LiveChat Review 2021: Best Live Chat and Help Desk Software for Businesses?

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In today’s highly competitive market, businesses leave no stone unturned to launch their product or service in the market – with immense support from teams of experts who are responsible for design and development, marketing, SEO and so on.

Where once companies could easily sell the product through aggressive marketing strategies, today customers are looking for a more tailored solution as well as highly professional customer service that could promptly address their queries – before, during and after a purchase.

In this LiveChat review, we’ll take an in-depth look at the LiveChat Software to understand what features does it offer, its pricing model, and why it is the best choice for live chat and helpdesk support tools.

LiveChat Inc: A Quick Introduction

LiveChat Inc is a software firm based in Poland, specialized in creating tools for website live chat and help desk solutions. Founded in 2002, the company is currently operating in SaaS (software-as-a-service) model and is providing an online platform to companies with live chat, help desk, and web analytics capabilities.

It provides a 3-in-1 solution that you can use for marketing, collaboration and customer service activities that would otherwise be handled through separate tools. Today, many popular brands use LiveChat tool as a single point of contact to engage with their website prospects or customers.

Live Chat
A live chat tool that allows you to communicate with your website audiences in real time.

Help Desk
A help desk support tool that helps you to collect concerns or issues raised by users through various channels.

In general, the primary channels of sources include,

  • Chat
  • Email & Ticket
  • FB Messenger

Now that you have some idea about this livechat tool, but you are still wondering how using live chat can help you? Let’s take a look at the benefits of using live chat software for a website.

Benefits of using Live Chat Software

#1: Reduces Operating Cost

Businesses are always striving to find proven sales strategies to meet sales goals and upsurge revenues. Adding a cost-effective customer service solution not just improves the quality of services but also helps reduce support expenses that have a direct impact on a company’s profitability.

According to studies by several research firms, live chat is 15-20% cheaper than a phone call support. And while phone call only offers one-on-one support, the advantage of using live chat is that a single chat agent can manage multiple customers at the same time. This added efficiency can save you both time and money you spend on customer service.

#2: Increases your Sales

One may ask “how can the use of live chat software increase sales?”

Finding a way to reach your potential visitors and answering them in the fastest possible way has become a necessity. And, that’s because not every customer can wait patiently to get their questions answered, sometimes, even the slightest delay in answering can result in absconding visitors.

It is very useful and can be a very efficient tool for your sales teams to increase sales. According to a report claimed by Startup Magazine, adding live chat solution to the website can boost conversions up to 20%. Not just that but typical ROI from standard live chat software for sales is around 300%. Where another study reveals that adding a personal touch to every interaction with your customer leaves a big impact on how they perceive your brand.

Live chat helps to increase sales conversion rate for websites by allowing your customers to connect directory with online chat agents in a very efficient way without overloading them. And, you can generate more sales leads by engaging positively with visitors and convert them into loyal customers.

#3: Know your Customer Problems

Demand for business live chat has increased in recent years.

According to data published by Harish Research, 53% of customers are likely to use online chat before calling customer support. (Source: ICMI)

And, one of the reasons that customers prefer this method of communication is because it helps to solve the problems faced by customers quickly. Customers can connect directly to an online agent instead of dialing the number and wait patiently while their call is on the waiting list.

What’s more? Knowing your potential customers and understanding their needs is a lot simpler, as your operators get a real-time list of live visitors to your website.

But, despite all this, one of the toughest parts of the customer service is that they may not have a dedicated support agent for customers. And because not every customer is the same, sometimes it’s really hard to handle some difficult customers. That’s when the chat transcript feature plays an important role as your support agent can quickly go through a conversation history while exchanging greetings with a customer. It helps the agent to know what to do and what not to do based on previous interactions with the same customer.

#4: Improves Customer Loyalty

Customer satisfaction is of the utmost importance to every business.

As technology has advanced so much in the last two decades, customers’ preferences have also changed and today they have more options to reach out to customer support than in the 90s when people were only limited to typical voice call support.

With live chat integrated to your website, customers not only can talk to the support team, but they can even stay connected longer than phones, which is much less expensive for customers as well as businesses. Customers find it more confident when they see live chat support on a website. Some surveys even show that companies that provide real-time support by allowing agents to spend little extra time with their visitors, it helps develop trust in visitors.

It sheds a ray of hope on them that their problems will be acknowledged and resolved quickly.

#5: Gain Competitive Advantage

According to a survey conducted by Forrester, although the rate of live chat adoption has increased rapidly over the last couple of years, yet major companies have not fully adopted it in their business. In fact, another report states that only 12-15% of businesses have integrated an online chat software that offers real-time support to customers as an alternative to voice call support.

The figures show that by harnessing the power of live chat, you can get a competitive edge over names who have not yet introduced this support tool. This is because it not only offers real-time assistance to your audience but also delivers a better experience between customers and the sales team.

Moreover, it brings you an opportunity to talk to new leads while they are on your website and that can help you increase your customer acquisition rate.

#6: Reporting and Data Analytics

Helping your website visitors resolve their queries is important, but so is analyzing the data gathered during the online conversation in a way that enables you to turn it into actionable insights.

LiveChat software gives you useful insights into your visitors’ engagement, resource utilization, customer satisfaction, staffing prediction and more. It helps you understand what problems customers are facing, the average time visitors spend interacting with a chat agent, the ability to track the geo location of website visitors, whether your customers are happy with the level of support and so on.

Not only this, but it can also assist you in measuring your team’s performance by monitoring their workload in terms of the number of chats and tickets resolved, customer satisfaction rate, average response time to chats, resolution time for tickets and so on.

LiveChat Integrations

As you probably would already know that collecting and analyzing customer data can bring many benefits in terms of sales, cost, efficiency, and transparency.

LiveChat offers seamless integration with a wide variety of enterprise applications and services including popular CMS platforms such as WordPress and Drupal, analytics services like Google Analytics, and CRM tools like Salesforce and HubSpot, without worrying about technical details.

It works out of the box with over 200+ third party tools that you may already be using in your business.

A Quick Glance at LiveChat Dashboard

The first thing you will probably notice after you have logged into LiveChat website is that you have a navigation list on the left-hand side of the Dashboard giving you quick access to various features of the LiveChat.

The dashboard neatly consolidates numbers and metrics to give you a graphical summary of the various pieces of information about chats, tickets, and agent activities. On the home screen, it gives you stats showing the number of chats you have served in the last 7 days as well as the number of total chats done by the entire team. Similarly, you have stats showing the total number of tickets opened in the last 7 days.

livechat dashboard
LiveChat Dashboard

You can now get a real-time overview of the number of ongoing chats, the number of customers who are currently visiting your website, the number of live agents that can help customers, and the number of tickets that are not yet assigned.

quick stats into livechat numbers

Real Time LiveChat Stats

Moreover, if you are just setting up the tool, you will probably see the suggestion list on the right side of the Dashboard to help you get most out of the live chat software and learn fast.

So, let’s get started with the tool.

Adding LiveChat to a Website, Step by Step

Step 1: Installing LiveChat on WordPress site

Adding LiveChat on WordPress site could not have been easier without this plugin. The plugin is published by LiveChat Inc. and is freely available on the WordPress.org website.

To get started, first, log into your WordPress site in administrative mode.

Go to the Plugins section, click on Add New and search for the LiveChat plugin developed by LiveChat Inc Software.

livechat wordpress plugin

WordPress Chat Plugin

Next, install and active the plugin.

Step 2: Connect your WordPress site to LiveChat

After activating the plugin, you can then connect your WordPress site with LiveChat. For this, go to plugin’s settings and click on ‘Connect with LiveChat’ button.

connect livechat inc to your website

Connect your WordPress site to LiveChat

This brings you two options:

  • Login with your existing account, if you already have signed up for LiveChat membership or trail.
  • Register to create a new account from within WordPress site.
livechat added to wordpress

Confirmation that livechat software is successfully connected to your WordPress site

After you’ve successfully connected with your LiveChat account, you should see a chat widget in the bottom right corner. But, if not, try to refresh the page.

That’s all it takes to install LiveChat plugin on WordPress site.

In the next step, you will learn how to onboard your team members to LiveChat.

Step 3: Onboard your Team to LiveChat

To ensure a smooth transition and keep the process straightforward, LiveChat provides you with a very simple user interface that gives you a quick way to add team members. You can add your entire team to LiveChat in a matter of a few minutes.

ask support agents to join livechat

Invite your support team to join livechat by sending the bulk invites

And as the need arises, you can also send an invitation link to add more agents to provide seamless 24×7 customer service support to your visitors.

Step 4: Personalize your LiveChat

Connect with your visitors by starting an online conversation with a personalized, automated message.

Next, you can optionally upload your profile picture. This can increase the visitor’s chances of continuing the conversation with just one glance to the profile picture in the chat window.

Tip: Keep the welcome message as simple as possible and make them feel like they are talking to a real person and not a chatbot.

Step 5: Customize your Chat Window to match Website Look

To help your business maintain its brand identity, LiveChat provides dozens of easy-to-use options to select the right set of colors that matches the color scheme of your website and increase your brand awareness. In just a few easy steps, you can not only adjust the appearance of the chat widget but also change the behavior of the widget. For example, disable the chat on small devices like smartphone or enable the chat rating feature at the end of a conversation.

You can access it by logging into your LiveChat account, and then going to Settings » Chat Window » Customization.

This will take you to the Chat Widget Configurator screen.

Appearance

Under the appearance tab, you can choose one of the two themes below.

  • Smooth
  • Modern

To see which theme is best suited for your website, you can quickly toggle between theme modes and see how your chat window will appear on your website under the preview section on the right.

customize chat window appearance

Customize appearance of chat widget

You also get an option to choose how you chat window will appear when it’s minimized. And, the options are,

  • Bar
  • Bubble

Next, choose the color scheme of your chat widget.

You can either choose from an available theme color set that matches the colors of your website or brand or customize the widget by picking the right set of colors for your chat window.

color settings for chat windows

Customize the look and feel of the chat widget by setting the right color scheme

Position

Under the Position tab, you can quickly control when and how the chat window will appear on your website pages.

The live chat messenger appears on the bottom right of the browser window but you can easily change the position to left if you want that. You can also adjust spacing for the chat window.

Additionally, you have three options that control the visibility of the chat widget icon on your website as shown in the screen below.

live chat window position

Set position and visibility for chat widget

Mobile Chat Widget

Here you can set the visibility of the live chat on mobile devices. You can toggle between two buttons to easily turn on or off live chat for mobile.

While the chat for mobile is enabled, you can either opt for a unified experience across all platforms such as mobile and desktop, making it easy for visitors to spot on the chat widget, or you can customize it the way you think it would look great on a mobile device.

livechat customization for smartphones

Settings for mobile chat widget: Hide or show chat window for mobiles

Additional Tweaks

Under this tab, you can control some additional settings and features such as enabling a feature that allows your visitors to download a chat transcript at the end of a conversation with your live chat agent and/or hiding a button that allows users to rate conversation, and more.

livechat settings

Additional settings for LiveChat customization

Again, as you modify your settings, the preview can be seen on the right panel.

LiveChat Reports & Analytics

In general, reports provide you a wide range of insights and metrics useful for the business. In this section, you will see what kind of reports we get with LiveChat and how the data in these reports can be useful to different teams and help improve decision making.

A Quick Summary: Last 7 Days Report

As you navigate through the report section, the first thing you will find is the key metrics based on the number of activities performed during the last 7 days. This summarizes the total chats handled, the number of sales generated, satisfaction rates, tickets opened, number of resolved tickets and more.

Here, the section is subdivided into two, chat and ticket. It is very self-explanatory as you see in each section.

chat summary and ticket reporting

Get a summary report for chats and tickets from last 7 days

Chats

This section gives you insights centered around the chats as you read below.

1. Total Chats Report

You need to know how many chats are served on a particular day and at a particular time to measure the resource utilization of your teams. This helps you determine the time when you need to add more agents to handle additional chats during peak hours.

And, there is no better place than this.

total chats report

Keep a track of number of chats received every day using this total chat report

2. Chat Engagement Report

This report helps you determine where your chats are coming from. It shows you statistics about the number of chats coming from greetings messages, the number of chats coming directly from customers, and the number of chats initiated by agents.

The automatic greeting is probably the best way to encourage your visitor to join the chat with your agents. And sending a better greeting means you have more chances to convert to leads.

chat engagement report

This report presents a breakdown of the chats by type of user who started a chat session

3. Missed Chats Report

The first thing you would do is to look for the reports that tell you common issues, such as the report that indicates missing opportunities.

One area you definitely want to monitor is the ‘missing chats’ that could possibly be caused by the high volume of visitor trying to connect with your online agents, or perhaps outside the chat support hours. When agents are busy answering already connected visitors, this can cause new chats to be queued, resulting in more chances of visitors simply leaving the website.

With a missed chat report, you can see visitors who did not receive answers from online agents. This report helps you keep track of missing numbers as well as follow up on specific matters.

missed chats report

Learn to track missed chats opportunities in LiveChat

The missed chat heatmap lets you even see when you miss the most chats during the day. This helps you plan your team’s schedule so that there are more agents to handle visitors during busy periods.

missed chats heatmap report

A heatmap report for missed chats to forecast staffing needs to meet anticipated chat volumes

4. Greetings Conversion Report

Live chat helps you get engaged with your site visitors and there is no better way than sending a personalized greeting to encourage them to talk to you. Personalizing a welcome message helps your brand to deliver better customer experience through a contextualized message.

LiveChat allows you to group greetings in groups making it easier to see which greeting is performing well and which needs tweaking to bring in more chats.

chat greetings conversion report

Get a comprehensive report of chat greetings and breakdown of greeting-to-chat conversion numbers

What’s more?

There are other useful reports available under the Chats report section such as, report that explains the availability of chat during the day, number of surveys conducted after chatting, a report explaining the usage of tags, number of leads from greetings and more.

Tickets

LiveChat allows you to monitor the tickets received during a given period, the rate of satisfaction of your customers, the number of tickets resolved, as well as the average time your agents take to resolve tickets.

1. New Tickets Report

You can quickly get a summary of newly added tickets that you have received within a selected period.

Not only that but it also tells you the sources of those tickets such as tickets added via email, or chat, or through the ticket form.

new ticket report

This report shows newly added chats within a selected period

2. Ticket Satisfaction Report

Businesses must ensure that customer complaints are acknowledged, but more importantly resolved in a timely manner.

The ticket satisfaction report can help you determine how your customers are responding to the answers from your support team.

It lets you to filter the tickets based on raring and lets you drill down into the reasons for bad ratings.

ticket satisfaction report

Report showing customer satisfaction score for tickets

3. Solved Tickets Report

The best way to keep trust alive in the business is to know what problems customers are facing and how quickly you can respond to them within the agreed timeline.

The report helps you keep a track of the number of tickets that are solved on a day or within a given duration.

solved tickets report

Monitor the number of tickets resolved within the selected period

4. Resolution Time Report

The resolution time report shows you the length of time, on average, it takes for your chat agents to resolve the tickets.

This helps you identify tickets that took longer than usual for agents to resolve so that you can work on it to improve and deliver better resolution time.

ticket resolution time report

LiveChat helps you monitor the resolution time for the ticket along with the report

Customers

1. Queued Customers Report

When the number of incoming chat requests is high and you have very few agents online, the chats are automatically queued. The report helps you see the number of chat requests queued vs. queued requests entering into chat mode vs. number of chats left unanswered.

queued chat conversion report

The report showing routing of queued chats to online agents

2. Abandoning Chats Report

Abandoned chats are, in simple terms, the total number of chats that you have missed over a certain period of time. This helps you find out if you are missing out on potential leads and by what numbers?

For example, you can see visitors that tried to contact your support, but left the chat due to no response from the agents.

customer queued chat abandonment report

See how many visitors left the queued chats and number of pre-chat surveys filled

Ecommerce

1. Achieved Goals Report

You can set many different types of goals in LiveChat. These goals can help you gather the insights you need to optimize your workflows and increase conversions.

The Achieved Goals report shows the useful numbers such as number of chats that ended with purchase or signup, or any other goal you set up for your website to track numbers and monitor conversion rates.

Track and monitor performance of goals through daily, weekly and quarterly reports

2. Tracked Sales Report

The Tracked Sales is probably the most interesting report you’ll be interested in as it shows you data that summarizes sales for your business.

sales track report

See how much sales you have generated and performance using this tracked sales report

LiveChat Pricing: How much does it cost to Startup and Business?

Currently, it has four different paid plans to offer to its customers. Unfortunately, there isn’t any free plan.

LiveChat pricing starts from $16 per seat per month. This starter plan is suitable for SOHOs such as professionals offering SEO consulting, email marketing etc. Two other advanced plans are ideal for small to medium-sized companies: $33 per seat per month and $50 per seat per month, respectively.

The fourth plan is specifically designed for enterprises for their varied needs. The enterprise plan may cost $149 per seat per month but includes many perks such as 24×7 support and training by LiveChat experts, as well as many useful features like SSO integrations and more. This plan is customizable.

All the plans include two very important things: live chat and ticketing system. But not all the features we learned above are available in the starter plan, so definitely pay attention to the feature list if a specific feature holds your interest.

Support and Documentation

As the company itself is a platform providing customer service solutions, needless to say, but they need to handle the customers better and ensure that they are well satisfied. Therefore, the support team at LiveChat goes above and beyond to answer all their visitors’ questions on time and in great detail.

You will find hundreds of articles that are neatly organized into categories so you will get the right information when you jump into the documentation. For any urgent matter, you can contact them via live chat. Alternatively, write them an email or raise a support ticket and their support team will get back to you in no time.

Conclusion

LiveChat is a cost-effective and convenient option over other support modes such as in-person or voice support. This not only helps your brand improve the customer service experience but also aids your marketing and sales teams to boost conversions. What I liked while writing this review article is that LiveChat was really easy to install and configure with the website. Another thing that impressed me is that LiveChat offers tons of integrations with popular third-party services and platforms, some of which you might already be using.

It was a wonderful experience evaluating this tool and I recommend you try it out to realize the benefits of this awesome tool.

And, if you have already used it, please leave feedback for LiveChat in the comment box below.

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