Even if we have already chosen a type of live chat service for our site, we spent some time in order to see if there is a better option, therefore we tested three of them. We registered for all three, implemented the code on the site and eventually found a lot of differences. So we hope this information will be useful for other BC customers.
We selected only the services that are already integrated with Adobe BC:
There are no outstanding differences when it comes to design settings. You can customize colours and background to match the looks of your site. You can place your company logo and operator’s avatar and set your own greetings.
All of them support department separation, chat rating, chat history, knowledge base features, file transfer, some reports, transfer chats between agents and departments, proactive features, desktop and mobile agent apps, browser based agent. Most differences are under the hood. Here are the most important and interesting ones, from our point of view:
Triggered events by CRM data
This feature automatically creates actions based on specific criteria. It’s a great way to target high value leads. Usually all such services have proactive features based on internal conditions like: visited pages, country and city of visitor, the number of visits. But the most interesting things come from CRM: name, email and phone, birthday, orders quantity, industry, website etc. Of course, it is possible only for authorized users of the site.
- Live Chat - Full support of CRM fields, possible to set actions based on specific values. It's enough just to pass it from CRM to dashboard
- Zopim Chat - Supports tags, which could be CRM values, it's possible to set actions by tag’s values. It's enough just to pass it from CRM to dashboard
- JivoChat - Only one aggregated CRM field is enabled, where you are supposed to write a text with all the details. The information is not structured, making it impossible to set proactive events for that.
Visitor’s information before beginning to chat
We refer to visitor’s real time CRM data in the monitoring list, such as name, email, website, industry, status, number of orders etc. So it can be possible to send him promo messages manually.
- Live Chat - Displays information for all the users in the list
- Zopim Chat - Displays information for all the users in the list
- JivoChat - Makes it possible to see user’s information only after chat started
Third services integration
We have in mind the apps available for use with Chat service ranging from CRMs and e-commerce platforms to help desk software, social media integration and custom solutions
- Live Chat - Great list of apps including Dropbox, Facebook, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, MailChimp, Shopify, Zendesk, Adobe BC, etc
- Zopim Chat - Zendesk integration always included (as Zopim is a Zendesk company). Not so large list of integrated apps, including Salesforce, Jira, Shopify, SugarCRM, Adobe BC. Please note, it supports only one third-party integration for each plan
- JivoChat - No integration list, but it already has integration with Adobe BC
Rest API integration support
Representational state transfer (REST) - allows you to build your own custom integration and apps, export chat, agent and visitor data into third party systems.
Web-calls
Visitors can call the agent with just one click right from the website. Voice is transmitted over the Internet so the call is free for both parties
- Live Chat - Possible with Instant Messenger solution
- Zopim Chat - Possible with Uservoice integration
- JivoChat - Included for all paid plans
Typing insights
Agents can see the chat messages that visitors are typing in real time, which means the agent can begin typing his answer ahead of time, thus the response speed significantly increases.
- Live Chat - not supported
- Zopim Chat - not supported
- JivoChat - Included for all paid plans
Automatic translation on-the-fly
Multilingual real time conversation with automatic detection and translation into whichever language you want.
- Live Chat - supported
- Zopim Chat - supported
- JivoChat - not supported
Conclusion
All these services appear somehow equal, but are actually so different. Of course, the optimal choice will differ from one project to another and you will have to take into consideration which feature is more important to you than others in every specific situation.
Here's a summary of all the above-mentioned differences:
