10 Best Live Chat Software for Your Small Business in 2024

As a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you may have limited resources and time to handle customer queries. You want to reduce workload,  increase sales, and easy-to-integrate customer service tools.

“44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.”

Now you are wondering how to leverage the gap and find affordable and scalable live chat solutions. Well, we’ve got your back!

This article will provide you with the best small business live chat you are looking for. Let’s find the best live chat solutions for your customer service.

The Best Live Chat Tools for Customer Support at a Glance

REVE Chat

Reve Chat is an all-in-one omnichannel live chat platform. It is designed to elevate customer support and engagement across websites, social media, messaging apps, and mobile platforms. With a strong focus on live chat, REVE Chat helps businesses offer personalized, real-time customer service, particularly in small businesses.

There are some distinct characteristics of a small business. You need growth faster than any other type of company. While REVE Chat includes an AI-powered chatbot to speed up responses, our priority is delivering personalized, and human-centric customer service. The platform empowers businesses to offer high-quality, immediate support where it matters most.

Key Features

• Omnichannel Engagement: You can manage customer interactions seamlessly across multiple platforms, including Facebook (Messenger & Comments) and Instagram (DM, Story Replies, Mentions & Comments), unifying customer communications into a single, easy-to-use platform.
• Proactive Customer Interaction: With features like auto triggers and proactive chat, businesses can engage customers at the right time. And boost conversions and improve overall customer satisfaction.
• Collaborative Support Tools: Advanced features like co-browsing, video chat, and screen sharing enable agents to assist customers directly in real-time. You can improve issue resolution and enhance your customer’s experiences.
• Smart Ticketing System: You can convert customer chats into tickets for effective issue tracking and follow-up. This ensures no customer query is overlooked, streamlining your support operations.
• Detailed Analytics and Reporting: Access insightful reports that allow your business to monitor performance, track customer interactions, and make data-driven improvements to service quality.
• Mobile Friendlyness: REVE Chat’s mobile apps ensure that your team can offer customer service anytime, anywhere, maintaining flexibility and responsiveness.
• Canned Responses: These are predefined responses to customers’ common inquiries. You can add canned responses to save time and increase response speed.
• Customer Feedback Collection: It is a built-in tool to collect feedback or satisfaction surveys at the end of the conversation so that your agents can get an idea of their performance, as well as whether the customer was satisfied or not.
• Ease of Setup and Use: REVE live chat is very easy to integrate with your website. It doesn’t require extensive technical knowledge. So you can easily set up this tool without having technical expertise.
• Advanced Customization: One of the most important factors is that REVE Chat is customizable. You may customize features according to your business needs. 

Pros

• Complete customer engagement solution with video chat, co-browsing & live chat
• Integrated chatbot builder to manage automated and live conversations in one platform
• Omnichannel messaging
• Both SaaS and on-premise options are available
• Mobile SDK for live chat and video chat
• Prompt customer service with 24×7 live chat support
• Affordable plans for all types of businesses with per-agent pricing
• Ticketing System

Cons

• Need stronger trigger options for outbound messaging 

With a comprehensive suite of features, REVE Chat is the ultimate platform for businesses looking to provide exceptional customer service.

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Live Chat

LiveChat is a popular messaging application that can be integrated into your website to address sales and support queries instantly. The LiveChat Android & iOS apps help to engage with your customers wherever you are. Its desktop apps for Windows and Mac offer a rich interface that helps to take customer service to the next level.

Key Features

• Customizable chat widget for branding
• Real-time analytics to track performance
• Chat transcripts for auditing and follow-ups
• Ticketing system to convert chats into tasks
• Integrates with CRM and helpdesk tools

Pros

• One of the simplest and easy-to-use interface
• Strong analytics capabilities for staff prediction. Able to send automated reports and chat summaries through email
• Dedicated app marketplace with almost any integration you can think of. They can also do custom integrations if needed

Cons

• It lacks real-time engagement features such as video chat and co-browsing
• No built-in chatbot builder. need to purchase another product
• Mobile apps have very limited functionality. Agents may not get full features to work the same way as the web version

Tawk.to

Tawk.to is an agent-centric website live chat app for communicating with visitors. It helps businesses monitor and chat with the visitors on their website, respond to support tickets, and create a help center to empower customers to help themselves.

Key Features

• Triggered auto messages for proactive engagement
• Canned responses for quick replies
• Message sneak peek to see real-time typing
• Live visitor tracking for timely outreach
• Tags, departments, and visitor info for organized chats

Pros

• Simple and very quick to set up and implement
• No limitations on the number of agent seats or chat history
• Tag and assign conversations to the right agents to respond at the right time

Cons

• The dashboard needs a continuous refresh
• Late notifications 
• Even though the free plan is great paid subscriptions are expensive
• Limited features, not suitable for mid-size companies or enterprises

Freshworks

Freshworks (Freshchat) is a live chat solution platform that helps you engage with customers over chat through various channels like websites, mobile apps, or even social pages. It helps businesses and their teams focus on a continuous and context-driven messaging experience. It also helps to understand the customer you are conversing with the help of events timeline, social profiles, and auto-upload the captured leads to your CRM.

Key Features

• Campaigns for targeted engagement
• Sales bot to automate lead generation
• Integrated self-service for quick resolutions
• Intelligent message routing for faster responses
• Canned responses for instant replies
• Customizable branding to match your style
• Supportive integrations for seamless workflows

Pros

• Strong automation tools
• Multi-channel messaging

Cons

• Every plan has limited monthly unique visitors 
• Does not offer video & voice chat
• Some of the premium features get expensive such as clear bit integration, co-browsing, and API access
• Lack of timely customer support

Intercom

Intercom is branded as the conversational relationship platform that helps to build customer relationships via messaging and live chat across their journey. It allows delivering top-notch support at scale with the help of business messenger and conversational support funnel.

Key Features

• Connects with customers through real-time chat
• AI-powered bots automate common tasks and provide instant responses
• Targeted communication and customer segmentation based on behavior and demographics
• Customized bots that guide customers through specific processes
• Tracks customer interactions and agent performance to optimize service

Pros

• Offers complete conversational marketing suite for outbound messaging
• Support for email as a fallback channel is great for having ongoing conversations
• 250+ out-of-the-box integrations and APIs for custom integrations
• Ideally suitable for SaaS businesses
• Provides in-app product tours to onboard new customer

Cons

• The implementation process is tedious and takes a long time 
• The UI/UX lacks the modern feel and is just not as smooth or visually appealing as other platforms
• Limited native integrations

Zendesk

Zendesk Chat is a well-established live chat solution that integrates hassle-free with the broader Zendesk customer service platform. It offers real-time chat capabilities for banks to provide instant customer support. 

Key Features

• Instant support to customers via a user-friendly chat interface
• Automatically route chats to the most appropriate agents based on predefined rules
• Set up triggers to send targeted messages based on customer behavior
• Hassle-free integrates with other Zendesk tools 
• Detailed reports on chat volume, response times, and customer satisfaction

Pros

• Real-time view of visitors
• It can be used on several websites simultaneously in multiple chat windows with different settings
• The best live chat solution can be easily integrated with other Zendesk products in one centralized platform
• It allows creating macros, so agents can also create mother and parent tickets in Zendesk

Cons

• No support for video and voice chat
• Outdated interface and chat widget design
• Advanced widget customization is only available to the Elite plan
• The free plan has very limited features and is not very useful
• Advanced reporting is limited. Do not offer scheduled reporting features

Drift

Drift is a conversational marketing tool that helps to generate leads and provide online support. They believe in conversational marketing, which empowers consumers to interact in real-time with your brand. 

Key Features

• Video chat for real-time conversations and higher conversions
• Chatbots to automate the buying experience
• Revenue acceleration to engage customers across their lifecycle and boost revenue

Pros

• Modern and intuitive UI
• Setup playbooks to build sales bots that allow you to automate funnel conversations and boost your conversion rate
• Ability to segment customers and target them with account-based marketing (ABM)

Cons

• One of the best free live chat tools however it does not offer real-time engagement tools such as video & voice chat, co-browsing
• Complicated setup for paid plans
• Expensive pricing beyond the free plan. Not suitable for small and medium-sized businesses
• Broken mobile apps

Olark

Olark is one of the best live chat apps for engaging with website visitors and customers in real-time. It is the ultimate tool for sales & support teams to boost your sales, help solve issues, and understand your customers. Give your customers the answers they need immediately and gain powerful insights about what they want for relationships that last.

Key Features

• Chat transfers for seamless conversations
• Visitor monitoring for real-time insights
• Chat notifications to stay updated
• Lacks chatbots for lead generation and automation

Pros

• The user interface is extremely easy to learn and to use. 
• Advanced chat widget customization options. 
• Affordable pricing
• Create automated messages that pop up depending on the different web pages the visitor lands on

Cons

• Good live chat platform but not suitable if you need multi-channel messaging or real-time customer engagement
• No mobile apps. No chat SDK
• Limited functionality, no spell check, routing, etc.
• Reporting is limited, unable to segment data by specific periods

Zoho Desk

It is a powerful, cloud-based customer service platform that includes live chat as one of its core features. It is designed to help customer support agents deliver hassle-free customer support by integrating live chat with other communication channels such as email, phone, and social media. The platform’s ticketing system is particularly useful for tracking and managing customer inquiries.

Key Features

• Integrates live chat with email, phone, and social media
• It can automate routine tasks and responses
• Tracks and manages customer inquiries across all channels
• Customizable dashboards for real-time monitoring of customer interactions

Pros

• Affordable
• AI capabilities

Cons

• Limited third-party integration

Pure Chat

Pure Chat is a straightforward and easy-to-use live chat software for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple for customer service teams to engage with clients in real-time. 

Key Features

• Engage with customers instantly through a simple and intuitive chat interface
• Monitors website visitors in real time and initiates chats based on their behavior
• Provides a complete history of customer interactions
• Pure Chat customizes chat widgets to align with your brand’s visual identity

Pros

• Pure Chat allows businesses to align it with brand identity and user experience preferences
• You can automate communication with pre-defined and customizable replies to boost response times and accuracy
• It allows users to manage live chat conversations on the go for continuous engagement with website visitors

Cons

• Some users may require time to familiarize themselves with the platform’s advanced customization options and features

How Does Live Chat Software Improve Customer Experience for Small Businesses?

Customers expect businesses to be prompt across social media, text messaging, and websites. Live chat software helps to understand customers and provides interactive support by using customer engagement tools. By setting welcome greetings, and having proactive chats, you can guide customers in the right direction. According to Forbes, “92% of customers feel satisfied when using the live chat compared to other communication channels.” The live chat on your website makes customers easy to interact with your brand for the key reasons:

• Deliver instant response to sales and support queries of the website visitors and customers.
• Collect real-time customer feedback after every conversation. 
• Identify the customers who drop off and reach out to them in the future.
• With live tools, like co-browsing and video chat collaborate with customers in real-time with personalized conversations. 

Live chat connects with the customer in real-time to address their queries and guide them in their journey. The agents collect feedback about the products and services after the chat ends from the customers so as to improve their services and products.

How to Select the Best Live Chat Software for Small Businesses? 

Let us discuss one by one how you can grow your small business productively by implementing live chat software. Provide better engagement to your customers and raise the chances of sale conversions.

Step 1. Turn Your Website Visitors Into Customers

For small business owners, the cost is one of the major challenges to adopting an online b2b lead generation strategy for which the website is the main alley. Adding live chat to your website can provide valuable insights into the interests and behavior of website visitors. Now the questions come, how can live chat help to turn web visitors into customers? Here is the answer:

• You can trigger a personalized message based on the visitor activity at the right time to guide them effectively in their journey. 
• Start a proactive conversation with visitors when they get stuck for some time on a particular page like a product or pricing page.

Assisting the visitors in their journey and addressing their queries effectively in real-time encourages them to make quick decisions then and there for your product. With a timely and personalized message, you can develop trust and enhance your live customer service experience.

Step 2. Provide Live Assistance at a Single Click

Live chat for business websites whether for startups or small businesses, can connect with customers with a single click. Using live customer engagement tools, like video chat, co-browsing, and screen sharing helps to interact face-to-face and makes the conversation effective.  

Sending proactive messages helps to respond to customers’ queries at that point in time and close sales faster.

Being available for chat assistance without delaying or queuing incoming chat requests helps to resolve customer queries instantly and make quick decisions for the products and services. Providing live assistance in real-time provides maximum customer satisfaction.

Step 3. Deliver Better Customer Experience

Adding a live chat feature to your website helps to communicate immediately without letting the customer wait. The real-time assistance provided to your customers helps to get a quick response to queries or problems. 

Personalizing the chat through video chat develops trust in customers and improves customer experience. Providing better assistance and support by using customer engagement tools to make your conversations effective.

A co-browsing solution helps the support agents to guide the customers to fill form complex forms or applications. It provides a better contextual experience in real-time. Combining co-browsing with live chat and video chat makes conversations interactive and delivers a great virtual in-person experience.

Step 4. Improve Sales Conversions Rate

Connecting with customers at the right moment and assisting them encourages quick decision-making. Triggering the right messages based on the visitor’s journey resolves the queries instantly and increases sales conversions. 

Talking about online chat services for small businesses, there are some basic do’s and don’ts that need to be considered in order to keep your customers happy. Follow some of the live chat best practices to give your customers a memorable experience.

Better Engagement of Website Visitors

Gain insights from visitors’ analytics about their interests and behavior. Start a proactive conversation with them by sending personalized messages. By using visual tools, provide face-to-face engagement and effective solutions in the first contact. 

Best practices 

• Use automated triggers and welcome greetings to start a conversation with visitors
• Make use of visual tools like video chat and co-browsing to identify issues faster and deliver effective solutions.
• Rightly use canned responses to answer customer queries faster

Nudge Visitors Toward Sales Conversion 

Provide complete engagement to visitors in real-time to resolve their queries and make a quick decision. Guiding the visitor effectively throughout the journey improves sales conversion.

Best practices 

• Integrate live chat with different sales and marketing tools to transfer leads.
• Attract customers with a promo or offer after a fixed time with proactive triggers.
• Engage customers effectively and restrain customers from cart abandonment.

Turn visitors into loyal customers 

Delivering better engagement to customers throughout their journey with personalized communication turns the visitors into loyal customers.

Best practices

• Document the answers to FAQs and use them for better customer engagement
• Routing the chat requests across the right teams to improve resolution time
• Distribute the chat to the departments to deliver effective customer service

Step 5. Live Chat Is Cost-efficient

Live chat is an excellent way to minimize the operating costs related to sales and support.  Specifically, for any startups or small businesses where hiring resources is a big constraint. 

Comparatively, it is more expensive to handle a customer query than to resolve it on the first point of contact. Routing the queries to the most qualified agent saves customers from needing to repeatedly explain their query to different agents and improves your First Call Resolution (FCR) rate. Live chat for small businesses and startups helps to save money. The reasons that make it cost-effective are:

• Live chat agents can handle multiple chats simultaneously. This increases efficiency and no need to hire more agents.
• As the customers are delivered real-time assistance average order value increases. The agent satisfies the customer by delivering the exact product or service he was looking for
• Minimizes the help desk costs by lowering the waiting queue time with faster resolution

Step 6. Develop Lasting Relationships With Customers

Generally, satisfied customers are less likely to switch. They tend to remain less price-sensitive and value the way they are taken care of. The customers with who you live chat tend to come back and buy more often. They have familiarity with your business and the processes.

Effective communication is the key to building customer relationships. Listen to your customer’s experience with the products and services. Learn what your customers need and explain the solution that you have for their requirements. 

Foster good communication skills with customers while onboarding new employees. Follow an employee policy, requiring timely follow-up, to ensure that the customer’s needs are met.

Step 7. Builds Trust and Customer Loyalty

Customer trust and loyalty take your business a long way. By personalizing the live chat sessions with your visitors you build a personal connection in between that helps in more conversions and business growth. 

Apart from enhancing the customer experience, companies using live chat can gain more customers. By adding visual live engagement tools such as co-browsing, and video chat the conversations can be made more engaging and effective. 

These tools help to collaborate with your customers in real-time and offer instant solutions. Customers value businesses and are loyal to those who treat them as individual people through personal conversations.

Step 8. Connect With Your Business Tools

Most of the startups and small businesses have resource constraints. Every business uses different tools to automate and streamline things in a better way.

Adding a live chat feature to the business website helps to cope with the problem of resources. Automating tasks by connecting live chat with your other small business software and tools can be a big time saver and productivity booster.

Having such integrations can really help you to spend your time more on customers and less on administrative tasks. So what are the tools you can integrate live chat with? Some of the key tools that you may be using quite frequently are:

• CRM tools – Hubspot, Salesforce, Infusionsoft
• ECommerce platforms – Shopify, Magento, Opencart
• CMS platforms – WordPress, Joomla, Drupal

What is the Best Live Chat Software for a Small Business?

All of the above-mentioned live chat tools are great for your business. You just need to select according to your business needs.  REVE Live Chat can be one of the best live chat software for small business organizations. While developing the live chat software and setting strategy, prices, and everything else, we focused a lot on making it small business-friendly. 

There are some distinct characteristics of a small business. You need growth faster than any other type of company. Here are our live chat pricing plans. 

At the same time, you might have to win with limited resources. All these considerations have been taken into account while making our live chat software.

Conclusion

Live chat for small businesses empowers in making customer communication effective. It not only benefits the SMBs but also big enterprises as well. Companies using live chat software are an integral part of a customer-centric strategy. Following the above guide startups, & small businesses can reap significant benefits and grow. Redefine your customer experience with our small business-friendly live chat software. Start a free trial today!

Frequently Asked Questions