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Customers today expect to have their requests or issues solved quickly whenever they reach out for assistance.
The chat solution for your customer service will determine how fast and reliable each support request is.
However, in the case of chatbot vs live chat, which one do you think is the best? Do your business needs require more genuine, empathetic interactions or instant automated responses? Or is it a crime to use them both in customer service?
Although chatbot vs live chat is almost the same, they can be used in various methods to offer support to customers.
In this blog, we’ll explore the key differences between chatbot and live chat features and factors companies should keep in mind while selecting the best tool for their business.
Chatbot vs. Live chat differences
Chatbot solution
Chatbots are scalable setups of automated customer service interactions that use machine learning and AI support.
They can communicate with consumers through text or voice, offer information simultaneously, answer repetitive questions, and even complete tasks around the clock.
Chatbots can be embedded in messaging applications, websites, or other social media platforms, making it easier for businesses to offer better customer support and engage with their customers.
Live chat solution
Live chat support is a real time communication tool that is available on a company’s website or through a dedicated chat application.
This allows clients to communicate with customer service teams through a text messaging system.
Live chat may be quickly improved by combining it with popular messaging apps and platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Businesses can use live chat software to give customers quick and more personalized responses.
Table summary of live chat vs chatbot
| Aspects | Chatbot | Live chat |
| Response time | Offers instant and auto-mated responses | Are human -driven, which may have slight delays |
| Availability | Available 24/7, ensuring that customers receive support at any time of the day or night | Available only within specific business hours, which may limit accessibility for customers in different time zones |
| Scalability | Handles multiple inquiries simultaneously without the risk of human error or fatigue | Support teams can handle a maximum of 3 to 4 customer issues at a time |
| Costs efficiency | Offer consistent responses | The consistency varies based on agent skills and experience |
| Learning and adaptability | Requires regular updates and AI training | Support agents adapt and learn in real time |
| Customer experience | Offer a uniform experience since it is automated. Lacks the human touch | Offers a more empathetic and personalized experience |
Key factors to consider when choosing live chat vs chatbot
Selecting a chatbot or live chat solution for your business is one critical decision for which you weigh numerous factors. This comprises of:
Handling complex customer issues
Understanding the type of inquiries your customers usually have helps set expectations for resolution times and customer satisfaction.
Live chat would likely be more appropriate if your business frequently encounters complex issues requiring detailed explanations and good understanding.
However, a chatbot could be sufficient if most questions are simple and repetitive and can be answered with programmed responses.
Final decision: Live chat wins over chatbot.
The volume of customer requests
The number of inquiries a customer makes is a huge determinant of your decision.
Basically, at the point when numerous customers are looking for answers to questions, that is where the chatbot does its magic.
They efficiently handle multiple queries without delays, hence offering on-the-spot responses to customers.
On the other hand, if the volume of tickets is low, support agents may be hired to offer more empathetic assistance through a live chat system without feeling there is too much workload.
Final decision: Chatbot overcomes live chat.
Availability requirements
Consider the hours during which your customers require support. Chatbots offer 24/7 customer service, ensuring customers find help anytime.
For the automated help desk, chatbots provide instant answers to customer issues.
A survey by Adam Connell shows that 64% of customers report that having chatbot support available 24 hours makes it the perfect choice.
Live chat support on the other hand mainly relies on the schedule or business hours of the support agents. In addition, it can also be 24 hours available by having support teams work on different shifts.
Final decision: Chatbot is better than live chat.
Cost efficiency
Assessing your resources and financial goals will help you determine the best option.
Chatbots can be cheap since they minimize the need for a large customer service team, especially for routine tasks.
The implementation of live chat entails incurring expenses on elements such as installation, onboarding training, and probably integrating some other software for the effective handling of customer interactions.
Final decision: Chatbot wins over live chat.
Customers experience expectations
The use of live chat support gives the feeling of the service being more human as it allows for more empathy and understanding, leading to better customer relations.
On the other hand, chatbots can respond promptly, but they are incapable of addressing any emotional or complicated issues.
Knowing what your customers expect may help you choose the right customer communication channel, which will, in turn, help raise customer satisfaction.
Final decision: Live chat is better than a chatbot.
Integration with other tools and applications
Try adding either chatbot or live chat solutions and your favorite tools or support systems before starting to offer assistance. Check out whether your operating system would gain a boost from each method of different operations in the productivity sector.
Nowadays, some chatbots can easily communicate with different platforms, which allows easier sharing of information.
Live chat systems also offer integration abilities, but ensuring compatibility with your current tools may require more effort.
Final decision: Both chatting solutions are equally impressive.
Maintenance and installation
Both chatbots and live chat solutions require the idea of maintenance and installation.
Assessing your maintenance and implementation resources can help you choose the appropriate option for sustainable long-term use.
To raise the effectiveness as well as the accuracy of chatbots it is necessary to constantly update their scripts and understand the algorithms.
Live chat involves training the agents and at times this may force the agents to modify their processes depending on customer feedback.
Final judgment: There is no better or worse of the chatbot vs live chat solutions.
Future scalability
Finally, make sure you align your long-term growth plans with the possible evolution of your customer service needs.
The great advantage of chatbots is their scalability, which means businesses can increase the number of inquiries handled without the need to regularly increase the number of support teams.
A chatbot can manage more customer interactions as your business grows while maintaining efficiency.
Even though it offers effective personalized customer service, live chat may call for the expansion of the workforce in order to accommodate growth.
Final judgment: Both live chat and chatbot are equally good.
Advantages and disadvantages of using a chatbot or live chat
The following are the pros and cons of live chat and chatbot solutions to consider before making a choice.
| Chatbot | |
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Chatbots always deliver assistance around the clock making it easier for consumers to find answers to their questions whenever they need them | A few percent of customers who prefer standard ways of engagement may find them uncomfortable |
| They can handle multiple inquiries at the same time, making them greater for businesses that experience high volumes of customer interactions | The installation might involve a lot of work in terms of maintenance and implementation |
| It is cost-effective, allowing businesses to save on service spending by automatically answering the most commonly asked questions while freeing up employees to focus on more complex issues | May not be adequate to handle complex topics or understand specific requests appropriately |
| Offers repetitive answers to common questions, minimizing human errors and allowing a uniform customer experience | |
| Live chat | |
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Agents can empathize with customers’ concerns and provide tailored assistance | Businesses must either manage the live chat feature themselves or employ other support teams to do it for them |
| Live chat is best for complex questions that need critical thinking. Support agents can better understand these issues than chatbots | Support teams must be empowered with product knowledge or service to provide good support |
| Engaging with customers in real time creates opportunities to build trust, which can encourage loyalty | It only works effectively with a few customers, and it’s challenging to communicate with many individuals at once |
| Support agents can provide offline responses by sending emails during offline hours | |
How live chat and chatbot can be used together
Both live chat and chatbots have pros and cons, but they can still work together to provide the best customer service experience possible.
Below are some of the ways in which the live chat and chatbot solutions can be used together to enhance customer service:
Provide immediate responses
A live chat solution allows support agents to work on complex issues and offer personalized and speedy responses to customer questions.
Chatbots can help with this by resolving simple, commonly asked questions or providing basic information any time of the day or night.
When it comes across complex issues, it can act smoothly and hand over the conversation to a live chat agent.
This approach helps in reducing the amount of waiting times while simultaneously ensuring that employees are available for complex challenges.
Ensure 24 /7 support availability
As customers need quick responses to their issues, ensure that support is available 24/7.
Businesses should make good use of chatbots to automate customer queries and give immediate answers not only during regular business hours but also at other times.
In cases where live chat support agents are unavailable, the chatbot can escalate complex issues to live agents for solutions during offline hours, providing more personalized and detailed support when available.
Using both live chat and chatbot ensures that customers can always receive assistance regardless of the time while allowing support teams to focus on more complex tasks.
Customize to address customer problems
Customers always prefer businesses that connect with them emotionally. If you both have live chat and chatbot solutions, use chatbots to gather useful information about a customer-facing problem.
After finding what the problem or issue is, you can utilize live chat support to help the live chat agent deliver more personalized customer service without the customer realizing it.
Manage ticket volume
The number of support requests can be overwhelming at times. To better handle these requests, start by employing chatbots to address many repetitive customer inquiries at the same time.
In addition, ensure you guide customers to the live chat session and allow them to get answers to their questions by providing links to resources like a knowledge base software, FAQs, and step-by-step guides. This will result in increased ticket deflection.
This will let consumers finally resolve their needs more quickly on their own, allowing support agents to concentrate on more difficult issues, especially during busy periods.
Offer seamless transition
When shifting from chatbot to live chat, make sure there is a smooth movement to remove any disruptions in communication.
For instance, if the customer’s request needs human interaction, live chat professionals will then take over efficiently from the chatbot.
This switch between live chat and chatbot ensures immediate and continuous customer service without any possible obstacles.
Track customer interactions
In order to monitor customer engagement, companies should use key performance indicators (KPIs), such as response time, resolution time, agent performance, and customer satisfaction levels.
With the chatbot tools, you can help generate real-time reports with the most common customer issues and offer insights into the causes, and also provide answers.
Once the support teams are available, the conversations can be transferred to a live agent. The agent can carry on with monitoring customer service KPIs, giving a comprehensive representation of the customer support operations.
This statistical method helps companies detect weak spots for course enhancement and rises the performance of both live chat and chatbot.
Running chat support on BoldDesk: Key advantages
If you are looking for the best customer service software that offers real-time interaction, enabling quick support between customers and the support team, BoldDesk has it.
Having a user-friendly live chat software that is easy to access from any device, anywhere. The platform enables customers to engage more efficiently with the support team and may even get their inquiries solved at any given time.
BoldDesk enables businesses to integrate live chat widgets on their online customer service, mobile apps, and social media channels.
This provides quick and real-time communication with the clients and ensures the high quality of their customer service.
To streamline workflows, you can integrate live chat with other tools such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. This lets users start conversations immediately with businesses when they want to learn information.
BoldDesk’s live chat solutions can receive support tickets from chat and provide customers with notifications on progress. This together with better customer support operations, enhances customer satisfaction.
The previous chat conversations can be sent to the customers through their emails by the employees in case of any need or the chat message can also be used for future reference.
Finally, the BoldDesk live chat solution supports offline ticket creation, allowing support teams to respond accurately to customer support issues even during offline hours.
Top live chat and chatbot providers
Having a comprehensive knowledge of what both live chat and chatbot are. The following are the best software you can use to provide instant support.
| Product | BoldDesk | LiveChat | LiveAgent | Zendesk | Freshdesk |
| Live chat support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chatbot | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Offline support | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
| Self-service | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email transcript | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Intelligent ticket routing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Chat preview | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Real-time visitor tracking | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Canned responses | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing starts @ | $25 for three agents/month | $20/agent billed annually | $9 /agent/month | $55 /agent billed annually | $15 /agent/month billed annually |
What is the best chatting solution for your business: Chatbot vs live chat?
The ongoing debate between chatbot vs live chat has yet to be resolved. Making the appropriate selection depends on the specifications of your company.
The measurability of live chat and chatbot comparison is realized. It is possible to create a project that combines live chat and chatbots through an assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of each.
Chatbots are quick to handle and provide immediate responses to some straightforward inquiries from customers. They can even provide solutions to issues during difficulties.
However, complicated problems that require human involvement are best left to live chat. The support teams establish a strong connection that finds the ideal balance of live chat and chatbot to provide the highest level of customer happiness.
Talk to us over a 30-minute live demo to see how BoldDesk can transform your customer service with simple and instant responses, or start a 15-day free trial today.
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