What do customers want? Quick solutions.

When do they want them? Immediately, if possible.

We live in a hyper-connected world where patience is in short supply.

Providing real-time customer support is no longer a competitive advantage – it's a necessity, as customers are becoming increasingly used to it.

Thankfully, live chat solutions are becoming more accessible to everyone, small and mid-size businesses included. They might be the key to providing timely support, boosting customer satisfaction and increasing your conversion rates.

In this article, we'll talk about what is live chat and how to implement it on your website.

What is live chat?

Live chat is an instant messaging tool that can be embedded into your website allowing you to communicate with website visitors and answer questions in real time. The website visitors can access live chat through a chat window or website widget, without having to leave your website.

The questions are typically answered by customer support agents or sales representatives. However, that can be time-consuming if you have many repetitive queries and a lot of visitors.

That's why many businesses experiment with AI customer service and conversational chatbots. This approach allows them to automate initial conversations and basic questions and transfer only more complex queries to human agents.

To learn more, check out our comprehensive omnichannel chatbots guide, and who knows, you may find the right solution for yourself there.

How does live chat work?

You can add live chat to your website or app either as a piece of code or website plugin. The process may vary based on the platform you're using.

You can also integrate your live chat tool with other tools like your CRM so that agents can access chat history and provide more personalized responses based on past data. You can also customize your live chat app to align with your branding.

Now, let's see what happens when your website visitors have a question:

1. They'll see a live chat widget, usually located in the bottom right corner of your website.
2. They need to click on a widget/icon for the live chat to open.
3. They can write their question or choose some of the suggested commonly asked questions.
4. In the meantime, the request is routed to a live support agent who is supposed to answer quickly and provide immediate assistance.

The biggest limitation is that one agent can chat with only one client at a time, which means customers might end up waiting unless you have a lot of agents. If people are stuck waiting for a while, it's no longer fulfilling the promise of "live" chat.

However, that can be fixed too. Check out our top nine strategies for elevating customer service productivity.

Benefits of live chat

Live chat has many benefits compared to other communication channels such as email or phone calls. Here are some of them:

Real-time assistance

As everything in our daily lives speeds up, from technology to work, customers increasingly demand faster service. This shift in expectations can be noted year after year, by analyzing customer satisfaction surveys.

Unlike traditional support channels such as email or ticket systems in call centers, live chat allows customers to receive instant responses in real time. This means that most customer issues can be resolved quickly, without having to wait long periods for replies.

Real-time communication is especially useful when you have to guide customers through complex processes, for example, troubleshooting issues with technology, or when they need help with a purchasing decision.

Increased sales and conversions

Live chat can significantly increase sales and conversions by offering real-time support during key moments in the customer journey.

Imagine this situation. You found a lovely pair of affordable shoes on an e-commerce website but you're not sure how their sizing works and whether they'll fit you.

A number of people would hesitate to call or email customer support and ask about sizing. Let's face it, it's too much of a hassle for a 30$ pair of shoes, which leads to a high rate of abandoned carts.

On the other hand, if you have live chat support at your fingertips, it's so easy to reach out, check the sizing and buy shoes.

By implementing live chat, your agents can address customers' concerns, reduce their hesitation and help them make the right decision.

Higher customer satisfaction

As already mentioned, live chat allows you to provide real-time customer service which many clients appreciate. They get answers to their questions quickly, without the need to call or wait for email responses. Instant communication reduces frustration which leads to improved customer satisfaction.

To take it one step further, various surveys show that good customer support is one of the main drivers of customer loyalty, and we all know how important that is.

Insight into customer behavior

Live chat transcripts provide valuable insights into customer behavior by tracking interactions and gathering large volumes of data in real time. You can analyze conversations with customers to identify common questions and pain points so that you can address them on your website beforehand.

Also, you can monitor the pages customers visit before and after engaging with live chat which can help you optimize your content for more conversions.

The customer data you gather can help you optimize:

• your products and services
• your website and content
• your customer service

Easy integration with CRM and marketing tools

You can integrate live chat with your CRM and other marketing tools so that you can manage all customer data in one place.

By connecting live chat to a CRM, all conversations are automatically logged, which allows your agents to access customer history and provide more personalized responses. This integration also simplifies lead tracking and improves the follow-up process.

Integrating live chat with marketing tools can help you with lead nurturing, more precise targeting and monitoring campaign performance.

Want to learn more about integrations? Check out our top strategies for omnichannel customer support.

Live chat challenges

Live chat may seem superior to some other support channels but it has some limitations, especially if you don't have an unlimited budget to hire dozens of agents. Here are some things you should be aware of:

Maintaining personalization

Yes, live chat agents have access to customer data, but do they have time to use it?

More often than not, they don't have time to extensively browse customer data during live chat conversations, especially knowing that customers expect immediate responses.

The expected speed and lack of time often result in more generic responses and force agents to rely on pre-written templates, which can significantly reduce customer service quality.

Personalization is important but it requires time that agents often don’t have, even when they try their best to provide personalized support.

In fact, technology and AI can often be better at providing personalized service at scale, compared to human agents. Check out five more ways AI chatbots outperform human agents.

Miscommunication

Miscommunication is a common problem when using live chat tools due to typing in a hurry and a lack of verbal cues like tone of voice. Customers may misunderstand responses, especially if replies are rushed or unclear, leading to even more frustration and negative reviews.

On the other hand, agents may misinterpret customer inquiries, leading to incorrect or incomplete responses.

The best way to solve this is to avoid using technical jargon and to repeat customer queries in your own words to make sure you've understood them properly before offering solutions. Also, it's a good idea to summarize long conversations at the end to ensure mutual understanding.

Did you know that AI sometimes understands your customers better than human support representatives? If you don't believe it, check out these 11 ways AI can help you identify and fix your customers' pain points.

Response time expectations

One of the biggest challenges of live chat is meeting customer expectations for response time. Customers often expect immediate replies (and rightfully so, as it's called "live" chat), but agents can be overwhelmed by handling multiple conversations at once.

This gap between expectations and actual response time can lead to a negative customer experience. The easiest way to solve this (if you don't have a budget to hire extra staff) is to create automated responses for the most common queries.

Another thing to consider is: when will your live chat be available?

Some businesses make their live chat functionality available only during business hours, but that's not enough for a large portion of customers who are used to getting immediate responses no matter the time of day.

In that case, the best solution is getting an AI customer service software that is available 24/7, with no extra costs for working overnight.

Sounds interesting? Click here to learn everything from A to Z of automated customer support.

Agent burnout

Did you know that one in four customer support agents suffers from burnout and over 50% of agents report high levels of stress?

Unfortunately, this is not surprising, due to the high volume of interactions and the pressure to respond as quickly as possible. Dealing with demanding customers on a daily basis can lead to mental and emotional exhaustion.

What's more, the constant stress and pressure can reduce productivity and lead to making more mistakes.

The solution?

Automating at least part of the repetitive queries to reduce the load of your customer service representatives and give them more time to focus on solving complex issues that need their attention.

Click here to discover the best conversational AI platforms that can help you with automation.

Adding live chat software into your website

If you're looking for the best live chat software, Glassix probably fits a lot of criteria on your list. It's easy to set up, user-friendly and it comes with many advanced features.

Also, it allows you to combine live chat with AI chatbots and other communication channels, making it one of the best omnichannel software for customer service. Why pay for multiple tools when you can have everything with Glassix?

Here are just some of our live chat software features:

• Suggested responses: Glassix has a built-in GPT-4 AI that analyzes your conversations in real time and provides you with meaningful suggested responses. That way, you can boost agent productivity and significantly lower average response time.
• Automated conversation categorization: Glassix's AI automatically tags and categorizes conversations based on topics and sentiments, providing you with valuable insights about your customers.
• Conversation summaries: As mentioned, it'd be great to have a summary at the end of each conversation. Well, there's no need to summarize your conversation manually, as our software does that for you. That way, it's much easier to analyze conversations and you can always quickly return to the key points, whenever you need to.

Now, here's how to add our live chat software to your website. There are two ways to do it.

a) The first way is to embed live chat in your website code. Don't worry, you don't have to be a coding expert, all you have to do is copy the code we will provide for you.

1. Open your Glassix account and go to the Settings.
2. Then, open the Installation tab and you will see the code you need to copy.
3. Go to your website and open the main HTML file.
4. Paste the code you've copied to the </body> tag and click on Save.

There you have it! The chat widget should appear on your website now.

b) If you want to avoid the code, we've got you covered. You can add live chat through your CMS. Here's what you have to do:

1. Download the Glassix app from the App Store or Google Play.
2. Create an account.
3. Create your own live chat widget based on the directions you'll get in the app.

You're all set and good to go!

But bear in mind that Glassix is much more than a live chat solution. Our omnichannel customer support software provides you with a centralized inbox where you store all your conversations.

Apart from live chat, here are other communication channels we support:

• Instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messanger and Instagram DMs
• SMS and Apple's iMessage
• Chatbots
• Email conversations
• Social media customer engagement (posts, comments, tweets)

Glassix makes both your customers and your employees happy. Apart from increasing customer satisfaction and reducing the time people have to wait for support, here are some other results you can expect:

• 19x lowered agent burnout
• 28% increased agent satisfaction rate
• 41% lowered first response time
• 21% increased median agent tenure
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If you're just starting out or you're on a tight budget, click here to discover the best customer support software for startups.

The Best of Both Worlds: Glassix Automated Live Chat

Why choose between a live chat platform and conversational AI chatbots when you can have both, at no extra cost?

At Glasssix, we create live chat platforms for the next generation that are super user-friendly and easy to set up in only a few clicks.

Our platform also provides you with suggested responses that can save your agents tons of time. You'll also get advanced analytics and insights into customer behavior at your fingertips so you can improve your performance and customer satisfaction.

And when the number of queries gets super-high, you can redirect repetitive queries to our AI chatbots to reduce the load of your human agents without compromising on the service quality.

Sign up today and try it for free!

FAQs

Does LiveChat have a chatbot?

Yes, LiveChat has AI chatbots. However, bear in mind that they're not native to the platform. Instead, they come as an integration among LiveChat and ChatBot software, which may lead to occasional glitches and time delays.

What is the difference between chatbox and chat bot?

A chatbox refers to the part of the website or app's interface, a window where users can engage in text-based conversations. A chat bot, on the other hand, is software that's trained to interact with customers and respond to their queries. A chatbot program can be built-in a chatbox on your website.

What is the difference between chatbot and chat assistant?

Chatbots are usually simpler, they're often based on scripted responses or decision trees and they can do only basic tasks. On the other hand, chat assistants are often based on AI and natural language processing (NLP) that allow them to perform more complex tasks. However, bear in mind that the definition of a chatbot may vary and that some chatbots use conversational AI and machine learning which makes them much more powerful than the previous generation of chatbots.

What is the difference between chatbot and conversational AI

Traditional chatbots are based on rule-based processing and scripted responses and they aren't able to handle more complex queries. On the other hand, conversational AI is more advanced, it's able to understand the context which allows it to engage in human-like conversations. Also, conversational AI improves itself over time and it becomes better after every customer interaction.

Business automation

Chatbots

Messaging channels