An easy workaround for a service is live chat support. Today, you will learn about online or virtual chat support. This live chat support guide helps you also learn about live text support or chat helpline.
Live chat support is something that most people associate with customer support because it’s fast, convenient, and personal. Below I’m breaking down what live chat support is, and I show you how to make your online chat support a success.
Let’s take a look at why virtual chat support is such a powerful tool for customer support teams. So, let’s dive into the article!
What is Live Chat Support?
Live chat support is real-time customer service through instant messaging platforms. It empowers businesses to provide immediate customer support and build happier customer relationships. Source: Wikipedia
Many IT company sites include a button that customers can click to connect with an agent. And with an agent, they can get live text support. Around 73% of customers find live chat the most acceptable form of communication with a company.
However, the live chat helpline allows agents to collect data from customers and later use it to understand the customer’s problem better.
In the digital age, competition, and buyer empowerment have become stronger than ever. Therefore, online chat support is mandatory for your business’s growth.
Why Live Chat Support is Important?
You may think that is why live text support is important. Well, because your customers love it. And for your customer’s sake, you have to have a live chat helpline.
In this digital world, virtual chat support becomes an integral part of a business. Companies are now having live text support on their website and also on social media like Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, etc.
So, here I am showing you why you need online chat support:
- Through virtual chat support, you can give real-time favor to customers and gain their trust.
- It can handle multiple chats simultaneously with live chat agents.
- You don’t need to hire multiple people for handling multi-channels because most of the time AI gives managed it.
- To stand out among your competitors, you need live text support.
- The live chat helpline helps you to increase conversions and sales.
- Through online chat support, you can build long-term customer relationships.
- It helps you to provide 24/7 customer service.
- It offers easy integration with social media messengers so you can start conversations with customers without the app.
Benefits of Live Chat Support
By offering instant support, you can improve your customer experience. Virtual chat support is the only to give instant support. Studies show that live text support is the preferred choice of many customers.
Live chat support is very convenient from both customer and business perspectives. Let’s see the benefits of the live chat helpline:
- It is highly accessible. You don’t need to hunt for support, they exactly know where to find you.
- Online chat support delivers useful context. It helps the support team to understand the problem and determine the solution.
- Virtual chat support boosts your customer service team’s productivity.
- It is convenient for your customers.
- It gathers invaluable information on your products/services.
- Through live test support, you can keep your customers coming back
- With the right training, your live chat helpline team can handle multiple tasks at once and improve efficiency as well as waiting times for your customers.
- Through online chat support, you build your brand trust with the customer.
- By adding virtual chat support, you can make it with a team of skilled sales agents.
- For international businesses, one of the main advantages of live text support is its multilingual capabilities.
- With live chat support, it’s easy to monitor sessions and transcripts, conduct quality control audits, and both support and supervise.
- It also helps you to support your digital transformation.
- Not only can you assess peak periods and usage trends, but you can also set agent chat schedules to meet demand through online chat support.
Types of Live Chat Support
The population of live text support is growing day by day. People now don’t like to visit customer care or don’t want to talk with a supportive person via phone calls. They want instant solutions. And that is the live chat helpline.
There are different types of chat support for your customer you can provide. Let’s see the types of online chat support:
- Social Media Chat Support
- Virtual Chat Support
- Web Chat Support
- Chatbot Support
Social Media Chat Support
In social media app development there is a function of chat support differs depending on the various channel. It gives businesses an opportunity to meet customers where they are and quickly answer their questions. Over 60% of customers think solving an issue fast is an important part of good support.
You can offer social media chat support through:
- Messenger
90% of online businesses use live chat support through Facebook messenger. They say that it’s easy to optimize. Source: Meta
Virtual Chat Support
Virtual chat support means you provide customer service via a chat app. It is one of the most common models of customer service chat.
To access virtual chats, customers need to click or tap on a chat bottom of a business’s website. Then, your customers can quickly connect to a live agent. Virtual chats support ends when customers exit the business’s website or chat screen.
Web Chat Support
Web chat support is a new phenomenon in the web app. It gives customers the option to experience the best of both worlds. Web chat support gives customers multiple options, helping you meet their expectations.
When customers click on the web chat button, a new window pops up. In it, they can choose to start browser-based web chats or share their phone numbers and social media to start SMS conversations.
Chatbot Support
It is similar to virtual chat. But the difference is instead of a human, there is an AI function that controls all conversations. Therefore, it is easy to provide twenty-four-hour service.
There are 6 types of chatbots. They are given below:
- Menu/button-based chatbot
- Linguistic based chatbot
- Keyword recognition-based chatbot
- Machine learning chatbot
- The hybrid model
- Voice bot
Future of Live Chat Support
The future of live text support increasingly will be driven by technological innovations. Generally, these new technologies will improve customer and agent experiences, along with business metrics. The live chat helpline increases customer retention rates by 5% and increases profits by 25%-95%. Source: Harvard Business School
The future of online chat support looks promising as it is becoming popular among businesses and customers alike. Here are a few ways that virtual chat support is expected to grow in the future:
- AI-powered chatbots are already being used to handle simple queries, but in the future, they are expected to become even more sophisticated and able to handle more complex inquiries.
- Live text support will become more personalized, with businesses using customer data to tailor their interactions and provide a more customized experience.
- Video and voice chat will become more prevalent in the live chat helpline. It provides customers with a more immersive and interactive experience.
- Online chat support will become part of a wider array of customer service channels, including social media, messaging apps, and more.
- Businesses will have access to more sophisticated analytics tools that will provide them with insights into customer behavior and help them improve their virtual chat support strategies.
- By the end of 2023, the live chat support market is estimated to be worth $987 million.
Live Chat Support Trends
The trends of live text support highlight its importance of it in today’s customer-centric world. It helps your businesses to stay ahead of the curve to provide excellent customer service.
Here are some trends in live chat helpline that businesses should be aware of:
Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots
AI-powered chatbots are becoming increasingly popular for handling simple customer queries, freeing up human agents to handle more complex inquiries. Also, it can give you a faster response than humans.
Multi-channel Integration
Online chat support is being integrated with other customer service channels. Such as social media and messaging apps, to provide customers with a seamless experience across multiple touchpoints.
Mobile Optimization
With an increasing number of customers using mobile devices to access virtual chat support. So, businesses are optimizing their live chat systems for mobile to provide a seamless experience. It is also user-friendly.
Personalization
Live text support is becoming more personalized, with businesses. It can use customers’ data to tailor their interactions and provide a more customized experience.
Video and Voice Chat
Video and voice chat are becoming increasingly popular in the live chat helpline. It can provide customers with a more immersive and interactive experience. You just need to give a voice command.
Increased Use of Analytics
Businesses are using analytics. It can help you to better understand customer behavior. Therefore you can improve their online chat support strategies.
Proactive Chat Invitations
Businesses are using proactive chat invitations to offer virtual chat support proactively. It is so useful for business websites.
Integration with CRM Systems
Live text support is being integrated with CRM systems to provide a more streamlined and efficient customer service experience.
Live Chat Support Skills
Your customers love the live chat helpline. Because they can solve their problem without going out. And also, it’s easy to communicate with an agent.
So, the agent should maintain the customer properly. Based on an agent’s behavior, a brand reputation can go down and also go up. Therefore, they should have some common skills.
The common skills of online chat support are given below:
- Apply strong communication skills
- Find the right tone of voice
- Keep things personal
- Understand your limits
- Set yourself up for success
- Know your priorities
- Take advantage of AI
- Lead with empathy
- Deliver fast responses
- Use follow-up feedback
Live Chat Support Features
For developing a live chat helpline, you have to maintain a lot of features and tools. It’s not only from the customer’s view but also from the agent’s view. Because they need to maintain all the support. Also, they collect customer data for a better customer experience.
You can also build an online chat support software if you know the tools. So, let’s see the virtual chat support tools:
- Proactive chat
- Visitor tracking
- Chat rating
- Chat routing
- Operator monitoring
- Chat monitoring
- Canned responses
- Mobile optimization
- Offline forms
- Smart triggers
- File transfers
- Queue times
- Reports and analytics
How to Provide Live Chat Support
Are you want to provide better virtual chat support? Then this part of the article is important for you.
In this post, I am sharing a structured workflow. So that you and your team can follow when providing live chat support.
The workflow of the live text support is given below:
- Be quick to accept the chat
- Chat with focus and a confident smile
- Greet the customer
- Identify the customer
- Read the chat subject carefully
- Treat complex queries as several smaller ones
- If you need time to research, first let the customer know
- Practice the solution in your system/test environment
- If you are not sure, talk to your colleagues
- Be in sympathy with the customer and start drafting your reply
- Keep your response simple and remember to have proofread
- Offer a detailed solution and cover any potential questions
- Share related documentation and encourage self-service
- End the chat on a high note
Conclusion
The live chat helpline can speed up that process by allowing for a more natural conversational style. Where you can find a skilled support agent who can ask the right questions at the right time. Also, give a quick direct a customer to where they need to be.
However, both customers and businesses love online chat support because it’s quick, efficient, and cost-effective. With a live chat helpline, customers can get answers to their questions in a minute. Along, the virtual chat will also make your team more productive, and deliver meaningful insights about your customers’ needs.
If you want to build live text support software then I hope you have become very helpful after reading this article.
Thank you!
Live Chat Support FAQs
Most of you may have questions in mind after reading this article. For your benefit, I am listing some common questions that people usually ask. If you still have some other questions please feel free to ask.
Here are the common questions:
What is the definition of live chat support?
Live chat support means the ability to conduct a chat between the client and the support team over the Internet. It also automates and speeds up the work of the support teams.
What are the modules of live chat support?
It allows customer interaction and handling via emoticons, video sharing as well as voice messages. A customer can start a conversation anytime.
What are the duties of live chat support?
The online chat agent may provide technical support, resolve customer service inquiries, or offer additional forms of real-time problem-solving.
What are the basic rules of chat interaction?
1. Don’t Keep Your Customer Waiting.
2. Good Grammar, Spelling, and Use Of Language.
3. Provide a Proper Introduction.
4. Be Friendly and Cheerful.
5. Always Be Honest.
6. Keep The Chat Positive.
7. Stay On Topic.
This page was last edited on 14 April 2025, at 3:21 pm
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