Looking for alternatives to Zopim, or having a few tools to test in your pipeline? Read our article to make an informed decision about your next customer service tool.
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Do you want to empower your company with a tool that will connect you with your website visitors, provide proactive customer experiences, and work perfectly in a browser window and on a mobile device?
A chat tool like Zopim (Zendesk Chat) is an efficient way of reaching out to your website visitors and getting them engaged with your company. You can use it to provide customer support, answer their questions, or solve their problems.
But is it true for the Zopim chat?
Let’s find out whether other alternatives can help you better deal with your customers and provide an excellent agent experience.
What is the Zopim chat?
Zopim is a live chat software that is now known as Zendesk Chat. This customer service platform enables businesses to keep in touch with their customers and website visitors. Zopim, now Zendesk support chat, is a cloud-based software for small and large companies.
However, it has some flaws. Let’s explore the tool in detail.
Zopim Pros
The platform offers live chat and a chatbot for communicating with others. So you can provide real-time interaction between a user and a chat agent or a bot.
Various integrations
Thanks to integration capabilities, the Zopim chat (Zendesk messaging app) allows you to continue using your daily tools and plugins. With API, you can still take advantage of their functionality. For example, you can connect CRM tools or analytics software.
Automated answers
It is a feature for automating your work. With AI-powered automatic answers, your prospects may get the answer to their questions immediately. The lowest plan, however, allows only 50 automated answers per month. Unfortunately, even in higher plans, the answers are limited.
Bots support for handling offline chat conversations
You can use both - a Zopim live chat and a chatbot. Thanks to machine learning, bots can respond promptly to incoming inquiries, enhancing workflow. They save time and provide customer support at any time when your agents are not available.
Omnichannel assistance
The Zopim chat enables customer care agents to stay in touch via various channels, for example, via Facebook Messenger or Slack. Thanks to omnichannel, operators can communicate more efficiently. However, before choosing the Zopim chat as your messaging tool, ensure it offers the channels you and your customers need and use.
A lot of features
This chat platform offers many features. However, you cannot choose what features you want to use and pay for them. They are already packed into a plan. Smaller businesses with a tight budget may not be able to use the potential of such a solution, and it can be a waste of money for them. That’s why the number of features may be both a pro and a con at the same time.
The Zopim chat Cons
Users complain about waiting to get help from a customer service representative. Moreover, to contact them, you need to fill in the pre-chat form and give your email address, phone number, and other personal information. It might take even longer than describing the problem itself. Asking a quick question can be discouraging.
It might be a bit pricy option for smaller companies or solopreneurs. Additionally, it doesn’t provide a free plan in contrast to other chat providers.
How much does the Zopim chat cost?
Zopim’s pricing starts at $55 per agent, billed monthly. There are many pricing plans, both for enterprises and smaller businesses. Each has a free trial so that you can try them out in practice. However, the most basic plans are quite limited in their features.
Is Zopim really a good choice for your business?
Zopim is relatively good. But it has some flaws, and for some companies or solopreneurs, the price might be a problem. Before making a decision, it is worth taking a moment to look around for some alternatives.
Before choosing a tool, let’s research first. We’ve enlisted the Zopim chat competitors that might be interesting and even better.
So, take a look at the Zopim chat alternatives.
Zopim Alternatives
#1 Smartsupp
Smartsupp is a live chat and chatbot software for communicating with customers and website visitors. As a result of its many advanced features, it offers customers a great chat experience.
It is a perfect choice for customer care and e-commerce, but if you have any other idea about how to use Smartsupp - the sky is the limit.
Key features and benefits of Smartsupp
Live chat for improving user experience
Live chat is an excellent way of staying connected with your customers by resolving their issues and complicated requests on the spot. When providing a live chat, you signalize that you are always ready to help and assist website visitors in their shopping experience (and not only!). Moreover, the chat widget can be customized to your preferences.
This type of communication makes it easier for you to get to know your customers. For instance, you can find out their preferences and collect feedback on your customer service thanks to a quick poll. Users’ opinions are significant, especially for developing businesses that want to provide the best customer experience possible.
Chatbot for providing help around the clock
If you cannot be available 24/7 to help your website visitors, you can easily use a Smartsupp chatbot.
Your customer will love it!
It is a great way to provide shopping assistance when agents are offline and save plenty of time. For example, design your chatbot to answer recurring questions and give relevant recommendations.
💡 Smartsupp allows you to change the chat window: you can change its size and color or add an agent photo. Also, thanks to API functionality, you can carry on a chat conversation in other languages and then see the chat transcript if needed.
Video recordings for understanding users’ behavior
With video recordings, you can follow the cursor movement of each website user. This feature lets you see if your website is intuitive enough for visitors. Also, it is a valuable source of information where the users give up and leave the website. This way, you might notice your website’s issues and if any areas need improvements.
Additionally, you can conveniently watch the user’s chat session. With Smartsupp, it is possible to skip the parts where users don’t interact with a website and watch the moments when they click.
Conversation tagging for better organization
This feature allows you to organize your work and understand your visitors better. With a tagged conversation, you get an overview of what topics the users have questions about. With these pieces of information, you can build a FAQ section (for example, chat FAQs) that lets the users find the information themselves and save you plenty of time.
Many integrations for automating workflows
They allow you to connect easily with your website, online store, or CMS tools. For instance, you can integrate with Facebook Messenger, email, and other communication channels with your online store or website. Additionally, having the tools connected allows you to gather and analyze essential information about customers.
Using Smartsupp, it is possible to integrate with platforms like WordPress, Google Analytics, Atomer, Joomla, and more! Find out what native integrations and third-party ones are available.
💡 With Smarstupp’s targeted messages, you can deliver proactive engagement to visitors.
How much does Smartsupp cost?
Smartsupp prices start at $15.83 per month per agent. There is also a free plan, where you can have:
- a live chat
- 100 conversations a month
- one agent
- 14-day conversation history
It is perfect for those who want to try it out or need a basic live chat package.
All the plans are upgradable, so as your business grows, you can easily have a bigger plan. There’s also an enterprise plan for companies that need a tailored-nade solution for their business. Such a plan includes custom limits, all advanced features, a customer success manager, and more! Take a look at the pricing here.
Smartsupp: Is it really a good investment in your business?
The answer is yes! Except for many valuable features, Smartsupp has an intuitive chat user interface and advanced analytics capabilities. For instance, you can track agent performance or check the initial time for responding and average wait time.
You can set up your chatbot or live chat in a few clicks and moments. Additionally, its price is affordable and can be used by a small company and a more complex business.
#2 Tidio
Tidio is a live chat software that allows businesses to communicate with their customers in real-time using a live chat and or chatbot. Tidio can help companies increase sales and improve customer satisfaction.
But is that really the case?
Let’s find out by analyzing its features, cons, and pricing.
Key features and benefits of Tidio
Both live chat and chatbot
You can use both chatbots and live chat to deal with your customers or website visitors. So when your operators are offline, you can use a chatbot instead for handling simple issues. Also, you can adjust a chat widget to your website and preferences. Theme settings can be found in the admin panel.
A lot of integrations
Integrations let you connect with the tools you’ve been using and automate workflow in your team. Tidio enables you to connect pretty easily with the platforms, so it does not take a lot of time.
Live typing
With this feature, you and your team see what the user is typing before sending the message. It is supposed to save you time because you can see their chat window and prepare the answer immediately. However, remember that some people might give up while typing their message or just change their minds and rewrite it.
How much does Tidio cost?
Tidio messaging software offers a free limited plan but is rather restricted in its chat functionality. Additionally, the prices start at $15.83 per agent per month with a limit of up to five operators.
Con of Tidio
You cannot have more than five agents with a basic paid plan. In that case, you need to upgrade the plan. It results in more features, which in some cases might be good. However, if you are okay with the basic plan and you only want to have more agents, you need to buy the new plan. For some companies with a limited spending plan, it might be problematic.
A free plan does not provide in-built chat analytics. So there’s no option for checking your average resolution time. You can use plugins and third-party integrations instead, but not everybody wants to do that. So, for some, it might be a con.
There are only seven days for testing Tidio. It is a short period of time, and before making a decision, it is worth getting to know all the features and testing them out. Having as many features as Tidio offers, it might be hard to check all of them in a week.
Tidio: Is it really a good investment in your business?
Before investing your money, make sure that you are aware of its disadvantages and its chat capabilities. However, there are some affordable customer engagement tools that offer a better solution than Tidio.
#3 tawk.to
It is an app for customer care that enables carrying out a chat conversation with users via a live chat. Additionally, the tool offers some other features that improve the user and agent experience. Take a close look at them.
Key features and benefits of tawk.to
Knowledge base
Besides a live chat feature, you can support your customer or website users with a knowledge base. It allows your website visitors to find their answers immediately, and they don’t have to write to you via live chat. It is possible to create self-service options for both your customers and your team.
Chat pages
You can chat with your customers without having a website. Using chat pages, you can turn links into chat conversations, share your company profile or link social media channels and start live chats. You don’t have to have coding experience, there’s no need to write even a small piece of code. However, setting up a chat page might take a moment, especially for those who have little experience with such technicalities.
It is free of charge
Its main advantage is that it is free to use. It means that you don’t have any upfront investment in the software or installation costs. Additionally, the chat widget is customizable.
💡 Ensure that z live chat solution provides an offline form so that you can gather customers’ data like an email address. In addition, customers are able to leave their contact details in a chat window.
Cons of tawk.to
Among the other chat providers, tawk.to is quite limited in its features. Also, there is no option for upgrading your plan because there is only one available. For some, it might be a disadvantage. When your business grows, you will need more advanced features.
In that case, you’ll need to find another solution and do the research once again. The customer service industry is a dynamic one, so even a month of not keeping up with what’s going on in the marketplace would make a difference. With upgradable chat apps, it might be easier. Also, you will save some time, because there is no need to research another solution.
How does tawk.to cost?
Although this live chat website software assures that it is free forever, there are some costs. If you don’t want to have a tawk.to label on your chat box, you need to pay. Additionally, tawk.to offer paid training for your agents and a virtual assistant that you can hire for some administrative tasks.
Tawk.to: is it really a good investment in your business?
It is a decent tool, but for some, the lack of upgrade possibilities might be a deciding factor. You don’t want to perform log parsing just to get to some customer data, right? Also, compared to other alternatives, there are not that many advanced features, and it’s rather a simple product.
#4 Pure Chat
Pure chat is a tool for small, mid-sized businesses or external customer service teams that want to support their customers and website visitor using live chat software.
First, let’s examine its pros and cons.
Key features and benefits of Pure Chat
Unlimited chat
This live chat solution provides unlimited chat sessions, which means you can handle as many conversations as you need and want to. It is an important aspect because when having limitless chatbot interactions, website visitors can always reach you, and you won’t lose selling opportunities.
A long free trial
Pure Chat offers a 30-day free trial of the highest plan, which is enough to test all the essential features for you and to decide whether it is a good choice for you.
Chat widget customization
You can change the chat box, but you only have two options to choose from. Unfortunately, as opposed to other options, a chat window design needs an update.
Real-time analytics
Chat features like real-time analytics are useful for monitoring the quality of customer service. You will see a detailed list of visitors, for example, when they are active, a chat transcript, or response time. With such universal analytics, you can check the ability of service agents to deal with prospects and messaging rates.
How much does Pure Chat cost?
Pricing starts at $49 per month. For additional users, you need to pay $13 per month.
Cons of Pure Chat
Pure Chat offers only two subscription plans for customers. Unfortunately, there’s no enterprise solution nor a free plan.
Pure Chat doesn’t provide a chatbot solution. There’s only a live chat for communicating with your customers. Looking at the price, there are other tools at even lower prices that also provide chatbot support. Having a chatbot would save your time and automate repetitive tasks, so consider implementing it for your chat strategy.
Pure Chat: is it really a good investment in your business?
Pure Chat has some disadvantages, and you need to pay attention to them. Analyze if it’s the best choice for you by looking at social messaging channels, Pure Chat’s ability for integration and if they offer a business plan in their pricing options. Maybe it’s worth looking around to find a tool that is perfect for your needs.
These are only a few alternatives you can come across while researching. We’ve gathered the ones that, in our opinion, are worth checking out.
Conclusion: Zopim (a.k.a Zendesk chat) as a chat platform
The Zopim competitors differ from one another so that everyone can choose something interesting. Some of them deliver awesome products. However, choosing the one among many chat services may be a tough call.
But we have a winner here.
If you want to carry on meaningful conversations that convert, we recommend Smartsupp.
With Smartsupp, you can stay in touch with your target audience, get to know them, and also better your website or online shop, delivering amazing experiences to customers.
No time to waste. Sign up for a free trial and take your customer service to the next level by dealing with complicated requests and also simple issues!