The Best Live Chat Tool for Agencies

Live chat has become an incredibly effective tool for connecting with prospects at the prime moment when they are on your website and looking for answers.

The standard goal for response time used to be one business day, now with live chat, it’s a matter of minutes.

We have tried a variety of live chat platforms and discuss the pros and cons of each and which is the best fit for agencies to get started with.

Whether live chat is something you are either currently doing and you are trying to become more effective with it, or something you have just begun to consider, this episode should be helpful!

Our Top 3 Live Chat Recommendations

Although we’ve tried a bunch, three live chat options stood out to us as the best to get started with for agencies. Let’s break down the pros and cons of each below.

HubSpot Messages 

At the time of recording this episode, HubSpot has just released their new HubSpot Messages product to accommodate live chat on your website. Like most new products, it has started a bit limited, but we anticipate more customization and features coming down the pipeline in the future.

The Pros:

• If you’re already paying for HubSpot Sales Pro, HubSpot Messages is already included in that cost.
• Easily integrates into your workflow if you are a HubSpot CRM user. 
• Keeps live chat right inside your CRM if you are a HubSpot CRM user, which is super convenient. 

The Cons:

• You have to keep your browser or email open all day to know when new live chat messages come through.
• Limitations on customization. Options like only sending a message after “x” amount of seconds, or only to contacts that have come from “x” page are not currently available.
• If you do not have HubSpot Sales Pro you cannot purchase Messages separately.  

Drift 

Drift is largely our number one recommended live chat tool for agencies to start with. The company and support are great and super responsive. They develop quickly and have come a long way within the last year we have used their product. 

The Pros:

• Great user interface for managing messages.
• Advanced customization for tailoring specific messages for different pages and prospects.
• Slick mobile app to help with chat on the go.
• A growing list of integrations, including a great Slack integration to make sure you never miss a live chat opportunity.

The Cons:

• Cost. Drift certainly isn’t the cheapest option (although they do have a limited free plan) and realistically you are going to be spending at least $50/month to use it. That’s the same price you would pay per team member for HubSpot Sales Pro for the month. You do get 5 “seats” with that, but it’s still a potentially expensive option depending on how many seats and contacts you need.

Intercom

Intercom is our current go-to for ZenPilot. Reason being, it’s great not just for live chatting with prospects, but for managing support for our DoInbound platform (update: no longer available for new customers). It seems that Intercom is more geared toward SaaS companies, however, it could certainly work for an agency as well.

The Pros:

• It’s been around for a while, and it’s clean interface and feature list shows it.
• Great integrations with other platforms, including that Slack integration we love.
• Great team segmenting capabilities to keep “growth” and “support” separate and easy to manage.
• Great pool of emojis and GIFs to choose from to make communication more personal and fun.
• Likely less expensive than Drift, although it does depend on how you’re using it so be sure to look at each of their pricing pages carefully.

The Cons:

• Not as many custom properties to customize messages with as Drift, but more than HubSpot Messages.
• Integration with HubSpot CRM doesn’t allow you to see conversations right in the contact profile.

And just for a little bonus, we thought we would share an option we haven’t tried, but really like the concept of, and that’s Slaask. If you use Slack all-day, every-day, it’s worth checking out!

Have a live chat tool you really like? Let us know!