![\"best](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Cog_01@2x.png\")
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The best live chat software helps you communicate with your customers, save time and work together as a team. Especially with smaller teams in cross-functional roles, it\u2019s important that team members can serve customers using live chat<\/a> without it eating up their entire day. <\/p>\n So, what should you look for in live chat software? These are the features that positively impact customer experience and team efficiency. <\/p>\n You would never want to walk into an important meeting without the accurate background information you need to participate fully. Similarly, you wouldn\u2019t want to engage in a live chat with a potential customer without knowing how they have already interacted with your website, or with other members of your team. <\/p>\n Here are things you might want to know about the website visitors you\u2019re engaging with via chat:<\/p>\n When your live chat software includes website visitor history on your site then you can better understand where the person is in their customer journey, and provide better service. <\/p>\n Quick Tip: our Live Chat has a free plan<\/a> to get you started, there’s nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving it a go.<\/strong><\/p>\n Being able to add internal notes is critical, particularly if you\u2019re chatting with a prospect who is close to a sale, or if you\u2019re handling a customer service issue. <\/p>\n You should be able to quickly and easily add an internal note to any conversation, and your team should be able to access it instantly when they are logged into your chat platform. That way, if there are any hand-offs between conversations<\/a>, or the customer leaves your site and returns to the conversation days later, the active team member can pick up where the conversation left off.<\/p>\n If you plan to have multiple team members logged into your live chat platform at one time, it needs to be clear who is handling what. <\/p>\n Your software\u2019s inbox<\/a> should show which conversations are actively being handled by other people. For example, our Live Chat product continually updates the inbox in real-time, so you can see when other members of your team are replying and won\u2019t double-up work or confuse the customer.<\/p>\n This is important because you need to know which customers are unattended. Anything in the inbox without an active team member needs to be addressed. Team members can hop in on the right conversations and stay out of conversations that are being taken care of. <\/p>\n The ability to set office hours is a simple but powerful feature. What hours are your team available to chat? Assuming you\u2019re not online 24\/7, you want to make it clear when you\u2019re not live and when you are. <\/p>\n For example, when you\u2019re live, if a customer clicks on your chat icon, the message could say something like, \u201cOur team is available to help you! We\u2019re here Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm CET.\u201d<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re gone, your message can say something like, \u201cWe\u2019re not around right now, but we\u2019d love to help. Please ask us anything and we\u2019ll get back to you right away.\u201d<\/p>\n Just like visitor website history, CRM information can help you better understand and serve the person at the other end of the live chat conversation. While visitor website history can provide what pages they\u2019ve looked at on your website, and when was the last time they visited your site, it\u2019s not going to tell you about the status of their customer account.<\/p>\n You should use live chat software that includes an insightful CRM<\/a> or integrates with your CRM so you can know the standing of a particular customer. Here are some things you can find out with your CRM that might impact how you approach a conversation:<\/p>\n You want as much GDPR-friendly background information<\/a> as possible when chatting when customers and prospects, right? Of course you do. In addition to website history and customer status, you might also want to look for a live chat software that includes social profiles and company information. Your tool won\u2019t be able to get this for all website visitors (as some will be anonymous), but whenever possible, knowing who you are talking to can make a huge difference for B2B teams. <\/p>\n Get started with our free Live Chat plan<\/a> in just a few clicks. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Automatically generating chat transcripts is more than cool, it\u2019s important for great customer service and training. <\/p>\n Here are some things you might want to do with chat transcripts:<\/p>\n For all of these reasons, you should vet your live chat software for an automated chat transcript feature.<\/p>\n Templates are awesome. With templates, you can save time on just about anything. And if you\u2019re going to be serving your customers or selling to your prospects via chat, you\u2019re definitely going to want to save some time. <\/p>\n If your live chat software lets you save replies, you can create templates for the following uses:<\/p>\n With saved responses or templates, your team can automatically load them and edit if needed before sending to the customer<\/a> on the other end. Absolutely a must-have. <\/p>\n With a small team, roles are nearly always cross-functional. Your marketing assistant might help with customer service or shipping. So it\u2019s safe to assume that anyone who is dealing with live chat enquiries might have other duties. They will likely not be logged into your live chat software during all of their working hours. <\/p>\n That\u2019s why some sort of notifications are really important. For example, with our Live Chat product, notifications are sent via Slack (which you can receive on your desktop computer and\/or as push notifications on your mobile device), but you could also use Zapier to get notifications from email or another communication tool.<\/p>\n Make sure your live chat software has a solution for notifications so you never miss a live chat opportunity. Also, you\u2019ll want to be able to turn these notifications off. With Slack, they can get snoozed, so no one is woken up at 3am. That\u2019s the worst!<\/p>\n Chat prompts are another important feature for live chat software. Here\u2019s how they work: instead of waiting for a website visitor to click on the chat icon to initiate a chat, they pop up on the lower right-hand side of the screen with a short question or message. <\/p>\n There are a lot of reasons why you might want to use chat prompts:<\/p>\n You can probably think of half a dozen more chat prompts<\/a> that would fit your business. Chat prompts are a great feature because they let you initiate the conversation. Just make sure that you don\u2019t overuse chat prompts on your website. Too many can be disruptive.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that a website visitor comes to your site and asks a question via chat, but you aren\u2019t there. They come back the next day during your business hours. <\/p>\n In this scenario, there are two things that should happen: you can see their question, and they can see their question. Both parties can see where the conversation left off.<\/p>\n This is an important feature because it makes for a better user experience with chat. You don\u2019t want someone to have to type their details again when they come back during your business hours. It just makes sense that it should save, right?<\/p>\nView website visitor history (the customer journey)<\/h2>\n
![\"view](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_View_01@2x.png\")
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Add internal notes<\/h2>\n
![\"add](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Notes_01@2x.png\")
<\/p>\nView which conversations are being handled by other team members<\/h2>\n
![\"best](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Tick_01@2x.png\")
<\/p>\nSet office hours and away messages<\/h2>\n
![\"set](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Clock_01@2x.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"set](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_gosquared_assistant.png\")
<\/p>\nSyncs with your CRM, so you know more about their account<\/h2>\n
![\"sync](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Sync_01@2x.png\")
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Social profiles and company information<\/h2>\n
![\"information](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Infomation_01@2x.png\")
<\/p>\nChat transcripts<\/h2>\n
![\"transcribe](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Transcribe_01@2x.png\")
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Create and save templated replies<\/h2>\n
![\"save](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Templates_01@2x.png\")
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Notifications so you don\u2019t have to stay logged on to your chat tool<\/h2>\n
![\"notifications](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Notification_01@2x.png\")
<\/p>\nChat prompts to start conversations<\/h2>\n
![\"chat](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Prompts_01@2x.png\")
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Save conversations (for you and the visitor)<\/h2>\n
![\"save](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Save_02@2x.png\")
<\/p>\nLet\u2019s round up a few of the key takeaways for small teams: <\/h2>\n
![\"the](\"https:\/\/static.gosquared.com\/images\/liquidicity\/19_07_02_Best_Live_Chat_Software%20\/19_07_02_Round_Up_01@2x.png\")
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