As digital customer service expectations continue to rise, the very least a small business (SMB) should offer is live chat.
With the assortment of solutions available, however, it can be difficult to narrow down which one will work for your business. To make the research process easier, Website Magazine has put together a list of five live chat options that are designed specifically for SMBs. Learn more about these offerings, including pricing information, by checking out the list below:
Starting Pricing: $15/month
Olark is easy to get started with, as it simply requires businesses to paste some coding into their site. The solution is also customizable to provide businesses with the ability to match chat windows to the branding of their site. What's more, the solution can be leveraged to collect feedback from website visitors, and also provides businesses with website visitor data, such as the items in a visitor's shopping cart and the actions visitors are taking on the site. Pricing for Olark starts at $15 a month for one operator and ranges to $219 a month.
SnapEngage
Starting Pricing: $60/month
SnapEngage offers many live chat features, from live chat mobile apps to customization tools and post chat surveys. The solution also enables businesses to setup proactive invitations to automatically invite visitors to chat, as well as offers co-browsing capabilities, real time activity monitoring and Facebook Fan Page chat. SnapEngage starts at $60 per month for up to four agent licenses, but also offers plans that offer HIPAA compliance from $140 a month to $420 a month.
BoldChat
Starting Pricing: $599 agent/year
BoldChat's starting live chat offering, dubbed BoldChat Pro, is customizable and offers proactive chat and co-browsing capabilities. What's more, BoldChat comes with a feature called "sale recovery," which helps to rescue customers who chat with a retailer when the retailer is unavailable. BoldChat Pro also offers conversion tracking and a reporting engine that helps businesses identify the most successful proactive invites, track agent responsiveness, measure marketing program effectiveness and more. Pricing for BoldChat Pro starts at $599 per agent per year. That said, businesses that want to leverage the company's Premier or Enterprise plan must request a quote.
LivePerson
Starting Pricing: $49/month
LivePerson's LiveEngage product offers both mobile and Web messaging functionality. With mobile messaging, LivePerson displays a committed response time to help set consumers' expectations. The solution also enables customer care professionals to open a secure cobrowse session with consumers, which helps them more effectively solve customer issues. It is also important to note that LivePerson offers reporting and analytics, which gives each customer service agent the ability to see their daily key performance indicator (KPI) metrics, which are updated in real time. Pricing for LiveEngage starts at $49 per month for one user and ranges up to $139 per month for three users.
Zopim
Starting Pricing: Free
The Zopim offering from Zendesk helps SMBs offer real-time support to their customers. The solution supports proactive chat capabilities, as well as website visitor tracking and monitoring. Moreover, Zopim offers a variety of layouts and themes to allow SMBs to customize their chat windows. The solution also provides users with chat reports and agent reports. For individuals, Zopim is free, but for teams with more than one agent, the basic offering starts at $11.20 per agent per month (when billed annually). There is also an advanced and premium offering available that come with additional features and functionality.