Chat for Support: Top 7 Best Tools in 2023

Providing customers with fast and effective service is key to any successful support operation. While there are many channels you can choose from, you might want to consider chat for support in order to take your customer service to the next level. 

Why? Because customers now expect it, and they want instant answers to their problems. When customers are browsing your website or using their app, they might encounter a problem that would derail their journey with you without chat for support. 

52% of customers would stay with a business that offers live chat support while 29% of customers will share their good live chat support experience with family and friends. You can’t afford to miss out in offering this vital channel for support, alongside more traditional meals such as email. 

41% of customers prefer live chat for support, making it the most popular customer support channel enabling you to increase customer satisfaction. 

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What is chat for support?

Live chat software is a tool customers can use to conduct real-time conversations with customer support agents to ask questions and solve problems. It’s usually a window embedded in the company’s website, so customers need not leave context in order to access support. It’s a way of providing instant support to customers with pressing questions, which might be about your product, their order, or anything else. 

Chat for support differs slightly from other channels because customers don’t need to switch platforms in order to use it. It’s easy for them to communicate with multiple agents to resolve complex problems since agents can assign the conversation to someone else if they feel they can’t solve it. 

Live chat software is essentially instant messaging for customers and support agents, hosted on your own channel. 

What are the benefits of chat for support? 

Customer support agents are typically able to manage multiple live chat conversations at once, making chat for support much less resource intensive than that other live channel – phone support. When customers have their conversation recorded in text, they can review it to check for any steps they have missed. 

Live chat software has an immediacy that other channels like email lack, making it a great choice for harried and impatient customers – as long as you can staff it. If customers are on your website and looking for a way to get in touch, it’s a simple process to open a live chat window and type in their question. 

Read More: Customer Service Tools: Our Comprehensive Guide

With chat for support, it’s easy to share links and save transcripts for the future, making this a great channel for support documentation. In case there is ever a dispute, you will always have the transcript to refer to. 

• Live chat prevents customers from leaving – since you are providing support in context, customers are less likely to navigate away from your webpage when encountering problems and losing the thread of their journey. 

• You can have a conversation with customers – unlike other channels like email, chat for support facilitates conversations that can happen as a back-and-forth between agents and customers, helping to uncover the real root of the problem. 

• Live chat happens in real-time – these real-time conversations with customers help your agents solve problems in seconds or minutes, without requiring customers to deeply understand why they need help beforehand. 

• Chat for support makes interactions easier – since agents can ask follow-up questions, your support conversations can happen in bitesize chunks that result in less frustration and disappointment for customers. 

What to look for in chat for support

There are a fair few tools on the market to choose from, but there are a few key features that you’ll want to keep your eye out for if you want your live chat software implementation to be a success, and ensure that you choose the best live chat software. 

• Dedicated chat for support tool – picking a tool that has been specifically developed for chat support means you’ll have access to all the most robust features, with a roadmap geared towards improving the tool. 

• Scalability in the future – although your team may be small now, if your live chat software is a success you’ll soon be expanding your support team to cope with increased demand. Choose a chat support tool that makes it easy to scale up. 

• Quick to set up and learn – you don’t want a tool that takes months to configure and test out. Choose one that works right out of the box so you can get started in helping customers. 

• Integrations with other support tools – chat support rarely works in isolation, and you might be using other customer service software tools such as a help desk, CRM or knowledge base to help customers. Make sure these tools can integrate to offer a seamless support experience. 

Read More: 10 Customer Service Apps for 2023

Top 7 chat for support tools

Now, we’re going to look at the best live chat software for customer support teams in 2023. 

1. Olark

Olark is a chat for support tool that enables you to have conversations with customers. The look of your Olark chat window can be customized to match your branding so you can offer colorful, engaging experiences for your customers. Users who install Olark have a 50% decrease in repetitive inquiries as well as having their conversions more than doubled, so you’ll definitely want to consider Olark. 

As a dedicated live chat software tool, you know Olark has been designed to do one thing, and one thing well. It’s easy to get Olark up-and-running and review your progress with reports, so you can keep track of every customer conversation. 

With the history of every customer included in your chat windows, you’ll be able to personalize your interactions with customers even more. It doesn’t matter which agent is conducting the conversation if you can always access previous chats and their transcripts to ensure that customers receive the best help possible. 

Features: 

• Custom pre-chat forms – ask customers to fill in their details before opening a live chat so you can gather vital context to launch the problem-solving process. Build the form yourself to collect only the information you need. 

• Triggered messages – use customer behavior to send pre-configured messages to urge them to take action. 

• Offline messaging – like a voicemail, this enables customers to leave messages while you’re offline which you can then follow up using email. 

• Automation – send greetings to customers, funnel messages to the correct department, and configure your chatbox to appear or hide it depending on context. 

Pricing: 

$29 per month per seat, with additional power-ups available as well as discounts for annual plans. 

2. LiveAgent

If you’re interested in the best live chat software then it’s very likely you’ll have heard of LiveAgent, and for good reason. As well as being a full-fledged help desk, LiveAgent is known for its live chat support tool that enables you to conduct real-time conversations with customers. While LiveAgent certainly offers live chat, you can benefit from a holistic experience that unites all the key customer communication channels. 

With LiveAgent, you don’t have to wait for customers to get in touch – you can invite customers to chat proactively so you never miss an opportunity to help. You always have a broad overview of every chat which means you can understand where agents are spending their time and allocate resources appropriately. 

Since LiveAgent gives you access to more built-in features, you can be assured that you are getting real value for money with this live chat support tool. It’s possible to tackle hundreds of conversations in 24 hours with smart ticket routing and access to unlimited conversation history. 

Features:

• Real-time typing view – you can view what your customers are typing before they hit send, which enables agents to conduct prior research and anticipate where the conversation will go, providing a much more impressive experience. 

• Multilingual chat widget – depending on what language your customers prefer, you can configure LiveAgent to respond in a particular language to provide a multilingual support experience. 

• Chat routing – assign chats to particular agents or departments for a faster resolution and more effective first-time responses. 

• Self-service portal and knowledge base – LiveAgent comes in-built with a knowledge base with articles that are integrated with the live chat software to speed up and automate customer support. 

Pricing:

Starts at $9 per agent per month billed annually. 

3. LiveChat

LiveChat is another live chat software that handles all sorts of messaging channels. When customers land on your website you can launch a chat with them to cover their needs and increase leads, as well as provide timely support. 

With LiveChat, you can take advantage of chatbots combined with automation rules and AI to route to the right department. The experience of using LiveChat reflects your customers’ preference for switching across channels depending on what is most convenient for them. 

Chat doesn’t have to be passive; proactively broadcast messages and monitor customer behavior by tracking the pages they have read on your site. You have the ability to send and receive files, which makes helping customers easier. 

Features:

• ChatBot – LiveChat integrates with ChatBot to handle simple and recurring inquiries to reduce the load on your agents. 

• Inactivity messages – if your agents have not replied for a set period of time, trigger a message asking for the customer’s email address so they can follow up later. 

• Chat transfer – assign a chat to another agent in case the customer cannot be helped by the original agent. 

• Incoming message sneak peek – see what your customers are typing before they hit send to anticipate your answer. 

• Reports and analytics – track metrics like total chats, queued visitors and sales for insight into your performance. 

Pricing: 

Pricing starts at $20 per agent per month billed annually. 

4. Tawk.to

If you’re looking for a brilliant and free live chat for support tool, tawk.to is your answer. Although you can pay for premium features such as removing the tawk.to icon from your chat, tawk.to also offers other beneficial services like the ability to outsource your agent support for $1 a month. 

Considering tawk.to is free, they offer a highly intuitive agent experience with the ability to customize the chat widget for your website, making it a very attractive option for many small businesses. In fact, Tawk.to offers even more freebies than their chat for support software – they also have a free knowledge base and ticketing system. 

So if you’re thinking about adopting live chat support software but don’t want to commit to a costly tool, then you should consider tawk.to. They are disrupting the traditional SaaS model of hands-off software and work closely with you, their customer, to provide a superior product. 

Features: 

• Monitor website visitors in real-time – keep on top of the pages your customers view and how often they visit your website for real-time insights into behavior. 

• Use localization to translate messages – tawk.to allows you to run a multilingual live chat to support customers in different regions. 

• Mobile live chat app – respond to chats from your mobile device to manage live chat on the move. 

• Shortcuts – canned responses allow you to save frequently used messages to send to customers. 

• In-chat payments – this feature is in beta but will allow your customers to make payments through the live chat widget. 

Pricing: 

Free. 

5. Zendesk

If you are a user of Zendesk then you may be interested to know that they also offer a live chat solution, allowing you to stay within the interface that you love whilst also supporting customers through chat. When you use live chat in Zendesk, it’s easy to manage your conversations and also conduct multiple conversations at once for those power users. 

Since the provider is Zendesk you know you will get a quality experience that integrates with Zendesk’s other systems. For example, using Sunshine Conversations, you can deploy AI chatbots and trigger proactive outbound notifications to engage your customers. 

Typically with Zendesk the aim is to create a conversational experience rather than transactional exchanges. Since you are using a digital medium you have access to all sorts of data you can use to personalize the customer service interaction without investing too much in terms of resources. 

Features:

• Custom pre-chat form – get customers to fill in their details and problems before you start chatting. 

• Visitors tab – access real-time visitor information to understand more about your customers without them having to tell you. 

• Intelligent routing – make sure each live chat customer reaches the right department or agent. 

• Custom AI chatbots – interact with your customers when agents are offline and offer them help with common queries. 

• Omnichannel – switch between different channels including SMS and Facebook Messenger to reach customers where they are. 

Pricing:

Pricing starts at $55 per agent per month. 

6. Tidio

Tidio is a powerful live chat tool which integrates a chatbot and conversational AI to enable you to help more customers. As well as live chat, Tidio connects all your help desk channels into one system, including email, Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs. Customers aren’t using a channel – they’re talking to real people. 

Like other live chat tools, you can use Tidio to track your visitors and understand their behavior on your site. Tidio has the immediacy of live chat while also offering the option to switch to another channel if necessary. 

Tidio functions as a basic live chat widget as well as offering extra functionality such as its AI assistant, Lyro. With a free forever plan for budget-conscious businesses, you get access to a great live chat tool that enables you to help more customers, more effectively. Tidio free users are limited to helping 50 customers per month. 

Features: 

• Pre-chat surveys – collect customer data for marketing purposes to take advantage of customers already on your site. 

• Customer database – use Tidio as a way to manage your customers in the database to offer experiences with more insight. 

• Multilingual live chat – support customers in different languages using the same live chat widget. 

• Integrate with Shopify – you can manage Shopify orders without leaving Tidio, making it easier to assist your customers. 

• Offline messaging – collect customer details when you’re unavailable so you can get back to them later. 

Pricing:

Starts free. 

7. Intercom

You can’t consider a chat for support tool without thinking about Intercom. Primarily a business messaging platform, Intercom turns customer conversations into tickets and integrates your other channels such as email and SMS. You will undoubtedly have seen Intercom operating with proactive outbound messages on company websites. 

Like other chat for support options, Intercom offers an AI-enhanced ticketing system to help you solve customer inquiries automatically. Integrated with your own knowledge base on Intercom, their AI bot Fin can suggest answers that are relevant for customers. 

Intercom works beyond their own platforms to integrate with other business-critical tools like Slack and GitHub so you never have to leave Intercom to get your work done. Reporting means that performance can be easily measured, and your customer service team supported to deliver the best help possible. 

Features: 

• Automated messages – proactively let customers know about any issues as they arise. 

• Integrated help center – post help articles and suggest them to your customers to answer common queries. 

• Product tours – help customers get to know your product with interactive onboarding. 

• Series – build sequences of targeted messages to send to customers that are triggered automatically. 

• Workflows – build automations with workflows, triggers and rules to assist your customer support team. 

Pricing: 

Ask for a quote. 

Wrapping up

Businesses supporting customers should consider the best live chat software for support, and particularly those options with free tiers. Even the smallest businesses can offer customers their preferred channel for support with instant, easy messaging. Customers on your website with simple questions will very often turn to live chat for answers. 

Dedicated live chat tools are best for businesses that want to focus on live chat, although some are full-fledged help desks that allow you to manage customer tickets across channels and link with other resources like CRMs. 

Chat for support means you can assist customers when they have questions directly on your website, without asking them to switch to channels such as phone or email. Such seamless support creates customer experiences worth remembering.