A quality product and a reasonable price. That’s a simplified checklist all customers look for when buying from a brand. But what keeps them coming back? Good customer service. Combine these three factors, and you’ve got yourself a successful business. 

It’s no secret that the modern-day shopper isn’t the one to drive through menacing traffic, and look for a spot in a crowded parking lot, only to waste time standing in a queue for checkout. 

They choose the convenience of “click and buy,” which is why eCommerce has grown from $572 billion to a $4.2 trillion economy in just a few years. As if that weren’t enough, reportedly, online searches influence 56% of retail shoppers’ decisions.

ECommerce platforms like Shopify are taking over the retail world. But for most customers, the online shopping experience does leave them wanting for more. What about the “in-store” service? Questions like- “which model is better for me?” “What is the difference between these two products?”, “Is this right for the weather in my city?”

Lack of proper customer service is one of the reasons many eCommerce businesses struggle with high bounce rates and abandoned carts. 

To convert more website visitors into buyers, you should install a Live chat for Shopify. 

Does Shopify Have a Live chat?

Yes. Shopify does have a native live chat feature called Shopify Chat. It is an extension to Shopify Ping and is free for all Shopify users, whether you have a basic or advanced plan. There are no hidden costs too. 

Shopify Chat is easy-to-use, and you can install it in just a few clicks. It provides all the basic features you want from a live chat for Shopify. It allows you to interact with customers in real-time, send them promo codes, or answer their questions. 

Once you integrate it with Shopify Ping, you can easily track all the completed sales through the Analytics Page. But much like most of the features offered by the Shopify Customer accounts, Shopify addresses the need for a chat feature in an oversimplified manner.

Here’s what it offers- 

• A customizable live chat button for your Shopify store
• A way to reply to customer queries in real-time. 
• An iOS app that lets you access conversations through your Apple device. 
  

On the downside:

• It does not allow you to access messages from the Shopify Dashboard. 
• Since it is an extension to Shopify Ping, you have to download Ping to access the live chat service
• It does not save customer credentials. The conversations are anonymous, and often new messages can get lost.

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• ‍Best Shopify Apps to Integrate with Ecom Store
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• Shopify vs Shopify Plus: Features Comparison

Essential Live Chat Features for Shopify Stores

Shopify Live chat Apps can accomplish much more than just connecting customers to support teams. Live chat can be a vehicle for better customer service and is essential in creating repeat customers. Here are some features to look out for in Live chats:

1. Self-Help Feature

Self-help is one of the most sought-after features in a Live chat for Shopify. 

Simply put, it allows you to demonstrate your product, educate your audience or even answer commonly asked questions through the chat widget on your website. With the power to solve their queries, customers will have a better shopping experience. 

And it means reduced workload for your agents as well. It is a win-win situation for both parties. Richpanel has reduced tickets by 70% for a business through self-help feature, which allows you to edit or cancel orders and access to customizable knowledge base. 

2. Smart Triggers

A fast-growing trend in the customer support world, smart triggers or proactive chats can help you reach website visitors and turn them into customers. When a customer spends too much time looking at a single product in your store, you would want to tap their shoulder and ask if they need assistance. 

Smart triggers allow you to do this virtually. It helps you reach out to customers while shopping and guide them through the journey.

3. Queuing

Queuing is another beneficial feature offered by many of the best live chat apps for Shopify. Based on the words mentioned in the customer conversations, it routes the tickets to the correct department or an agent with experience. 

Suppose your customer said the word “return” or damaged- you can ensure that these conversations are routed to agents experienced in handling returns and damaged items, respectively. Discover more How to Handle & Manage Returns with Best Shopify Returns Apps

4. Canned Responses   

Many Shopify live chat apps offer this automation tool to reduce response time. This is a preferred feature for businesses that value speedy responses. Canned responses are a set of pre-drafted automated responses to commonly asked questions.

For messages like “where is my order?”, you can send out an automated response that will enlist the shipping details and provide a link to the delivery tracker if need be.

5. Record Metrics for Analysis

Live chat software for Shopify can also help businesses analyze agent performance and get insights into how well their customer support team is performing. These apps can help Record various metrics like the average response time, and average wait time and send out surveys to evaluate the CSAT score. 

Learn More:

• ‍Ecommerce Live Chat Software & Best Practices
• Best Live Chat Plugins for Woocommerce‍
  

Top 10 Best Live chat apps for Shopify in 2024

Here are some of the most popular Live chat apps for Shopify along with the features you should be looking out for:

• Richpanel
• Tidio
• Gorgias
• Reamaze
• ProProfs
• LiveChat
• JivoChat
• Chatra Live Chat
• Zendesk
• Tawk
  

1. Richpanel:

Richpanel is a leading customer support software with a live chat feature. One of the best things about Richpanel is that it aims to give customers the power to make order edits and answer their questions through a customizable knowledge base. It improves customer interactions and actively reduces your support agents' workload. 

Here are some noteworthy features:

• A customizable knowledge base that helps customers find answers to commonly asked questions, so they don’t have to contact customer support. 
• An “Amazon-like” customer profile with a personalized view of the customer. It gives them the power to edit orders, cancel them or initiate a refund. 

• A CSAT survey which is is very thoughtfully triggered. Richpanel sends out CSAT surveys when certain conditions are met, like when the chat is more than 50 characters 
• The back-end is exceptionally intuitive and easy to use. It provides agents with complete customer context and conversation history from different channels, giving them better insights into the customer’s problem. 
  

Richpanel, however, does not have a chatbot feature. While this helps companies maintain personalization and add a human touch to all their interactions, it can be a drawback for businesses looking for automated responses. 

Reviews: 5.0 ⭐ (97 Reviews on Shopify Store)

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2. Tidio:

Tidio is a dedicated live chat and chatbot app that allows you to converse with customers in real-time and personalize the shopping experience. It aims to drive revenue through customer service. Here are some of its features:

• It allows you to send personalized messages to repeat customers and offer discounts.
• It has automated chatbots that collect customer information in real-time and help drive sales through product recommendations etc.
• It allows you to provide 24/7 customer support with automated chatbots.
  

However, Tidio has a loose integration with Shopify, and agents often find themselves switching between tabs to answer questions, and it takes multiple clicks to get simple things done.

3. Gorgias:

Gorgias is a helpdesk and live chat software that aims to improve customer service. It seeks to personalize the customer experience and improve agent efficiency. Here are some benefits of using Gorgias for your Shopify live chat:

• It has an automated sentiment analysis feature. 
• It allows you to access multiple stores through one window.
• Set up automated responses for commonly asked questions.
  

However, the sentiment analysis feature is inaccurate and often results in discrepancies. It requires manual oversight and fails to fulfill its aim. Gorgias has a deep integration with Shopify. However, it glitches when you add multiple stores to the same account. Discover More on Richpanel vs Gorgias

Related Read: Choose Your Gorgias Alternative

4. Reamaze Live Chat:

Reamaze is a live chat and ticketing software for small and medium-sized businesses. It primarily acts as helpdesk software and allows you to access customer conversations across channels like email, live chat, video call, social media, mobile SMS, and VoIP through one window. Here are some of its features:

• It provides customer insights like browsing activity and geolocation.
• Allows you to create canned responses for redundant queries.
• It sends automated pop-up messages to convert your website visitors into customers. 
  

Automation relies heavily on execution. ReAmaze chatbot often misunderstands the customer intent and causes discrepancies. This is one of the biggest reasons business owners prefer other Shopify live chat apps. Furthermore, it sends CSAT surveys before the query is resolved, closing the conversation without any conclusion. Learn More on Reamaze alternatives.

5. ProProfs ‑ Live Chat & Chatbot

Proprofs is a tool that aims to improve customer support through human resource training tools and features such as CRM, help desk, and survey makers. Proprofs has an outstanding Live chat feature as well. Here are some of its capabilities:

• It allows you to add self-help articles so customers can find answers to their queries. 
• Supports canned responses to reduce response time. 
• Allows you to give product tours to engage website visitors. 
• Allows you to add announcements for occasions like product updates. 
  

Proprofs is an excellent app for training your customer support team, but the chat fails to meet the same standards. To begin with, it does not provide customization options for the agent dashboard. The chat has limited reporting features and fails to provide necessary insights. 

6. Live Chat with Helpdesk

Live chat is for large-scale businesses, customer support, and sales teams. Here are some of its features: 

• Provides detailed CSAT reports on agent performance metrics
• Canned responses for quick turnaround time. 
• Live chat message templates with product carousels.
  

However, this isn't the most effective Shopify live chat app available. Users reported frequent glitches. Livechat also limits the number of queued conversations and redirects customers to Different channels when you cross the limit. It also sets a bar on the number of invitations you can send. 

7. JivoChat Live Chat

Jivochat primarily aims to integrate all social media messengers with live chat on your website and provide a centralized hub for communication. This is one of the most popular live chats apps for Shopify, and here are some of its features:

• It allows you to store customer information and give customer context to your support agents
• You can evaluate agent performance by reviewing saved dialogues
• It enables you to analyze lead sources and gain insights into your website
• It also allows you to explore the sales funnel and improve your workflows

Jivochat is an excellent tool if you’re looking to integrate different communication channels and extensive reporting. However, the software glitches frequently, and there are some discrepancies with the chat itself. One of the issues is that the chat does not notify customers when the conversation has ended, leaving loose ends in the customer support process. 

8. Chatra Live Chat:

Chatra is a multichannel messaging solution that helps small-sized businesses to scale through customer support. It provides a live chat widget and allows you to integrate messages from your website, social media, and email. Here are some of its best features:

• Group messaging gives multiple agents access to a conversation. It’s a great way to train new employees. 
• Allows you to monitor visitors' activity on your website. 
• Automated message triggers (greetings) when visitors land on your website. 
  

Chatra has a free plan that can help small businesses get started. It is primarily a communication hub and does not have a ticketing system. Chatra’s reporting system is also rudimentary and does not offer much functionality. As a business scales, Chatra’s features cannot keep up with other live chat apps on this list. 

9. Zendesk: 

Zendesk is a customer support software built for many industries. It is highly customizable and can cater to the needs of different types of businesses.

The Zendesk Live Chat tool is one of the most popular options for Shopify live chat apps. Here are some of its features:

• Pre-chat forms that help collect customer information 
• It allows you to preview website visitors to understand the customer journey better
• CSAT surveys that help evaluate the customer experience
• Zendesk is notoriously tricky to understand and adapt. 
• Learn More Here more on Zendesk Features

It takes time to set up the customizations, and the learning curve is steep since the layout is confusing. Users also report frequent disruptions due to updates. Discover Gorgias vs Zendesk

Related Read: Zendesk Alternatives and Competitors

Checkout Why Leading Ecommerce Brands Migrated from Zendesk to Richpanel

• Atlas Bars chose Richpanel over Zendesk. Here's why.
• How Bicycle Warehouse Improved CX with a Lean Team after Moving from Zendesk‍
  

10. Tawk.to: 

Tawk.to is a customer service chat software that provides a helpdesk and live chat support. Here are some of its most notable features:

• It recognizes 45+ languages
• Is mobile-friendly, and has an iOS and Android app. 
• It is free. It allows unlimited agents on a single account. 
  

Unlike other Shopify live chat apps on this list, Tawk. to does not offer a good reporting feature, and hence users miss out on essential data. Apart from this, users report a lot of lag between offline messages and the email notifications received by agents. 

Why do we need to integrate Live chat with Shopify Store? [Benefits]

There are several benefits of integrating live chat software with your Shopify store. Much like the customer service staff in a retail store, it allows you to reach your customers while they are shopping, offering help or guidance to improve sales. 

Here are some Benefits of live chat that impacts an ecommerce business-

• It helps to Increase Conversions & Customer Retention.
• Frees Up Agents’ time
• Personalizes and Humanizes the Customer Experience
• Higher customer satisfaction and engagement rates
• Improve customer service efficiency

1. It helps to Increase Conversions & Customer Retention.

When customers can’t find answers in time, they tend to abandon the cart or reconsider their decisions. Shopify live chat makes it easy for customers to contact support agents and get assistance. It is a convenient way for eCommerce businesses to provide additional value. A live chat app reportedly improves conversion rates by 2.8x. The added convenience significantly improves customer experience, increasing customer retention rates. 

2. Frees Up Agents’ time

Apart from impacting customer experience, live chat makes your agents’ lives easier. It provides real-time insights into the customer journey and helps them understand customers' issues when shopping on your site. With an excellent live chat app for Shopify, you can reduce their workload with features like self service portals and centralized access to conversations and customer data. 

3. Personalizes and Humanizes the Customer Experience

Live chat tools often collect the data of website visitors. It allows agents to see what issues customers face in real-time. This helps them better understand the customer's needs and offer a personalized experience when they converse with potential customers.

Many ecommerce customer support software that provide live chat support also act as a CRM, giving agents insight into the customer’s history and helping them make more informed decisions. Learn more on Shopify CRM Features Integration

4. Higher customer satisfaction and engagement rates 

Live chat allows businesses to foster relationships with their customers. Live chat has one of the highest customer satisfaction scores ( 73% ) compared to other forms of communication. It is profoundly personalized and increases engagement rates for website visitors, guiding them when making decisions.

5. Improve Customer Service Efficiency

Live chat is less time-consuming and tedious for both customers and agents. Compared to emails and other traditional methods of communication, Live chat offers quicker resolutions, and it is much easier to keep track of conversations on live chat. With CSAT surveys and other measurable metrics, you can better understand the support team’s performance and improve efficiency. 

Recommended Read: Guide to Create an Ecommerce Customer Service Help desk

Comparisons of Best Shopify Live Chat Apps:

Related Read: Best Shopify Helpdesk Apps to Integrate

Enhance Customer Experience with Richpanel Shopify Live Chat App:

Most live chat apps intend to create a direct link between website visitors and support agents, making it easy for customers to get help. While this helps improve efficiency, Richpanel alleviates your customer support even further. It gives the customers the power and resources to address their problems without contacting customer support. 

Whether it is the extensive knowledge base or the ability to take actions such as edit orders, Richpanel aims to improve the customer and agent experience, helping operate your customer support like a well-oiled machine. 

Richpanel is the best live chat app for Shopify business owners as it provides deep integration with the platform and integrates with most of the popular eCommerce tools like Returnly and Klaviyo. Signup for Free Today

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