Here are the best live chat plugins for your
e-commerce website to provide live customer support

Several studies show that around 83% of consumers require assistance when buying a product or service online.

If up until today most companies offered a support service through email/ticket systems, today most of the customers who buy online expect an immediate service of assistance, typically via a live chat with customer service of the company from which they are buying.

That being said, there are hundreds of solutions that provide assistance in real time on the market, which allow the user browsing the website to request instant support. Depending on the type of your business, some solutions may be more suitable than others. We have chosen to present you here the 3 best solutions based on the type of clientele your e-commerce addresses.

Here are the three best Live Chat plugins you can install on your website provide real-time support

1) Callbell

We just had to start from our solution, obviously 😜. Callbell is a chat plugin that allows site visitors to request support through their favorite chat app (including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram Direct).

The platform allows you to customize the chat plugin according to the channels you want to make available, and is a solution suitable for all those e-commerce websites that focus on a mobile-first audience.

In fact, the visitor can start to chat in real time with the company through his or her favorite messaging app, and then continue the conversation at a later time, without having to wait for the response on the website.

For the company, it is easier like this to gather information about the user and analyze the history of past chats. Everything is managed by a single platform that collects conversations from different channels and allows them to be distributed to a support team.

2) Intercom

Intercom is the right Live Chat solution if your company operates in the B2B space. Intercom’s interface allows you to start a chat directly on the website and provide support to your site visitor.

Moreover, the platform provides advanced features so you can customize the user’s experience on your site: the platform allows you to understand if the user is still online, which page of our site he/she is on, and send different welcome messages based on the URL where the user is at.

Intercom is the perfect solution to generate leads in a B2B market and/or provide pre and post sales support to companies which use our services.

In the B2B area, there are other viable solutions such as Drift, Crisp or HubSpot’s live chat.

3) Zopim (Zendesk)

Zopim is the ideal choice for companies that use Zendesk as a customer support/ticketing platform. Although it is not exactly a “modern” solution, it is often an ideal choice for companies (both for B2B and B2C) that wish to customize their chat as they please.

Moreover, Zopim can easily be integrated with Salesforce, Magento, WordPress and many other tools for sales and support management. Zopim offers a free version which can yet be restrictive. Afterwards, the paid plans start at €14/month per user.

There are many other valid alternatives to Zopim that provide approximately the same type of functionality. Like for example SmartSupp, LiveChat or Tawk.to.

4) Hiver

If you’re looking to deliver timely customer service without investing in a separate live chat solution, then Hiver is a good option. The reason is simple: most live chat tools require you to log in to a separate platform and learn to use an alien interface. Moreover, frontline agents would constantly have to toggle between the live chat tool and other workflow management tools and their work inbox. Something that would impact everyday productivity.

Hiver, on the other hand, lets you seamlessly manage both email and live chat queries right from Gmail’s native interface. That makes Hiver extremely easy to use and intuitive. Onboarding is also fairly straightforward.

With Hiver, support managers can assign chat queries to frontline agents with a single click. Agents can respond to frequently asked queries with custom-built chat templates, and also share entire chat transcripts to get help from other teams or loop colleagues into customer conversations. At the end of every chat, you can also collect customer feedback and gauge quality of support.

Hiver also offers one-click integrations with various tools like Asana, Jira, Slack, and Zapier. It comes with a 7-day free trial and the paid plans start at $15/month per user.

Which is the best Live Chat plugin?

In this article we took into consideration 3 of the best Live Chat plugins on the market. Which one is the best?

It depends on your type of business and your customers; let’s recap:

1) If you have an ecommerce site, focused at young customers and/or mainly mobile traffic, Callbell is the right solution for you

2) If your customers are companies (B2B), Intercom and Acquire are the most complete solutions, not only to provide support, but also to generate leads and manage your prospects

3) If you are looking for something more “traditional”, but compatible with Salesforce and customizable, then you can choose Zopim, Zendesk’s Live Chat

4) If you’re looking for a solution that works seamlessly integrates your email and live chat queries within your native Gmail interface, Hiver is the best option. 

If you are still undecided and don’t know how to decide, you can start a chat with us or leave a comment below: our team is always available to give you some advice!

Thank you for reading and see you soon!