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How to Choose Live Chat Software: 6 Vendors Compared

Posted October 3, 2008 by Linda Bustos /

Just a heads up, in case you’re considering adding live chat to your site, or thinking of switching vendors — Tim Smith, ex-VP at Gartner and Avaya’s former Director of Competitive Intelligence has researched the ins and outs of live chat and prepared a white paper and upcoming webinar on the subject.

The Live Chat Market Overview compares 6 live chat software vendors suitable for medium to large scale implementations. The vendors are: BoldChat, InstantService, LivePerson, Talisma, Velaro and WhosOn. You can check out the white paper and sign up for the webinar at LiveChatComparison.com.

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Comments

  1. Nicky
    October 3rd, 2008

    Are any of these compatible on the iphone, windows mobile or blackberry? We at one point were using LivePerson (2 years ago) but didn’t like the fact that we are in such a technological era and it wasn’t compatible on windows mobile or blackberry. It would be nice to be on the go and take live chats on our phones…. just curious.

  2. Martin Rood
    October 3rd, 2008

    I am a co-inventor of Instant Service. They have been issued a patent on this method of technology in July, 2005. Several of the other companies are probably infringing on the technology. Something to keep in mind when chosing which company is “better”.

    Martin Rood
    206 713 1304

  3. David
    October 3rd, 2008

    Interesting data considering it was one of the vendors who commissioned the report.

  4. Linda Bustos
    October 5th, 2008

    @David,

    Ahh, you’re right, commissioned by Bravestorm which is BoldChat.

  5. Linda Bustos
    October 5th, 2008

    I don’t think the commissioning is an issue here, the data and comparison is thorough on a number of criteria and is not biased to BoldChat from what I can tell, Live Person, for example seems to fare well in this analysis.

  6. Linda Bustos
    October 5th, 2008

    @Nicky

    Not sure about mobile compatibility. I haven’t heard of any vendors doing this but it sure would be a nice offering to have.

  7. Einer
    October 5th, 2008

    There is another solution, and it’s free: google talk. With widgets, flash version, integration with google apps it’s perfect for small ecommerce.

  8. Ken
    October 6th, 2008

    So, we are supposed to believe a comparative study commissioned by the parent company of one of the vendors? I think we are smarter than that. Allowing LP to fair a bit better than BoldChat was a nice, yet transparent, strategy to give credibility to the study, attempting to give credence to the LP - BC parity which is suggested. BoldChat is a late arriver to a mature market, sacrificing true enterprise-level scalability and functionality to maintain a low cost. You are sleeping on the vendors in your study who scale to 500, 1,000 or even 5,000 users, geographically dispersed and able to integrate with workforce management systems and other legacy applications necessary to run chat as a mission critical tool.

  9. Jason Billingsley
    October 6th, 2008

    For everyone’s benefit… please stop the sock puppetry. If you are a vendor on the report and are not happy with the results, identify yourself as such. Transparency is the best practice in a community like ours. If not, we’ll out you. Every comment made on this post has been from someone with a vested interest in the results of the study.

  10. Esteban
    October 21st, 2008

    Jason is right people.

    Customer review:

    There is one important factor that Tim’s article doesn’t include. How often do you visit a website with this technology and you get the message “Live Chat Button unavailable, please leave a message”, indicating that no one is there to answer chats.

    Can you measure that Tim ?

    It’s not lucrative to have a receptionist taking chats all day long is it ?

    Having a live person available 24 hours day for assistance and engaging customers even when you’re not available is the key.

    I’ve tried Boldchat, Website Alive and Provide Support and for me Website Alive has cover all my needs and is on top of my list. Nevertheless I had the same problem with 24/7 support until I ran out with Nveevo a live chat service provider. They used my current software and work with it.

    They basically added a few customer care representatives to handle customer inquiries and capturing lead information all day long.

    Now I have full 24 hours support and Spanish Live Chat assistance as well and I no longer need to see the Unavailable Button no more…

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