Live chat is the chat window on your website in which visitors ask a question and get an answer straight away, from a member of staff, from AI or from both. Even so, it raises plenty of questions: what do you need, which software do you choose, what does it deliver and how do you measure that?
This guide brings all the parts of live chat together in one place. For each topic you get the essentials. If you want to go deeper, each section points you to the article that covers it in full.
What is live chat?
Live chat is a form of customer contact in which a website visitor holds a real-time conversation with a business through a chat window. The difference with email or a contact form is speed: the visitor gets an answer while they are still on the page, at the moment their interest is greatest.
Who gives that answer varies from business to business. It can be your own team, an AI that handles frequently asked questions, or chat specialists from an external partner. Increasingly it is a combination: AI for the simple questions, a person for advice and sales. How that works is covered in the explanation of what live chat is and how it works.
Live chat software: chat window, features and inbox
Live chat software has two sides: the chat window the visitor sees, and the environment in which your team or AI answers the conversations. In between sit the features that determine how well it works.
- Chat window: the window or button on your website, in your own branding.
- Proactive messages: an invitation that appears on a page or after a set time.
- One inbox: all conversations in one place, ideally together with WhatsApp, Messenger and email.
- Integrations: conversations and leads that land automatically in your CRM or mailbox.
Which features there are and how they work together is covered in the article on live chat software.
Choosing the right live chat software
The best live chat software does not exist; the best choice depends on who holds the conversations. A team that chats itself has different requirements from a business that has the chat staffed for it. Four questions help you choose:
- How many chats do you expect per day, and at what times?
- Who answers them: your own team, AI, an external partner or a mix?
- Which channels and systems need to connect to it?
- Do you want software you manage yourself, or a partner who sets everything up and keeps it running?
A neutral comparison with the criteria side by side is in choosing the best live chat software.
Is live chat right for your business?
Live chat works best for businesses where customers compare and ask questions before they buy or book an appointment. Think of a car dealer where visitors ask about a used car or a test drive, or a kitchen or window company where they want to know what bespoke work costs.
It is less suitable for sites with little traffic or for purely transactional webshops where nobody needs to ask anything. Staffing matters too: a chat window nobody answers backfires. Whether it suits your organisation is covered in live chat for business.
Benefits of live chat
The biggest benefit of live chat is that you help visitors at the moment they hesitate, rather than hours later. The other benefits follow from that:
- More enquiries from the same website traffic, because questions do not get left unanswered.
- Wider availability, in the evening and at the weekend too.
- Less pressure on phone and email, because simple questions are handled in the chat.
- Insight into what visitors are looking for and where they get stuck.
Each benefit, with the conditions for delivering it, is covered in the article on the benefits of live chat.
Adding live chat to your website
Technically, live chat is quickly in place: you add a small piece of code to your website or deploy it via Google Tag Manager. The work lies in what comes after: who answers the conversations, on which pages does the chat start and where do the conversations and leads go?
Answering those questions in advance prevents a chat window that is visible but delivers nothing. The step-by-step plan, from script to CRM integration, is in how to add live chat to your website.
Generating leads and increasing conversions
Live chat is more than a service channel: used well, it produces enquiries. The difference lies in what happens in the conversation. A chat that only answers a question produces a satisfied visitor. A chat that asks about wishes, timing and contact details produces a lead your sales team can follow up straight away.
How to turn conversations into qualified enquiries is covered in leads from live chat. How to get more visitors to convert with proactive chat is covered in increasing conversions with live chat.
Measuring live chat
With live chat you measure three layers: how available you are, how well the conversations go and what they deliver. Think of response time and missed chats, satisfaction and handovers, and the number of enquiries and the pages where conversations start.
On top of that, the conversations themselves tell you what visitors are missing on your website. Which figures count and how to connect chat to GA4 and your CRM is covered in live chat metrics.
Doing it yourself or outsourcing
The most important choice in live chat is not the software, but who holds the conversations. Doing it yourself gives you control, but requires staffing at every moment the chat window is visible, including outside office hours. Outsourcing means trained chat specialists hold the conversations and pass the leads to your team.
In between there is a mix: your own team during the day, an external partner or AI in the evening and at the weekend. The trade-offs, with costs and conditions, are covered under live chat outsourcing. How an external chat specialist gets to know your business and which questions they answer is covered in how outsourced live chat agents answer questions.
How we set up live chat in practice
At Bconnect, we set up live chat around the question of what a visitor needs at that moment. Our AI answers the predictable questions straight away, day and night. As soon as there is advice or a sales opportunity in the conversation, one of our chat specialists takes over, announced and with the full context. They are available seven days a week, from early in the morning until late in the evening.
What we often see in practice: the chat window is already there, but nobody feels they own the conversations. That is why, with us, all conversations arrive in one inbox, together with WhatsApp, Messenger and email, and every lead goes with the transcript to the client’s CRM or mailbox. That way the chat produces enquiries instead of loose conversations. What that looks like is shown in live chat on your website with AI and chat specialists. If you would rather have the chat answered entirely for you, you can have your live chat staffed by professionals.