Looking for the best live chat app for your Shopify business? We’ve got you covered! A live chat is undoubtedly crucial, but with so many options out there, making a decision can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve done the research for you and compiled a list of the top 5 Shopify live chat apps.
So, let’s find the perfect app for you!
Table of Contents
First, what’s a Shopify live chat app?
A Shopify live chat app is a handy tool for e-commerce store owners like yourself. It’s like a little chat bubble that you can place on your website, usually found at the bottom right corner.
This feature allows your customers to message you in real-time and get immediate answers to their queries. It’s a fantastic way to provide fast and efficient customer support, engaging with your customers personally and boosting sales.
With live chat, you can enhance the overall customer experience, drive more sales, and build customer loyalty. It’s a game-changer in the world of customer support for online businesses.
But, why do you need it?
Connect in Real-Time
In a fast-paced online world with short attention spans, live chat fills the gaps in communication between your business and customers. It’s live, meaning site visitors can instantly get in touch with someone who can address their needs within seconds. This reduces wait times and significantly boosts customer satisfaction.
Preferred by Customers
While phone and email support have been traditional options, statistics show that customers are actively seeking alternative means of communication. As a result, Live chat has emerged as a preferred channel, with 41% of customers choosing it to interact with support agents, surpassing phone (32%) and email (23%).
By offering live chat, you cater to customer preferences and enhance their overall experience.
Build Closer Connections
Live chat enables businesses to connect with prospects and customers on a more personal level, fostering a human-centric approach to sales. It allows you to have meaningful conversations, understand customer needs, and provide tailored assistance.
Also, the statistics speak for themselves: live chat can bring significant improvements in marketing awareness (+29%), early-stage sales development (+32%), and post-sales customer support (+39%).
Boost Sales and Customer Value
Engaging with website visitors through live chat has a direct impact on your bottom line. Visitors who interact with a business via live chat are worth 4.5 times more than those who don’t.
Additionally, the average order value increases by 10% when customers engage in a live chat before making a purchase. By implementing live chat, you have the opportunity to increase sales, improve customer value, and drive growth for your e-commerce store.
So, what’re some key features you should look for when finding a live chat app?
Multichannel Integration
A good live chat app should integrate with various channels, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Email, and Live Chat. This allows you to manage customer queries from multiple platforms in one dashboard, making it easier to respond to customers and collaborate with your team efficiently.
Automation and Self-Service
An effective live chat app should provide automation features and a self-service widget. These functionalities help reduce repetitive queries by automating responses to frequently asked questions.
As a result, by empowering customers to find answers independently, you can save time for your support team and enhance customer satisfaction.
Team Collaboration
Seamless team collaboration is an essential feature of a good live chat app. It should allow tagging team members, writing internal comments, and assigning conversations to ensure the right person responds at the right time.
This feature promotes effective communication within the support team, enabling them to provide comprehensive and timely assistance to customers.
Affordable Pricing and Value for Money
Pricing is an important consideration when choosing a live chat app. A good app should offer affordable plans that provide great value and return on investment. Look for pricing that aligns with your budget and offers the necessary features to meet your business requirements.
Top 5 Best Shopify Live Chat Apps
A live chat is undoubtedly very important, but the question is: Which app should you choose? A quick search can give you tens of apps to choose from, thus, it can be overwhelming to make a decision. To make it easier for you, here’s our list of the 5 best available Shopify live chat:
NestDesk
If you are finding a solution to your customer support and aligning customer service to sales, NestDesk should be on the top list of all. With NestDesk live chat, you centralize all conversations, deliver personal responses, and generate sales within one inbox.
Features
- Channel Integration: Connect with multiple sales channels like Live Chat and Facebook, bringing all messages together in one convenient location.
- Customer Information: Automatically retrieve and display customer details at the top right of the chat widget, making it easy to access important information during conversations.
- Conversation History: View previous interactions with customers and respond with better context, thanks to the ability to see past conversations.
- Draft Orders and Checkout Links: Create draft orders and instantly send checkout links to customers directly from the chat inbox, streamlining the purchasing process.
- Tags and Ticket Assignment: Add tags to customer conversations and assign tickets to the appropriate person, ensuring efficient organization and delegation of tasks.
- Automated Responses: Utilize macros for automated responses, reducing the workload for your support agents by providing quick, predefined replies to common queries.
- Private Notes: Agents can leave internal notes to communicate important information to other agents, ensuring effective collaboration and knowledge sharing.
- Performance Insights: Gain in-depth insights into conversations, revenue, and the performance of each store, allowing you to track progress and make data-driven decisions.
Pros
- Real-time Support and Sales: Enable your agents to provide immediate assistance and make sales within ongoing conversations, enhancing the overall customer experience.
- Centralized Inbox: Consolidate messages from Facebook Messenger and Live chat into a single inbox, ensuring that no messages are missed and simplifying your communication management.
- Enhanced Efficiency: Improve the efficiency of your customer service work by streamlining processes and optimizing response times.
- Support Metrics Tracking: Keep track of your support metrics to gain insights into areas that require improvement, allowing you to enhance your customer service practices.
Cons
Currently, NestDesk only integrates with Shopify. Integration with other eCommerce platforms is planned for the future.
Pricing
NestDesk offers a completely free pricing plan. Here’s what you can enjoy with NestDesk’s free plan:
- Unlimited Conversations: Bring together all customer messages from various stores and channels into a single dashboard, streamlining your customer support process.
- Unlimited Agents: Expand your business team without limitations and improve efficiency by utilizing the agents you already have in place.
- Unlimited Sales: Every customer interaction becomes an opportunity to make sales in real-time. Provide support while simultaneously promoting and selling your products or services.
Who should use NestDesk?
As a feature-rich and absolutely free customer service software, NestDesk is the best suitable for small and medium businesses that need a live chat to improve customer support and generate more sales.
LiveChat
LiveChat is a help desk software that provides merchants with many unique features for their live chat services. It can integrate with Shopify, customer relationship management systems, social media channels such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Messenger, and the email marketing platform Mailchimp.
Features
- Access customer carts: Easily view customers’ shopping carts during chat interactions.
- Send Product cards: Share product recommendations directly within the live chat widget.
- View order history: See customers’ previous orders conveniently alongside each conversation.
- Customer Insight: Gain detailed customer information through insightful features.
- In-depth analytics: Access comprehensive data analysis for better decision-making.
- Omnichannel integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple communication channels.
- Data security: Ensure the protection and privacy of customer data.
Pros
- Omnichannel conversations: Enjoy a wide variety of communication options across multiple channels.
- AI auto-reply: Save time and reduce agent workload with automated responses powered by AI.
- Fast loading speed: Enhance customer experience with quick and responsive performance.
- Ease of use: Benefit from a user-friendly interface that is easy to navigate and understand.
- Clean and well-designed: Experience a visually appealing interface with a sleek and organized design.
Cons
- Limited Shopify optimization: The platform may not be fully optimized for Shopify as it also serves as a CRM.
- Costly for beginners: The pricing may be high for individuals or businesses who are just starting out.
Pricing
A free trial is available for 14 days and no credit card is required. The cheapest plan “Starter” package starts at 16$, the “Team” package is 39$ and the “Business” package is 59$.
Who should use LiveChat?
As LiveChat is also a CRM, it is the most suitable for businesses that are looking for CRM solutions in addition to live chat capabilities.
Tidio
Tidio is a Customer Service Platform that combines Shopify, live chat, chatbots, email, Messenger, and Instagram to communicate with your customers. With approximately 1,470 reviews, Tidio Live Chat is currently the highest-rated live chat app on the Shopify App Store.
Features
- Unified communication: Consolidate live chat, e-mail, and Messenger in a single platform.
- Chatbot support: Easily send pre-set messages with the assistance of chatbots.
- Abandoned Cart Bot: Reduce the rate of abandoned carts with the help of dedicated bot functionality.
- Customizable live chat: Customize the live chat interface to align with your brand image, free of charge.
- Extensive integrations: Seamlessly integrate with various third-party software solutions.
Pros
- Advanced tracking and insights: Gain access to a wide range of tracking and insight options to better understand user behavior.
- Automation and bot templates: Take advantage of numerous automation and bot templates to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
- Intuitive user interface: Enjoy a smart and user-friendly interface that simplifies navigation and enhances usability.
Cons
- High price: The pricing might be slightly higher for Shopify merchants, which could impact the overall cost-effectiveness.
- Limited integration with Shopify and other eCommerce platforms: The connection with Shopify and other eCommerce platforms may not be as seamless or robust as desired, potentially limiting the functionality and compatibility for some users.
Pricing
The pricing plan of the software ranges from Free, “Communicator” plan $19 to “Chatbots” plan $49/month (Additional charge may be required)
Who should use Tidio?
Tidio is an ideal choice for beginners on Shopify with a free plan. If you are looking for live chat solutions that provide plenty of features and automation for customer support and marketing, Tidio may be a suitable one.
Chatra
Chatra live chat, or what we can call “Live Chat, ChatBot, Cart Saver” was developed by Roger Wilco LLC and was launched on October 29, 2015. Thus, Shopify merchants can communicate more with their customers by implementing Chatra’s Live chat & Facebook messenger. Moreover, it has many more cool features that also help merchants increase conversion rates.
Features
- Targeted chat: Reach out to customers who encounter issues during their journey to provide personalized assistance.
- Visitor information: Gain insights into your website visitors, including their location, and view their cart contents for better context.
- Facebook and Instagram integration: Respond to chat messages directly from the app, catering to users from Facebook and Instagram.
- Group chat: Collaborate with other agents by creating group chats for efficient teamwork.
- Conversation history: Store and access previous conversations, allowing for seamless continuity and reference.
- Agent photos visible pre-discussion: Customers can view the pictures and names of online agents even before initiating a chat, promoting a personalized and welcoming experience.
Pros
- Target valuable customers: Efficiently reach out to your most important customers and offer personalized assistance.
- Real-time visitor monitoring: Keep track of visitors currently browsing your website, including their origin, to better understand their behavior.
- 24/7 support with chatbots: Set up bots to automatically initiate conversations based on specific criteria or collect information even outside regular business hours.
- Preview customer messages: Gain insight into what customers are typing before they hit send, allowing you to prepare answers in advance and save time.
Cons
- Limited features in the free plan: The free plan offers only basic features, and many advanced features are not available without upgrading.
- Costly per-agent pricing: If you have multiple agents in your customer service team, the pricing based on the number of agents can become expensive.
- Delayed notifications: According to some reviews, there have been issues with notifications not appearing promptly, leading to problems in the service system.
Pricing
Chatra has a forever-free pricing plan. If you want to upgrade to higher features to open more cool features, the “Essential” plan costs $21 and the “Pro” plan costs $29/month. However, if you want to pay annually, the cost for the “Essential” plan costs $204 and the “Pro” plan costs $276.
Who should use Chatra?
Shopify merchants who want to implement live chat to contact customers in the pre-purchase phase in order to boost conversation.
Omega
If your business supports customers coming from Facebook, Instagram, and live chat, you should consider installing this app in your store. This app was launched on January 20, 2016, and received more than 400 reviews on the Shopify app store.
Features
- Seamless integration with Facebook and Instagram: Engage in direct conversations with customers through these popular social media platforms.
- Flexible working time scheduling: Set and manage your working hours according to your business needs.
- Customer history storage: Keep a record of customer interactions and history for future reference.
- Centralized message management: Access and view all customer interactions conveniently in one place.
- Comprehensive analytics: Gain valuable insights through in-depth data analysis for better decision-making.
Pros
- Limited advanced features: The platform may lack some advanced features that more experienced merchants might require.
- Limited scalability for larger businesses: As your business grows, you may find that the platform’s capabilities and pricing structure may not be as suitable for larger-scale operations.
- Limited integrations with other eCommerce platforms: The platform primarily focuses on providing robust support for Shopify, which may not be ideal if you use other eCommerce platforms.
Cons
- Limited suitability for larger Shopify businesses: The app may not meet the professional requirements of larger Shopify businesses, lacking the advanced features and scalability they need.
- Inconsistent chat function: Several reviews indicate that the chat function may experience occasional malfunctions or failures, potentially affecting customer interactions.
- Slow developer technical support: Some users have reported delays or sluggish response times from the developer’s technical support team, which can hinder prompt issue resolution.
Pricing
Has only 2 pricing plans including one forever free pricing plan and a “Premium” pricing plan that costs $4.99/month
Who should use Omega?
Small or medium-sized is the best suitable for Live chat by Omega because of the reasonable pricing plan. Moreover, installation is fast and easy and doesn’t require any coding skills.
Choose the most suitable live chat app for your online store
No matter if you’re looking for a live chat solution or a fully-featured ticketing system, there are many options out there with various customizations to help you strengthen your customer relationship.
In case you want an advanced customer support tool to improve customer experience, and even turn your exceptional customer service team into a powerful sales channel, NestDesk might be your suitable choice.
Don’t let your budget stop you from delivering great customer service. Get started now with our feature-rich and absolutely free customer service software.
