When your customers have questions, and are ready to buy, live chat can help. They don’t want to fill out a form, and wait for your company to answer. In fact, they like it so much that 51% of people will buy from a business that uses live chat. In the world of WordPress, you can also offer live chat support. In this article you’ll learn more about live chat, and even about the best live chat plugins for WordPress.
What are live chat plugins?
Live chat plugins, in the WordPress community, are software built to allow website owners a way to connect with customers in a more prompt manner. In most live chat plugins, you have to sign up and pay for a 3rd party live chat service.
You can manage different customer chats, and some live chat services allow you to have multiple people handle incoming messages.
Users simply install and activate the plugin, and then sync the plugin with their 3rd party live chat services. When a visitor comes to a site and has a question, they can click on some type of icon that indicates that live chat is available. The customer can fill in their name, and then automatically be put in queue for the next customer support or sales agent manning live chat.
Why is live chat important?
Getting the customer from seeing what you’re selling to actually buying your products is crucial. Live chat support is like a middleman to help improve the chances of that happening. In fact, live chat improves conversion rate by 3.84%. Due to places like Facebook, about 41% of customers expect a live chat module on a website.
Aside from using live chat for selling your services, it’s a fantastic method to get quick support. For example, if you have questions or issues with your web hosting plan at Verpex, our live support is there for you 24/7/365. Live support can help troubleshoot any errors, faster than submitting a support ticket.
The overall purpose is to get communication flowing between your business and the customer, in order to achieve both of your needs, a total win-win situation.
How to Choose the Best Live Chat Plugin for Your WordPress Website
The criteria for choosing the best live chat plugin for your WordPress website are:
Lightweight and loads fast.
Offers ability to handle multiple live chat agents.
Options to integrate with email marketing.
Options to offer suggested knowledge base or help articles based on questions.
Easy to install.
Easy to use.
Lightweight and loads fast.
Because your website should load fast, it’s also important that live chat plugins are light weight and don’t hinder site speed.
Offers ability to handle multiple live chat agents.
A good live chat plugin should allow room for handling multiple chat agents, or ability to upgrade when you hire more people to do live support.
Options to integrate with email marketing.
If you’re building a newsletter list, offering an option for live chat customers to opt in during any part of the conversation can help bring them back to your site later on.
Options to offer suggested knowledge base or help articles based on questions.
Combining the power of live chat and your existing knowledge base is a great way to streamline live chat. Sometimes, based on the customer’s question, a knowledge base article can free up a live chat spot for the next person in the queue.
Easy to install.
If the live chat plugin can be installed easily from the WordPress admin, then it’s super helpful for even those who are a bit technology-challenged.
Easy to use.
Being able to easily use a live chat plugin is important. If you can’t learn how to use the plugin, or find anything easily, then it’s not worth the trouble.
7 Best Live Chat Plugins for WordPress
Considering the list on what makes a live chat plugin the best, the following ones qualify:
ActiveCampaign - Forms, Site Tracking, Live Chat
Formilla Live Chat
HubSpot
Live Chat by Customerly
Pure Chat
Tawk.to Live Chat
Tidio Live Chat
