LiveAgent Live Chat Software Review: Features And Pricing

Is your customer service complaining about long queues of customers waiting for their queries to be answered? Is your company’s customer service team facing fatigue and health issues due to the consistent ringing of phones? If yes, we have a handy solution, LiveAgent live chat software.

You might have come across live chat online business management systems that allow a gateway to your customers to resolve queries online. Sometimes, the agent is not available, and sometimes the customer loses interest. This is because either the chat support systems are disorganized to manage queries properly or overloaded to the extent that agents don’t bother to answer. The live agent brings both problems to its attention. 

Before starting with the review, let’s see how this LiveAgent software works. 

What is LiveAgent?

LiveAgent helps to integrate customers with specific needs to a company that is selling a product or service. LiveAgent helps provide prompt response and aids in efficient and flexible engagement with the customer. It has a very organized and integrated ticketing system that allows tracking every query and maintaining a workflow by monitoring each agent’s time. It also provides the distribution of workload to agents through automated distribution. The software manages tickets through a universal inbox which receives queries from emails, chat, contact forms, phone, etc. and assigns a reference number to a ticket. 

The platform has a myriad of features that help organize your agents. The first is a pre-chat form to start a live chat with an agent. These pre-chat forms help the agent to accumulate information about the customer.

How to access LiveAgent pre-chat?

Pre-chat forms are available before the chat starts. These take in details of the customer, including name, email address, and reason for contacting customer support. Pre-chat forms are available through contact buttons when a customer is searching for a product or service. 

To configure the pre-chat form into your chat button, do the following:

1. Go to chat button Settings in Overview. Beneath there is an option of pre-chat form. 
2. For any particular chat button incorporated, select option that you want your customer to see a pre-chat form if your agent is online.
3. Also, select Contact Form option to let your customer place query when the agent is offline. 
4. Once you have selected both search pre-chat templates. 

Pre-chat forms come in a variety of templates which you can set accordingly. It depends on how the company wants to narrow down the information it receives before starting a live chat. For instance, you can select an option of departments customer wants to inquire in. The query on live chat is then assigned a ticket. The live chat setting is configured through the Dashboard. 

LiveAgent dashboard

The dashboard helps to manage tickets and set up live chats. It also allows you to manage your reports and data against tickets. You can configure settings in departments, topics, and agents for tickets. Once you have everything aligned, your agent starts receiving tickets in his/her Universal Inbox. This inbox helps them answer every ticket efficiently. 

LiveAgent ticketing system

This is an essential feature of LiveAgent around which revolves the entire idea of software. Ticketing is generated in a Universal Inbox assigned to each agent. As soon as they receive a query via email, message, live chat, and contact form, a Universal Inbox ticket appears. Each ticket assigned has a reference number. 

Features of ticketing system

LiveAgent ticket feature helps your company track both customers and agents to resolve queries efficiently and manage agent’s performance. Tickets are assigned automatically and tracked through various features. 

Automated distribution

A ticketing system helps your company to maintain workflow through automated distribution. Automated distribution is activated via the LiveAgent configuration settings menu. The ticket is distributed through volume management in automated distribution where tickets are automatically assigned to the agents based on workload, topics, and departments. 

For instance, if your query is about “price” and “purchase” of a product, your agent in the sales department gets the ticket. Similarly, if a customer puts forward a query on “defected product”, it goes to the customer feedback department. 

Ticket tags

You can associate different tags by showing tickets like New, Open, Answered, and Postponed. Similarly, you can tag tickets as sales, finance, or customer feedback depending on the query’s nature. This helps agents to respond efficiently to ticket traffic on his/her inbox.  

Hybrid ticketing 

Your agent can also integrate tickets in different departments based on the hybrid ticketing system. It can work across various departments, and you can track its journey. A query can start with product features, lands to pricing, crosses purchase, and ends in feedback. For these various departments come into play and ticket passes to each.

The ticket is also allowed to move departments at the same time. There could be a chance that a query is assigned to two departments simultaneously. For instance, a customer might be negotiating for prices in finance and at the same time looking for a purchase through the sales department. 

Transfer ticket

The agent can transfer the ticket to the other department once his side of the query is complete. A ticket is transmitted through the button “Transfer”. This button shifts the access to another department’s agent who comes next in line for the query. 

Time tracking and SLA (Sales-Level-Agreement)

LiveAgent keeps track of your agent’s query’s response completion time. It does it in alignment with the SLA agreement, which checks both times, performance, and targets for answering questions. SLA helps to set rules for tracking the throughput time and quality work of each agent. The agent’s performance is managed by checking his response time by monitoring his/her overall time for handling each query and the total time taken to address accumulated work. 

These hefty features LiveAgent are beneficial, yet its prices are optimal to your business needs for live chat support systems. 

LiveAgent pricing

The subscription plan for this software is very convenient and serves every need of the business. There are three pricing plans designed for the customers keeping in the view from simplicity to the complexity of business nature. You can choose any plan that might help you to stay connected with your potential clients in the best possible way.

Free trial period

These plans have a 14-day trial period which will give you a hands-on experience on different features, after that you have to buy LiveAgent. Because of the limited applicability of a 14-day subscription, you can choose a free account option, but this also has minimal features. To enjoy a full range of multi-dimensional experiences of this live chat software, you can subscribe to any of the three plans based on your business needs. 

Subscriptions 

The basic Ticket subscription plan for just $15/ agent.

The Ticket with Chat subscription for $29 per /agent.

The all-inclusive plan accounts for $39/agent.

There are no hidden charges in case you subscribe to any of these three plans. For live chat, we need to add Chat Buttons. 

LiveAgent how to chat?

The chat buttons are the way to give access to your potential customers to the live chat agent. You can do it through configuration settings, as shown in the image. 

You will write the name of the chat button that will appear on the screen. You will choose where the query can go, e.g. a department or general, and you will select a language to be used for chat.

Your traffic will click on these chat buttons and will be direct towards pre-chat forms. From there on, the live agent will receive information, assess, and prepare to reply to a query. Sometimes that live chat agents are offline, in that case, your traffic will use contact forms.

The agents can turn their offline status online anytime.

How to change to online in LiveAgent?

A live chat agent can stay online and offline during live chats to take pauses. In both ways, customers can contact them. When an agent is online, customers will use pre-chat forms which will then initiate conversation; otherwise, they can use contact forms.

The configuration settings on the dashboard also allow you to use the offline button. For this, it will enable you to use a timeframe, let say 6-8 hours working hours, to set as online time. During this time, the agent will appear active, and pre-chat is allowed. As soon as the time is up, the agent is offline, and the customer can contact through the contact form only.

After contact forms or pre-chat, a customer can have a one-on-one session with an agent. LiveAgent needs a microphone to work correctly for a better chat on calls.

LiveAgent how to activate microphone for calls?

Here are some steps customers can follow:

1. Go to Start and click on the Setting icon.

2. Once you see the Privacy tab, click on the microphone.

3. If it says microphone access to the device is on, it’s okay. Otherwise, please turn it on.

4. Also, press ON for “Allow apps to access your microphone.”

Now the customer is ready to chat with an agent live.

LiveAgent is undoubtedly a one-stop solution that is affordable, integrated, automated, and highly efficient. If you are looking for handy software that helps your business grow, Go, grab it!