Tag: Chat

Best Live Chat Software

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Live chat has quickly become an integral part of customer service in the digital era. 

When a customer or website visitor has a question, complaint, or needs some other type of assistance, they expect to reach your brand via live chat.

In addition to the improved customer experience, live chat is also more efficient for your support team. Service reps can’t field more than one phone call simultaneously, but they can handle multiple live chat conversations at the same time.

Overall, live chat is fast, effective, and more cost-efficient than any other type of customer communication. In terms of consumer preferences, it ranks higher than phone, email, and social media. Every website needs to have live chat.

With that said, there are dozens of different live chat solutions available on the market today. Which one is the best for you and your website? Continue below for my in-depth analysis.

The Top 7 Options For Live Chat Software

  1. Zendesk
  2. JivoChat
  3. Pure Chat
  4. Intercom
  5. LiveChat
  6. Acquire
  7. Smartsupp

How to Choose the Best Live Chat Software For You

As you’re comparing different live chat options, there are certain feature sets and considerations that must be evaluated. I’ll break these factors down in greater detail, so you have a better understanding of what to look for. 

Number of Agents

How big is your support team?

There’s a big difference between businesses with 5, 50, and 500 agents. Most plans will have some limitations on how many support reps can access the software. Other plans will have minimum seat requirements as well. 

It’s also important for you to look down the road as your company grows. Is it easy to add new agents to your plan at scale? Make sure you’re not locked into a plan that restricts your scalability.

Use Cases

Why exactly are you in the market for live chat software?

Sure, there are plenty of general-purpose options out there. But some software is designed to accommodate specific needs and goals. For example, there is live chat software for lead qualification, live chat software for customer engagement, and live chat software for customer support. 

These are just a few of many examples that should be taken into consideration. 

Omnichannel Support

If you’ve got customers reaching out to your brand on different channels, you want to make sure that the software seamlessly integrates with those third-party systems.

For example, you could potentially manage conversations from your website and conversations from Facebook Messenger within the same live chat software. Your service reps can handle everything from a single dashboard, instead of switching screens and being forced to use different platforms. 

Automation

Automation is arguably the most crucial and desirable feature of live chat software. It speeds up service requests significantly, and it’s a cost-effective way to provide assistance 24/7/365.

Chatbots don’t take lunch breaks or sick days. They work nights, weekends, and holidays. So if a website visitor has a question at 2:00 AM on a Saturday, it can potentially be resolved with a self-service chatbot. 

For businesses with multiple departments, chatbots and live chat software can automatically route messages to the right representative. Questions about returns would be sent directly to a support rep, while questions about new products would be routed to a sales rep.

Extras and Bonus Features

Aside from the core live chat software tools, each software will offer additional features with different plans. Not all of these will be a deal-breaker, but it’s helpful to have if you’re going to take advantage of these offerings.

I’m referring to features like CRM integrations, chat history, custom widgets, admin monitoring, helpdesk features, HIPAA-compliance, calendar integrations, appointment scheduling, etc.

The Different Types of Live Chat Software

At its core, live chat software is essentially real-time messaging on a website between a visitor and brand representative from a chatbox on the corner of the page. But within this broad classification, live chat can be segmented into three main categories.

Chatbots

Chatbots use AI technology and automation to solve problems. In many cases, customer inquiries can be resolved without any human interaction if you add chatbots to your website. 

It’s also common for sites to use chatbots initially, before ultimately routing the conversation to a support representative. Chatbots can help qualify the visitor and ultimately get the inquiry resolved faster.

Chatbots typically won’t come standard with basic live chat software plans. These are usually offered as an add-on. Don’t let the price of chatbots scare you away from using them. Over the long-term, it’s much cheaper to use bots than paying for human labor. 

Live Chat For Sales

There are lots of great sales-specific live chat solutions out there. This type of live chat software will include built-in CRM tools (or integrate with the CRM you’re already using), lead qualification features, and customer engagement tools.

Your sales agents will have a much easier time closing leads if you’re leveraging live chat software built for sales. 

Customer Support Software

Live chat is a common component of helpdesk software. Lots of customer service software on the market will have features for things like ticket support and team collaboration, but the best ones will also include live chat. 

Not every live chat software is built specifically for customer support. So if this is the primary feature that you’re looking for, make sure you choose a solution with those helpdesk features and support tools. 

#1 – Zendesk Review — Best For Customer Engagement

Zendesk is a versatile live chat software trusted by 200,000+ businesses worldwide. They have solutions for sales, support, and customer engagement. 

One of the reasons why Zendesk ranks so high on my list is because of its simplicity. The software is easy to use, and you can deploy it within hours of signing up.

Zendesk is used by some big names and industry leaders, like Shopify, Slack, Uber, Venmo, and more. Here are some of the top reasons why I recommend it:

  • Reach out to customers with proactive engagement before they land on your site
  • Powerful analytics customer satisfaction, agent performance, and other KPIs
  • Omnichannel support with email, social, phone, and live chat
  • Self-service and knowledge base tools in 40+ languages
  • AI suggestions and machine learning from context clues

Zendesk Chat starts at $14 per agent per month. 

But I recommend the Zendesk Support Suite. This package comes with features for chat, support, messaging, and voice, starting at $89 per month. It’s also worth noting that Zendesk has a Sales Suite to consider as well. 

Try any Zendesk plan free for 30 days. 

#2 – JivoChat Review — Best Cross-Platform Live Chat Software

JivoChat is branded as an all-in-one business messaging solution. It allows you to communicate with customers via phone, email, social, and of course, live chat—all from a single platform.

It seamlessly integrates with popular tools and services that you’re already using, like Slack, Weebly, WordPress, Wix, Pipedrive, Zapier, Shopify, and more.

More than 284,000 websites worldwide rely on JivoChat for their live chat needs, making it one of the most popular solutions on the market today. Here’s a quick overview and explanation of why the software is so popular:

  • Compatible with Facebook, WhatsApp, Apple Business Chat, Telegram, Email, etc.
  • All customer communication is managed from a single window
  • The live chat widget works on every device, browser, and operating system
  • It’s customizable and has the ability to be translated into 20 different languages
  • Automatic proactive messages based on custom triggers
  • CRM integrations and visitor’s information (like location and click source)
  • Chat logs and reports between customers and agents

JivoChat offers unlimited chats and websites on every plan, including the free version.

The software and its basic features are free for your first five agents. Pricing starts at $13 per month per agent, which gives you access to all of JivoChat’s features. Try it free for 14 days.

#3 – Pure Chat Review — The Best Live Chat Features

Pure Chat is an excellent live chat solution for small and medium-sized teams. 

Compared to other solutions on the market today, Pure Chat is one of the most feature-rich live chat tools that you’ll come across. Even better, all of these features are included with every plan.

Let’s take a closer look at Pure Chat’s extensive feature list:

  • Unlimited chats
  • Advanced widget customization
  • Security roles (for admins, operators, power users)
  • Chat notifications
  • Canned responses
  • File transfers
  • Trigger-based actions
  • Real-time analytics and visitor tracking

There are two different Pure Chat plans for you to choose from—Growth and Pro. These start at $39 and $79 per month, respectively. The Growth plan comes with four users, and the Pro plan comes with ten. Additional users cost extra.

For most businesses, I’d recommend the Pro plan. It gives you the ability to remove Pure Chat’s branding from your widget, and you can use it on an unlimited number of websites.

Try either of these Pure Chat plans free for 30 days to access all of the features.

#4 – Intercom Review — The Best For Lead Qualifications

Intercom is branded as a “conversational relationship platform.” It’s a clever way to say it helps you build customer relationships through messaging and live chat.

The software is trusted by 30,000+ companies across the globe, including Microsoft, IBM, Udemy, and Sotheby’s.

What makes Intercom so great? Let’s take a closer look at the software highlights:

  • Boost site conversions with targeted messages, bots, and real-time chat
  • Onboard, activate, and re-engage customers with outbound communication
  • Proactive support tools and self-help features
  • Manage customer interactions across all channels from a single dashboard
  • 250+ integrations out-of-the-box and APIs for custom integrations

The software starts at $39 per month for basic live chat and outbound messaging features. 

To take advantage of automation and managing lead qualifications at scale, I recommend the Accelerate plan. It starts at $499 per month and includes ten seats. This comes with awesome features like custom bots, team inboxes, and more. 

Try Intercom for free with a 14-day trial.

#5 – LiveChat Review — The Most Versatile Live Chat Software

With a brand name like LiveChat, it’s no surprise to see this software rank so high on my list. This tool is trusted by 30,000+ businesses in over 150 countries, including names like PayPal, McDonald’s, Adobe, and Mercedes-Benz.

The software is used for online chat, multichannel support, lead generation, online surveys, in-app support, net promoter score, and more—making it one of the most versatile solutions on the market today.

Here’s a brief overview of the features, benefits, and noteworthy highlights of LiveChat:

  • Add product cards to live chat conversations
  • Use custom forms and AI chatbots to qualify your leads
  • Automatically track sales and KPIs to monitor the effectiveness
  • Automatic agent routing
  • Automatic ticket creation
  • Segment visitors based on their behavior on your site
  • 170+ integrations (Dropbox, BigCommerce, MailChimp, Shopify, Salesforce, etc.)

LiveChat is easy to use and set up as well. Plans start at $16 per agent per month, and you can try it free for 14 days; no credit card required. 

#6 – Acquire Review — Best Live Chat Software For Chatbots

Acquire isn’t the most popular live chat software on the market today. But it’s still trusted by large organizations like Lexus, Audi, the US Air Force, Discover, and more. It’s an all-in-one solution for omnichannel support, knowledge base, video chat, VoIP phone, and more.

For those of you looking to add the most advanced chatbots to your website, Acquire is my top recommendation.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes Acquire stand out from the crowd:

  • Automate routine questions with AI chatbots
  • Sync your knowledge base articles with chatbots
  • Route chats to human agents when bots can’t provide a solution
  • No coding needed or developers required to deploy bots
  • Manage all email, social, live chat, and other channels from a single inbox
  • Team collaboration tools
  • Co-browsing software for troubleshooting with on-page markups
  • Video chat with customers

Another reason why I like Acquire is because the company provides exceptional customer support. It’s a growing brand, but their team is still available to accommodate your needs, 24/7.

Pricing is not available online. Contact the Acquire sales team for more information.

#7 – Smartsupp Review — Best For Monitoring Visitor Behavior

Smartsupp is another live chat software with omnichannel capabilities. The solution is used by over 425,000 websites.

It’s a great way to increase customer loyalty, drive conversions, and improve engagement with live chat and bots.

Smartsupp has one of the most unique features of all live chat software on the market today. It has built-in video recordings that give your agents a deeper understanding of how each visitor is moving around on your site. This gives you agents the ability to discover where people are getting lost, so they can provide better support. 

You’ll also benefit from top features like:

  • Out-of-the-box integrations and APIs
  • Analytics and customer satisfaction ratings
  • Create personalized automated messages with smart rules
  • Communicate with customers while on the go from Smartsupp’s mobile app
  • Web dashboard with analytics about customers
  • Customize the look and colors of chat box
  • Add personalized photos to support agent names in the chat widget

For smaller websites with basic needs, Smartsupp is free forever for your first three agents. Paid plans start at $10 per month. 

You can try Smartsupp today by creating a free account. 

Summary

There are lots of great live chat solutions available. But the seven recommended in this guide are definitely my favorite.

Which one is the best option for your website?

Be sure to follow the methodology I outlined earlier in this guide. This will make it much easier for you to narrow down your options. 

The post Best Live Chat Software appeared first on Neil Patel.

The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors

Marketing has evolved into an omnichannel approach. This means you can no longer just go after one channel to succeed.

Back in the day, companies like Facebook grew into billion-dollar businesses through one channel.

Facebook used email to grow and they did it by having you invite all your contacts to join Facebook.

Yelp was also similar. They grew into a multi-million dollar business through one channel… SEO.

Dropbox grew through social media. If you tweeted about Dropbox, they would give you more space.

These marketing approaches worked well for all of these well-known
companies, but what’s wrong with them?

The law of shitty click-throughs

What worked for Facebook, Yelp, and Dropbox were all great strategies, but over time, all good marketing channels got saturated and stopped working like they used to.

As Andrew Chen puts it, first it works
and then it doesn’t.

It really is that simple. Sure, those channels can still
drive traffic and always will, but as people get used to them, they won’t work
as well.

Just check out this image below.

Can you guess what that is?

That was the first banner ad. AT&T created that banner ad and placed it on HotWired.com in 1994. And here’s what’s really crazy… out of all the people who saw it, a whopping 44% clicked on it.

Just think about that… that banner ad had a 44% click-through rate.

We can all agree it’s not an amazing banner ad or design, it
just so happens that it was new and novel at the time, so it generated massive amounts
of clicks.

Just like how SEO was more effective earlier on, or paid ads were more affordable and produced a higher ROI, or referral marketing was much more effective. There are a lot of single-channel case studies that worked in the past.

Again, it doesn’t mean any of these channels don’t work, it
just means that they don’t work as well as they used to work.

So how do you survive in a competitive market?

You take an omnichannel approach. You don’t have a choice other than to use all of the marketing channels out there.

Yes, they will be competitive and saturated, but they still
work.

It’s a game of papercuts… papercuts are small and don’t do much damage, but if you have tons of these small papercuts, they will add up and can do some damage.

The same goes with your marketing. If you add up all of these channels that produce a small amount of ROI, it will add up to a big number at the end. But when you look at each channel individually, the results aren’t that sexy. But when you combine them, it looks great.

Start with chat

What do you check more, your text messages or your email
inbox?

I bet you are going to say text messages because you look at
your phone more often than logging into your email inbox.

But here is an interesting stat for you… did you know that
over 6
billion SMS messages are sent daily?

Now can you guess how many emails are sent daily?

269
billion!

That’s a big difference.

And do you know how many people visit Facebook each day?

1.62
billion.

Now the point of me sharing those stats isn’t to try and
tell you that email is better than text. Or that Facebook isn’t as valuable as
text messaging.

It’s more so to show you that they are all massive channels
that people are using each and every day.

So why wouldn’t you try and leverage all of them?

And you can easily do so through free chat marketing tools like Manychat that allow you to communicate to your visitors using text messaging, email marketing, and Facebook Messenger.

Once you have created your Manychat account, go here to watch how to set it up. They have tons of very helpful videos that teach you how to do things like setting up Facebook Messenger bots and connecting your Facebook page so you can start sending out messages.

Now that you are all set up, I want you to use the following templates for your business as I know they convert…

Templates that convert

My team and I have tested out tons of different messaging
for all channels, such as email, messenger and text messaging.

Here are the ones that have worked the best for us…

Text messaging templates

My favorite text message to send someone is:

[first name]?

When someone sends you a text with just your first name and a “?” what do you do? Chances are you respond with… “who is this?”.

Once someone responds with who is this, our sales reps typically
respond with…

This is John from Neil Patel’s team. I just wanted to follow up to see if you have any questions or if we can help you with anything.

It’s simple and it works well and it has boosted our sales
by 4.69%.

Another one that works well is a “flash sales” text message…

Flash Sale: All product on [yoursite] are [x]% off for the next 24 hours. [insert URL]

This one works really well during holidays or anytime you
want to run a promotion. Depending on the size of the business you run and how
big your list is, you will usually see an additional 2 to 3% in revenue for
that month.

And my favorite text campaign is…

Check out this new blog post, [subject of the blog post] [URL]

An example would be… “Check out this new blog post on doubling
your SEO traffic [URL]”

When I send out text message alerts for new posts, it usually increases the traffic to that blog post by another 4%.

Email templates

You’re probably familiar with this email template as you get
it from me every week. 😉

Subject: How to Generate Leads When You Have Little to No Traffic

If you have a ton of traffic, it’s easy to generate leads.

But what if you have a new website or one with little to no traffic?

What if you don’t have any money to spend on paid ads?

What should you do?

Well, there is a solution. Here’s how you generate leads when you have no traffic.

Cheers,

Neil Patel

I send out an email every Tuesday and Saturday that looks
something like that.

It’s a simple text-based email where the subject line is the title of your blog post and the text of the email states a problem and solution, with the solution being a link to the blog post.

To give you a rough idea, that email format has been getting me 29% to 33% open rates and 4% to 7% click-through rates.

And if you are selling info products through webinars, there are 8 types of emails I use to generate sales (check out that post if you want to learn how to make good money selling info products):

  1. Invite sequence – these are a series
    of emails that invite people to watch your webinar. (here
    are my invite emails    )
  2. Indoctrination – you need to build a
    connection with people. People are more likely to convert if they know more
    about you and trust you. (here
    are my indoctrination emails    )
  3. No shows – just because someone
    signs up to watch your webinar, it doesn’t mean they will attend. For everyone
    who doesn’t attend, you’ll want to email them and get them to watch the replay.
    (here
    are my no show emails    )
  4. Encore – not everyone will watch
    your whole webinar. If they don’t stick to the end they won’t see your offer.
    You’ll want a few emails that push the replay. (here are my
    encore emails    )
  5. Objection handler – there are a
    handful of reasons someone may not buy. You’ll want to answer each of those
    objections through email. (here
    are my objection handler emails    )
  6. Countdown sequence – you’ll want to
    close off your course. Letting people know that they only have a few days left
    to buy is a really effective way to generate sales. These emails will roughly
    make up 1/3 to half of your sales. (here
    are my countdown emails    )
  7. Last chance email – on the last day
    you’ll want to send a few emails letting people know it is about to close. (here
    are my last chance emails    )
  8. Free trial offer – the majority of
    people won’t buy from you. Offering the last chance free trial offer is a great
    way to roughly get 15% more sales. (here
    are my free trial emails    )

If you are selling products, there are 3 main emails that I’ve found to work well. The first 2 are for cart abandonment.

Subject: Did you forget something?

We noticed that you left something behind. Don’t worry though, we saved the items in your cart so you can easily complete your purchase.

[insert picture of products]

CTA button: Return to cart

This simple abandonment email typically increases sales by 1.73%. I know it’s not a lot, but it’s all about the papercuts as I mentioned above. 😉

Subject: Still thinking about it?

If you can’t decide on whether [insert product name] is right for you, here are some of the benefits:

[insert benefit 1]

[insert benefit 2]

[insert benefit 3]

[insert benefit 4]

[insert benefit 5]

[insert benefit 6]

So, what are you waiting for? You have nothing to lose with our 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.

CTA: Complete my purchase

On average this email has provided our customers an increase of
1.44% in sales.

Subject: Who doesn’t love 15% off?

Explore new [type of products you sell] that will help you with [insert benefit].

Sale ends at [insert date and time].

CTA: Claim my discount

Now with the discount/coupon code email, we’ve found the results to vary a lot. The bigger the discount, the more sales you will typically receive. The biggest gains are when companies offer over 30% or greater discount.

Facebook Messenger templates

Unlike email and text, you can’t just easily just message people
on Facebook Messenger and do whatever you want. There
are rules…

  • You can message a subscriber within the last 24 hours of your last interaction.
  • Within that 24-hour time period, you can send promotional material.
  • After the 24 hour period, messages must contain one of these 4 tags: confirmed event update, post-purchase update, account update, or a human agent.
  • For users who opt-in to receive messages after 24 hours, you can, of course, message them.

As for templates that work, because Facebook is continually changing Messenger rules, follow these templates over at Manychat as they constantly change based on real-time data of what is working or what isn’t.

Conclusion

You have no choice but to take an omnichannel approach with
your marketing.

Sure, all good channels eventually get crowded and click-throughs will decrease over time, but if you go after all of the main channels the marginal gains will add up.

And the easiest way to start with going omnichannel is with chat. I know you are probably using email, but I bet you aren’t using text messaging or even Facebook Messenger bots. And I bet you aren’t using push notifications either.

So, how many marketing channels are you using?

The post The New Way to Chat With Your Visitors appeared first on Neil Patel.