LiveChat

LiveChat
Developer(s) LiveChat Software
Initial release January 10, 2002 (2002-01-10)[1]
Operating system Web-based, Windows, OS X, Android, iOS
Available in 41 languages
Type Live support software, e-commerce, web analytics, ticketing system
License Proprietary (SaaS)
Website livechatinc.com

LiveChat is an online customer service software with live support, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities. It was first launched in 2002[1] and is currently developed and offered in a SaaS (software as a service) business model by LiveChat Software.

Companies use LiveChat as a single point of contact to manage from one software all customer service and online sales activities that normally are provided using different channels (chat, email and social media) and multiple tools.[2] LiveChat is used by over 19,000[3] paid customers from 118 countries.[4]


Technology

Technically, LiveChat is a proprietary software built with the use of multiple technologies, including JavaScript, Node.js, MySQL, ElasticSearch, C++ and Erlang.[5] The entire platform consists of two main elements:

LiveChat application viewed as agent

There are two ways of having an online chat session between the agent and website visitor:

In areas unrelated directly to the product, LiveChat relies on 3rd party services. This includes Postmark for the delivery of transactional emails,[9] Recurly for subscription billing[10] and Pingdom for performance monitoring and uptime tracking.[11]

Features

Apart from website chat, other core features include: real-time website traffic monitoring, built-in ticketing system and agents' efficiency analytics.

System identifies the best prospects visiting a website based on data gathered from the purchasing decisions of 65 million buyers.[6] Statistics section allows calculating the conversion from chat invitations into chat sessions and then into sales.[12]

LiveChat is available in 41 languages: Armenian, Azeri, Bulgarian, Catalan, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian (bokmål), Norwegian (nynorsk), Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

Integrations

LiveChat is available for custom integrations over REST-based API.[13] It also offers over 50 integrations with other services and SaaS vendors for creating own ecosystem of applications:

Awards

In the Fall 2015 Grid℠ report for live chat software published in August 2015 by business software review site G2 Crowd, LiveChat was called a High Performer of the industry. It also earned the highest overall satisfaction score among all listed companies.[18]

Later that year, Gartner-owned business software review site GetApp released its quarterly research, 2015 Q3 GetRank, including top cloud-based customer service applications. LiveChat has been listed 2nd in the research[19] and the report ‘Customer Success in the Cloud: Key Trends for 2015’ which highlights the most important trends in the customer management space to help choose the cloud-based CRM, Customer Service, or Call Center applications for business.[20]

Criticism

Among generally positive reviews, there are comments that emphasize the high cost of the product, especially when compared to cheap or free solutions available on the market. Lack of freemium version and expensive pricing are mentioned by customers who also admit that "range of features & services" justify the price.[21][22]

Critical reviews claim that "bigger businesses may find the price minimal considering the benefit the product brings, but for start-ups or smaller businesses, it may put LiveChat out of their financial reach".[23]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 LiveChat CrunchBase profile Crunchbase
  2. LiveChat Review Enterprise Chat Software Reviews, 2011.
  3. "BRIEF-LiveChat Software no. of clients using paid version of LiveChat up at 19,251". Reuters. 2017-04-03. Retrieved 2017-04-12.
  4. Rogers, Stuart (2015-11-17). "Web hosting firms win customers’ hearts with live chat, but automotive is failing". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2015-12-29.
  5. Use Cases: LiveChat Elastic, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  6. 1 2 Lynn, Samara (2011-05-19). "LiveChat Livens Up Its Features". PC Magazine. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  7. Triggers: automated and personalized customer support LiveChat blog, Aug 25, 2010.
  8. Moore, Stefany (2011-05-27). "No mindless chatter here: Online apparel retailer ScotteVest gains sales via live chat". Internet Retailer. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  9. Postmark helped LiveChat scale to 10,000 customers Postmark, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  10. LiveChat more than doubles its subscribers in 18 months with the help of Recurly. Recurly, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  11. How LiveChat uses Pingdom. Pingdom, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  12. Wolf, Tammy (2011-05-19). "Telepresence - LiveChat Unveils Triggers and Conversion Meter Features". TMCnet. Retrieved 2011-06-02.
  13. API documentation LiveChat
  14. LiveChat integrates with Highrise 37 Signals Product Blog, January 13, 2011.
  15. Yan, Steven (2010-07-27). "LiveChat: capture offline chat messages in Zendesk". Zengage. Retrieved 2011-05-05.
  16. Siu, Roxana (2010-10-17). "Keep chat conversations in one place with LiveChat". Zengage. Retrieved 2011-05-05.
  17. La, Peter (2010-04-14). "Add-ons roundup: What do you need in addition to FreshBooks?". FreshBooks. Retrieved 2011-05-05.
  18. G2 Crowd publishes Fall 2015 rankings of the best live chat software, based on user reviews. G2 Crowd, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  19. GetApp Announces the Top Customer Service Software in its Q3 GetRank. PR Web, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  20. GetRank Q3 Research for Customer Service. GetApp, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  21. LiveChat Reviews G2 Crowd, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  22. Top Ten Best Live Chat Softwares for Online Support 123Chat Agents, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
  23. LiveChat Review Comparakeet Best Wix Apps 2016, Retrieved 2015-12-30.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.