Best Live Chat Widget for Startups: Jan 2016
January 20, 2016 § Leave a comment
Live chat support software is a great way to ensure visitors to your SaaS site are successful – or at least tell you what went wrong. An in-page widget with a friendly human being on the other side is much more approachable than a link to anonymous forum!
Unfortunately, few startups are able to guarantee 24×7 coverage, which means you need a easy-to-use tool with a good fallback user experience for when nobody is available to chat. Here is what appear to be the best options as of January 2016.
Conclusion
For small startups, the best option I’ve identified is Pubble, an interesting alternative to traditional live chat systems. Most live chat systems are designed (and priced) for dedicated support teams. Pubble is the first system I’ve found intended for your entire company to use to “pitch in” and help customers whenever possible. If you try it out, let me know how it works out for you!
Criteria
- Easy to install (JavaScript)
- Free trial
- Doesn’t affect page loads
- Both manual and auto-launch
- Company offers live chat on their page advertising their live chat product
- Optimized for real-time conversion
Options
- http://www.pubble.io/messenger
- https://medium.com/@john_dineen/pubble-live-chat-or-real-time-messaging-1bb0cf8f802c#.ne0ncdrj0
- Appears optimized for the not-quite-real-time problem
- http://www.comm100.com/
- Had their own, very responsive chat window
- Requires social media login (both good and bad)
- Lots of options
- Good offline settings: http://www.comm100.com/livechat/features/offline-message-window.aspx
- https://www.zendesk.com/live-chat-software/
- https://www.intercom.io/live-chat
References
- http://blog.crazyegg.com/2015/11/05/top-live-chat-software/
- http://live-chat-support-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
- http://www.capterra.com/live-chat-software/
- https://www.quora.com/Online-Customer-Support/What-are-the-best-live-chat-solutions-for-websites
- http://www.comm100.com/blog/how-to-increase-conversion-rates-with-live-chat.html (Dec 2013)
iHack, therefore iBlog 
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