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.

Best Live chat plugins

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

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.

Callbell: the best live chat for ecommerce sites

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.

Intercom: Live Chat for b2b companies

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.

Zopim: live chat by Zendesk

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.

Hiver

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!

Frequent Questions

What are the three best live chat plugins you can install on your website?

The best solution for live chat is Callbell, it is a plugin that allows site visitors to request assistance via their favorite chat app (including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram Direct). This platform allows you to customize the chat plugin according to the desired channels and is a suitable solution for all those e-commerce sites that focus on a mobile audience. Which makes it perfectly ideal.

The user, in fact, can start chatting in real time with the company through their favorite messaging app and then continue the conversation at a later time, without having to wait for the response on the site. It is much easier for the company to collect user information and analyze previous chat history. Everything is managed through a single platform that collects conversations from different channels and allows them to be allocated to a customer service team.

Then we have Intercom, which is the appropriate live chat solution if your company operates in a B2B market. The Intercom interface allows you to initiate a chat directly on the website and provide support to your site visitor. Last but not least, there’s Zopim, the ideal option for companies that use Zendesk as a customer support/ticket platform.

What is the best live chat plugin?

Without a doubt Callbell is the ideal solution if what you need is a good live chat plugin, Callbell extracts all chats from your usual communication channels such as WhatsApp Business, Telegram, Facebook Messenger and Instagram and centralizes them in its collaborative platform, where all your agents can manage incoming chats and respond in a quick and efficient manner.

At the same time, the customer can chat live from any channel through the app, while you get stats from your customers and agents. In addition, Callbell offers a chat widget that you can integrate into your website to capture all messages from your audience and an automatic routing that automatically redirects these messages to the corresponding departments.

Senza nome 7 - The 4 best live chat plugins for an ecommerce website

About the author: Hello! I am Carlo and I am one of the co-founder at Callbell, the first communication platform designed to help sales and support teams to collaborate and communicate with customers through direct messaging applications such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram and (soon) Instagram Direct