Top 10 Essential Features to Look for in a Website Live Chat Service

Customer-centric strategy can affect nearly everything in your organization but can be improved almost immediately with the help of live chat tools.

Live chat software are increasingly popular channel for handling service issues and produces a high customer satisfaction score for all channels.

It also has relatively cheap functionality for implementing the technology into existing products.

We developed live chat software and support tools for small businesses willing to help their customers via chat or email.

Your customer support team will love using live chat software in their daily routine.

You have done all the research you need to do, but the more you search, the more confused you become.

It’s not because there is no website live chat software out there, but it is difficult to find the one that meets your need.

If this is you, then you are in the right place.

Choosing a good website live chat software for your business is a laudable cause because you have just 10 seconds to communicate your product’s value to your website user.

And you know what?

75% of people prefer live chat over any other channel.

A robust live chat software will do three things for your business.

1. Boost your conversion rate. Forrester discovered that live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate.
2. Offers faster customer support. 79% of customers say they prefer live chat purely because of its immediacy compared to other channels.
3. Improved customer experience: 73% of customers were satisfied with their live chat experience, compared to 61% of email users and a worrying 44% of phone users.

Bad news!

Can I say it?

If you choose the wrong live chat software for your business, all the benefits above will be a mirage.

But you don’t have to worry.

Watch out for the good news at the end of the article.

This article is written to help you choose the best live chat software for your website.

Are you happy now?

Let’s move on.

In this article, you will learn the top 10 essential features to look for in a live chat software.

Let’s get started.

Make sure that you are looking for an online tool that can help you to get leads and help you to grow sales.

Integrations to Social or messaging systems allow users to begin the conversation and continue wherever they choose.

Chatbots are used for the qualification of leads.

A live messaging service can improve interaction. Form for collecting visitor information on websites: Integration of CRM with Lead Management Tools.

Lead scoring for determining the worth of lead.

The Best live chat software will allow you to create team members and invite them to join the live chat support software when needed. This feature will enable you to notify and assign incoming support tickets to support teams that can handle them.

The truth is there are some specialized inquiries that only a professional can answer. For example, suppose the incoming conversation is about tech issues on your website. In that case, assigning such a conversation to a team member in the technical department who can answer the inquiry effectively will be appropriate.

Most of the time, you can transfer your chat manually, but the best live chat software will help you to assign conversations based on customer data or their inquiry.

There is live chat software with a free version capable of automated chat routing. Continue reading this article until the end to discover it.

The best live chat software will allow you to profile your leads. You can create a pre-chat form to request details such as name, email address, and other information you need from your clients.

When your lead starts a conversation with your customer service, the live chat software will display a form for them to fill in with the required information.

This information will help you profile your lead accordingly and to transfer the chat to the appropriate team.

The pre-chat form is essential when you receive traffic on your website. It helps filter out time wasters or people who don’t know what they want.

Even when your traffic is low, it will help your sales team to engage better with the generated lead.

While you support customers, your best live chat software must allow you to send transcripts to them. 

You can send the chat transcript to the customer to keep a history of their conversation with your business and send a copy to your email.

Use the transcript to segment leads based on your discussion with them. Then, create a necessary email campaign to nurture them. This helps to save time, makes your sales process more effective, and reduces the time to close sales.

Collecting chat transcripts will help you better understand your website user’s thoughts, problems and behavior by paying attention to common words, phrases and questions. You can use this information to improve your product or service and create better marketing campaigns.

You can also use the questions in the chat transcript to create a knowledge base (available on our free plan) accessible to chat agents and your website visitors so that when a user asks a similar question, they can quickly search through the knowledge base to solve the problem.

Companies that use chat transcript in this manner enjoy a 10-time greater yearly increase in annual company revenue than all others.

Transcripts are also a must for chat tools cause, due to GDPR rules, you MUST provide a live chat transcript whenever a customer asks for it. Every free live chat should have it in their free plan. If not, they are not GDPR compliant.

It can be a difficult task to track incoming chats, especially when you are busy with a task. A live chat service with a notification feature ensures you never miss a chat. Notifications ensure that you respond to chat quickly.

An effective website live chat service will ensure you can receive notifications on major devices such as your desktop computer, mobile devices, and email. Team members should also be able to get notifications when chats are sent to them.

You can also enable browser audio so that when a user starts a conversation, the notification comes in with an audio sound to draw your attention to it.

When visitors or customers land on your website, your live chat widget should greet them courteously. But it can be time-consuming for your chat agents to do it repeatedly. This is where you need canned responses.

The best live chat software should enable you to set canned responses to save time and increase effectiveness.

Canned responses are saved responses you can set up for your website users. You can automate it to appear on your website when the live chat comes up.

There are different messages you can set as canned responses. This includes greetings, answers to frequently asked questions, and promotion information.

These canned response templates will help your team to reply to any incoming live chat. Not all chat tools have a series of canned responses template you can use in no time.

It is always a delight to know where your visitors are coming from.

This is one of the great features of good live chat software. It should capture the URL parameters of user conversations with your chat agents.

This will help you know the source of your chats.

A live chat support software that allows you to send files, videos, images, and take screenshots is not common.

Above all features, this one will help you send files or images to your chat users to help them personalize their experience on your website.

For instance, if they are experiencing an incorrect display of items on their web pages, you can ask them to take a screenshot and send it to you instantly.

You can also ask them to send you a screenshot of a problem they need to solve. This makes it easy to solve users’ problems and make your customers happy.

A live chat support software that will help your business to run effectively must have integration features. It must enable you to connect to third-party tools. Integrating with CRMs, social media networks (such as Facebook messenger), etc, should be easy. 

This is especially true if you can integrate your live chat tools with a CRM. Or use the integrated CRM Customerly offers on top of its live chat.

It will help you know more about your customer’s chat history and be able to update them accordingly for future reference.

For example, Customerly integrates with Zapier, Customer, and Facebook messenger. These are essential marketing tools when it comes to synchronizing your customer data.

The real-time chat feature of the website’s live chat software is very important. It helps to see the live chat user in real-time and to respond quickly to their inquiries.

You will also see the customers’ details, such as the browser, location, and other attributes you pre-defined. This will quickly help you know whether the visitor is the right lead for your business. Once you know, you can quickly provide the right response to their inquiries.

Your support team might need extra help when commuting, and nowadays, with remote work, a live chat app is crucial to reply from everywhere.

Our free plan has our live chat apps available completely free, so every support request can have an answer on the go.

Once the live chat widget is installed on your website, the live chat software will allow your support team to receive push notifications on their mobile apps and help with any support requests.

We have covered all the features a live chat software might need to fully satisfy your customer’s needs. Now we are going to add a pinch of salt and see all the features that the best live chat software must include.

Message Sneak peek

Reading what your customers are writing before they hit send on your live chat will let you anticipate the proper answer and reduce the first time to reply.

Facebook Messenger

If you have a Facebook page, you might consider a live chat software that connects with Facebook messenger to receive live chats in one inbox.

Highly customizable chat widget

The live chat widget must match your brand and let your customers instantly recognize your brand. This is why having a customizable live chat is key to showing professionalism with your visitors, even on your website chat.

Out-of-office hours

Each live chat app must suggest the website visitors whenever the team cannot reply instantly. For this reason, office hours must appear immediately after the chat has started in the chat window.

Set up the chat business hours like this, and Customerly will provide the best experience for your customers.

Google analytics integration

When running campaigns on Google Ads or Facebook ads, it’s crucial to link your Google analytics with your live chat tool. This way, you can truly understand where your conversions are coming from.

Proactive chat

Having a Proactive chat means you can anticipate issues or avoid them completely, saving your support teams plenty of valuable time.

Knowledge base

Small businesses nowadays, more than ever, need to search for a knowledge base included in the live chat functionality. Some live chat providers include a knowledge base software in their forever free plan.

Automation tools

Don’t compromise your customer experience by using too many automation tools. Consider using a good balance of automation tools in your live chat tool that will increase your customer satisfaction.

For example, you can use a knowledge base to automatically support your customers at a glance.

Video Chat

What if I tell you that your chat widget offers your live chat agents the possibility to video chat in real-time with your website visitors without adding any external tool? Yes, now, while your support team handles support requests, they can use this live chat feature to provide the best customer support on Earth.

Chat Routing

this is what a free live chat software must include in its free version. However, some live chat platform offers simple chat routing in their free plan and powerful chat routing in their advanced features.

Conversation history

When your website visitors start live chats with your customer support teams, you want to keep all your conversation history and check previous conversations with the same customer.

Record User sessions

While your website visitors will interact with your free live chat, you can record user sessions with all the customer data your customer support team needs.

The user session collection will have a positive live chat experience for them and your team.

Live Chat analytics

A live chat platform must offer analytics to your customer success team to improve your customer satisfaction and understand immediately.

Multiple Channels

If you are looking for an all-in-one support software that offers live chat software, support email management, and social media connection, look no further than Customerly.

Live Chat Translation

Your live chat support software must speak any language; this is why this popular live chat software supports automatic translation of all your live chat.

Among all the live chat widgets, our website chat automatically adapts to your customer’s browser language to ensure the best experience.

Unlimited chats

You don’t want to lose your incoming live chats due to limitations on your live chat support software, so you want to look for a customer communication platform that gives you unlimited chats with your website visitors.

Visitor tracking

Not all help desk software is capable of tracking your visitors. This chat functionality will help your marketing team understand where your customers are coming from.

Your Live chat app will tell you exactly if the visitor landed on your website from a Facebook campaign.

After analyzing all the popular live chat apps available in the market, we conclude that almost all the support tools offer similar features.

Each has essential live chat capability in the starter package and offers integration and more live chat apps in the premium packages.

No company offers such unique capabilities as other live chat services as Customerly does. If you are considering a live chat option to add to a site, you must consider price, integration, and other features.

Cost: Chat services can be purchased through a monthly subscription. There are live chat apps with a free plan; one is Customerly.

Integrations: When considering integrations for your live chat, you want to have for sure a WordPress plugin if you are using it, Zapier that is basically integration on steroids, and much more. We do have all of them.

Next step: Install Live Chat

I know what you are thinking: “I want a live chat on my website, but I don’t know where to start”.

Well, It’s easy.

Integrate live chat on your website to quickly convert more website visitors into profiled leads.

Your live chat solution must also be easy to install on any website.

This is why you can install your live chat solution with our WP Live chat plugin.

Now you know the live chat software features that will help boost your conversion rate, offer faster customer support and enhance customer experience.

What if I told you that your search for the live chat software had ended?

Sound good? Ugh!

Yes. It is too good to be true.

Customerly live chat software has all the 10 features mentioned above and much more.

That is not all!

It is also cheap; you don’t have to break the bank to get it.

Ready? Then get it here – Customerly.