Everyone is at a different place in their entrepreneurial journey. But, each entrepreneur reaches a point when they need to expand their customer service capabilities. This leads many of them to seek the best live chat for small business. There are plenty of options to choose from, but you want the offering that’s right for your company.
In the following guide, we’ll go over some of the most popular options for website live chat services. Informed entrepreneurs make better decisions for their brands. By the end of this guide, we hope you’ll be at that point.
Top 5 Best Live Chat for Small Business
There’s certainly plenty to discuss for each of these services. This discussion could range from Better Business Bureau ratings to available promotions. Instead of focusing on everything, though, the following sections will center on where these offerings differ.
Abby Connect
Abby Connect stands out as one of the more affordable and effective options for live chat answering services. Between transparent pricing (that’s right, no hidden fees like many other services) and free technical implementation, it appeals to many small business owners. And the above-and-beyond benefits don’t stop there. Here are just a few of the features that makes Abby Connect one of the best live chat for small business services available:
- Proactive chat
- Multilingual support
- Email transcripts
- Pre- and post-chat surveys
- True SMS integration
- Scheduling
- Chat triggers
- Visual customization
- 24/7/365 availability
- Chat-to-Call
Because of its many offerings and benefits at a comfortable price, Abby Connect is beginning to be regarded as the best live chat for small business. It would be unfair to stop here, so we analyzed the other website live chat services so you can better understand their strengths and weaknesses.
Ruby
Ruby is like Abby Connect in a variety of ways. The pricing at both companies is very similar — although Ruby has a $90 charge for self chat service. There are some major areas, however, where some feel Ruby drops the ball:
- No free trial (you don’t know what you get until you buy it)
- Multilingual support confined to Spanish
- No pre- or post-chat surveys
- No option for chatbots
- No true SMS integration
Ruby certainly stands out for its affordable price. Unfortunately, these savings sometimes come at the detriment of important services. The best website chat service should always meet your company’s needs — and on more than just pricing.
Money Penny
A lack of service bundle options stands out as one of the biggest disadvantages of Money Penny. They offer lower prices than many options, but certain services (e.g., chatbots) will cost you extra. You’ll also pay additional fees for 24/7 coverage, additional logins, sub-widgets, and evening/weekend coverage.
The following issues also detract from their overall offerings:
- No multilingual support
- No advanced reporting
- No true SMS integration
- No pre- or post-chat surveys
- No Chat-to-Call
Money Penny may be cheaper than many of the best website chat services, but that savings will likely affect your ability to serve customers.
Smith.ai
Smith.ai is seemingly another affordable option, but that’s only if you don’t look at added fees. Their setup fee is $600 out of the gate, and you’ll pay extra for integrations and custom plans. And while they offer outstanding features like chat triggers and proactive chat, they fail to provide advanced reporting, pre-chat surveys, post-chat surveys, true SMS integration, and other necessities.
AnswerForce
Not offering a trial period scares some people away from AnswerForce. If they delved into the company’s offerings, though, they might come to the same conclusion. This is because their clients pay by the minute rather than chat aggregate.
This means an especially chatty client could cost you more. The offerings simply don’t live up to the price when you add in the lack of multilingual support, advanced reporting, Chat-to-Call, pre-post chat surveys, and chatbots.
What’s the Best Live Chat for Small Business?
There’s no shortage of live chat services available for small businesses. Unfortunately, they’re not all created equally. While many of the offerings discussed in this guide provide similar features, there are distinct areas where each brand differs. That’s why it’s so important to do your homework before choosing the best live chat for small business.
When you review all your options, we’re certain you’ll see the superiority of Abby Connect. Even when competitors offer similar features, it’s typically at a disadvantage to their clients. This is how Abby Connect stands out:
- All features included in every plan: Abby Connect’s online chat for websites is all-inclusive. You get each of our services. Unfortunately, other live chat providers require add-on charges or a custom plan.
- No hidden fees: What you see with Abby Connect is what you get. We’re the only service with no hidden fees. While you’ll see added costs for integrations with Smith.ai and evening/weekend services at Money Penny, we don’t think it’s okay to surprise clients with costs.
- No setup fee: There should be no hurdles when you’re ready to get started. Some of our competitors have hefty setup fees. At Abby Connect, there’s no such fee at launch.
- Installation specialist: Technical implementation is often a burden for small companies. That’s why Abby Connect provides an installation specialist to handle this for you — we’re one of the few services that offer this.
This is just a small sampling of the reasons we believe you’ll agree Abby Connect is the best live chat for small business. In an in-depth comparison, there simply is no comparison.
Experience Abby Connect’s 14 Day Free Trial
Live chat services are the perfect way to improve what your company offers clients and prospects. It’s important to research all your options, but we fully believe Abby Connect is the best solution for live chat services as well as answering services for small businesses. Of course, we don’t expect you to take our word for it.
Sign up today for Abby Connect’s Live Chat Free Trial. You’ll have two weeks to see what online chat for websites can offer your brand — and there’s no obligation to continue after that point. In 14 days, we believe you’ll discover our service is right for you.
