The Basics
Live chat (live support) is technology that provides companies with a way to interact with users when they visit an organization’s websites, primarily, but increasingly may include social media chat, sms, video chat. In times gone by, live chat was typically implemented through code inserted into selected pages of a website (generally in the header sections) on a page by page basis.
This is no longer the case. Virtually all of the paid for live chat services offer plugins for wordpress users that simplify the instalation process while offering familar menus for configuration to your company website and branding. Sure some good quality chat solutions remain fixed on HTML code snippet insertions. Perhaps for commercial grade webmasters this is preferable for design teams and additional 3rd party feature set integrations. But for the general users, a feature set rich plug in will do just fine.
Much like our article on best ATS , there has bee significant feature set creep in live chat in a raise to be everything to everyone. By way of example, not every company needs an inventory control and monitoring fuction built into their chat solution. Not every company needs a Help Desk Knowledge center or Library updated by AI. Not every Company needs omni channel to a centralized desk top app. But some do. The point is there are so many option in feature set and integrations that you can really pick and choose the features most important to your organization.
What are Live Chat solution?
As written above, Live Chat Solutions, sometimes known as live support solutions, provide companies with a way to interact with users when they visit an organization’s websites, primarily, but increasingly may include social media chat, sms, video chat. In times gone by, live chat was typically implemented through code inserted into selected pages of a website (generally in the header sections) on a page by page basis.
If you haven’t yet, have a look at The Basics (above) for a quick way to gain some perspective on this massive landscape.
The Real
A few words on Free and Free Trials
Many chat solutions draw you in with Free. In our experience, putting any third-party solution into your corporate website that is free is asking for data breaches and trouble. We prefer the idea of Fee Trial – which we know runs contrary to our past articles on the purpose of Free Trials. But in live chat, there is a massive amount of potential liability in sharing customer information via chat, which is generally the purpose right, personalized available customer service. Given the choice between free and free trials we will take a free trial everyday – Read on.
Really what you need is a solution from a company that will provide you with high quality installation, initial set up, guidance, decent training on feature sets, related price points at the individual feature set level, and an agreement to refund your money if you are not satisfied after a reasonable amount of time.
We know, this should always be the case, but we also know that more often than not “Free” or “Free Trial, no cedit card needed” its being used by companies to enable spotty customer service while drawing you further into bying their product or service due to the time you’ve invested in setting it up, training your people to use it, and achieving buy-in for your customers and potential customers.
Customer Buy-In
By customer, we mean anyone on your site, whether they engage in chat or do not engage in chat.
Live chat software should be designed to efficiently manage all sales and support queries from customers and staff from one platform.
The mainstream introduction of AI means live chat bots support and manage many customer and staff support requests, whether working on site or remotely.
Live chat software should be omnichannel, enabling communications through multiple channels in addition to the standard website chat box, including email, social media, and even through SMS making it convenient and accessible from varied locations (home, office, commuting, waiting somewhere in line, parks, cafes, etc.) all reachable through the chat software platform.
The best live chat software is easy to set up and to integrate with other business management and operational tools, as well as providing accessible and useful, real time analytics for quick, systematic responses .
Note the difference between live chat solutions and help desks: Both facilitate responses to customer support requests, but they’re slightly different.
With live chat solution, you can add a real-time messaging capability, providing software lets human employees speak directly to customers, but it also allows businesses to create chatbots that automatically answer common customer questions and requests.
Help desk software is used by businesses for managing and responding to customer service tickets. Firms can create an online help desk where customers can raise support tickets. This software will also provide a back-end dashboard that will enable agents to view and answer these tickets.
Our Choice
Best for Most
Best for B2C
Reliable delivery and feature set. Set up may be challenging for some, but service is patient. This is the pro choice for B2B email. Their primary meter is Reputation. Says it all.
Delivery and a dashboard with honest stats that allows for super quick changes in strategies and similarly quick understanding of the results. Plus top social media integrations that work.
The choice for established companies growing their customer engagement through multi-channel marketing with a focus on email and sms. New superb Enterprise class service.
How an email marketing platform works.
As a B2B company, we focus on the B2B experience where it matters. Here are some basics for new adopters.
Most email services companies have a free service or trial period which enables you to learn the system before beginning your subscription. Customer service varies during ghtis trial period and as wer have written in the past, a dedicated adopter will quickly reach the limitations of the trial feature set and functions.
For any subscription service we would recommend spending the higher month to month fees and determining the services suitability to your business before paying for the discounted full year rates. Until you are using the service in the real world, week to week at scale, you’ll never know.
There are two steps to quickly get up and running with your selected email services provider. The first is to upload your existing client email list and information. Once uploaded most email service providers run your list through a filter to determine any number of factors, but primarily to see which emails are still in use. More on this below.
The next step is to create an email or what is typically referred to as a marketing campaign. This is where the builder and templates come into use. You simply assemble a form, generally by on-screen drag and drop functions, add your own images and language, and then send a test email to yourself or your team members to see what it will look like. When you are satisfied with the results, you start your campaign. At this point your email is sent to every email found in the group or segment that you have selected. Mailchimp is best known for its builder, but in truth each email service provider has designed a builder that suits their typical client and, by extension, their client’s clients.
Another feature most every email service provider offers is a way to build your client email list through form capture. There are templates for these too. Some are called opt-in forms. They may be embedded into your site in aa number of ways. The most effective will be determined by each company website. We’ve all been asked to sign-up for newsletters or marketing content in the past. We know what this looks like.
What Email Marketing Platforms does CareerNet Recommend?
1. SendGrid
SendGrid is at once the best of email marketing platforms, and the most daunting if you do not have a reasonably experienced IT person on your staff. Set up and testing can range from 1 – 3 days based upon your in-house expertise. Next the real fun begins. Upon configuring your email and sending out your first mail be prepared for a reality check. Your mail will be delivered, the stats will be accurate, your campaign performance will immediately reflect in your on-line reputation. You can’t get deliverability without impacting your on-line reputation. Which is why spammers should for sure not select SendGrid.
For the rest of us, SendGrid is one of the few email marketing platforms that does everything it says it will to standards that continue to amaze us month after month. Your email discipline and compliance is maintained. Your email design or over design is kept in check. You almost do not have to A/B test (although it’s offered) because it will be obvious immediately whether your latest campaign was effective or not. Plus, once you are set up, it’s super simple to add users and monitor their every move in an affiliate or external marketing arrangement. We only have one complaint, and it’s always a big one for us, the pricing scheme gets complex and convuluted quickly. We hope that SendGrid will work on the price key.
Pros
Near perfect deliverability.
Superb email designs for the qualified user.
Once configured (see above) anyone in your organization can use it like a pro.
Cons
There are no brakes, you send it you own it. Miss use it (spam) and you’ll need to start looking for a new URL.
Don’t know what MX records are or how to manage your DNS settings? Look at our other recommendations.
Customer service has become spotty in the last few months.
Confusing pricing.
2. Constant Contact
This is the choice for B2B companies just starting a true email marketing strategy through email marketing platforms. We think its ease of use combined with its feature set and impressive deliverability ratings make it a natural choice for small to midsized businesses. As your segments grow, so will your use of Constant Contact.
Deliverability as discussed above is the primary metric for success. This can only occur through active monitoring, current knowledge of email servers limitations and proper authentication practices.
These are managed by Constant Contact in ways you’ll never know are happening. It’s like having a nanny and email marketing expert watching your every move. Which is a good thing.
That comes with a cost that is a bit higher than other typical competitors, but really, there are none – For sure we’d recommend Constant Contact for B2C companies.
Pros
Among the industry leaders for deliverability.
A corporate focus on email compliance which doesn’t impact your marketing.
A simple dashboard that gets to the point.
Leaders in SMS marketing and communication.
Simple subscriber management, segmentation.
Social Media integrations that include LinkedIn.
Transparent pricing.
Cons
It’s easy to get lost in data analysis, especially as you grow your email lists.
Massive well integrated feature set will be overload for first time email marketers.
Setup is not as simple as advertised.
Customer service is OK – prepare to go on a learning journey.
3. Brevo
Think of Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) as a top notch CRM (Customer Relationship Manager platform) for B2C with a top class email marketing platform design focus. Brevo received high marks for usability, time to get up and running, and omnichannel experience. We would rank it equal in performance to Constant Contact. It is not our third choice, it is in fact one of three choices we would recommend.
Specifically, Brevo is excellent for enterprises who are in the B2C space. Brevo excels in user interface, but equally so in maintaining customer feature sets that reflect the latest and greatest UX experience for consumer response.
That means the design elements for things like popups, chat, and even SMS work. Customers like to click on designs built with Brevo.
In B2C marketing clicks are the key KPI for email marketing.
Finally, Brevo is actually passionate about email marketing compliance. They don’t simply maintain internal standards to protect themselves, they do it for the longevity of email as a marketing outlet. This approach is unique and brings nuance to your email marketing that will bring you better results than you may actually deserve.
Pros
Compliance without limiting your efforts.
Seeing email marketing from a CRM approach seems natural, not forced.
All the ways and methods to reach that elusive customer KPI, “Clicks”.
Easier than our other choices to get up and running.
Any size business can start with Lite or Premium level, and develop an expertise, with the knowledge that there is an Enterprise Class ready and waiting.
Cons
Brevo is not a blunt force email delivery service. Do not use it as such.
Use the templates, creating your own designs requires lots of trial and error or an in-house design professional. You already have one right? If not, use the templates.
Patience is a virtue in email marketing. Brevo rewards it.
What we have learned seeking the best email marketing platforms
What really matters: deliverability and internet reputation as determined by both email servers and recipients of your emails.
By using a number of email marketing platforms, encountering disappointing results, and speaking at length with the providers of these services, we learned that certain providers are focused on deliverability and certain are focused on providing a platform while protecting their own reputations with email server hosts. Which means as a user of these services, you are in effect, renting their reputation, not developing your own.
It may seem that using an email marketing service provider that focuses on its reputation first is a good way to establish your own. After all, it’s easy to be looked upon as a spammer. We’ve found that when using these types of service providers, your company is drastically limiting its audience.
Take an example we discovered. Using a known premier service for 2 months, a few emails to our current customers weekly, we found that many were not seeing our emails at all. Their servers identified our emails as emails sent from the service provider, regardless of our email address appearing in the From line. Worse, when we uploaded our full customer list, and agreed to pay the additional costs per month, our account was locked up. Then we began to receive inquiries from this service provider as to the origination of our email list. It was acquired over 20 years of business. That didn’t seem reasonable to the service provider.
So we started doing our homework. Speaking to experts in the email deliverability field, we found that enterprise class solutions, when you are marketing legitimately, are not only more effective, but understand enterprise marketing practices.
Warning: If you chose to use enterprise class email marketing platforms, and you spam, the reputation of your email extension, @yourURL.com, will implode quickly. So don’t do it.
Enterprise class email services systems are more expensive and require certain network and server language knowledge. They expect that you have it and, as such, don’t expect highly responsive level one customer service.
But they actually work where it matters, deliverability to an inbox.
How we make our recommendations
In truth our marketing group has used more than 6 email marketing services in the last 5 years. Some were long term relationships, some short. We trialed another dozen or more and spent weeks reviewing alternatives in between.
Again, our contacts and customers are businesses. This comes with a special set of security and fire walls designed to prevent questionable or unsolicited emails through corporate servers and into email boxes. Most any email services provider will deliver email to gmail accounts and, based upon the number of emails sent and the interaction (openings or clicks) of these emails will determine the importance of your emails quickly. Servers it seems determine the viability of your email campaigns.
An easy example, and perhaps the most extreme, is emails with @yahoo.com extensions. Marketing to users with an @yahoo.com extension is like not marketing at all. Unless you have a history of exchanges with @yahoo.com email users, your cold email will likely go into a spam folder, if it even makes it through the servers. See our forthcoming article on 5 Best email practices for B2B.
Helpful Articles from CareerNet Insights
Labor Trends Real or Not Real?
It’s Labor Day Weekend! Introduction Back in 1894, when work conditions were abhorrent and workers’ rights barely existed, the Federal Government saw fit to offer a single day of vacation “to honor labor workers’ contributions to the country.” Read this...
AI for Recruiting
It seems every time we pick up a business journal or check one of our social feeds, we see some booming article on AI. It’s understandable. AI promises to remove all the difficulties people face in their lives and work world. And if AI for recruiting can really work...
Be Kind to Applicants
Why should you be kind to applicants? First, the Conclusion: Being kind to applicants (candidates) leading into and during the interview phase should be part of all company cultures. Treating candidates well during the hiring process is not only the right thing to do,...
Pre-Qualify. It's Easy.
Up Your Hiring Game
People. Not Data.
Learn more about the CareerNet Companies
Just Interview
Modern Hiring. We source the candidates you Just Interview.
CareerNet Nation
Developing professionals from all backgrounds for better jobs, careers.
LearnNet
LMS designed by teachers for students. Managed responsibly by CareerNet.
CareerNet Pro
World Class executive recruiting by the leaders in Employee Solutions.