Setting up live chat tools for your e-commerce business is very important because they allow you to provide instant response and a personalized experience to your customers. Most customers want their questions answered instantly, and any problem or uncertainty with their purchase can make them leave your website or abandon their carts. Using a live chat tool for e-commerce business can be a gamechanger for your e-commerce store or website. Constant engagement and support to your customers through live chat support will improve customer experience, drive sales and boost customer retention. However, finding the best live chat tools for your e-commerce business is not an easy task and can be time-consuming. That’s why we have put together a list of the best live chat tools that can help you to improve your customer service experience and generate more sales.
Why Do You Need A Live Chat For Your E-commerce Business?
- Statistics show that 44% of consumers believe that having their questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a company’s website can offer. Furthermore, live chat has a more satisfactory level in terms of customer service at 73% when compared to 61% for email and 44% for phone.
- Adding a live chat tool for your e-commerce business will help reduce cart abandonment and increase sales.
- Live chat tools allow you to contact leads without having an email signup form embedded in your website. Which is used to gather customer insights for continuous improvement.
- It helps deliver a better user experience through real-time support, a targeted approach, and personalization
- Having a live chat tool on your e-commerce website allows customers to get instant answers without leaving your website.
- A live chat tool will have a significant impact on online sales and marketing by keeping a customer on the site for a longer period and even converting them
- A positive live chat experience can effectively help customers make buying decisions.
What You Should Consider Before Choosing a Live Chat Tool
There are a lot of live chat tools available with different functions and solutions, but not all of them are meant for every business. To choose the best live chat tool for your e-commerce business, here are a few things you have to consider.
1. Automation
When choosing a live chat tool for your e-commerce business, you should choose one that can automate a variety of daily tasks, like greeting customers when they visit your website, gathering names and information of customers, gathering product info, or sending follow-up surveys. An automated chatbot can initiate live chats with customers to answer some basic questions about your business.
2. Real-time analytics
The live chat support tool you choose must be able to offer real-time analytics which enables you to analyze important metrics like response time, chat histories, conversion tracking, visitor details, average time spent on chats, wait time, and customer satisfaction ratings. These data are essential for determining effective strategies and areas for improvement.
3. integrations
When choosing a LiveChat tool, make sure you look for one that can integrate with your business tools including your CRM tool, like Zendesk, BIGContacts, Zoho, HubSpot, Monday.com, and other apps like social media messaging apps and delivery tracking apps for a more interconnected and seamless customer service experience.
4. Mobile support
Live chat support needs to be mobile-friendly because billions of people are accessing websites through their phones. The software needs to be available for all platforms and devices to cater to all your customers. Having native apps on iOS and Android is also valuable.
5. 24/7 support
Having reliable software that you can reach via phone call, email, or chat is crucial when choosing a live chat system as it reflects how well their product works. It is important to be able to reach out to your vendor 24/7, 365 days a year, and ask for assistance when you need it.
6. Easy customization.
Branding is important for businesses, therefore, all elements of your website must deliver a consistent visual experience, including your live chat interface. Choosing a customizable one is essential so you can promote your brand image cohesively through personalizing languages, chat banners, styles, colors, and fonts, among others.
Top 10 Live chat Tools for Your E-commerce Business
1. LiveChat
LiveChat is a very popular and well-rounded live chat support option. It is very easy to set up and install and offers a broad range of features and e-commerce integrations. These features include branding and customization, file sharing, chat transcripts and archives, multilingual chat, and software integrations. Utilize automatic or personal greetings, after-hours forms, reports and analytics, ticketing, sales info, and goals.
LiveChat also comes with live chat support apps that your customer service team can use on their laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. This means you can chat with customers on the go.
You can also add survey forms before and after a live chat session, so you can evaluate how your support team and sales team is performing.
Features
- Integrate with various business tools
- File sharing
- Chat transcript and archives
- Branding and customization
- Multilingual chat
Pricing
- $67/mo starter,
- $33/mo team,
- $50/mo business
- Enterprise contact for quote
2. Tidio LiveChat
Tidio is another live chat tool that you can integrate with your e-commerce website to improve your overall e-commerce business. It is a powerful yet easy-to-use e-commerce live chat tool that comes with various benefits for your online store. The app is great for those businesses that are just starting and do not have experience with coding.
Features:
- Automated messages targeting customers based on activity type
- Unlimited chat support with over 100 new customers per month
- WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores
- Easy installation (takes less than 30-seconds)
- Supports multiple languages
- 500+ automated emails per month
- Automated email response for offline queries
- Easy integration with Facebook Messenger, Zapier, etc
Pricing
- It comes with a free plan that supports 3 operators, unlimited chat sessions, and automated bots
- Chatbot plan ($18/month)
- Communicator plan ($18/month)
- Mailing plan($10/month).
3. Hubspot
Hubspot is another popular all-in-one marketing platform that offers e-commerce stores full live chat functions as well as a chatbot builder. The tool allows users to customize their live chat design to match their website brand. It also allows automated chatbot flows with no code, and seamlessly integrates all customer data in the HubSpot CRM platform. The app comes with a user-friendly interface that can integrate with other apps like Facebook and Surveymonkey.
Hubspot allows you to customize targeted messages for your audience and the personalization features help to personalize your conversation for returning visitors. The software comes with a mobile app that allows users to take notes, make calls, and schedule appointments.
Furthermore, HubSpot also comes with email marketing automation, sales CRM, landing page software, and many other powerful marketing features included for the same price.
Features
- Email marketing automation
- sales CRM
- landing page software
- Mobile app
- Easy integration with various marketing software
- A user-friendly interface
- Analytics
Pricing
Free
4. Live Agent
This is another well-known live chat tool for e-commerce businesses. Apart from its live chat functions, the app comes with a ticketing system, built-in call center, live chat, video chat, time tracking, and a customer access portal. The app also integrates seamlessly with CMS platforms like WordPress, top email marketing services like Mailchimp, Customer relation management tools, and other marketing platforms. The app is perfect for businesses in search of helpdesk and support solutions. If you do not have a support desk system already, the app can help make things easier and more interesting for your staff.
Features
- Easy integration
- Ticketing system
- Built-in call center
- Live chat
- Video chat
- Time tracking
- Customer access portal
Pricing
- Offers a free plan
- $29/mo per agent & up
5. Sendinblue
Sendinblue is a user-friendly live chat software for e-commerce businesses that is easy to set up and install. All you need to do is set up your chat box under your account and then add it to your website using a WordPress plugin.
The software allows you to answer customers’ questions via live chat. Furthermore, the app integrates with Sendinblue marketing automation which enables you to capture more leads.
It comes with built-in email marketing integration, retargeting for Facebook ads, segmentation, and complete marketing automation.
Sendinblue offers a complete marketing package with CRM, SMS and email marketing, landing pages, and more. This powerful toolkit helps you convert even more visitors into paying customers.
Features
- built-in email marketing integration,
- retargeting for Facebook ads,
- segmentation
- complete marketing automation.
- landing page builder
- integration with CRM tools
Pricing
- It offers a free plan
- Lite plan at $25/month
- Premium plan at $65
6. Olark
Olark is an e-commerce live chat tool that makes it easy for you to talk to customers. It’s easy to set up and install and can be integrated with the WordPress site. You can do this by copying and pasting a code snippet into your WordPress sidebar widget. Apart from this, the app also integrates with other services like Google Analytics, Salesforce, Zendesk and Highrise seamlessly.
Features
- Collects visitor details like location and device, maintains visitor history
- Chat transfers
- Chat transcripts
- File sharing
- Chat tagging for analytic purposes
- Automatically add chat events to Google Analytics
- Organize chat agents into departments and monitor activity
- Pre and post-chat survey
- Chat routing
- Canned responses
- Automate chat greeting, and chat initiation on triggers
- Automate chatbox behaviour based on visitor behaviour
- Chat agent user roles – basic access and administrative access
- Enable desktop notifications of new chats
- Integration with Zendesk, Salesforce, Magento, BigCommerce, and more
- Dedicated WordPress plugin for WooCommerce stores
- Add-ons for co-browsing, removing ‘Olark’ branding, and visitor insights into social and professional profiles
Pricing
- Olark comes with a limited free plan that lets you have up to 20 chats per month with limited features.
- There is also a paid plan that starts at $29/month/seat
7. Freshchat
Freshchat or Freshdesk is another live chat tool that offers some amazing features that you can use to boost your e-commerce business and overall customer service support. The app allows users to have real-time chats with customers using agents or AI-powered bots.
The app offers triggered messages which are used in completing a purchase and email campaigns that drive action after visitors have engaged with your brand.
Features
- Triggered messages or email campaigns based on customer-specific behavior
- lead generation
- Clearbit integration
- Segment users based on geography or behavior for targeted action
- It is mobile friendly
- Integrate with top marketing and customer support software
- Co-browsing and screen sharing
- Smart plugs to pull information from Team Inbox to engage customers with context
- Chat transcripts
- Create a ticket from chats
- Conversion report, label report, and team performance report
Pricing
- Free
- $15/mo per agent, Growth
- $39/mo per agent, Pro
- $69/mo per agent, Enterprise
8. Zendesk
Zendesk is known for its ability to deliver quick customer service and capture leads. With Zendesk, you can bring conversations from messaging platforms, social media, websites, and email into a single workspace. One good thing about Zendesk is its user-friendly interface, it also works well with multiple communication channels and delivers detailed analytics.
Features
- Behavior-based triggers
- Pre-chat and offline forms
- Chat ratings
- Visitor lists
- AI-powered chatbots
- File sending
- Multi-channel mobile support.
- Screencasting
Pricing
- It has a basic free plan
- A team plan for $14
- Professional which goes for $29
- Enterprise $59
9. Intercom
Intercom is a live chat software that is used for capturing leads, engaging and supporting customers and conversions. It offers messaging services with live chat widgets that you can automate. It also offers services like chatbots and customer engagement.
Intercom also allows e-commerce store owners to customize their chat interface according to their branding and personal preferences. Also, you can insert emojis and GIFs into your chat to make it look more casual and fun.
Apart from the live chat functions, it can be used as a lead generation tool, marketing automation, and user-engagement software.
The app is easy to use and seamlessly integrates with other marketing software like Slack, Facebook, Salesforce, Google Analytics, Stripe, CRM software, and email marketing services.
Features
- See conversations across all channels in a single inbox
- Trigger automatic chat messages when customers meet certain criteria
- Direct customers to your knowledge base or self-service center using chatbots or apps
- Automatically route more complex tickets to a live chat agent
- Integrate with 300+ different tools and platforms
Pricing
- Start — $39 per month
- Grow — $99 per month
- Accelerate — $499 per month
- Scale — $999 per month
10. Gorgias
Gorgias is a live chat software used by e-commerce businesses to support and strengthen their customer service teams. It comes with live chat, chatbots, a self-service portal, a ticketing system, and data analytics. It also comes with tools you can use for your online sales and marketing, analytics for detailed customer reporting, and sales tracking. Its live chat solutions help streamline and personalize customer support for your customers and support agents. Gorgias can integrate e-commerce websites like Shopify and Magento making it easy for you to update customer orders and refunds in real-time as you chat with them.
Features
- Integration with e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce Magento and Shopify and more
- live chat,
- chatbots,
- self-service portal,
- ticketing system
- Data analytics.
- Create custom auto-responses and templates
- Chat campaigns that engage web visitors based on the page they’re on or their time on the page
- Track metrics such as ticket volume, first response time, and resolutions time
Price
- A Basic plan at $50 per month billed annually
- Pro plan at 300 per month
- Advanced plan at 750 per month
- Enterprise plan
Conclusion
Choosing the best live chat tool for your e-commerce depends on your needs and budget. However, some tools are recommended for small businesses like Hubspot which is an all-in-one marketing & CRM platform. The platform offers both live chat software and a no-code chatbot builder for free. Tidio Chat is another free live chat tool that is recommended for small businesses. LiveChat is another software that is highly recommended for small businesses, it is a great all-around chat tool for e-commerce businesses, however, it is not free, but is highly recommended.
Generally, Live chat tools allow businesses and customer service teams to engage with website visitors in real-time by answering their questions and resolving any issues they have. The ability to instantly engage with customers not only increases their satisfaction but allows businesses to scale while maintaining a high level of service.
