Top 10 Customer Support and Live Chat Tools for Ecommerce

The realm of ecommerce is getting increasingly competitive every day. Excellent customer support is a game-changer in this realm which can enormously make a business thrive. That’s why customer support and live chat tools have come to handle the constantly-soaring demands for personalized and instantaneous interactions.

These tools can sweeten customer satisfaction, simplify workflow, and maximize team efficiency. If chosen correctly, they reshape how a business interacts with customers because they come with AI-driven automation, smooth integrations, multichannel support, and more.

In our post today, we aim to discuss the top ten customer support and live chat platforms you can find for ecommerce needs. We will talk about their benefits, features, and unique capabilities in detail.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk is recognized as a powerful customer support and live chat platform. It benefits from AI to provide instantaneous and personalized services. The platform’s AI has been designed on billions of real customer interactions so it can understand customer needs in a flash with no extensive manual setup.

The AI-driven bots on Zendesk are capable of resolving the majority of customer requests autonomously. They minimize the workload on human agents and deliver 24/7 support. These bots can smoothly merge with internal and external systems so they can handle even intricate queries with no hassle.

Zendesk’s all-in-one package brings customer interactions across multiple channels—like email, voice, WhatsApp, and Messenger—into a single workspace. Thanks to its real-time insights and vital reporting tools, businesses can make exact decisions based on different data, track their performance, and sweeten their customer satisfaction.

The tool is highly customizable. It can reshape to manage different business needs. Its scalable solution is trusted by more than 160,000 companies to revamp their customer experience, whether they need to initiate valuable conversations or conserve a chat interface that fits their brand.

2. Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a leader in the realm of customer support and live chat tools. It presents a simple AI solution that simplifies customer service. The platform is distinguishable for its user-friendly interface and fast setup as it enables businesses to deliver outstanding support. Its intuitive workflows and collaboration tools ease your teamwork and let your agents resolve issues in a flash.

The platform’s AI—called Freddy—automates repetitive tasks and empowers agents to concentrate on delivering personalized and impactful customer experiences. Features like advanced ticket management, AI-powered responses, and unified agent workspaces help teams prioritize and resolve queries instantaneously. With Freddy, agent productivity soars, and customers can enjoy smooth interactions.

Furthermore, Freshdesk’s Omni solution consolidates support tools and lowers complexity and costs. At the same time, it sweetens service across multiple channels such as live chat, email, voice, and messaging. AI bots also empower self-service as they immediately respond to common questions and minimize ticket volumes.

Freshdesk is highly customizable and armed with potent integrations like Salesforce. It adapts to different businesses of all sizes. Some other notable features of the platform include:

• Advanced ticketing management
• Streamlined admin
• Analytics and insights
• Helpdesk AI

3. Intercom

Intercom is a premium customer support and live chat tool that comes with personalized, scalable, and proactive service. Its Business Messenger feature empowers teams to connect with customers right where they are, like inside apps, websites, or products.

The platform’s saved chat history is accessible on any device. Its AI tools reshape customer service. Fin—Intercom’s advanced AI agent—handles frontline support autonomously. It enables teams to focus on high-impact tasks. In the meantime, bots and in-app messages allow customers to resolve repetitive queries instantly, hence the reduced workload and enhanced response time.

Intercom consolidates all conversations in a single inbox. This makes it effortless for agents to deliver personalized care. The platform’s customer data capabilities provide a rich context for interactions so teams can address issues smoothly and instantaneously.

Proactive messaging is another strength point of Intercom. It helps businesses onboard, educate, and notify customers before any issue appears. The platform’s mighty self-service tools like bots and articles reduce support volume and satisfy customers.

4. LiveChat

LiveChat is another top-notch customer support and live chat tool that delivers fast and personalized service. It enables instant responses to customer inquiries so issues are resolved fast, thereby maximizing satisfaction and expediting resolutions.

The intuitive interface of LiveChat makes it simple for both customers and agents to use the platform. Features such as canned responses and message sneak-peeks sweeten efficiency. Plus, the platform helps agents handle multiple customers at the same time, which makes it enormously efficient compared with traditional phone support.

State-of-the-art capabilities such as order tracking, performance monitoring, and screen sharing in LiveChat empower the user to resolve even intricate issues in one interaction. This streamlined approach minimizes dependence on emails or lengthy phone calls.

Thanks to its AI-powered tools, LiveChat automates up to 80% of customer inquiries so agents can focus on more complex issues. Its AI assistant, Copilot, strengthens productivity as it suggests faster replies and enables easy accessibility to company knowledge.

In addition to these attractive features, other valuable features of the platform include:

• Communication across multiple channels
• Integration of sales tools
• Insightful reporting and managerial options
• Support customers with HelpDesk
• Enhanced websites with widgets

5. Tidio

Tidio is an extraordinary customer support and live chat platform that can sweeten the ecommerce experience for both businesses and shoppers. It comes with an all-in-one dashboard that merges communication across live chat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Features such as live typing previews and canned responses in Tidio enhance response times. Its multi-language support and cross-device compatibility can boost accessibility and personalization.

One of Tidio’s notable offerings is its AI-powered Lyro Chatbot. It automates up to 70% of customer inquiries. The chatbot delivers human-like responses to questions about products, services, and return policies to save time for support teams and sweeten customer satisfaction.

What’s more, Tidio supports sales automation with customizable templates that enhance lead generation and streamline sales funnels. It has been designed specifically for ecommerce and lets businesses turn chats into sales opportunities as it offers personalized product suggestions, previewing carts, and managing Shopify orders directly from the inbox.

6. Olark

Olark is the next powerful tool on our list. It helps businesses craft real-time connections with their customers. Its elegant chat widget helps customers engage with friendly, human support directly on your website, resulting in instantaneous answers and higher satisfaction rates.

Customers will feel confident as they explore your offerings because Olark helps them chat without interrupting their browsing. This leads to boosted sales and conversions. In the case of accessibility, Olark shines because it is certified to meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards. Its chat widget and team interfaces are even functional for people with disabilities.

The platform beautifully merges human interaction with the efficiency of AI. Its live chat tools provide immediate help, and its AI chatbots handle repetitive queries so your agents can manage complex duties. Integrations with more than 100 tools and a flexible API make it effortless to incorporate Olark into your current workflow.

What’s more, Olark offers a bunch of other invaluable features such as:

• Live chat analytics
• Actionable insights in transcripts
• Custom chatbox forms
• Matching chatbox to your brand
• PowerUps features
• Comprehensive reporting

7. Drift

As an outstanding customer support and live chat tool, Drift comes with a complete set of features to simplify conversations and enrich user engagement. It supports interactions handled by humans, bots, or AI (Drift Automation), which makes it versatile for any business.

Drift’s live chat platform can be easily accessed through a browser or a dedicated desktop app. One of its integral features is the customizable inbox system that helps businesses segment conversations into custom-made categories like sales or support. Such a comprehensive level of organization helps you make sure messages are sent to appropriate teams.

What’s more, Drift offers conversation status options so users can manage their chats as open, closed, or archived. There are also tools for batch-closing and automation to handle inactivity.

To boost usability, Drift offers agent status settings, powerful notification options, and a rich composer interface with shortcuts. It can smoothly merge with tools such as Zoom and calendars to enable scheduling and collaboration within chats.

8. Help Scout

Help Scout is a mighty tool that delivers a simple but comprehensive platform where users can enhance their team collaboration and customer satisfaction. Its all-in-one solution empowers Help Scout to blend a shared inbox, live chat, and a customizable help center together, thereby guaranteeing smooth support experiences for businesses and their clients.

Thanks to the comprehensive features of Help Scout, teams can deliver excellent and personalized support. Users will be able to respond to 56% more customer messages in their first year and benefit from a 25% higher CSAT score compared with industry averages.

The big focus of Help Scout is on speed and efficiency. It helps teams send their first reply in under an hour and learn how to work with the platform in less than a day.

What distinguishes Help Scout is its customer-first approach. It blends the latest AI tools with a commitment to personal interactions. AI helps users craft more immediate replies and automate routine tasks, but human connection is more important for Help Scout and it tries to make every support moment genuine and beneficial.

In addition to all these strengths, Help Scout offers a set of several exciting features such as:

• Beacon messaging tool
• Comprehensive built-in reporting
• Voice and text integrations
• Free mobile app
• Different massage styles

9. Chatra

Chatra is a phenomenal customer support tool that enables businesses to connect with website visitors, solve problems, and boost conversions. It mainly focuses on real-time communication to help you engage with customers instantly or use messenger mode to respond conveniently.

The platform merges all interactions into a single and multichannel dashboard for channels such as email, Instagram, and Facebook. Its notable feature is visitor intelligence which helps businesses monitor real-time browsing activity, view detailed visitor profiles, and craft personalized messages.

Chatra’s chatbots can smoothly automate routine tasks, collect visitor data, and answer FAQs so your team can concentrate on more crucial tasks. The iOS and Android apps of the platform help you make sure you never miss a conversation.

What’s more, modern features such as typing insights, group chats, file sharing, and chat ratings provide you with a complete package for impressive customer service. Today, more than 45,000 businesses trust and integrate Chatra with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, Slack, and more.

10. Crisp

Crisp provides an all-in-one AI platform that unifies communication, data, and teamwork. It comes with a centralized inbox that helps businesses manage messages across channels like email, website chat, WhatsApp, and Messenger from a single interface.

The platform empowers customers with autonomy through customizable help centers. That’s where users can access guides and solutions anytime they need them. This asynchronous communication minimizes support load and makes sure customers find their answers in no time.

Furthermore, Crisp blends customer data from different sources into a harmonious view to enable personalized interactions according to past conversations and insights. Its AI automation simplifies workflows and cuts team workloads by 50% through intelligent task management and automatic responses.

Crisp’s live chat feature creates high-end customer experiences as it engages visitors with no sweat and delivers instant support. Proactive engagement is another of Crisp’s strengths as it delivers multichannel automated messages based on user needs to sweeten onboarding and customer satisfaction.

Audience and Use Cases

Each of these tools we discussed today comes with its unique target audience and use cases. Although they share a variety of features and benefits, they slightly differ in some aspects as the table below shows.

Final Words

Customer support and live chat tools are today more than vital for crafting impressive customer experiences. They come with features such as AI automation and multichannel communication to help businesses resolve queries instantaneously, sweeten customer satisfaction, and enhance team efficiency.

Picking the right tool hinges on your distinct needs such as scalability, integrations, or proactive engagement features. Tools we talked about today help businesses boost customer loyalty and simplify support operations. The key is to stick to one of these tools if you want to stay ahead in the competitive ecommerce market.

About the Author

Robert Koch – experienced SaaS application designer and business optimization through automation consultant. An avid home brewer and cheesemaker in his spare time.