Subject areaChannels and tools
Live chat is the real-time written conversation window between a website visitor and a person at the company.
It serves support and sales at the moment the customer has a doubt, without making them switch channel.
Unlike a chatbot (a program that answers on its own), there is an agent on the other side, although an automated system often collects the first details and then hands the conversation over to a person. That is why live chat reduces friction at the points of the journey where customers are likely to give up, and it is a tool of customer care and conversational commerce.
An example
The case below is constructed, because the term does not appear in the articles yet. An industrial equipment manufacturer opens a live chat on its spare parts pages: a customer who cannot find the right code asks a technician while still on the site, instead of closing the page and calling the next day.
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Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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