Live Chat Services could be seen as essential for online businesses in the digital era. But which plugin should you choose to integrate these ‘chat-bots’? This article aims to guide you into selecting the correct Live Chat Service for your website.
There is no doubt that your website needs a Live Chat Service to secure customers’ sales and build up a relationship between them and the people behind the website which they see on their screen – this is common knowledge within the website-building industry. A short-list of the five best Live Chat Service plugins has been compiled below, to aid you in your search for the best.
1. Facebook Messenger
Everybody uses Facebook – it’s one of the most well-known and popular social media sites on the internet. So, by utilising this $10/month subscription to Facebook Messenger Live Chat, you receive a highly-customisable service which your customers will near-instantly trust due to the familiar Facebook style.
It requires very little time and effort to set up and supports most languages, with a multitude of personalisation options, like colours. However, the best feature of this plugin must be the fact that conversations can be continued even after the visitor has left your website via the Messenger app, so that getting customer feedback is not a hassle.
However, integrating Facebook’s style with your website’s unique formatting may be an issue, and customer support isn’t easy to access.
2. LiveChat
LiveChat is one of the oldest competitors on the Chat-bot market, with its basic package being $16/month, recommended for smaller businesses.
While this may be pricier than other plugins, with the most expensive package being $149/month, it does have an excellent style which could be easily customised so that it fits into your website, with many different options – this Live Chat Service is feature-rich and could be called the Microsoft Word of Chat-bots, with options to add customer-feedback surveys not only after the conversation, but also before, and also an extremely efficient loading and working speed.
But, it does have lacking support for multilingual websites, and the high price tag cannot be ignored.
3. Tidio
Tidio is a new Chat-bot service with some potential but also limitations. Different to the two options before it, Tidio does have a limited ‘forever-free’ option, going up to a $17.09 (€15)/month package with tailor-made additions.
Just some of the possible additions are live type (see what your visitors are going to say before they even submit the message, making conversations quicker and more fluid) and page tracking (see which pages are gathering interest or gaining problems).
Although it is excellent for multilingual websites, it is somewhat unpolished and limited; for example, it contains some reported graphical glitches with the chat logo and multi-website integration isn’t as efficient as it could be.
4. JivoChat
This modern-looking Chat-bot has a ‘forever-free’ version, and a $30/month ‘professional’ version, with a further customisable pricing option for larger-scale businesses.
It boasts support in twenty languages and is extremely user-friendly. Many users are allowed to use the software at once, so paying more money for more users would be a problem of the past.
However, the customisation options are limited compared to others in this list, so integrating it with your website’s individual style could be difficult, and the chat history is only kept for two months, which may be detrimental if an issue arises after two months and the chat history needs to be checked.
5. Tawk.To Live Chat
Tawk.To is a uniquely 100% free Live Chat Service, with the option to hire a chat agent for $1/month being the only paid option on the site, highlighting its advocacy of your interaction with your customers being free.
It will monitor traffic coming to your website for you and is fairly customisable. It also has an option to write down ‘notes’ about a particular visitor for any future conversations which the visitor has with a different operator, but it is by no means the equivalent of, for example, such a heavy-weight program as LiveChat. You cannot be sure of the service not going down at any given moment – there is no 99% uptime guarantee. Also, the customer service has been known to give no response for several hours at a time.
It is suitable for smaller businesses, but it is not reliable enough for larger-scale operations.
6. Pure Chat
This is a plugin that will enable you to talk to several visitors of your website at the same time while retaining the history and the transcript so you can return to it at any point and read it again. As a bonus, there are many triggers as well that you can choose from and the appearance of the chatbox. You can also choose what this widget will display when you are not online. For instance, it can display an indicator that you are not online or it can display an email contact option or it can disappear entirely from the home page. After you install it, you will need to create an account and then select a widget that you would like to use on your page, click on the link to the dashboard of Pure Chat. There, you can change some settings and customize your widget to suit you best. This plugin has no annoying ads and it integrates with tools and apps which will improve your customer engagement and management.
7. Zendesk Chat
This is another very popular plugin that will interact with your customers in real time and it can help them to complete any transaction. You can then manage several transactions and use the dahsboard which will help you monitor visitors there. The plugin is optimized for mobile devices and it works on all major browsers as well as in 40 languages.
After you install it, you can set up your account with the Zendesk chat account and then customize and set up your widget so it manages the conversions from the dashboard which is very intuitive and smart. The free version will allow you to chat with one person at a time and it will save data from the interview for 14 days, after which it will be deleted. Only one of your team members can enter and access your dashboard at a time in the free version and there are less customization options here as well. However, you can get a premium version and get many additional features that will help you improve your chat.
8. IflyChat
This is a great option for the community and social networking sites because it can allow you to chat with your customers and allow them to chat with each other. This is the reason why it’s a good fit for forums or dating websites as well as some other areas. After you install it, you will need to create a profile there and then get an API key which will allow you to access the plugin. This is a cloud based chat so it means that you won’t have to install any new software.
This plugin uses HTML, JS and CSS to work as well as a Url based filteer which makes it possible to hide the chatbox on certain pages. The free plan will support about ten users and signing into your website will sign you into the plugin chat. Your users can also choose to stay anonymous. You can set everything up to provide support for any of your products or services and the free version comes with branding too. You can share files and ban different IP addresses and it encrypts syour chats with SSL so it’s all safe. It will also keep a record of your chats and you can always access it.
You can have chatrooms, group chats, moderations and so on. It will allow you to embed your chats so they don’t show on a popup.
9. WhatsApp Chat
This is a Whatsapp chat for your website which will add a live chat to your site. This live chat app is pretty self-explanatory. It’s very useful when you know that the vast majority of your users are using the Whatsapp app for their communication and that it’s something that they are familiar with, this is the one that will bring them to your page and give hem an extra reason to support your brand. This tool is really easy to integrate and it will help you bring a professional layer to your pages. Having that customer support is another one of the highest values you can have on your website.
10. HubSpot all in one marketing plugin
This is a plugin which will give you everything you need and offer immense value for your website, brand and users. It will give you a live chat option as well and it will help you communicate with your audience simply and effectively. They can get in touch with you in real time and learn about how to benefit from you and your brand. To make it even more convenient for you, you can also use a chatbot feature which will allow you to communicate with your customers even when you are not around.
Conclusion
Choosing a Live Chat Service to represent your business with your online customers can be difficult, as every plugin is tailored towards different people with different needs, but this article walking you through the main contenders should help you to make your decision.
