When customer experience directors float the idea of investing more heavily in live chat for customer service, it’s not uncommon for them to get pushback. One of the biggest motivations for such reticence is uncertainty over whether anyone will actually want to use such support channels—and whether investing in them will ultimately prove worth it.
An additional headwind comes from the fact that many CX directors are laboring under the misapprehension that they need an elaborate plan to push customers into a new channel. However, one thing we consistently hear from our enterprise customers is that it’s surprising how customers naturally start using a new channel when they realize it exists. To borrow a famous phrase from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Or, to paraphrase a bit, “If you build it (and make it easy for them to engage with you), they will come.” You don’t have to create a process that diverts them to the new channel.
Why is Live Chat Important for Contact Centers?
60% of customers indicate that they’re more likely to visit a website again if it has live chat for customer service, and a few more (63%) say that a live chat widget will increase their willingness to make a purchase.
But that still leaves the question of how live chat stacks up against other possible communication channels. Well, nearly three-quarters (73%) are more comfortable using live chat for customer service issues than email or phone—and a high fraction (61%) are especially annoyed by the prospect of being put on hold.
If this isn’t enough, there are customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores to think about as well. This is perhaps the strongest data point in support of customer live chat, as 87% of customers give a positive rating to their live chat conversations.
Agents also prefer live chat over the phone because regularly dealing with angry and upset customers via phone can take an emotional toll. Live chat contributes to agent job retention—a big, expensive issue that many CX leaders are constantly trying to grapple with.
The data is clear, and it makes sense for all the reasons we’ve discussed: Live chat for customer service shows every indication of being a worthwhile communication channel, both now and in the future.
Benefits of Live Chat Support Services
Real-Time Support
When customers need help, they don’t want to wait. Live chat support services provide instant solutions, cutting down resolution times and getting customers the answers they need—fast. No more sitting on hold or waiting hours for an email response. Whether it’s a quick question about a product or an issue with an order, live chat keeps the process smooth and stress-free. And when customers get quick answers, they stick around. Faster replies lead to higher satisfaction, increased trust, and more repeat business. The quicker the response, the better the experience—and that’s a win for both customers and businesses.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
Today’s customers expect immediate support, and live chat support services deliver exactly that. Instant responses mean they don’t have to wait, call, or go searching for answers—help is right there when they need it. This level of convenience keeps frustration low and satisfaction high. Beyond just speed, a great chat experience builds trust. When customers know they can rely on your support team for quick, clear, and helpful answers, they feel confident in your brand. That confidence translates into loyalty, repeat purchases, and positive word-of-mouth—turning a one-time buyer into a long-term customer.
Efficiency
Live chat isn’t just better for customers—it’s a game-changer for support teams too. Unlike phone calls, where agents can only help one person at a time, live chat lets them handle multiple conversations at once. That means fewer bottlenecks, faster resolutions, and better overall efficiency. Plus, fewer phone calls = lower costs. With live chat, businesses can reduce phone expenses, optimize staffing, and minimize hold times—all without sacrificing customer experience. It’s a smarter way to support customers, making teams more productive while keeping costs in check. More efficiency for your team, better service for your customers—everyone wins.
Omnichannel Integration
Customers don’t just stick to one channel—they bounce between email, social media, SMS, and your website. Live chat support services integrate seamlessly into this mix, creating a unified experience. Whether a customer starts a conversation on social media and follows up via chat or asks a question through SMS, they get the same consistent service. Even better, integrating chat across channels keeps all customer interactions in one place, so your team has a complete history of past conversations. That means no more repeating issues, fewer dropped interactions, and a smoother customer journey from start to finish.
Live Chat Support Best Practices
Prompt Response Times
Speed matters when it comes to live chat support services. The faster you respond, the more valued customers feel—and that leads to higher satisfaction and loyalty. Nobody likes waiting, especially when they have a quick question standing between them and a purchase. A prompt answer at checkout can eliminate doubts and reduce cart abandonment before it happens. Whether a customer is asking about shipping costs, return policies, or product details, meeting them in the moment with real-time support keeps them engaged. The result is more completed sales, fewer lost opportunities, and a reputation for being responsive and customer-focused.
Professional Communication
Live chat is fast, but that doesn’t mean it should feel rushed. A professional and friendly tone makes all the difference in building trust and keeping conversations productive. Customers want clear, concise, and helpful responses—not robotic scripts or vague answers. Miscommunication can create frustration, so keep things simple, polite, and to the point. Use proper grammar, avoid jargon, and personalize interactions with the customer’s name. A great chat experience feels like talking to a knowledgeable friend—someone who understands the problem and knows exactly how to help. The smoother the conversation, the more confident customers feel about your brand.
24/7 Availability
Customers shop on their own time—whether that’s during a lunch break, late at night, or halfway across the world. Offering live chat support services 24/7 means you’re always there when they need help. This is especially valuable for global businesses, ensuring customers in different time zones get real-time answers instead of waiting for office hours. Plus, round-the-clock availability isn’t just about support—it’s a sales booster too. A shopper with a question at 2 AM might just leave if they can’t get an answer. But if live chat is available? That hesitation disappears, and the sale happens.
6 Tips for Encouraging Customers to Use Live Chat
1. Make Sure People Know You have Live Chat Services
The first (and probably easiest) way to get more customers to use your live chat is to take every step possible to make sure they know it’s something you offer. You can get a lot of mileage out of promoting live chat through your normal marketing channels–a mention on your support page, on your social feeds, and at the bottom of your order confirmation emails, for example.
First, use your IVR to move callers from phone to messaging. You can also mention that you support live chat for customer service during the phone hold message. We noted above that people tend to hate being put on hold. You can use that to your advantage by offering them the more attractive alternative of hopping onto a digital messaging channel instead—including WhatsApp, Apple Messages for Business, and SMS. For example, this might sound as simple as: “Press 2 to chat with an agent over SMS text messaging, or get faster support over live web chat on our website.”
From your perspective, an added benefit is that your agents can easily shuffle between several different live chat conversations, whereas that isn’t possible on the phone. This means faster resolutions, a higher volume of questions answered, and more satisfaction all the way around.
Similarly, include plenty of links to live chat when communicating with your customers. After they make a purchase, for example, you could include a message suggesting they utilize live chat to resolve any questions they have. If you’re sending them other emails, that’s a good place to highlight live chat as well. Don’t neglect hero pages and product pages; being able to answer questions while talking directly to current and future buyers is a great way to boost sales.
2. Minimize the Hassle of Using Live Chat
One of the better ways of boosting engagement with any feature, including live chat, is to make it as pain-free as possible.
Take contact forms, for example, which can speed up time to resolution by organizing all the basic information a service agent needs. This is great when a customer has a complex issue, but if they only have a quick question, filling out even a simple contact form may be onerous enough to prevent them from asking it.
There’s a bit of a balancing act here, but, in general, the fewer fields a contact form has, the more likely someone is to fill it out.
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has made it possible to use an AI agent to collect information about customers’ specific orders or requests. When such an agent detects that a request is complex and needs human attention, it can ask for the necessary information to pass along to an agent. This turns the traditional contact form into a conversation, placing it further along in the customer service journey so only those customers who need to fill it out will have to use it.
Though they may seem minor in isolation, there’s an important truth here: if you want to get more people to use your live chat for customer service, make it easy and pain-free for them to do so. Every additional second of searching or fiddling means another lost opportunity.
3. Personalize Your Chat
Another way to make live chat for customer service more attractive is to personalize your interactions. Personalization can be anything from including an agent’s name and picture in the chat interface displayed on your webpage to leveraging an LLM to craft a whole bespoke context for each conversation.
For our purposes, the two big categories of personalization are brand-specific personalization and customer-specific personalization. Let’s discuss each.
Brand-specific personalization
For the former, marketing and contact teams should collaborate to craft notifications, greetings, etc., to fit their brand’s personality. Chat icons often feature an introductory message such as “How can I help you?” to let browsers know their questions are welcome. This is a place for you to set the tone for the rest of a conversation, and such friendly wording can encourage people to take the next step and type out a message.
More broadly, these departments should also develop a general tone of voice for their service agents. While there may be some scripted language in customer service interactions, most customers expect human support specialists to act like humans. And, since every request or concern is a little different, agents often need to change what they say or how they say it.
Setting rules for tone of voice and word choice ensure the messaging experience is consistent no matter which agent helps a customer or what the conversation is about.
Customer-specific personalization
Customer-specific personalization, which might involve something as simple as using their name, or extend to drawing from their purchase history to include the specifics of the order they’re asking about.
Among the many things that today’s LLMs excel at is personalization. Machine learning has long been used to personalize recommendations (think: Netflix learning what kinds of shows you like), but when LLMs are turbo-charged with a technique like retrieval-augmented generation (which allows them to use validated data sources to inform their replies to questions), the results can be astonishing.
Machine-based personalization and retrieval-augmented generation are both big subjects, and you can read through the links for more context. But the high-level takeaway is that, together, they facilitate the creation of a seamless and highly personalized experience across your communication channels using the latest advances in AI. Customers will feel more comfortable using your live chat feature, and will grow to feel a connection with your brand over time.
4. Include Privacy and Data Usage Messages
By taking privacy very seriously, you can distinguish yourself and thereby build trust. Customers visiting your website want an assurance that you will take every precaution with their private information, and this can be provided through easy-to-understand data privacy policies and customizable cookie preferences.
Live messaging tools can add a wrinkle because they are often powered by third-party software. Customer service messaging can also require a lot of personal information, making some users hesitant to use these tools.
You can quell these concerns by elucidating how you handle private customer data. When a message like this appears at the start of a new chat, is always accessible via the header, or persists in your chat menu, customers can see how their data is safeguarded and feel secure while entering personal details.
5. Use Rich Messages
Smartphones have become a central hub for browsing the internet, shopping, socializing, and managing daily activities. As text messaging gradually supplemented most of our other ways of communicating, it became obvious that an upgrade was needed.
This led to the development of rich messaging applications and protocols such as Apple Messages for Business and WhatsApp, which use Rich Communication Services (RCS). RCS features enhancements like buttons, quick replies, and carousel cards—all designed to make interactions easier and faster for the customer.
Using rich messaging in live chat with customers will likely help boost engagement. Customers are accustomed to seeing emojis now, and you can include them as a way of humanizing and personalizing your interactions. There might be contexts in which they need to see or even send graphics or images, which is very difficult with the old Short Messaging Service (SMS).
In the final analysis, rich messaging offers another powerful opportunity to create the kind of seamless experience that makes interacting with your support enjoyable and productive.
6. Separating Chat and Agent Availability
Once upon a time, ‘chat availability’ simply meant the same thing as ‘agent availability,’ but today’s language models are rapidly becoming capable enough to resolve a wide variety of issues on their own. In fact, one of the major selling points of AI agents is that they provide round-the-clock service because they don’t need to eat, sleep, or take bathroom breaks.
This doesn’t mean that they can be left totally alone, of course. Humans still need to monitor their interactions to make sure they’re not being rude or hallucinating false information. But this is also something that becomes much easier when you pair with an industry-leading conversational AI for CX platform that has robust safeguards, monitoring tools, and the ability to switch between different underlying models (in case one starts to act up).
Having said that, there are still a wide variety of tasks for which a living agent is still the best choice. For this reason, many companies have specific time windows when live chat for customer service is available. When it’s not, some choose to let customers know when live chat is an option by communicating the next availability window.
Employing these two strategies means that your ability to service customers is decoupled from operational constraints of agent availability, and you are always ready to seize the opportunity to serve customers when they are eager to engage with your brand
Creating Greater CX Outcomes with Live Web Chat is Just the Start.
Live web chat with customers remains an excellent way to resolve issues while building trust and boosting the overall customer experience. The best strategies for increasing engagement with your live chat is to make sure people know it’s an option, make it easy to use, personalize interactions where possible—and make the most out of AI to automatically resolve routine inquiries while filling in live agent availability gaps.
If you’re interested in taking additional steps to resolve common customer service pain points, check out our ebook on the subject. It features a number of straightforward, actionable strategies to help you keep your customers as happy as possible!
