The Best Tools For Providing Chat Support in 2024

Live chat is a must-have customer support tool that ranks higher than email and phone support for customer satisfaction. In fact, a whopping 86% of customers who use a live chat service are satisfied with their support experience. 

Live chat also increases sales conversions and improves first-contact resolution rates.  

For businesses today, the big question isn’t whether to offer chat assistance to customers. That’s now a given. The big question in 2024 is which live chat tool will help you deliver the best customer experience. 

Several support ticketing systems like Zendesk and Freshdesk supply native chat tools, providing a seamless way to integrate chat into your existing workflow. Those can work well, and we’ll touch on some of them below. But if your help desk doesn’t have all the features that you need, or if you’re unhappy with the chat solution provided by your helpdesk software, we’ll also cover some standalone live chat tools that are great for providing technical support.

Key Features in Customer Support Chat Tools 

If you’re just getting started with chat support, you might not have specific requirements for your chat tool. You might not know precisely what you’re looking for. 

To narrow your search, here’s a list of key features you should keep in mind as you hunt for the perfect tech chat tool: 

• Chat Assignment Options: Chat teams typically operate with a few support specialists working on the same shift at the same time. The ability to assign and reassign chats is crucial for smooth escalations and handovers. 
• Chat Widget Customization Options: Your chat widget should feel like an extension of your brand. Good chat tools provide sufficient customization options so you can make the chat widget seamlessly blend with your brand’s color scheme, style, and font, giving a cohesive look and feel.  
• Chatbots: Whether rule-based or powered by conversational AI, chatbots guide customers through predefined flows and leverage help center resources to enable self-service. If set up properly, they’ll automate common service issues, boosting your team’s productivity and improving customer experience. 
• Generative Artificial Intelligence: Tasks like routing or tagging support tickets can be automated with artificial intelligence, streamlining operations and saving your team time for what’s important – assisting customers. Generative AI’s ability to understand and respond in human-like ways is transforming the way companies provide live chat across industries — you can learn more about that evolution and the best generative AI platforms in this post.  
• Visitor Data: Having access to user data like previous interactions, page views, and other sessions is crucial for personalized service. It eliminates the need to repeat or confirm user details in every chat and enables you to tailor conversations to specific user segments. For example, reps can provide premium support to your most valuable customers.  
• Macros: Macros are essential for quick and efficient responses in chat interactions. Look for apps that allow you to equip the team with templates for greetings, handoffs, and common queries that expedite issue resolution. Some tools call these canned responses, templates, or shortcuts, but the idea is the same regardless of the name on the label. 
• Mobile App: A dedicated mobile app ensures that agents can promptly respond to chats at all times – even on the go. It’s also handy for receiving notifications when chat volumes are sporadic. 
• Support Analytics: Most tools have analytics built in, and those insights are crucial for monitoring and managing team performance. Look for straightforward and easy-to-use reports which include all essential metrics you want to track, such as response and resolution times, first-contact resolution rate, customer satisfaction, and more. 
• Pricing: Some platforms offer free plans, while others charge per agent seat or based on chat volume. While you want to find a tool with the right feature set, you also don’t want to spend more than you need, so balance your feature requirements with budget constraints to make the right choice.

Best Customer Service Chat Tools in 2024 

There are dozens of chat support apps out there, and although many of them offer similar features, they all work best for different use cases. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of solutions for various scenarios so you can choose the right one that aligns with your business’s needs. 

While these tools typically offer some AI capability, if you’re looking primarily for Generative AI platforms, check out our Guide to Choosing a Generative AI Platform, which discusses the AI capabilities of some of the tools featured here, along with standalone tools like Siena, Ada, Ultimate, and Forethought.

1. LiveChat

Top standalone chat software for established customer service teams. 

LiveChat stands out as a top-tier chat software tailored for companies with well-established customer service teams. It offers a range of advanced features within its higher-tier plans, including capacity planning, scheduling features, and advanced reporting tools. These are all crucial for effective managing a large team of chat support agents.  

One of the key features of LiveChat is its message sneak peek, which allows agents to preview text that customers are typing before it’s sent – boosting response times. Additionally, you can configure smart assignment flows to streamline the management of high-volume chat teams.

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With over 200 integrations, LiveChat seamlessly integrates with helpdesk tools such as Freshdesk, Zendesk, and HelpDesk, serving as a handy chat add-on for customer service teams. 

LiveChat pricing 

Pricing for LiveChat starts at $20 per seat per month for paid plans. The Business plan is available from $59 per seat per month. 

LiveChat also offers a free 14-day trial, allowing you to test features out before committing to a paid plan. 

2. Intercom

The ultimate online chat solution for cross-functional SaaS teams. 

Intercom is a popular chat tool choice among SaaS businesses, offering a set of collaboration tools for smoother teamwork. With Intercom, your support, marketing, and sales teams work together from a centralized hub and engage users via support chats, product tours, in-app messaging, and self-service resources. 

Chats within Intercom can be manually assigned to teams, specific chat agents, or distributed in a round-robin fashion. Agents also have the option to effortlessly translate text, adjust tone, and correct drafts with conversational AI.

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One of the unique benefits of Intercom is its ability to configure customer-facing chatbots and internal process automation via a user-friendly, visual chatbot builder. Fin, Intercom’s AI bot, is easy to deploy and can provide effective help to your customers in a human-like manner. 

There are a lot of use cases for this feature, but common scenarios include: 

• Automatically responding to customer inquiries, even outside of your human team’s normal hours 
• Gathering essential case details before routing the chat to the support team 
• Including internal notes within the chat interface with specific instructions for the support team based on the query type or customer details. This eliminates searching through extensive knowledge bases and looking for customer information, enabling faster response times 

To learn more about Intercom, check out our in-depth Intercom review here.  

Intercom pricing 

Intercom offers paid plans starting at $39 per seat per month, with a 14-day free trial available for new users.

3. Gorgias

Best online chat solution for ecommerce customer support teams. 

If you’re in ecommerce support, chances are that you’ve heard about Gorgias.  

Designed specifically for online stores, Gorgias’ support software seamlessly integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, and it offers a comprehensive suite of support chat features for both your customers and agents. 

Key Gorgias support features include: 

• Real-time display of product information and customer history during chat interactions, enabling agents to provide personalized assistance 
• Outbound chat campaigns for proactive messaging and support to drive sales  
• Chatbot workflows for handling common queries automatically 
• AI-powered sentiment and intent recognition for automated ticket assignment

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If you’d like even more details about Gorgias, check out our in-depth Gorgias review here.  

Gorgias pricing

Gorgias offers a free 7-day trial. The pricing model is based on chat volume, and paid plans start at $10 per month for up to 50 chats.  

If you’re looking to leverage AI automation, an AI add-on is available at an additional $25 per month.

4. Olark

The best standalone support chat tool for easy implementation 

Olark is one of the most popular standalone solutions because it offers a comprehensive set of features that are essential for live chat support, all at an affordable price.  

Implementing Olark is a breeze.You can add its code directly to your site or use a chat window installation through WordPress. 

Much like LiveChat and other standalone chat tools, Olark has a number of integrations that centralize all of your customer analytics in one place. And, its fully-open API enables you to tailor user experiences to your specific support needs, using minimal engineering resources. 

Olark’s powerful AI co-pilot feature leverages automation to interpret and respond to repetitive user inquiries, drawing from your help documentation to provide customers with accurate answers to their questions.

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Olark pricing 

Olark’s plans start at $29 per seat per month with additional power-ups available at an extra cost if you want to have a non-branded chat widget, translation support options, or screen-sharing for co-browsing. 

You can explore the Olark platform risk-free with a 14-day free trial.

5. Tidio

Best chat solution for streamlining chat operations. 

Tidio is a popular choice for companies seeking to automate chat support operations with AI.  

Tidio’s AI bot, Lyro, is designed to comprehend human language, retain information from previous chats, and generate thoughtful responses, ensuring accurate answers to customer feedback and questions. It can efficiently deflect up to 70% of chat volume by engaging in automated, human-like conversations with your customers.

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For human agents, Tidio offers the Reply Assistant AI, acting as a co-pilot for your customer service reps. It enables your team to turn rough drafts into polished responses with a single click, enhancing the quality of your customer conversations. Tidio also gives agents a sneak peek at chat messages before customers send them further reducing response times.

Tidio pricing

Tidio offers a free plan for up to 50 chats per month. Paid plans start at $26 per month, with pricing based on chat volume. 

You can take advantage of a 7-day free trial for paid plans before committing to an ongoing subscription.

6. Zendesk Chat

The perfect chat app for customer service teams using Zendesk. 

Zendesk is one of the most popular help desk software on the market. If you’re already leveraging their ticketing solution, Zendesk Chat is a seamless addition. Zendesk chat can also be purchased as a standalone product, but it’s often not a great option because of limited integration options.  

Zendesk Chat provides agents with convenient access to customer details and shortcuts during chat interactions. Closed chats smoothly convert into Zendesk tickets for additional follow-up via email if required. 

While some users have expressed concerns regarding the outdated user interface and less-than-intuitive settings, most Zendesk customers that are accustomed to its quirks will find value in integrating Zendesk Chat into their workflow.

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Zendesk chat and messaging can be a great option for teams using Zendesk, but even Zendesk users sometimes opt for external chat tools due to cost considerations. For instance, features like operating hours and customer satisfaction surveys are only available with the Professional version ($55 per agent per month). And, you’ll need the Enterprise plan if you want your chat widget to be unbranded. 

To learn more about Zendesk, check out our in-depth Zendesk review.  

Zendesk pricing 

Zendesk offers paid plans starting at $55 per seat per month with AI features available as an add-on for an additional $50 per agent per month.

You can take advantage of a 14-day free trial to test the platform out before signing up for a paid plan.

7. Freshchat

The best customer service chat software for support teams using Freshdesk.

Freshchat is a chat service offered by Freshworks and it’s a great option if you use Freshdesk as your support ticketing system.

Freshchat allows you to start chats with customers manually or with automation through AI-powered bots. You can create customer journey maps and user timeline views as well as launch in-app campaigns and design your own bots for specific use cases.

Freshchat integrates with a variety of online chat apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Business Messages, enabling AI-driven bot experiences across several chat channels.

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The agent interface is simple but it has everything needed for successful chat handling – customer details, internal notes, and assignment rules.

Freshchat pricing

Freshchat offers a free plan available for up to 10 agents. Paid plans start at $19 per agent per month.

8. HubSpot

The ultimate live chat solution for teams using other HubSpot products

While HubSpot is mostly known as a CRM tool catering to sales and marketing teams, it also offers a robust selection of customer service tools with a live chat channel.

It enables all of your customer-facing teams to efficiently manage customer relationships – including customer service inquiries – within a unified platform, enhancing the customer experience with seamless chat transfers between different teams.

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HubSpot live chat comes with powerful chatbots that can be customized with an easy-to-use workflow builder. The chatbot flows can serve for qualifying leads, gathering additional information about user inquiries, providing self-service resources for specific issues or even scheduling meetings with your sales or customer success teams.

And their recently launched AI assistant (currently in Beta) can further speed chat operations by allowing your reps to correct grammar and adjust the tone of their drafted responses with a single click.

HubSpot pricing

HubSpot offers live chat integration at no cost with their Free Tools plan. 

To access advanced features like logged-in user authentication or additional custom contact properties as well as to remove HubSpot branding from the chat widget, you can opt for a paid plan starting from $15 per month per seat.

What Are the Best Live Chat Tools for Customer Support? 

When it comes to choosing the best customer service software for your brand, most platforms offer similar features. To narrow your search, create a checklist with your must-have features as well as any additional “nice to haves” that you’re looking for.

To make the process even easier for you, we created this cheat sheet with standout features for each of the tools above:For small businesses and startups on a tighter budget, Freshchat provides a free plan for up to 10 agents. Freshchat is best for companies using Freshdesk, so if you’re not on Freshdesk and you want seamless integration with your existing customer support tool, consider LiveChat or Olark instead.

For a more comprehensive customer service solution, Zendesk Chat and Intercom are excellent choices, providing a range of services for your support, sales, and marketing teams to work together in a centralized hub.

At Peak Support, we know live chat support inside and out because we’ve built and run live chat support teams ranging from a handful of agents to dozens. If you’re ready to learn more, you can grab our full guide to live chat customer support, and if you need assistance setting up your customer care tools or managing your live chat operations, you can book a free consultation with our team today.