Want to deliver timely and convenient resolution to customer queries but not sure which support method would best suit your business? Understanding the difference between the major channels–live chat and messaging can help.
Remember, the wrong choice can terribly spoil your customer service, and more than half of customers switch companies just after one bad customer service experience.
To help you out, we not only elaborate on the differences between live chat and messaging but also help you figure out which one should you pick. Let’s start!
When choosing an agent-customer communication channel, make sure to consider your customers’ needs. If you want urgent, one-on-one conversations, adopt live chat software. Choose a messaging tool if setting clear expectations of response time and asynchronous conversations work better for you.
Why Does the Difference Between Live Chat and Messaging Matter?
92% of customers expect immediate query resolutions. In this case, it’s obvious to think that live chat is your best bet for customer messaging. After all, it offers higher customer satisfaction, which boosts sales.
But you must stop and reconsider because with live chat comes customers’ expectation of super quick responses from agents. Don’t adopt a live chat just to welcome customer queries and inform customers that your agents aren’t available at the moment. That can frustrate customers even more as the time they invest in elaborating on their issue goes in vain.
That was an example of why you must not adopt chatting software without in-depth research. To ensure you don’t make a wrong choice, it’s important to understand the difference between live chat and messaging. Remember, a tool can be good and not work well for your business. To choose wisely, keep reading.
What is Traditional Live Chat?
Traditional live chat is when customers fill out a brief form and wait for an agent to help them out. Here, both the customer and agent need to be on the line and remain attentive during the conversation, like in phone support.
- This chat addresses customer needs and resolves queries in real-time by the first assigned agent or routes it to someone who can do it better quickly.
- In case of further assistance, customers have to reach out to a new agent in a new conversation after the initial chat is over.
Here, the solution is to choose the modern-age WhatsApp live chat widget for websites that offer communication histories and advanced features. But what is live chat on website? It’s the pop-up box in the lower right corner provided to type in queries.
What is Real-Time Messaging?
Real-time messaging is when agents, customers, or users can send and receive messages instantaneously and have asynchronous communication. In this message, the customer fills out a form elaborating on their query and receives a message displaying the business’s usual response time.
Sometimes, when the agent is available, customers can chat instantly or come back to the chat window whenever they need to with their desired device.
However, offering support via messaging across different platforms can be challenging to manage. The better choice is to consolidate messaging for all platforms in one chat window using an omnichannel messaging inbox platform from a trusted provider like ControlHippo.
How Do Live Chat and Messaging Compare?
Both communication channels–live chat and messaging, are widely popular among businesses. However, due to their distinct capabilities, advantages, and drawbacks, you must understand the differences between the two to make a better choice. Let’s go!
1. Availability
In a traditional live chat, both agent and customer availability during their entire conversation is important. If either of them is disconnected, the live chat ends.
Messaging apps, on the other hand, offer agents and customers the flexibility to communicate at their convenience and don’t bind them to respond instantly.
2. Communication history
You often don’t get communication history (previous messages) in traditional live chats. Once the chat ends, it is out of your agents’ sight, which means customers need to repeat their issue each time.
In contrast, messaging apps offer an organized conversation history in chat inbox form, which your customers can access when needed.
3. Cross-device
You cannot access or continue traditional live chats on different devices. It restricts you to a specific session on a particular device.
Messaging apps, in contrast, support cross-device conversations. It allows agents and customers to access or continue conversations from different devices, and neither of them loses context and history.
4. Customer experience
The traditional live chat option is unsatisfactory, as customers can only raise a ticket when an agent is available. Also, customers expect quick replies when raising queries via live chat, and any delay in response spoils their experience.
Whereas in messaging, you can auto-send a message informing the customer about the business’s usual response time. This flushes out disappointment, sets clear expectations, and elevates customer experience.
Note: To reduce confusion among customers when agents are unavailable, integrate an AI-based bot that can collect information and suggest a relevant self-service resource.
5. Resources
Customers seek quick responses and immediate access to resources from businesses. In fact, 27% of customers are likelier to purchase if a brand responds faster than expected. Traditional live chat helps you offer relevant responses to customers in an instant if you have the appropriate resources, like a solid agent team.
If you have a small team with limited agents, it’s nearly impossible to establish live chat support for your customers without expanding the team or stressing them. It’s best to turn to a more flexible option–messaging. It lets you support your customers and solve their issues without pressuring your agents.
6. Reporting
Traditional live chats have a defined ending point, after which the system can send an automated message asking customers to review and rate their interaction experience. This data can be arranged as a report for you to gauge customer satisfaction levels based on their responses and evaluate agent performance.
In contrast, in messaging, you have to define the ending point, after which you auto-send a customer feedback form. It can involve setting standard idle time after which the conversation is considered finished or closing it after initial query resolution.
7. Features
Traditional live chat messenger offers basic chat features like chat classification, push notifications, customer routing, and Facebook Messenger CRM integration. What’s more, live chat messenger isn’t a direct messaging channel, which new-age customers prefer.
In contrast, real-time messaging offers advanced features like read receipts, third-party apps or CRM integration, metrics to enhance business performance, chat labels, and omnichannel collaborative space.
: How To Create Whatsapp Business Labels?8. Benefits
Traditional live chat lets you quickly resolve customer queries, leading to shorter queues and higher satisfaction. Also, you receive instant feedback after closing the chat, which helps you continuously improve your service.
Whereas with real-time messaging, you can centralize multiple communication channels. Here, agents can cater to queries or collaborate with teams, and you can analyze agent or company performance seamlessly, enhancing customer service.
9. Limitations
As traditional live chat tools mostly do not have advanced features, they aren’t fit for today’s business models. Some of its other limitations include basic limited integrations, no data logging, high costs, and one service channel.
Although real-time messaging systems offer most functionalities that live chat tools lack, they have their own set of drawbacks. Such platforms often run on public networks, compromising data security. They do not work well in mass communication due to the constant influx of messages.
Which is Better For Your Business?
Companies can improve their revenue if they work on improving their customer experience. How? Because good experience means happy, loyal customers who are ready to make repeat purchases.
But which platform–live chat or real-time messaging helps you deliver better support and experience to customers? The truth is both modern live chat tools and omnichannel messaging platforms have distinct features and benefits. We’ll help you identify a suitable one here.
1. Live chat is a good fit for your business if
- Your customers briefly explore your website and purchase after a short period because then they would like to resolve their queries instantly (which is possible with live chat). Otherwise, they’d abandon the cart without making a purchase.
- You have the budget to maintain an adequate number of staff members at all times to handle the potential inbound query volume. This way, your live chat widget wouldn’t show – no agents available and maintain a good customer experience.
2. Real-time messaging channels are a good fit for your business if
- Your customers explore your website for hours and can accommodate slower responses from agents.
- You have limited agents to handle queries simultaneously and do not have the bandwidth to hire additional staff.
- Your team likes to prioritize customer requests for easy management and quick resolution of critical or time-sensitive problems.
Our Recommendations
Clear on the differences between live chat and real-time messaging, but still not sure which one to choose based on your business type? Here are our recommendations based on different business types.
1. Ecommerce business
Most ecommerce website visitors and ecommerce product buyers seek instant responses over live chat support out of habit. If you can’t offer that, they may leave, and you may lose a sale. But if you successfully provide what they are looking for, your customer engagement and sales are bound to rise.
: How to Use WhatsApp for eCommerce to Achieve 5x Sales? 2. Software as a Service (SaaS) business
SaaS customers rarely have urgent queries. They often have support-related issues that you easily take up over real-time messaging. Also, SaaS customers’ queries are technical and may need further assistance or reference to what agents said multiple times, which is only possible with a messaging app.
Now, if you want to integrate a support medium for your SaaS product’s marketing, live chat is a better choice. In such cases, customers have subscription- or free trial-related queries that need instant answers. Any delays would lead to customers losing interest.
3. Other business types
Are you an airline, clothing, or electronic business owner? Then, your customers would require immediate assistance due to high time sensitivity. For instance, they may require answers to delivery time, appointment cancellation confirmations, and flight booking queries.
Not answering them instantly can leave customers hanging, so you must turn to live chat for quick response delivery.
Or are you a service provider that doesn’t need day-long engagement on the customer’s end? Then messaging would work well.
: WhatsApp For Fashion & Apparel Brands: A Complete GuideWrapping Up
Now that we’ve finally reached the end of this actionable guide, we hope you understand live chat vs messaging better. Both have their pros and cons.
Your choice must depend on the kind of support and convenience you want to give your customers and on your business or product type.
So, select a robust support channel provider like ControlHippo that offers both omnichannel messaging and live chat widget for website.
Frequently Asked Questions
Live chat can happen on a website or app and requires real-time engagement from agents and customers. In contrast, messaging can happen on websites, apps (apple messages), or social media and has a flexible start and end.
For providing immediate customer support, live chat is better.
Messaging enhances customer convenience by providing a more flexible response time and conversation history. In comparison, live chat session enhances customer convenience by offering quick support.
Yes, if you have the budget to hire additional staff to meet the inbound requests, then you can use live chat effectively. With such a huge team, you can also accommodate messaging requests at your convenience.
The major factors are your team's strength, budget, and customer needs. If customers need a prompt response, then go for live chat to handle queries quickly. If your customers can wait and you have a small team, choose chat messaging apps.
Updated : July 5, 2024
Naina Khare is an experienced content writer specializing in business communication solutions. Her expertise in omnichannel communication shines through in her clear, engaging content. Naina’s writing helps businesses navigate and enhance their communication strategies, making complex concepts more accessible.
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