4 best Shopify live chat apps that improve your store

For eCommerce businesses, it is not enough just to offer good products to attract buyers and enjoy skyrocketing profits. It is also vital to establish and maintain close communication with clients and allow them to feel that you care about them and about their needs. If you run a Shopify store, a live chat will be an irreplaceable helper for your support team.

What is a Shopify live chat?

A Shopify live chat app is a tool for communicating with users who reach out to your store. Such chats may come in different types. For customers, they may look like a simple widget or a chatbox. This feature may also be presented in the form of a button that will redirect users to an external app like WhatsApp.

Modern technologies let developers make such chats much more powerful than a simple conversation tool. It can also be enriched with AI and ML functionality for automating interaction with customers and detecting their sentiments.

The 4 best Shopify live chat apps

The introduction of live chats has changed the game for customer support service. They allow businesses to streamline their communication with clients, enhance retention, drive sales, and improve customer experience. However, to leverage all these opportunities, you need to rely on the best live chat for Shopify. Here’s a list of solutions that deserve your attention.

1. Chatfuel

This tool allows you to add a button to your Shopify store. Once users press on it, they can connect with your company via WhatsApp. This Shopify chat app can be linked to one WhatsApp number, but it allows multiple agents to get access to conversations.

With Chatfuel, you can enjoy the power of automated re-engagement messages. This app will send notifications to your customers to remind them about abandoned carts. Moreover, it will inform them about shipping status and order confirmations, as well as provide personalized recommendations and exclusive offers.

Chatfuel is integrated with ChatGPT, so you can transform your interaction with customers by organizing high-quality service 24/7.

Sign up for a free trial to experience firsthand how Chatfuel can supercharge the performance of your Shopify store.

2. JivoChat live chat

It is an all-in-one messenger for businesses. It can be used as a centralized hub for communication that takes place across different channels. With a built-in CRM, your team will be able to follow up and convert leads into successful sales. JivoChat’s analytics tools help you get insights into the performance of your online store and the organization of your sales funnel.

Jivo is often called the best free live chat app for Shopify. However, its free plan has limited functionality. If you want to use an AI assistant, make video calls, or connect JivoChat to WhatsApp, you will need to pay for such features.

3. Zendesk

While searching for the best chat app Shopify businesses often consider Zendesk. The software products provided by this company have won a reputation as reliable solutions for absolutely different industries. And eCommerce is not an exception. Zendesk Live Chat boasts very high popularity and many users believe that it deserves to be the best chat for Shopify.

It has all the functionality that is typical for many modern live chats. And it also offers a wide range of possibilities to better understand the needs of your target audience. For instance, it has convenient pre-chat forms for collecting customer information. Moreover, with its help, you can conduct surveys to analyze customer experience.

If you're using Zendesk Support Suite, you definitely should think about this option.

4. Shopify Inbox

If you are looking for the best free chat app for Shopify, it’s worth considering its native solution. Shopify Inbox is an extension of the free messaging solution Shopify Ping. And it lets your team communicate in real time with visitors of your online stores.

When users want to start a chat with you, they need to provide their email addresses or phone numbers. This data will be either matched with your existing clients or will be added to your Shopify Customer list.

This solution has a row of benefits that can make it the best Shopify live chat for you. However, it is also associated with some inconveniences. For example, to get access to its functionality, it is obligatory to use a desktop or mobile version of Shopify Ping. Moreover, beginners may find the interaction with it rather complicated.

Features of the best Shopify live chat app

Live chats may offer different functionalities (and that’s exactly one of the parameters that you should analyze when you are looking for the best Shopify chat app). However, there are some must-have features basically provided by many tools of this kind.

• real-time conversations

• history of interactions

• order management

• history of orders

• an agent console with a ticketing system

• AI-powered chatbots

• notifications

• personalized product recommendations

How to choose the right app for Shopify live chat

To make the right decision regarding the best live chat app Shopify business owners should pay attention to a row of factors:

• easiness of setup

• customization options

• compatibility with mobile devices

• good analytics features

• integration with other tools, like CRM or CDP systems

Given the variety of available options, it may be challenging to choose the best chat app for Shopify at once. That’s why it is always helpful to try out different variants to opt for the most appropriate one.

Watch the video below on connecting your Shopify store to WhatsApp, and follow the Chatfuel YouTube channel for more insights and tutorials.