When it comes to keeping customers happy, loyal, and coming back again, live chat support is a crucial piece of the puzzle to consider.
79% of businesses say using live chat boosts customer loyalty and sales. And from the customer’s side, it’s just as important: more than half say they prefer live chat over phone or email.
While live chat is essential for standing out in modern customer service, team efficiency and boosted customer satisfaction require comprehensive software solutions. Platforms like Front offer a holistic approach to deliver exceptional experiences with features like AI-powered live chat, an omnichannel inbox, automated workflows, robust analytics, and more.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
What is live chat software?
Top 6 live chat software solutions
Key features of live chat software
Benefits of live chat software
Choosing the right partner for your live chat software
What is live chat software?
Live chat software is used by businesses to communicate with website and in-app visitors in real-time through messaging. It facilitates immediate communication, enabling businesses to provide swift assistance, address customer concerns, and offer personalized support, ultimately enhancing the overall customer experience.
Today, live chat has evolved beyond a simple pop-up window; it’s now a critical component of a holistic and omnichannel strategy to provide a premium experience. Businesses now interact with customers across multiple channels like email, social media, and messaging apps, meeting them where they prefer to communicate.
To lead in customer service today, teams should look for a live chat solution with omnichannel features and other capabilities that help ensure a seamless, personalized customer service experience.
Top 6 live chat service software solutions
Front
Front offers a top live chat solution called Front Chat with an easy-to-use interface. Front’s live chat solution can offer in-the-moment support, powered by AI.
Top Front Chat features include:
Key part of broader omnichannel strategy: Add Front Chat to your website, mobile app, or in product to support your customers anywhere and manage live chat in Front alongside all your other channels: email, SMS, WhatsApp, and more.
Personalized replies (even with AI!): Resolve more inquiries with personalized AI replies, leaving more time for your support team to handle the complex requests.
Set up in a snap for accurate responses: With Front Chat, you can connect your knowledge base for AI to source answers from, which means fast, accurate responses are simpler.
Increase resolutions with insights: Robust analytics track resolution rate and audit unresolved questions so your team knows where to improve.
Customized look and feel: Teams can style their chat widget to match their brand and maintain a consistent customer experience.
Front differentiates on personal, high-quality relationships while still keeping team efficiency at the center – achieving the best of both worlds. Although it has live chat software capabilities, it leads the pack because it was purpose-built for the next generation of customer service, including other features like:
Easy-to-use interface: Make customer support easier without the confusing onboarding that usually comes with traditional tools. Front’s simple inbox-style setup makes it quick to start using, so your team can help customers faster. No need for long, pricey setup processes; setting up Front is quick, easy, and doesn’t require external help to set up.
Omnichannel support: Bring together all customer chats into one place. With Front, you can manage messages from email, SMS, social media, live chat, and WhatsApp all in one platform. This makes your team work more cohesively and gives customers a smoother experience.
Robust, no-code workflows and integrations: Set up and manage automated workflows to make customer communication smoother, cutting down on manual work for agents. With Front, you can bring messages together, direct them where they need to go, and make sure everyone knows what they need to do. Easily connect your key tools and systems to make everything run better and help your team get more done.
Comprehensive, customizable platform: Front is made to give agents all they need to help customers, whether it’s simple questions answered by Front’s built-in knowledge base, chatbots, or AI Answers, or more complex issues that require coordination between different teams working behind the scenes.
Real-time collaboration: Keep everyone on the same page using features like mentions and comments in Front, whether they’re teammates, cross-functional teams, or stakeholders. This means everyone stays coordinated without having to switch to other apps for updates or to provide more information.
Boost productivity with AI: Deliver exceptional customer service faster than ever. Through functions like email thread summarization and quick drafting assistance, Front AI enables your team to offer top-notch support to customers with increased speed and efficiency.
Integrations and API: Front offers over 110 integrations and an open API tailored to optimize workflows specific to your business needs. Easily handle various channels like WhatsApp, Dialpad, or Twilio within a single platform. Access all relevant information from Front’s sidebar, including CRMs, project management tools, and other business systems, ensuring seamless collaboration and productivity.
Knowledge base: Front’s knowledge base allows customers, teams, and partners to swiftly locate the information they require with ease. Redirect frequently asked questions and simpler queries, leaving your team to handle the more intricate conversations.
Award-winning customer support: Front is renowned for its exceptional support team [which consistently achieves nearly 100% CSAT!]. Additionally, it provides an extensive knowledge base, Front community, and Front academy, offering users various avenues to ensure they maximize their Front experience.
Front G2 rating: 4.7 / 5
Starter: $19/seat/mo
Growth: $59/seat/mo
Scale: $99/seat/mo
Premier: $229/seat/mo
guide: 5 best practices for stellar self-service support
We spoke with top customer experience leaders at Loom, Airbnb, Lattice, and more to learn the secrets to successful self-service experiences.
Zendesk
Zendesk’s live chat support system is part of Zendesk’s broader customer service offering, which is best suited to more high volume support environments — where simple inquiries tend to be solved by individual agents without as much coordination with others.
With Zendesk’s live chat feature, users can connect across web, mobile and social to maintain an ongoing conversation and so the customer never has to repeat themselves. Its live chat software enables businesses to add live chat to their website with a no-code widget that can be customized.
Zendesk G2 rating: 4.3 / 5
Pricing:
Support team: $19/agent/month
Suite team: $55/agent/month
Suite growth: $89/agent/month
Suite professional: $115/agent/month
Intercom
Intercom’s customer service offering features synchronous, chat-based support. It emphasizes a conversational approach to engaging with customers in real time, prioritizing interactive communication to enhance customer experiences.
Intercom’s live chat solution is deeply integrated with their AI chatbot Fin, which automatically solves customer issues based on teams’ support content. It can also triage problems and pass them to human support without interruption.
Intercom G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Pricing:
Essential: $39/seat/month
Advanced: $99/seat/month
Expert: $139/seat/month
LiveChat
LiveChat is a live chat software that enables businesses to engage with their website visitors in real-time through live chat. LiveChat offers features such as customizable chat widgets, visitor monitoring, chat transcripts, and integrations with other business tools.
Of note, LiveChat doesn’t come with its own built-in knowledge base. To access this feature, users need to integrate with separate software products provided by LiveChat’s parent company.
LiveChat G2 rating: 4.5 / 5
Pricing:
Starter: $20/month/person
Team: $40/month/person
Zoho Desk
Zoho Desk is a customer support and help desk software developed by Zoho Corporation. It provides businesses with tools to manage and streamline customer interactions across various channels, including email, phone, live chat, social media, and self-service portals.
Users can make Zoho Desk’s live chat feature available on their website, and in their help center, by embedding the live chat widget without any coding. Zoho Desk’s live chat enables teams to create and customize separate embeddable widgets to reflect brand requirements.
Zoho Desk G2 rating: 4.4 / 5
Pricing:
Standard: $14/user/month
Professional: $23/user/month
Enterprise: $40/user/month
Help Scout
Help Scout is a customer support platform that focuses on delivering personalized and efficient customer service. Its live chat solution, Beacon, enables customers options to chat, email, or read help articles in real time.
Beacon provides alerts for customer service teams and in-app surveys that help share feedback on the customer experience. It can be customized to match the branding and design of a company’s website, providing a seamless and cohesive experience for customers.
Help Scout G2 rating: 4.4 / 5
Pricing starting at:
Standard: $20/user/month
Plus: $40/user/month
Pro: $65/user/month
Key features of live chat software
Omnichannel support: The best live chat software integrates seamlessly with other channels like email, social media, and WhatsApp, providing a cohesive customer service experience.
AI and automation: Features like chatbots and automated greetings can help manage the flow of conversations and provide instant responses to common inquiries, even outside of business hours.
Front customer Structured, a productivity app with over 1.5 million monthly active users, manages thousands of new chats weekly without maintaining a dedicated live chat team. Instead, bot flows guide users towards self-service options. The team diligently monitors chatbot performance metrics, continuously refining help center content to enhance resolution rates and overall service speed.
AI has enabled new self-service possibilities for our customers, as we don’t staff a live chat team. Instead we offer escalation to our team via email and their workload was cut by as much as 10% within a few weeks of adding AI Answers. We definitely think users are more satisfied with the AI responses as well!
Customization and branding: Live chat customization and branding involves tailoring the chat interface to reflect the company’s identity. By integrating brand elements like logos and colors, businesses can create a cohesive and professional appearance across all customer touchpoints. This fosters brand recognition and instills confidence and trust in customers, reinforcing the company’s commitment to quality service.
Analytics: Through analytics, businesses gain valuable insights into chat volume, customer satisfaction levels, and agent performance metrics. This visibility allows for proactive management of customer inquiries, ensuring prompt responses and resolution of issues.
Integration with knowledge base: With integration to a knowledge base, you can help customers help themselves with answers from the knowledge base right from the chat.
Front customer Enchanted Fairies, a franchise specializing in portrait studios, identified the primary reasons clients initiated chats: either to inquire about the nearest studio location or to adjust their appointment times. Since comprehensive details about each studio are available in their help center, Front’s AI Answers in live chat could efficiently manage most of these inquiries. Consequently, this automation enabled their team to expedite appointment modifications and elevate client service standards.
AI Answers has reduced the workload for our team by hundreds of chats per month and made my team’s life a lot easier managing our chatbot and help center. We’ve been incredibly happy with the accuracy of AI Answers, with 50% of chats that reach the AI resolved instantly.
Benefits of live chat software
Implementing a live chat system allows businesses to address inquiries in real time, fostering customer satisfaction and loyalty. Without live chat, businesses risk losing potential leads or frustrating customers with delayed responses.
Core live chat software benefits include:
Immediate customer support: With instant access to support agents, customers feel valued and cared for, leading to stronger relationships and repeat business.
Personalized experience: Agents can tailor responses, boosting conversion rates and retention. Through personalized interactions, businesses can address the unique needs and preferences of each customer, creating a memorable and impactful experience that encourages repeat purchases and referrals.
Cost effectiveness: Compared to traditional channels, live chat reduces support costs while maintaining quality of service offered. By leveraging live chat technology, businesses can resolve inquiries more efficiently, reducing the need for expensive phone support or lengthy email exchanges, ultimately saving time and resources.
Competitive advantage: Businesses stand out by offering responsive service, gaining an edge over competitors. In today’s market, providing prompt and effective support through live chat sets businesses apart, enhancing their reputation and driving customer loyalty.
Analytics and feedback: Live chat systems provide valuable data for improving service quality and making informed decisions. By analyzing chat transcripts, monitoring customer satisfaction metrics, and gathering feedback, businesses can identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to enhance the overall customer experience.
Choosing the right partner for your live chat software
When it comes to assessing modern customer service solutions, Front emerges as the top choice for businesses looking to deliver exceptional experiences. Front’s platform provides a holistic approach to customer support so businesses can harness not only the power of AI-powered live chat but experience the impact of an omnichannel inbox, automated workflows, robust analytics, and more — all in one unified solution.
Written by Sara Shaughnessy
Originally Published: 18 January 2024