“First Impressions are often the truest, as we find (not infrequently) to our cost, when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or studied actions.”
― William Hazlitt
Sure, Conversational marketing software, also known as messenger marketing software, is the first impression of customer interactions, and "the first impression is the last impression." that's why some customers never approach a business again after one bad experience.
According to recent studies, live chat and chatbots have a good satisfaction rating. They are most customers' preferred communication method than calling, emailing, social media, or submitting a form on your website.
Live chat needs fewer agents and is cheaper than phone support or outsourcing support to a customer service agent, while chatbots will lower these costs.
The majority of businesses are currently using AI or planning to manage their relationship with customers.
Therefore, you need to decide which option is better and whether you will use chatbots or live chat software on your website to guarantee an improved customer experience.
Disclaimer: This article isn't an advertisement, it is not influenced by any service providers' websites, and we have not been paid to suggest any recommendation.
These platforms are either the most popular & trusted services, or the highest-rated through the best reviews platforms, or recommended by online forums, influencers marketing, digital marketing courses, and certifications.
Honestly and transparently, platforms on this article may contain affiliate links that let us receive a small commission that supports our work and will not affect the price you pay through the links on these service providers websites.
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1. Live Chat Software
Live chat is a great technology that helps you get an immediate contextual response to your question carried live and emotionally by a human. It can help you handle complex technical customer's queries
and drive conversions because all consumers like to get their queries answered immediately.
But Chatbots are useful to resolve simple and repetitive customers' queries and get in emergency quick real-time solutions to their questions. Simultaneously, live chat response time will be delayed according to how many customers are in a queue, and the time spent with each customer. They have the fastest response times.
Unlike Live chat software, Chatbots can handle with ease multiple chats concurrent at a time and can stay online for as long as possible 24/7, 365 days a year.
If you haven't added a live chat app to your website, check out these tools to consider for 2021: Olark, Livechat, Jivochat, Liveagent, Chaport, Helponclick, and Botletter.
Olark is created in 2009 as one of the most popular chat support tools that allow you to give your customers quick answers in real-time related to your products or services, claiming to serve more than 12,000 businesses worldwide.
Olark slogan: Customers want to talk to you. Make it easy. Listen. Learn. Improve.
INTEGRATIONS
Olark live chat is designed to work with your favorite popular software to connect with to the rest of your sales, marketing, and support process, like:
- CRM and helpdesk: Salesforce, Groove, HubSpot; Zendesk, FrontFront, Help Scout, Sugar CRM, Nutshell, JIRA, GreenRope, etc.
- Automation: Webhooks.
- Email: MailChimp.
- Google Analytics.
- E-commerce: BigCommerce, Shopify, and Magento.
- Web publishing: WordPress.
FEATURES
✓ Match your chat box to your brand.
✓ Custom chatbox forms.
✓ Engage customers in real-time.
✓ Triggered messages.
✓ Offline messaging.
✓ Get up-to-the-minute live chat metrics.
✓ Easy chat data access and possible database archive transcript.
✓ Real-time dashboards.
✓ Keep your entire team on track.
✓ Email reports.
✓ Google Analytics integration.
PRICING PLANS
Olark offers affordable pricing for teams of all sizes, from flexible month-to-month or annual plan.
LiveChat is one of the best online customer service software available on the market since 2002. It helps over 28,000 companies' teams in 150 countries to build better relationships with customers about any
support and sales query, convert more visitors into leads each month, and grow their business using live support, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities.
INTEGRATIONS
You can install and use LiveChat with 170 apps at LiveChat Marketplace related to E-commerce, CRM connectors, CMS integrations, Email
marketing, Help Desk, Analytics, and certified experts.
(NOTE: Learn more about all those tools in our Ultimate Guide: Digital Marketing Toolbox PDF)
FEATURES
✓ Nice, simple user interface and complete chat screen.
✓ Easy setup and integration.
✓ Automatic messaging, offline mode, and chatbot Integration.
✓ Chat tools: Message sneak-peek, Canned responses, Visitor information, Chat tags, Rich messages support, File sharing, Timeline, Chat archives, Delivery status, Notifications, Transfer, Chat transcripts,
and Visitor banning.
✓ Customization: Chat window themes, Company logo, Messages and labels, Language, Social media buttons, Agent profiles, Engagement graphics, and White label live chat.
✓ Engaging customers: Automatic greetings, Personal greetings, Eye- catchers, Ticket form, Chat on Facebook, Embedded and the pop-up chat window, Smart or manual chat routing, Chat buttons, Chat on multiple websites, and Chat via a direct link.
✓ Reports & analytics: Basic statistics, Chat reports, Ticket reports, Filters, Daily summary, Reports via API, and Dashboard.
✓ Applications: Web app, Desktop apps, LiveChat on mobile, Cloud capability, Chat window on mobile, and Application shortcuts.
✓ Ticketing system: Ticket sources, Private comments, Tagging tickets, Ticket rates, and Ticket reports.
✓ Team management: Agent groups, Agent account management, Agent roles, Chat supervision, Work scheduler, and Chat limit.
✓ Getting feedback: Chat ratings, Rating comments, Ticket ratings, Post-chat surveys, and Satisfaction stats.
✓ Visitors tracking: Gathering customer data, Visitor information filtering, and Additional visitors information.
✓ Security: Encryption, Credit card masking, Datacenter Europe, Access restriction, Logging in with Google Accounts, and 2-step Verification.
✓ Chat API: Workflow automation, Webhooks, and JavaScript API.
PRICING PLANS
You can subscribe to one of the four pricing plans available after satisfaction with your free 14 days trial.
- Starter plan for Small office / Home office: $16 monthly per seat.
- Team plan for a full-time support team: $33 monthly per seat.
- Business plan for bigger firms to manage a customer service department: $50 monthly per seat.
- Enterprise for Fortune 500 companies: Contact customer support.
JivoChat is a free live chat & business messenger solution that helps over 277.000+ teams worldwide communicate in real-time with their clients with chat, phone, email, and social media. It uses just one tool, which would motivate users to subscribe, read, or purchase in one window.
JivoChat is translated into 20 languages and works across all devices: Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, and Web browsers.
INTEGRATION
− CRM: Zapier.
− Content Management System: WordPress, Shopify, Wix.com, BigCommerce, Ecwid, Drupal, Joomla, Opencart, Magento, PrestaShop, Modx, Bitrix, and Shopify.
− Analytics: Google Analytics.
FEATURES
✓ Multi-Language Support.
✓ One Jivo app window for chats, emails, and calls provides simple, easy, and exceptional customer support.
✓ Widget perfectly Designed, works on any Device, customizable, and translated into 20 languages.
✓ JivoChat assessments and suggestions will monitor and improve the quality of service.
✓ Monitor customer flow.
✓ Create reminders for your team.
✓ Mobile Optimization.
PRICING PLANS
JivoChat offers two pricing plans. The basic plan is forever free for up to 30 agents. You can try the Professional version free for 14 days to explore the functions before you subscribe for the paid version for $30 for up to 30 agents per month.
Featured on the best software companies list by the most popular software review platforms, Live Agent is helpdesk software featuring an online live chat, phone support, and social media integrations for small and midsize e-commerce businesses.
(Discover: The Best Digital Marketing Resources & Tools)
INTEGRATION
LiveAgent allows a range of integrations, plugins, and apps related to Feedback, Workflow, Tracking, Chatbot, Email marketing, Social, Billing management, e-commerce, CMS, CRM, Project management, Collaboration tools, and Migration plugins.
FEATURES
LiveAgent offers 175 helpdesk features to deliver exceptional customer service related to Ticket Management, Live Chat, Twitter and Facebook, Call Center, Reporting, Support Portal, Gamification, Multilingual (39 translations available), Mobile apps, Security, and more.
PRICING PLANS
LiveAgent offers three affordable plans with a 14 Day Trial:
− Ticket: $15 /agent/month.
− Ticket Chat: $29 /agent/month.
− All-Inclusive: $39 /agent/month.
Join over 30.000+ businesses like Airbus, Forbes, Sli.do, Nascar, USC University of Southern California, and Lyreco, who Trust LiveAgent.
Chaport is a simple modern messenger tool that helps you answer customer questions in one window via live chat, Facebook, or Telegram to quickly solve their problems, available for iOS, Android, Web, Windows, and macOS.
LANGUAGES
Russian, English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Polish, Estonian, Latvian,Turkish, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Ukrainian, and Swedish.
INTEGRATION AND API
You can connect Chaport with 750 apps using Zapier or integrate it with any app using API like Facebook, MailChimp, Salesforce, Shopify, Gmail, Ecwid, CRM, and more.
FEATURES
Chaport offers features to deliver good customer service related to file sending, typing insights, saved replies, detailed visitor info, multilingual chat widget, lead generation, widget customization, auto-invitations, group chats, offline messaging, reports, and even more.
PRICING PLANS
- Free plan: $0 up to 5 operators.
- Pro Plan: $9.80 per operator/month. you will get a free 14-day trial period.
Founded in 2012, HelpOnClick is a cloud-based live chat & help desk solution for desktop and mobile that helps companies of all sizes to connect with their website visitors to increase sales and customer satisfaction.
It is available as a Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone application. It is localized to over 20 languages.
INTEGRATIONS
Live chat with major CMS, help desk, e-commerce, and CRM systems:
− CMS: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Kentico, LightCMS, and Wix.
− CRM: ZOHO, Highrise, and Salesforce.
− E-commerce: Magento, ZenCart, OsCommerce, PrestaShop, Xcart, and Opencart.
− Help Desk: HelpOnClick, Zendesk, Desk.com, Freshdesk, Zoho, and Mojo Helpdesk.
− Social: Blogger, Gmail, Google Analytics, and Facebook.
(NOTE: Learn more about all those tools in our Digital Marketing Toolbox blog)
BENEFITS & FEATURES
This live chat provider offers a wide range of features and customization options, including:
✓ Desktop & Mobile App Downloads.
✓ Works Everywhere.
✓ Track & Improve.
✓ Instant Setup.
✓ Manual invitations.
✓ Pre-chat fields.
✓ Leave a message form.
✓ Desktop & Mobile apps.
✓ Automatically email all transcripts.
✓ IP address blacklist.
✓ Customization.
✓ Reports.
✓ Chat history.
✓ SSL Security.
✓ Virtual Agent 24/7.
✓ Email & live chat support.
PRICING PLANS
HelpOnClick Live Chat Software offers a 30-day free trial and two simple pricing for companies of all sizes.
Chat live with your website visitors with the HelpOnClick live chat solution. Start your 30-day trial period.
2. Chatbots Software
According to Chatbots Magazine, “A Chatbot is a computer program powered by AI that allows you to interact with the customers via a chat interface.”
You'll be asked to drop your email address so they can get back to you later by email, which often takes more than 24 hours. You have to wait on hold. It's disappointing if you need an instant answer. It could lead to customer dissatisfaction.
Although Chatbots can be sophisticated, they can't give more answers beyond what it's programmed to answer. However, based on what the customer is looking for, the chatbot can direct them to the right department's live human chat.
Unlike live chat software; Chatbots are easy to use. There is no need to invest money and time to teach your team members useful complex information and settings.
Although Chatbots can’t replace a human customer agent completely, my recommendation is to use a combination of the two options.
Chatbots give just an instant preliminary reply until a representative becomes available and transferred the customer to the right qualified representative.
It's way faster than email and more efficient than phone. Don't make your customers wait. Sure, Chatbots are the future of sales.
There is a large wide selection of the best Chat Bots Software, including Freshchat, Hellotars, Collect.chat, Chit Chat Chimp, Tidio, Activechat, Opesta, and Gong.
Founded in 2011, Freshchat is modern messaging software that power and manage millions of customer conversations for businesses of all sizes offering a sales sidekick that works 24*7 through the website, mobile app, or social pages in one window.
BENEFITS & FEATURES
✓ Lead generation, customer engagement, and support using bots and campaigns to get more conversions and satisfaction.
✓ Triggered Messages.
✓ Email Campaigns.
✓ Bots.
✓ Visitor Intel.
✓ Clearbit Integration.
✓ Email Notifications.
✓ OmniChat.
✓ Rich Media: words, images, emojis, stickers, or PDFs and documents.
✓ Multilingual Messenger.
✓ IntelliAssign.
PRICING PLANS
Freshchat offers affordable live chat software pricing, bidding unlimited contacts on any plan:
- Sprout plan to get you started: Free/ 10 team members and unlimited contacts.
- Blossom plan for all your support needs: $15/team member/month.
- Garden plan for your support sales needs: $24/team member/month.
- Estate plan for large teams: $39/team member/month.
- Forest plan for enterprises: $79/team member/month.
Hellotars is the highest-rated chatbot software through the G2 Crowd' review platform. It's trusted by companies like DHL, PostFinance, Daimler, MVD, Bajaj Finserv, Vodacom, and more.
It allows you to create intelligent conversational bots to interact with customers on multiple communication windows and across various devices concomitantly.
Since 2016, Hellotars offers hundreds of chatbot templates in a lot of categories like Finance & Banking, Insurance, Healthcare, Education, Real Estate, Legal, Travel, HR & Recruitment, Events, Hospitality, Agency, Automotive, Media / Publication, B2B, Services, Government, E-commerce, Local Services, Miscellaneous, and more.
- Lead Generation & Qualification: 386
- Customer Support: 26
- Education & Training: 25
- Order & Transaction: 8
- Product & Service Explainer: 4
- Quiz and Question-Answer: 48
- Online Website Calculator: 15
- Event & RSVP Management: 2
- Feedback & Survey: 26
- User Engagement: 11
- Learning & Development: 5
- Fun: 10
- Experimental: 7.
See Related: 20 Best & Most Popular CMS Platforms & Website Builders You Should Know
ALL TARS PLANS INCLUDE
✓ Drag and drop chatbot builder tool to create your chatbot in less than an hour easily.
✓ Get access to high converting chatbot templates to change when you need it.
✓ 10 input type capture Including Text, Fixed Buttons, Image Carousel, Star Rating, Calendar, Files/Images, Geo-Location, etc.
✓ Advanced Chatflow Logic to design a personalized and smart chatbot for users.
✓ Put and host your Chatbot on your website domain.
✓ Conversation data export feature from Chatbot to Excel/CSV to control and analyze your data.
✓ Multi-Language Support: English, German, French, Spanish,Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Thai, etc.
✓ Conversion Analytics.
✓ Partial Lead Capture even if user drop in the middle of theconversation
PRICING PLANS
Hellotars offers three pricing plans:
- Professional plan: $ 99/mo, to get started with 5 Chatbots, 1000 Chats/month, and $10/100 additional chats.
- Business plan: $ 499/mo Includes all Professional Plan features with 10 Chatbots, 5000 Chats/month, and $10/100 additional chats.
You can use your chatbot on several websites in this plan.
- Enterprise/ Agency plan: To Custom by contacting them. It offers 20 Chatbots and 50,000 Chats/month.
Collect.Chat is a chatbot builder tool that allows you to create an interactive chatbot to collect data & feedback, build email lists, execute surveys, schedule sales meetings, and more that converts your visitors into customers to grow your business. It was founded in 2017 and used by 10,000 happy clients worldwide.
Collect.Chat’ Slogan: Collect more appointments, leads, inquiries, meetings, bookings, feedback, orders, surveys, and suggestions for your business.
It offers dozens of Chatbot' examples and free templates related to:
✓ Data Collection: Lead Generation, Appointment Booking, Feedback Collection; Contact Us; Get Subscribers; Exit Survey; Job Application; E-commerce Assistant, and Donation.
✓ Feedback & Survey: Hotel Feedback, Restaurant Feedback, and Logistics Feedback.
✓ Personal: Appointment Booking, Webinar Registration, Wedding Invitation, About Me, Freelancer, and Photographer.
✓ Services: Education Consultancy, Webinar Registration, Legal Service, Outsourced Service, Coworking Space, Packing Service, Freelancer, Spareparts Provider, Digital Marketer, Photographer, and Recruitment Agency.
✓ Education: Education Consultancy, Career Guidance, Language School, and Secondary School.
✓ Finance: Merchant Service, Insurance Assistant, and Mortgage Survey.
✓ Real Estate: Real Estate Assistant, Mortgage Survey, and Mortgage Help.
✓ Health & Beauty: Multispeciality Clinic, Yoga Class, Doctor’s Feedback, TeleHealth Service, Beautician, and Fitness Centre.
✓ Event Planning: Wedding Planners and Event Planner.
✓ IT & Software: Digital Agency, Webinar Registration, Mobile Application, App Showcase, Outsource Service, Coworking Space, Freelancer, and Game Studio.
✓ Travel & Transport: Travel Booking, Hotel Feedback, and Logistics Feedback.
✓ Food & Restaurant: Book a Table, Restaurant Feedback, Coffee Lover, Order a Cake, and Eatery Order.
✓ Design & Photography: Video Production; Photographer, and Recording Studio.
INTEGRATIONS
Connect Collect.Chat with hundreds of apps like Salesforce, MailChimp, and Slack without coding or emailing an IT guy.
FEATURES
✓ Schedule Meetings, booking, and Appointments in an instant.
✓ Get inquiries on your website faster.
✓ Acquire customers while you sleep.
✓ Dozens of high-quality templates.
✓ Easy drag and drop builder to create fast & efficient chatbots.
✓ It supports multiple languages.
✓ Personalize your chat using various exceptional question templates to ask your visitors.
✓ Fast & Easy Installation.
✓ Simple dashboard and powerful visualizations.
PRICING PLANS
Collect.chat offers 5 small, medium, and custom sized business plans:
- Free plan: $0 Unlimited bots/ 50 Responses per month.
- Lite plan: $18/ 500 Responses per month.
- Standard plan: $35/ 2500 Responses per month.
- Plus plan: $69/ 5000 Responses per month.
- Custom needs: Talk to Collect.chat through their Email.
Stop worrying about losing out on your valuable prospects. Sign up for the free plan to test Collect.chat.
Chit Chat Chimp is an intelligent ChatBot building platform developed by Promote Labs Inc in 2017 to help you create a great looking bot easily to interact with your customers, gather feedback, and get higher sales conversions.
Chit Chat Chimp examples through the dashboard:
✓ Support Bots.
✓ Sales Bots.
✓ Feedback Bots.
✓ Training Bots.
✓ E-commerce Bots.
PRICING PLANS
Turn cold prospects into paying customers. Get started now.
Founded in 2013 and trusted by 300 000 businesses, Tidio is a communicator software that provides live chat, chatbots, Messenger, and e-mail in one place by engaging visitors in eal-time.
FEATURES
✓ Live Chat and Chatbots.
✓ Multilingual bot.
✓ Customizable Chat Widget.
✓ Autoresponder bot for missed conversations.
✓ FAQ bot.
✓ Automatic messaging bot.
✓ Abandoned carts tracking.
✓ Live chat.
✓ Email and messenger integration.
✓ Export visitors data.
✓ Unlimited Website Visitor Tracking.
✓ Quick responses.
✓ Geo-Targeting.
✓ Support for over 140 languages.
✓ Offline Message Form.
INTEGRATIONS
Tidio Chat offers a wide variety of third-party popular necessary integrations to keep information about our customers in one place and provide even better customer service.
- CRM: Zapier, Zendesk Sel, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Capsule, Hubspot, amoCRM, AgileCRM, and Insightly.
- E-Commerce: WordPress, Wix, Site123, Shopify, Prestashop, Codarius, BigCommerce, 3dcart, and Magento.
- Email Marketing: MailChimp, Google Analytics, and Get Response.
- Help Desk: Zendesk and HelpScout.
PRICING PLANS
Tidio allows you to use the same account on multiple websites at a time, to add more operators or raise the chatbots limit, and to downgrade your account anytime as well:
- Forever-free plan: $0 /Month/ Up to 3 users by default for a lifetime. It allows using bots.
- Communicator plan: $18 /Month for 3 operators. More than 3 seats can be purchased.
- Chatbots Package: $18 /Month for 5000 unique users on your website.
ActiveChat is an advanced chatbot platform created in 2017 for the modern conversational design to build voice and messenger virtual assistants for automated customer support, marketing, and businesses.
FEATURES
✓ Dashboard – all your bots in one place.
✓ Visual Bot Architect. Building blocks for chatbots: TALK blocks, EVENT blocks, SWITCH block, NLP block, JSON block, TIMER blocks, DATA block, EMAIL block, E-COMMERCE blocks (WooCommerce Chatbot Shopify chatbots), and SHOPPING CART blocks.
✓ Connect the bot to Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Twilio SMS messaging service, and Chat widget.
✓ Explore your users and conversation history.
✓ Send mass broadcasts.
✓ Bot statistics.
✓ Customer Support Chatbots.
INTEGRATIONS
- Natural Language Processing with Dialogflow NLP.
- E-commerce: Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Google Sheets chatbot integration.
- Google Calendar chatbot integration.
PRICING PLANS
Activechat.ai offers flexible pricing that depends on the number of users in your bot as follow:
Join 14,850 active users. Try Activechat for a 14-day free trial with no user limits.
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