5 Best Live Chat Apps for Shopify

Every business owner knows that customer service is vital, whether it’s a restaurant, boutique, physical store, or eCommerce platform.

Customer experience is particularly essential for eCommerce platforms as there are no physical customer touchpoints. There are no physical stores, decorations, or staff, so customers’ experience on the website and the quality of their interactions define everything. However, common sense is not a common practice. It’s often easier said than done, as many factors can affect the result. One of the most significant factors is loading time.

“73% of customers in a survey indicated that they would abandon their eCommerce purchase if they had to queue for over five minutes.” – How Long Does It Take To Lose Your Customer report

There are many reasons why an interaction can be slow. Still, any one of them could cause significant sales loss, as customers wouldn’t hesitate to leave if the experience becomes too frustrating. So, keeping your customer updated and adding a humanized aspect to your eCommerce platform can go a very long way. The easiest way to achieve that is through live chat apps. Let’s discuss what live chat apps do and how they could transform your eCommerce business!

What is a Live Chat app?

A live chat app is a customer service tool that allows you to chat with customers in real time as an e-commerce staff or owner. It functions similarly to an instant messenger. Through it, you can quickly respond to customers’ inquiries and requests through the website. Currently, live chat apps serve as add-ons for many eCommerce platforms, allowing owners to source the right one and add it to their interface.

An excellent live chat app helps balance phone and email customer support. Customers can receive a reply in real time and have their needs sorted out in minutes instead of by telephone or email, which could take hours or even days. Live chat apps can also let you inform your customers or help alleviate problems in advance. This way, you can assure them that their purchases are well handled.

Live chat is your virtual sales consultant

As this shows, live chat apps can significantly uplift your eCommerce business’ customer experience and service. A timely live chat with the right and human message can be reminiscent of a friendly sales staff in a physical store, making a huge difference. That’s why one in three companies has already added live chats as their website assets.

What is CHAT.devad.io?

CHAT.devad.io provides omnichannel customer support through a unified inbox supporting 10+ channels including website chat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, Telegram, and email. CHAT.devad.io features smart routing, tickets, and a knowledge base. AI automation includes chatbots, auto-replies, real-time translation, and multilingual support that automates 70–80% of inquiries. Marketing and lead generation tools offer popup messages, proactive chat, follow-ups, newsletters, and chatbot funnels. Pricing starts at $10/month with 50% off on annual plans.

Why do you need a Live Chat app?

Live chat apps enhance customer service experience by providing immediate assistance and improving efficiency. As we’ve mentioned, live chat apps are perfect for enhancing your customer service experience. Now, let’s look into that in detail.

Live chat apps are crucial in setting your business apart from competitors. There are no bigger turn-offs for customers than having to send an email for help, and waiting for days for a reply but only to receive a robotic and unhelpful response. With live chat, customers can seek assistance immediately without being put on hold. Enhanced accessibility to your customer support staff can immediately reduce customers’ stress and the chance of them dropping off. Since we value our time, adding a function that can enhance efficiency will be hugely beneficial. This is why live chat apps are slowly becoming a standard for customer service.

Conversely, live chat apps can let your customer service representatives work on multiple cases simultaneously. The structured layout also means representatives can clearly follow through a case and respond to various customers accurately while saving time in transitions between tickets. Your representatives can hence focus on each case much more efficiently and uplift the experience for all customers.

Adopting essential, straightforward, live chat apps can help you reach more customers. Right now, 69% of customers are interested in live chats or using them, and a half reach out to companies via live chats. Customers are gradually expecting live chat apps as a standard service, so adapting them will help you acquire more customers by retaining their confidence. Therefore, the right live chat app can significantly help you build a rapport with your existing and potential customers.

Last but not least, live chat apps can provide unparalleled data and insights. The Shopify Live Chat App and SleekFlow App can give you a real-time view of details like customers’ cart content, purchase time, and purchase trends.

With this level of clarity, you can provide relevant suggestions, clearly understand what customers want, and track shipping and delivery statuses. Also, insights from live chat apps can show you which products have higher demands and the popularity of your products by time or demography, so you can better plan your business or inventory.

How to choose the right live chat app?

Choosing the right live chat app requires evaluating criteria like personalization, lead generation, and reporting features. Choosing the right live chat app takes time. There are many types of offers out there, and each may tweak your business in different ways. But it is more important to pick one that is compatible with you. We have the following criteria to guide you through:

• Personalization – your live chat app should let you customize changes that align with your brand motifs, like colors or fonts. Also, it should integrate with your website and your content management system and house style.
• Lead generation – your app should let you collect basic customer details through either email addresses or providing forms for customers. The information should turn into CRM contacts.
• Visitor action-oriented – your app should trigger the chat based on the visitor’s actions and quickly access visitor data like location, language, and time zone.
• Targeted messages – your app should let you send one-time campaign messages to customers based on their data and personas.
• Chatbot and templates – your app should have chatbot options for common questions and basic customer service and support template responses.
• Reports and clarity – a good app should capture and compile customer data into reports while supporting features like tags and status to help sales representatives handle multiple cases accurately.

What are 5 popular choices and their pros and cons?

Popular Shopify live chat apps include Shopify chat, SleekFlow, HubSpot, Pure Chat, and eDesk Live Chat, each with specific features and pricing. Here are a few common Shopify live chat apps we’ve sourced, along with their features and pricing.

Shopify chat is Shopify’s own live chat function that supports real-time conversations on your Shopify interface. It allows a custom chat button on your online store and product recommendations for customers.

SleekFlow

The offering combines the best of everything. SleekFlow supports live chats across different platforms and essential dashboards for clarity.

Price: With a free plan supporting 100 customer contacts and up to 3 users,while other solutions at different prices to cater to your business needs! Check out the advance functions, such as contact forms before conversation starts, tailored pop-up messages on different pages, and more!

Cons: the free plan has a customer contact limit of 100 and is shared by 3 team members only but you can upgrade the plan

HubSpot is one of the most popular software for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service among businesses. Its chat feature allows you to easily integrate with its other paid ‘hubs’.

Price: Free

Pros: can be customized with your company colors, agents’ pictures, greetings, and away messages

Cons: relatively basic compared to most other chat apps

Pure Chat is regarded as one of the most convenient live chat apps for Shopify, but it only focuses on live chats.

Price: USD49 per month, but a 30-day trial is available

Two key features of eDesk Live Chat are its vast templates and fast response. It helps create a positive customer experience around the clock.

Price: from USD 89 per month.

Why evaluate live chat apps carefully for your Shopify store?

The live chat apps discussed centralize communications, automate responses, and provide insights to boost customer service and sales on Shopify stores. These tools enhance efficiency, reduce response times, and improve customer satisfaction for eCommerce businesses.

Evaluating live chat tools takes time, and choosing the wrong one can hurt your ROI by increasing costs or losing customers.

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