The Best Live Chat and Chatbot Services and How They Can Help You
In this all-in-one guide, you’ll discover everything you need to know about chatbot technology — its proven benefits, the different types, and the best companies and services available today.
Table of contents
Why You Need Live Chat
Ask anyone — customer service is the backbone of a business. Top-notch service can build a loyal customer base, enhance brand identity, and even increase sales. Lackluster customer service can quickly rot away your brand and allow competition to swoop in.
Two-thirds of American consumers say they are happy to spend more money with brands that provide superior customer service.
We live in an exciting time. Each day, digital avenues open up that improve business for everyone. Even a small business can have a vast reach by leveraging these methods.
But, as technology grows, so does customer expectation, and today, your customers demand multichannel support. For business owners, like you, this means offering more than telephone or email support.
If your customer has an inquiry, they want an answer immediately. Patience is in short supply, and if you can’t connect to your site visitors quickly, research shows they will turn elsewhere. A potential sale can turn into a bad rating or a new customer for your top-competitor.
The fastest way possible to give your curious clients what they came for is through some form of live chat or chatbot on your website or social media account. Either by using human agents or programmable bots, customers can have a one-on-one interaction with instant feedback.
Here’s the truth — this is the kind of customer service interaction that most of your customers really want!
Customers report greater satisfaction with live chat than other communication experiences.
|
Live Chat |
|
Phone |
|
73% Customer satisfaction |
61% Customer satisfaction |
44% Customer satisfaction |
And the good news? This service will save you money. Compared to in-house receptionists or third-party call centers, live chat is very affordable.
Live Chat Benefits
Live Chat Sets You Apart From the Competition
Does your competition offer 24/7 customer service? Do they have instant communication on their website? Offering these things is still rare. Live chat can give you this, and more, and create a brand image that puts the competition to shame.
We know that your customers value greatly. They will rate, recommend, or return based on their experience. When someone has an exceptional experience with a company, one that feels different or more polished, they instantly create a connection. This can keep them coming back long-term.
The other side to this — more businesses are becoming keen to modern tools like live chat each day. For the time being, you can be the modern, convenient, streamlined choice by using it. But, if you wait too long, you will struggle to catch up in a fast-paced, digital market.
Live Chat Increases Sales
Believe it or not, making a transaction online can be tricky for some people. Even with savvy, digitally-minded customers, technical issues can get in the way. These two problems are a barrier to your profits and can even lead to lost sales opportunities.
Live chat essentially eliminates these problems. When someone doesn’t understand how to make a purchase or set up an order, a friendly chat window is there, to guide them through.
When a technical issue arises, an experienced agent or well-programmed bot can troubleshoot, getting them out of limbo and back into the sales funnel.
Even more, chat on your website can be a tool to close on sales, not just maintain them. With a competent sales agent behind the keyboard, a customer’s quick question can be coolly converted into a lead capture or closed deal.
Live Chat Saves You Money
As mentioned before, live chat is more economical than customer service channels.
Classically, businesses connect to customers through phone or email. These are great if you have the resources to devote to them. However, for small businesses with tight budgets or businesses with a high volume of inquiries, phone and email can be costly and ineffective.
You may find yourself paying for in-house receptionists or expensive call centers to get the job done. If you want a faster and cheaper alternative, a large chunk of your customer service can be done via live chat.
Different Types of Chatbots
Now, we come to a crossroads. There are three main types of chat services, ones that use human agents, ones that use chatbots, and ones that use a combination of the two.
What is right for your business will depend on your needs.
Do you get lots of complex inquiries that require a human touch? Live agents are for you.
Do you want to save time and money with your customer support solution? Chatbots can do the job for cheap.
Here are the major differences between human agents and chatbots, and how they can help your business.
Live Chat with Human Agents
Interactions are carried out by a human. This means agents can respond contextually, feeling out the emotions and needs of the customer, and adapting accordingly.
- Complexity – People are great at handling complex issues. If interactions include tricky, technical terminology, your trained agent can work things out with ease.
- Cost – Humans need to eat, sleep, and get paid. This means live chat will be more expensive. Also, paying people to do simple, monotonous tasks like answering the same questions repeatedly isn’t cost-effective. Leave that to the bots.
- Coverage – No human can reasonably handle multiple inquiries at the same time. If two or more customers need something at the same time, they will need to wait in line or you will need to pay for enough agents to offer coverage.
Chat With Chatbots
Interactions are carried out by programmed bots. These virtual workers can quickly and efficiently respond to inquiries.
- Customization – Chatbots can pull from the customer’s profile or data to offer a tailor experience. This means bots will customize their service based on things like transaction history, location, or previous inquiries.
- Complexity – AI-powered chatbots can handle complex issues comparable to human agents, but this will cost more. The most common chatbots are command based and unable to adapt and recognize the subtlety of human interactions.
- Coverage – Chatbots can handle any number of chats simultaneously. Bots excel when customers are looking for simple and repetitive answers or when your customer service budget is low.
Best Companies for Live Chat and AI Chatbots
Here are the best companies offering live chat. These industry-leaders all rated highly in terms of customer service, features, ratings, and pricing.
Smith.ai
Smith.ai combines live agents with chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI). They offer both live chat and call answering services to help you keep your customers in the loop without breaking the bank.
The goal behind all of Smith.ai’s products is to simplify your business. This means less time worrying about running your business and more time doing business.
The Smith.ai chatbot tool is powerful. It uses a special method called “human-in-the-loop” training to make smarter bots that stand out from the competition.
Each bot is supported and trained by human agents. Chatbots do the brunt of the work while agents sit by, ready to make corrections or escalations.
Here’s what makes Smith.ai stand out.
Smith.ai features
1. Machine Learning AI Chatbots
Smith.ai has a one-of-a-kind messenger bot service. Using machine learning, bots adapt to your needs and improve over time.
Rather than meticulous programming, you simply provide basic information about your products and services and the bots carry out your plan — learning and adapting over time.
2. Live Agents
What the AI can’t do, live agents help with. All paid versions of the web chat use a “human in the loop” method in which a person guides the bots and fills in the gaps.
Escalating to human agents when necessary can help you to capture website leads, offer comprehensive customer service, and improve conversion rates.
3. No Contract, Pay as You Go
Smith.ai is a pay-as-you-go service.
You don’t need to sign anything and there aren’t long-term contracts. You simply pay for what you need each month. If you want to change your plan there is no penalty.
4. Integrations
To make sure your work goes on uninterrupted, Smith.ai includes a long list of integrations.
This way, no matter your infrastructure or workflow is, you can pick up their services with ease. Live agents and chatbots can make appointments in virtually any calendar applications you use, and all major CRM software is supported.
5. Call Answering Services
In addition to live chat, Smith.ai offers call answering services. U.S.-based agents are available to answer your calls, make appointments, and follow up on leads.
Smith.ai’s proprietary software manages your incoming calls, screening and prioritizing them accordingly. This means you get info up-front and give personalized attention to your customers.
Afterward, a summary of each call is delivered via text. Voicemails are transcribed and emailed to you every day.
Smith.ai prices
Web Chat with Smith.ai is very affordable compared to other similar services. They even offer a free option for customers who only need a standard AI chatbot.
The price of the paid AI chat goes up depending on how many chats you need each month.
Let’s check out the Smith.ai Web Chat packages:
|
Free |
Starter |
Basic |
Pro |
Custom |
|
$0 per month |
$140 per month |
$300 per month |
$600 per month |
Custom Pricing |
|
AI Bot only |
Staffed + AI Bot |
Staffed + AI Bot |
Staffed + AI Bot |
Staffed + AI Bot |
|
Unlimited Chats |
20 Live Chats |
50 Live Chats |
120 Live Chats |
Custom |
|
– |
$7/Chat after 20 |
$6/Chat after 50 |
$5/Chat after 120 |
Flexible |
Olark
Olark sells itself as “the world’s simplest live chat software.”
Whether your goal is to capture more leads, increase sales, or impress, customers with better service, Olark’s chat services can help.
Olark has all the important features you could want, in a straightforward and easy to understand format.
Olark features
1. Match your chat box to your brand
In just a few clicks you can meld your chat box with your brand.
Brand identity is everything for some businesses. For them, consistency in appearance and feel can offer a better customer experience.
If you work hard to maintain a stylish website, don’t settle for a chatbox that will clash with it. You want to attract the eyes of customers and get them chatting, inquiring, and buying, without compromising your image.
2. Save time with automation
This software has easy-to-configure chat automation tools. This means you can set things up without specific technical know-how.
Automation in your live chat will speed up your customer service workflow and make it easier and quicker for customers to get what they want.
Things like automatic greetings that fit your brand identity, custom messages based on visitor behavior, and automatic transfers, can give your customers the best experience possible.
3. Learn from live chat analytics
Olark’s detailed live chat reports update in real-time, so you can monitor chat volume, customer satisfaction, and agent activity as often as you need.
This makes smart staffing, prioritization decisions, and summary reports a breeze.
Information can be delivered straight to your inbox on whatever schedule works for you.
4. Uncover actionable insights in transcripts
Live chat transcripts are full of actionable product feedback and information about your customers.
Olark provides full access to your complete transcript archive, along with a user-friendly interface for searching, sorting, and filtering your way to the most relevant insights.
Olark Prices
Olark currently has three packages:
|
Monthly |
1-Year |
2-Year |
|
$19 (Per agent per month) |
$15 (Per agent per month) |
$12 (Per agent per month) |
Olark’s pricing packages are perfect for any size team. Each package includes the same core features — no restrictions or ceilings.
For companies with specific needs, choose from a menu of PowerUps, or extra features to customize your plan.
Engati
Engati is a platform for building, managing, training, and publishing your own personalized chatbot.
This may sound complex, but the process is intuitive and inclusive. In a matter of minutes, you can build your custom chatbot from scratch, or use or adapt a premade bot to handle your customer service needs.
The focus of Engati is automated chatbots, but they also offer live agents for customer interactions that need escalation.
It presently supports major messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Kik, Telegram, Line, Viber, Skype, Slack. Engati also integrates with your website, giving you a superior omnichannel presence that customers appreciate.
Other live chat or chatbot services don’t offer the ability to chat via your social media accounts. This gives Engati and edge, allowing you to reach your customers everywhere.
Engati Features
1. Conversation Flow Builder
Easily build your greetings, answers, and lingo based on your products and brand identity. Map out your customer’s perfect experience with ease. With Engati’s software, building conversation flows is simpler than ever.
2. Multilingual Support
Extensive support for building bots that can easily operate in multiple languages. Adapting to meet your customer base and the growing multilingual population is a huge benefit. This feature can even help you to reach new markets.
3. Omnichannel Presence
Meeting your customers wherever they are is an essential component of the digital age.
You can build your chatbot just once and deploy it across 14+ channels. This includes your website, mobile, and social media.
4. Bot Building & Solutions
For those who want to jump right in and get chat running, Engati has you covered. Engati experts can customize your bot or build you a custom one from the ground up.
5. Bot Templates
You have access to an extensive library of 150+ Bot Templates across a wide range of use cases. Find one that works with your business and customer service needs and integrate it immediately.
6. Live Chat
Your chatbots can seamlessly transition from automated responses to live agents. This is vital for complex situations or important leads.
Engati Price
Engati has 4 packages. Starting with an entirely free package, perfect as a trial or for small teams, all the way up to a robust enterprise package for large companies.
|
Starter |
Professional |
Business |
Enterprise |
|
1,000 interactions, 2 Bots |
10,000 interactions, 5 Bots |
30,000 interactions, 20 Bots |
Unlimited interactions, Unlimited Bots |
|
FREE |
$19 per month |
$50 per month |
Contact for info |
Each tier offers more features and services. With Engati, you can have a simple and sufficient plan for free or a comprehensive solution for a reasonable price.
Conclusion
If you need to improve your service, cut costs, and modernize your company, offering live chat is an amazing solution.
The data is clear, your customers want instant communication. They often don’t want back-and-forth email conversations, just a quick answer. Reducing your customers’ wait time directly increases their satisfaction and leads to better ratings and more sales.
Why pay more than you have to for answering simple questions? The average inquiry is quite simple, perfect for live chat agents or chatbots. With many services, you can have the flexibility of both.
This means, chatbots for the easy stuff, agents for the important stuff.
However you want it, there is a solution for you. The companies we listed all have exemplary track records of customer support, industry-leading services, and fair prices.
So go ahead, try one out. You will save money and take your customer service to the next level.