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With 41% of customers preferring live chat support over all other communication channels, businesses have to implement effective live chat tools to be able to engage with customers and stay competitive.
But how can you add live chat to your website to interact with your visitors instantly, answer their questions, and guide them through the buying process?
This blog will guide you on how to add live chat to your website, customize the chat widget to fit your brand, and highlight the benefits you can gain from using this tool.
What is live chat software?
Live chat software is a communication tool for customers to interact directly with support agents via a website or app.
Live chat support includes a small chat window on websites, usually labelled Chat Now or Help.
Businesses add live chat to websites to provide instant communication and real-time help to customers.
By adding chat to websites, support agents can manage multiple chats simultaneously, save conversations for easy reference and follow-up, making the customer support process more efficient.
Detailed steps for adding live chat to website
Adding live chat to your website is a powerful way to boost customer interaction and support. Here’s an easy step-by-step guide to help you get started.
1. Pick the right live chat software
Choosing the right live chat software is critical to the success of your support strategy. It is important to carefully select tools that you can use to add live chat to your website and get started with live chat effectively.
Features to look for in a live chat software
The best live chat software doesn’t just enable conversations; it creates real-time engagement that boosts satisfaction and loyalty.
Here are some of the features you should consider when picking live chat software for your business:
- Omnichannel customer service: Live chat software can be a great addition to your support offerings. It can be embedded with multiple channels, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp; and all these conversations can be managed through a single omnichannel inbox.
- Reports and analytics: Provide insights about the performance of every support agent and how satisfied your customers are with your company’s customer support.
- Customizable chat widgets: Tailor the look and feel of the live chat widget and user interface to match your brand.
- Integration capability: Integrate your live chat tool seamlessly with your existing tech stack, such as contact management systems and help desk ticketing systems, to streamline workflows, centralize customer data, and boost agent productivity.
- Offline support: With this feature, customers can leave messages when agents aren’t available. Replies are sent via email, ensuring 24/7 support.
- AI-powered features: The best live chat software should be equipped with AI Agents and AI Copilot to handle routine queries, speed up replies, trigger intelligent workflows, and assist agents with real-time suggestions.
- Chat transcripts: The software should be able to record all the conversations in transcripts for future reference.
- Automated chat routing: Assign chats to appropriate agents automatically based on area of specialization.
- Multilingual support: Enable customers to communicate in their preferred languages.
- Canned responses: Create and save responses to answer commonly asked questions.
- Security and compliance: Protect customer data with robust policies, strict controls, and full GDPR compliance.
2. Embed live chat on your website
Once you have picked the right live chat software provider, installation should be your next step.
Embed a single line of code at the back end of your website to install the tool and make it compatible with your website.
3. Customize live chat to match your brand
Once you add live chat to website, customize the look, functionality, and features of the live chat widgets to match your website branding. Some aspects of your live chat to customize include:
- Setting up welcome messages.
- Configuring the language options.
- Adjusting the chat button styles.
- Decide on the strategic location of your live chat.
- Use teams’ real names and photos for customers to see and feel they are talking to agents one-on-one.
4. Integrate live chat with other tools
Connect your live chat with other productivity tools you use on a daily basis. This brings all your applications into one dashboard, making it simple to switch between platforms and boosting overall efficiency.
Add chat to your website and integrate it with tools such as:
- A comprehensive knowledge base to help customers get answers independently and give support agents easy access to relevant information required to address customer inquiries.
- Artificial intelligence tools to help support teams summarize customer responses, correct grammar, automate processes, and analyze customer sentiments.
- The contact management (CRM) contains customer profiles, including name, addresses, purchasing history, and preferences.
5. Create canned responses
Prepare and save answers to commonly asked questions to enable support agents quickly resolve customer queries.
Canned responses can make support teams more efficient; they won’t have to type the same answer time and again. This saves time so they can focus on more complex issues.
6. Set up automatic routing
Customer inquiries can be automatically transferred to the right support agent with the appropriate knowledge to handle the task.
Automatic chat routing ensures that no support representative is overloaded with tasks, helping improve agents’ productivity.
7. Train your team
Give lessons to your agents on how to use live chat on your website effectively, with empathy and professionalism.
Equip your support team with good communication skills on how to handle customer complaints, manage different customer scenarios, and escalate issues.
Ensure they can handle multiple issues simultaneously, save canned responses, and work with live chat integrations.
8. Set your chat availability
Specify the working days and hours during which your support team will cater to customer requests.
If possible, you can assign them different shifts to eliminate customer service burnout and allow on-going support provision. If agents are not present, leave a message that indicates when they will return.
9. Verify live chat functionality and go live
After adding live chat to website, just before launching, check to confirm that all features are working seamlessly.
You can use different devices to test and browse to check the user experience on the web and mobile, then launch the chat feature.
10. Collect feedback and analyze live chat performance
Once it’s live, keep an eye on chat interactions and collect customer feedback to enhance the effectiveness of the tool.
Employ live chat metrics like first response time, average handling time, chat volume, among others, to find out customer behaviour, agent performance, and overall effectiveness of the live chat tool.
This data can help you improve your live chat strategy as required.
Why add live chat to your website?
Adding live chat to website is beneficial to businesses and customers in the following ways:
Strengthens customer support
Adding live chat to websites ensures support teams provide customers with real-time help, ensuring they resolve issues quickly and efficiently.
Support teams are able to access relevant information quickly from the self-service tool embedded in live chat software to provide comprehensive solutions to customers.
Boosts sales
Adding live chat to websites can assist in guiding customers during the purchasing process, helping to manage queries about products, and decreasing the likelihood of cart abandonment or customer churn.
Also, companies make announcements on promotions and discounts available on their products through live chat. This pushes customers to make a purchase there by boosting sales.
Enhances customer loyalty
Clients expecting quick, personalized customer service experiences are likely to engage with businesses offering live chat support.
They can keep purchasing from businesses that provide customized responses and solutions.
Saves on time
Adding live chat to websites can help improve first response time in customer service, through automated messages or canned responses, as opposed to other communication methods such as email, where responses can take hours or even days.
Moreover, the tool enables agents to manage various inquiries simultaneously, thereby saving time compared to other channels like phone and email, where an agent attends to one inquiry at a time.
Competitive advantage
Adding live chat to website ensures 24/7 customer support, enabling brands to provide real-time support to customers, and solve issues anytime from anywhere. This sets them apart from competitors who do not provide the same level of instant customer support.
Customers will always prefer a provider who can serve them at the most convenient time of need.
Cost efficiency
Live chat operates online, eliminating the need for on-premises hardware, software, and maintenance costs.
Adding live chat to website does not require physical space for offices, equipment, and agents; it can be accessed remotely, reducing the need for office space.
Add live chat to website and elevate your customer service
Live chat is an essential component for businesses as it enhances customer satisfaction, boosts sales, and reduces response times.
BoldDesk allows you to effortlessly integrate live chat into your website, enabling real-time customer interactions, automated responses, and streamlined support through its robust ticket management system, enhancing your overall customer experience.
Embed chat in website and watch your customer communication flourish.
Want to see BoldDesk in action? Schedule a live demo or start a free trial to explore its powerful features. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us—our team is happy to assist!
We hope you found this blog helpful. Do you have any additional comments? Please share them in the section below!
Related articles
- Proactive Live Chat: 5 Best Practices, Examples, and Setup Guide
- The 11 Best Live Chat Widgets for Websites
- 11+ Best Ecommerce Live Chat Tools for Customer Engagement
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes, BoldDesk allows extensive customization of the live chat widget, including adjusting colors, themes, and branding elements to ensure a seamless integration with your website’s look and feel.
Absolutely. BoldDesk Live Chat is mobile-friendly, ensuring that both customers and support agents can communicate effectively on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.
Yes, BoldDesk supports integration with various platforms, including CRM systems and social media channels, enabling a unified communication experience and streamlined customer support.
When you add live chat to your website, you get to provide immediate assistance, reduce wait times, and offer personalized support, all of which contribute to a more satisfying customer experience and increased loyalty.
Yes! Adding live chat to your website improves customer support, boosts engagement, and increases sales by providing real-time assistance and seamless communication.
You can use free live chat tools like Tawk.to, Crisp, or HubSpot Live Chat. Additionally, BoldDesk’s free plans, which is also available for startups and non-profits allow you to add live chat to your website for free, without any additional costs.
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