Online chat with an operator is an effective tool for communicating with customers that expands the capabilities of technical support. In addition, this feature on the site increases the potential number of loyal users of the business product. If a person has questions when studying the offer, he does not always have the desire or ability to call a consultant - for example, he simply does not like to talk on the phone or looks at the company's website in public transport. In many cases, the ability to write to the messenger becomes decisive, and the client chooses among competitors the one who has prompt chat support and can get information in a few minutes.
Today we will talk about good Ukrainian and Western services, with the help of which you can install online chat on the site and replace Russian platforms with them, if you have used them to date.
In the process of writing this article, it became clear how few services there are for creating online chats that we can use without resorting to Russian developments.
Among the services for correspondence with clients that we studied, the majority of them concern the creation of chatbots exclusively, others have only an English version (we wrote letters to them with a request to create a Ukrainian one). Therefore, the choice of services with live chats is currently somewhat limited.
So we are giving a hint to our IT users that this niche is currently not occupied by many competitors and is waiting for a Ukrainian product.
But it is also worth noting that many CRMs have an online chat option, so this need can be bypassed if you use one of these systems for business. To choose the most convenient CRM, read the review on our blog .
If you only need a chat widget for your purpose, learn more about the services we will consider in this article.
Gerabot
Gerabot is a chat tool made by a Ukrainian company for websites. This company also creates chatbots for popular instant messengers like Telegram, Viber, FB Messenger, and Instagram.
The Gerabot website chat comes with various tools that can boost website conversion rates by over 50% when integrated into the chat. These tools include:
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Lead generation forms with customizable fields.
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A chatbot for automated responses.
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Adding links to different communication channels with the company.
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Quick launching of bot scripts.
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Calls to action for individual pages or the entire site.
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FAQs or a knowledge base for users.
Gerabot is a website chat and customer interaction system that works with popular instant messengers and can also send email and SMS messages to customers. The control system is user-friendly, and there are plenty of video and text materials available to help you understand how to use it.
The Gerabot chat management system offers a wide range of features, such as:
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Setting up chatbot scripts.
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Keeping a history of chat conversations.
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Connecting operators to the chat, providing quick responses and scripts.
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Using filters and detailed analytics for chat operators.
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Utilizing a CRM system for managing leads and clients.
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Combining all communication options with clients in one system.
You can fully customize the widget to match your website's needs, including changing the colors, fonts, and widget text.
One advantage of Gerabot is that the cost of using the widget isn't based on the number of operators connected to the system. Instead, it depends solely on the number of requests received through the widget on your site, like operator connections or bot launches. The minimum chat rate starts at $18 per month for less than 1000 connections per month.
HelpCrunch
HelpCrunch is a service created in Ukraine that offers a whole arsenal of communication channels with customers to increase sales.
Among the tools are the following:
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Widget for online chat,
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chat bots,
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Poppa,
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Knowledge base.
It is worth focusing separately on the knowledge base. This is a very convenient tool for informing customers — for example, for introverts who contact a "live" operator only as a last resort. In addition, it significantly relieves the burden on technical support. You can create 10-15 short articles with answers to the most common questions, but if you already have a knowledge base, specialists will help you transfer it from other services. You can also turn off the live chat option and leave only the section with answers.
Now, in connection with the war, HelpCrunch offers very loyal conditions for Ukrainian businesses . If you log in from a Ukrainian IP address, the system issues a special offer: the first three months are free, and then at reduced rates. For other countries, the tariffs are slightly higher.
For customers switching from Russian services, all data is transferred free of charge. In addition, Russian users will no longer be able to download the company's applications in Google Play and the App Store, and when entering from Russian IP addresses, they will see a stub with a call to stop the war.
The company has a very interesting style of communication with clients, in which the spirit of the Carpathian Mountains and Ukrainian friendliness is felt. After registration, the client receives several letters with really useful instructions for working with the service.
The chat widget can be customized according to several parameters:
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Styling — choose chat color, background, upload logo.
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Localization - choose the appropriate languages for the different regions in which your business operates (if your technical support speaks them).
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Naming — edit the name of the company in the chat window (the nickname you specified during registration is automatically pulled).
Among the possibilities are chat forms for collecting leads, as well as automatic greetings: for example, if the user has been on the page for more than 30 seconds, the message "How can I help you?" is highlighted.
New letters arrive in the "Inbox" section of the administrator's account, and notifications are also sent to the registered mail. Another useful option is the integration of the work mailbox with the HelpCrunch account, thanks to which incoming emails appear in the same window as messages from the online chat.
Read also: "SPAM: why letters end up there and how to avoid it."
In general, the service is quite convenient and understandable, and detailed instruction from the team allows you to start work easily and quickly.
LiveChat
LiveChat is a software company focused on customer support through online chats and chatbots. It has been working since 2002, has offices in Poland and the USA.
The platform offers the following features:
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Online chat with individual design and photos of managers;
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The entire history of previous calls is displayed in one chat;
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Integration with CRM that you already have installed;
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Creation of chat bots;
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The ability to see what the client is typing to quickly find the answer;
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Receiving messages from messengers to the LiveChat application;
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The client can contact support directly from the order form and immediately receive advice;
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Applications for all popular operating systems allow you to work from smartphones, iPhones and tablets.
In the account of the super administrator, you can see reports on the effectiveness of the work of each manager, receive an assessment after the completion of each chat, and create graphs of customer satisfaction from feedback.
The online chat module is easily installed through Google Tag Manager, manually (copy and paste the code) or with the help of plugins for all common CMS ( Wordpress , Joomla , Drupal and others).
The marketplace has a whole list of external services available for integration with platform services — task managers , a platform for creating a knowledge base, a translator, a booking service, Zoom for video communication directly from the chat, and much more.
In connection with the war, LiveChat is actively supporting Ukraine, in particular offering a free license to its products for public organizations and volunteers, as well as assistance in creating websites for public organizations. What's more, LiveChat allocated 1 million zlotys for a Polish volunteer organization that helps Ukrainians affected by Russian aggression.
Pricing has two criteria for calculating the tariff — the number of operators and the set of services that will be provided according to the tariff. Accordingly, the larger the arsenal, the higher the price.
Currently, you can use the English or Russian version of the site. The admin itself is entirely in English, but you can choose the Ukrainian language for the online chat widget. We wrote a letter to the company asking if they could translate the service into Ukrainian. The answer states (translated from English):
"Unfortunately, our application is only in English. Even if the website was in Ukrainian, I'm afraid that a person who doesn't speak English at all might have problems understanding the application itself."
However, for many Ukrainian digital agency specialists and business representatives, the use of English-language software will no longer pose significant problems.
Tawk.to
Tawk.to is an American service that has been around since 2013, the main office is in Las Vegas, there are also branches in Europe, Australia and the Philippines. Provides features such as live chat with an operator, a separate chat page (if you don't have your own site) and knowledge base settings.
An interesting fact is that all these services are provided free of charge forever. How does the platform make money if all the tools are free? There are two paid options for monetization. First, every chat created in Tawk.to has the name of the service at the bottom with a corresponding link, that is, the client is actually distributing advertisements. If you want to remove the link to the site, you have to pay for it. Secondly, the company provides services for hiring operators — an hour of work costs $ 1. The description of the offer states that the operators of the service speak many languages, but currently only English is available.
However, we are interested in online chat, and you can integrate it into your site yourself. To do this, you need to copy the code of the widget or install a plugin for the CMS. All that remains is to add your operators to the admin and work, receiving not only all messages in one window, but also statistics on them.
The admin panel has several language versions. The most available for us are English and Russian, unfortunately, there is no Ukrainian.
KwizBot
KwizBot is a Ukrainian platform that allows you to create an online chat with an operator or construct chat bots.
The service provides a full-fledged widget for communicating with customers, which can be customized to match the style of your site. Moreover, there are various modifications of the chat. The first, standard — a window with correspondence in the corner of the screen. Next come full-screen chat and inline chat (it can be embedded, for example, in an article). And the icing on the cake is an animated character waving from the bottom right corner of the page, offering to enter into a conversation with him. If you click on it, a dialog opens.
In the admin panel, you can combine various communication channels (live online chat, Viber, FB, Telegram), create chatbots using a simple designer, send one message to several messengers at once.
Thanks to the client's cards, which contain all the data about the ice and the history of interaction with it, the operator can identify the user as soon as he writes. And the reporting system allows you to track the movement of leads through the sales funnel and analyze the effectiveness of the operator team. In addition, the service offers the option of sending files in messages and a payment widget directly in the chat.
It is a modern marketing communications platform that integrates with CRM and ERP and products that have APIs. KwizBot supports several language versions, and the data is hosted on European servers , which provides additional protection.
But this service is designed mostly for medium and large businesses, so the prices for its services may not be suitable for everyone. For example, the lowest plan costs $3,000 per year ($250 per month).
At the same time, for this $3,000 per year, you can connect up to 20 operators and one chatbot. If compared to other services, HelpCrunch provides unlimited operators and widgets for only $99 per month, while LiveChat asks for $19 per agent on a monthly basis (at the lowest rate). But on the other hand, when connecting the same 20 managers, the LiveChat service is already more expensive than KwizBot. Therefore, it all depends on what your business needs are and how many operators you need to connect.
If you represent a small company with several specialists in the support chat, it may be better to consider services that have tariffs designed for small businesses, or even think about Tawk.to, which provides online chat to the site for free.
In this review, we got to know the companies whose main services are live chats and chatbots. These two directions are interconnected, so they mostly meet together — although there are a number of services that provide chatbots separately. All the mentioned companies are very different, so we believe that among them there is an opportunity to choose a service provider that will suit you.
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