Live Chat Basics: Understanding the Most Important Features

You’ve done your research and you’re ready to make the leap into the future by offering live chat on your website. This is a big decision that will affect your lead generation and customer success. 

But what exactly are the features needed to optimize your live chat service?

The top 5 features you need to look for in a web chat service

When it comes to web chat, you’ll discover that they come with different functionalities and features. Let’s look at the best features you need to look for when investing in one.

1. Ease of use

Ease of use is by far the most important feature you need to look for in a web chat service. A web chat app that is difficult to use has 2 major disadvantages:

• Costly to train live agents, both in terms of time and money
• Has a high risk of not providing a satisfactory customer experience

2. Customization

In business, branding is everything. That’s why your web chat interface must be easily and highly customizable. This will help you maintain your brand identity.

Failure to customize your web chat widget to seamlessly blend in with your website can result in your website conversion rate dropping. So make sure you opt for a web chat that has an intuitive and easy to use design.

3. Mobile optimized  

We are living in an age where mobile devices are preferred above their desktop counterparts - particularly when it comes to dealing with brands we have a relationship with. If your web chat is not optimized for mobile you’re in danger of losing customers who want to communicate with you using their mobile devices.

4. Easy integration

A good web chat platform easily integrates with all other tools you use to run your business online. This makes it easy to sync all your platforms so as to have enough data to give your customers a personalized experience.

Another reason you will need a web chat platform that easily integrates with other tools is so that you can be able to track, record, and store your web chat analytics easily.

5. Good customer support

Yes, your customer support will at times also need customer support. And when that happens, you need to know that you have a good partner who responds quickly. After all, every second your web chat service down means a loss of potential customers and revenue for you.

Get started with Smith.ai live Web Chat risk-free

It's time to try live chat on your website. Just one new client captured via chat can pay for a year (or more) of Smith.ai's live web chat service. We provide fully staffed live website chat with professional agents. Outsourced live chat is best for small businesses like law firms, e-commerce businesses, IT consultants, financial planners, property managers, realtors, and marketing agencies (to name just a few!).

Our live agents are highly skilled and can answer common questions about your business, qualify new leads, schedule appointments, take payments, and more. You stay in the loop when chat transcripts are sent to you after each conversation and logged in your CRM. There's no setup fee, services are month-to-month, and there's no annual contract. Plans start at just just $140/month and are risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee.