Introduction
For any business that you do, how you treat your customers is how your business will be treated. This is where a WordPress Chat Plugin can help you.
Customer Satisfaction plays a big role in any successful business. When I mean customers it is not just the customers who have purchased your product but also your users who are looking for a product that you sell. Your existing customers’ satisfaction and the conversion rate of users is all that determines the success of your business
One of the best ways to make your customers happy and to increase the conversion rate is by instantly solving their questions and problems.
In this fast-growing business world, every one of your competitors is pushing fast to reach to your customers. You cannot scale your business unless and until are faster than them.
Live Chat is the best and fastest way to reach out to your customers than every other medium like phone calls, emails, social media or SMS. Here are some stats on how live chat affects your customers:
Around 73% of users prefer live chat compared with emails which have 61% and phone calls which has 44%.
BoldChat found that 31% of online shoppers from both the US and UK saying they would be more likely to purchase after a live chat.
Of those who prefer live chat, 79% said they did so because they get their questions answered quickly and 46% agreed it was the most efficient communication method.
More than 65% of users who come to purchase in an eCommerce website abandon their shopping carts without checking out since their questions were not instantly answered and moved to other competitors.
Research in 2021 shows that more than 67% of customers used a chatbot for customer support and it is expected to increase by 85% by 2023.
8 WordPress Chat Plugins (Paid and Freemium) with Pros and Cons:
Obviously, let’s look at some of the important WordPress chat plugins. But more importantly, let’s understand their pros and cons so that you can decide which best WordPress Chat Plugin suits your needs.
Zendesk Chat with free WordPress Chat Plugin
Zendesk Chat (Previously Zopim Chat) is one of the most popular live chat plugin which is loved by almost 100,000 businesses. It is available in over 40 languages.
Pros:
Triggers
You can send targeted and behavior-based messages to customers based on what they are doing on your site. A report says that customers are 3x more likely to make a purchase when you proactively send them a message. Zendesk does this job perfectly.
Chat Ratings
As we discussed, customer satisfaction is the most important factor in deciding the success of businesses. Use chat ratings to gather feedback and continue to improve your agents’ performance. More importantly, this feature is available in their free plan itself.
Chat Analytics
You can monitor live data on chat volume, your visitor’s experience, your agents’ performance, etc. By doing so, you can get a solid insight on your customers and agents and take the necessary steps to improve conversions and performance.
Saved Replies
Zendesk calls it as shortcuts which let you create templated responses for common questions that are asked so that the agents can answer swiftly to the customers.
Cons:
- Price is a bit costly in terms that you need to pay every month. Most small-scale businesses may look for something like a one time fee or at least pay per year plan.
- Only one agent is allowed for the basic free plan, and you need to pay extra for every agent you add. Again this might be a big deal for startups and small scale businesses.
- Triggers are one important feature every salesperson is looking for to increase the conversion rate. Zendesk offers unlimited triggers only in the professional plan which is $29/Month which might be very costly for many. Only 2 triggers are allowed for the $14/Month plan which won’t be of any use to any business needing more than 2 triggers.
- As we discussed above, the analytics report which is yet another powerful feature for sales and support, it is also available only in the professional plan.
- Chatbot feature is something everyone is looking for in a chat plugin as it saves much of his or her time. Sadly Zendesk has not come up with this feature in their chat yet.
Olark Live Chat with free WordPress Chat Plugin
Though Olark is not precisely a WordPress chat solution, it integrates perfectly with WordPress.
Pros:
- Olark has been designed in a way to work with almost every software which sales, marketing, and support team might need. They have powerful integrations with software like Salesforce, Highrise, Nutshell, Groove, Zendesk, and much more.
- You can group your team members according to the team they are in like the sales team, marketing team, support team, and send the chat to the right team to get solutions faster.
- There is no limit on the number of conversations and no extra pricing for any number of users at the same time.
- Price is much cheaper compared to Zendesk chat though it also comes under the pay per month pricing model. Olark’s wp chat plugin comes with any plan.
Cons:
- Olark also comes with per month pricing and allows only one agent. Extra pay for every agent added.
- Chatbots are not available yet.
- Saved Replies feature is not available which I feel should be developed soon by the team.
Live Chat with free WordPress Chat Plugin
LiveChat is a standalone SaaS live chat service. However, it also includes a WordPress live chat plugin that makes it easy to integrate the two.
Pros:
- Live Chat comes with a robust ticketing system that lets you create tickets that can’t be solved during the live chat.
- A Huge List of integrations like Hubspot, Salesforce, and lots more.
- You can auto-initiate your conversation with your users rather than waiting for them to contact you depending on the page they are in and their behavior, etc.
- You can use LiveChat on unlimited websites.
- It allows unlimited agents in the basic plan itself.
Cons:
- It is the most expensive on the list.
- Only Basic chat customization is available in the starter plan. For advanced customization, you have to switch to a higher plan which makes the already higher price even higher.
- Though it allows unlimited agents, only one logged-in agent can be available, that is only one agent can chat with a user at a time which makes the “Unlimited agents” tag completely useless.
- Only 60 days of chat history could be seen in the basic starter plan which is already higher in price. Unlimited history is much costlier.
Tidio Live Chat
Pros:
- Users don’t need to log in or signup for the chat which makes the process really fast.
- 3 Agents are allowed in the free version itself
- They have a generous free plan which includes 3 agents, an unlimited number of users, email integration, messenger integration, iOS & Android app, unlimited tracking, etc… This is huge in this category as no other plugin provides so many features for free.
- Live typing feature where you can see what your customers are typing before they hit the enter key. This is quite interesting.
Cons:
- Unlimited agents are allowed only in the paid version. The paid version is $15/mo. Apart from that, you need to pay $10/mo for any extra agent.
- Tidio pro version is also a monthly pricing model though the price is much lower compared with other Plugins.
- Chatbots are available for Shopify users but not for WordPress yet.
WordPress LiveChat Unlimited
If you are looking for a dedicated WordPress plugin, here is it. LiveChat Unlimited Plugin was made only for WordPress users with some exciting features.
Pros:
- Single fee with no monthly payment.
- LC Unlimited can be used in unlimited domains with a single purchase.
- It allows 10 operators and more than one operator can reply at the same time.
- It has Multilingual support.
Cons:
- Only 100 users can chat at a time. So you are in trouble if more than 100 users chat at your website at the same time.
- Some major features for sales and marketing like triggers, auto-initiating the conversation with the users, etc.. are not available with this plugin.
- Chatbots are not available.
WP Live Chat
Last but not least, one of the most powerful LiveChat plugins for WordPress users would definitely be WP Live Chat Support Plugin.
Pros:
- It’s a one-time fee option that frees you from the monthly fees. For many small businesses and solopreneurs, it’s a solid and affordable option.
- It has 6 predefined live chatbox themes to choose from, and you can also fully customize to your preference.
- Agents can chat with other agents which might be very helpful for agents who are new or in the beginning stages.
- An unlimited number of users can chat at the same time in the free version itself.
Cons:
- An unlimited number of agents are available only in Pro version.
- Only one site could be used in the basic pro version. To use unlimited sites, you need to pay $99 compared to the Live Chat unlimited which offers an unlimited website plan for $75.
- Chatbots are something they also miss.
Mobile Monkey WP Chat bot
It is a free chatbot which could be integrated with Facebook Messenger. It has a chatbot builder with which you can build a chatbot easily with a drag-and-drop interface. It is very useful on your WordPress website if you are using Facebook Messenger to chat with customers.
Pros:
- The free plan is very generous.
- Using the Chatbot Builder, you can make a chatbot with quick qualifying questions, forms, images, text, GIFs, and more.
- You can add any number of Facebook pages on the free plan.
Cons:
- It can only be used with Facebook Messenger. If you are not into Facebook marketing you wouldn’t want to use it.
- You need to learn Facebook marketing to use this chatbot to its fullest.
- The Pro pricing is for only 1 Facebook page. So you need to buy another license if you want to have it on another page. But Multi-site plans are affordable.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a dedicated WordPress plugin and don’t want to pay every month, you can go with either LiveChat Unlimited or WP Live Chat support.
If you are willing to pay every month but with minimal price, you can go for Tidio live chat or Olark.
If you are a top businessman who can afford to pay well and looking for the most powerful chat plugin, go for Zendesk or Live Chat.
Chatbots are something that many users are looking for but not available in any plugins yet. Recently, a chat tool called Drift understood this and has come up with a powerful chatbot but the price is very expensive. Hopefully, someone will come up with a solution where every user can afford and with such powerful features. These are the best live chat plugins for WordPress.
