In this age of technological advancements, everything has revolutionized and people want instant access to anything they want. They are no longer willing to wait either to get information or buy products or services. We know that you know that as well as an owner of a small business. The thought of keeping up with this “instant access demand” is often daunting. Small businesses want to provide their customers instant customer support but how? Thanks to living chat software, you have the right tools to be successful in your planning to provide your customers a type of support experience they never forget. 

Is live chat software really helpful for small businesses?

What do you need to make your small business successful? You need customers. What do your customers need? They need assistance. When do they want to support? Now! They want assistance and support right now. You need to make sure the instant response to make and retain customers in this hyper-competitive age. Otherwise, you cannot expect even your loyal customers to be back as people don’t like or prefer to wait and waste their time. If you don’t provide immediate customer support, someone else will and that will be the end of it. 

As a simple rule, put your customers in charge and provide them on demand whatever they want and whenever they want. Remember that your customers are ready to bow now when they are convenient, not 10 minutes later, half an hour later, or whenever you are convenient. And, if you miss grabbing the opportunity instantly, it may be gone forever. Thus, providing customers with instant support, assistance, and help is crucial for the success of your business, especially when your business is small and you don’t have many customers. You have to acquire new customers and retain them as well. And here live chat software can help you better than anything else.

We know how important live chat software can be for the success of a small business. Now, let’s discuss the best live chat software for small businesses as small businesses cannot afford hefty fees. We are going to share with you a list of the best live chat software for small businesses that offer free versions or are very economical and affordable. 

8 best live chat software for small businesses

1. Freshchat

Freshchart is among the best live chat software for small businesses that enables them to engage prospects and customers on the website, mobile apps, and social media platforms. It is a chat solution that simplifies and makes communication better between you and your customers a more captivating and personalized customer support experience. Freshchat enables small businesses to increase customers by focusing on a continuous and context-driven chat experience. The features like creating and sending contextual messages, design campaigns to educate prospects, acquire leads and qualify resources, extract valuable insight from users or third-party systems make it really good live chat software for small businesses. On top of that, Freshchat integrates well with other platforms like Facebook messenger, Zendesk, Slack, etc.

Key features

  • Freshchat live chat comes with an advanced web messenger that lets you share emojis and other content that gives a feeling of other social media messengers. 
  • Freshchart provides a unique messaging experience as it lets you categorize chats into custom groups to connect each customer to the right agent or team.
  • Freshchart enables you to view a visual summary of your customer support team performance, measure response time and resolution time, know about chat trends, and gauge the workload of each team member.
  • Freshchart allows you to provide FAQ search inside the messenger in more than thirty languages while waiting for an agent.
  • Freshchart’s feature of automated pre-formatted responses to frequently asked queries helps you optimize resolution time.
  • Freshchart offers a free plan with a lot of features and an economical paid plan “Blossom” is even better in terms of offered features that can cost $15 per agent per month.

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2. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is one of the most reviewed live chat software in the market and is the best option for small businesses. It also boasts about offering the fastest live chat widgets. LiveAgent is a complete helpdesk software solution that is packed with remarkable features and developments. It offers an omnichannel universal live chat plugin, real-time live chat, robust customer service portal, built-in call center, and much more. LiveAgent is customizable and also offers language adaptability. Its features enable you to convert your visitors into potential customers in a matter of seconds. LiveAgent also offers Android and iOS mobile apps for on-the-go customer service. Overall, LiveAgent is among the best live chat software for small businesses. 

Key features

  • LiveAgent’s unified database allows you to store all your crucial data in a unified place. The data is then delivered to relevant departments after the organization of data on the basis of pre-set rules. That minimizes manual rerouting and redirecting by almost 25%.
  • LiveAgent converts repetitive questions and queries into FAQs automatically and places them in the section that is used as a source of information. 
  • LiveAgent integrates well with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enable you to provide customer support on different channels and also monitor other business-related activities. 
  • LiveAgent introduced the free live chat version as a crucial part of their free helpdesk software that enables you to enjoy real-time chat with customers, view and manage important customer data, save conversation transcripts in the form of a ticket, free ticket management, knowledge-base functionality, call center, and CRM absolutely free. 

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3. Zendesk

Zendesk also offers one of the best live chat software for small businesses that is easy to implement and use. It has the most intuitive live chat that ensures hassle-free conversation and communication with prospects and existing customers. Zendesk always remains focused on innovation and adaptive to the demands of the ever-growing market. It allows you to provide exceptional customer support through different channels like websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms like WhatsApp. Zendesk boasts to deliver response time as fast as 30 seconds and improves the performance of your agents by almost 25%. 

Key features

  • Zendesk betters response time to ensure instant customer support and capture leads.
  • Zendesk allows photo and file sharing with the customers and visitors that lead to better communication and conversations. 
  • Zendesk’s chat triggers are a big force that empowers you to create customer-centric chat protocols and frameworks that better tend to the needs of your customers. 
  • Zendesk’s automated chatbots automatically initiate the chat with visitors even when there is no agent available that enables you to provide attention to every lead and increase your customer base.
  • Zendesk also keeps records of visitors’ visiting pages, items, or products and delivers you for analysis. It lets you understand the behavior of your customers in a better way.
  • Zendesk offers a free version with significant features that can be enough for small businesses. Its paid plans start at $19 per agent per month that also suits small businesses. 

>>MORE: How Does Livechat Work

4. Zoho SalesIQ

Zoho SalesIQ is another one of the best live chat software for small businesses that also offer visitor tracking solution. It is a sub-part of a larger ecosystem of Zoho that comes with everything from CRM to other tools that focus on sales and customer support. Zoho manages, prioritizes, and closes a volume of requests reaching your website through a wide range of channels. Zoho SalesIQ also builds and provides a support knowledge base that helps you in several ways. It is also one of the best solutions because it is a flexible and cloud-based helpdesk tool that enables you to provide exceptional customer support that your customers crave for. Zoho SalesIQ is among the best live chat software for small businesses because it is innovative and adaptive to the needs of small and startup businesses. 

Key features

  • Zoho SalesIQ free live chat software offers automated visitor geolocation, lead generation, customer support team coaching that enable managers to understand their team members’ individual performance. 
  • Zoho SalesIQ lets you transform queries into sales intelligence indicators that small businesses can utilize for a better decision-making process. 
  • Zoho SalesIQ offers personalized chat messages that can be used to share offers and deals in a direct manner. 
  • Zoho SalesIQ also offers a free plan with numerous top-quality features to assist small businesses. Its paid plan prices are also competitive that are economical for small businesses. 

>>MORE: Best Livechat Software For Websites

5. Smartsupp

Smartsupp is among the best live chat software that offers multichannel management in a single setup. It allows you to connect with your customers and visitors via emails, chats, and Facebook messages from a single unified platform. Smartsupp mobile application is also available to respond to customers on the go. Features like drag and drop file sharing, personalized messages, video recording to record the behavior of your customers, etc. make Smartsupp one of the most enticing software. In a nutshell, Smartsupp is a smart choice for eCommerce businesses because of its unique features. Moreover, it can also integrate with other popular shopping stores. 

Key features

  • Smartsupp’s real-time notifications allow you to provide instant customer support. It also gives detailed information about the returning customers that help you plan your conversation accordingly. 
  • Smartsupp also lets you create personalized messages according to pre-set principles and send them to your customers.
  • Smartsupp live chat is easy to set up and can be embedded on every website of your choice. You can also use your mobile phone to provide instant customer support anytime, anywhere. 
  • Smartsupp also enables you to watch video recordings of your customers and visitors on your websites that make it possible for you to understand their behaviors and provide them the customer support they desire.

>>MORE: Livechat Software Advantages

6. LiveChat

LiveChat is among the best live chat software for small companies because of numerous remarkable features that you can utilize for live chat for customer support, web analytics, online sales, and marketing. It is one of the most powerful chat and helpdesk tools with astonishing designs. LiveChat comes with a web-based chat window and web-based control panel that enables you to provide customer support through live chat from any connected device. It is actually a comprehensive set of tools that not only offers live chat but also covers ticketing, file sharing, chat surveys, geo-tagging, data security, co-browsing, advanced reporting, work scheduling, customer engagement, multiple branding, and most importantly can integrate well with other multiple third-party systems software. 

Key features

  • LiveChat is one of the easiest live chat software to implement and it is not only for customer support but also for eCommerce lead generation, sales, and much more.
  • LiveChat provides real-time monitoring of the website, elegant dashboard, statistics and analytics, interactive reports, etc. that collectively make it one of the most comprehensive tools for small businesses. 
  • LiveChat supports more than 30 languages and integrates with numerous other software and applications. 
  • LiveChat gives you a full view of your chat history and performance metrics so that you can make your workflow and operations better to be more customer-centric. 
  • LiveChat offers remarkable customization options for chat widgets, chat widget themes, logos, chat buttons, etc. 

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7. Pure Chat

Pure Chat is another one of the best live chat software for small businesses that allows you to connect with your customers via websites, mobile apps, emails, and social media platforms. It also acts as a dedicated Engagement hub that means it can easily work on any device including desktops, mobiles, and tablets. Pure Chat is absolutely free with numerous top-quality features that make it the best option for small businesses with little purse strings. 

Key features

  • Pure Chat offers advanced visitor tracking and analytics tools to showcase traffic trends, searches for distinguished leads to help you get more sales, organizes your data in the best possible way. 
  • Pure Chat lets you view the entire history of your customers with a single click and also automates your major portion, if not all, of your activities by relying on its integration with other third-party applications like Google Analytics, HubSpot, etc.
  • Pure Chat’s chatbox is super friendly and customizable which allows you to customize it, create a personalized chat page, and much more. 
  • Pure Chat permits you to add users and give them specific authorities and tasks and also assigns relevant chat widgets to different departments so that visitors get support from the right person.

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