Why should you have a live chat plugin on your website?
Engaging with website visitors through real-time communications is fast becoming a major differentiator on business websites. It’s separating the ‘great’ businesses from those that are ‘just OK’. Today, live chat functionality isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a strategic necessity that can break down the business/customer barrier, and help to develop exceptional customer experiences. Tawk.to is one of the best-known WordPress live chat plugins available today. But is it any good? And could it help you to create an efficient, seamless customer journey?
Let’s take a look…
What is Tawk.to?
Tawk.to is a fully customisable WordPress live-chat platform which allows businesses to engage with their customers in real time. It provides access to an entire end-to-end communications platform. This enables you to answer questions, resolve issues, and guide your customers on their own journey to conversion.
There are a lot of features and functionality here, going well beyond basic chat. For example, along with chatting with your customers, you can track their behaviour across your website. You can also convert chats into support tickets, and assign them to support agents to respond to visitors directly. Tawk.to provides a comprehensive overview of the overall customer journey and highlights sticking points. This empowers you to create an ideal online experience for visitors to your website.
How much does Tawk.to cost?
Believe it or not, Tawk.to is completely free. The live chat function costs absolutely nothing, and that’s with an unlimited amount of users, and unlimited concurrent chats. There are no ads, either.
The reason Tawk.to costs nothing to use is because the developer also offers paid services alongside its free software. In most cases, businesses will implement the free live chat software, and use their own customer service staff to manage online conversations. However, others choose to pay for Tawk.to’s hired agents, priced at $1 per hour. This is where they generate revenue, using the typical ‘freemium’ model.
How does Tawk.to work?
The way that Tawk.to works is relatively simple. It adds a small snippet of JavaScript into your WordPress website. This is a task that takes around 30 seconds to complete. Once the code is in place, the Tawk.to chat widget should start to work as soon as it’s been properly installed.
How do you integrate Tawk.to with WordPress?
When you’re adding Tawk.to to a WordPress website, there’s an install wizard that will walk you through all the necessary steps. But here’s a sneak peek into the process:
- Search for ‘Tawk.to’ in the WordPress plugins directory and download the zip file.
- Create a free account here. All users will need an account.
- In your Tawk.to account, follow steps for setting up your WordPress website as a ‘property’.
- Install the plugin through your WordPress dashboard and click ‘activate’.
- Select ‘Settings’ in your dashboard, choose the Tawk.to plugin, and log in to your account.
- Use the Tawk.to dashboard to select which pages you want your chat widget to appear on.
- Customise the colours, themes, and positioning of your chat widget.
- Use the ‘Administration’ section to add customer service agents (known as ‘Property Members’).
- Get chatting!
How do you respond to a chat in Tawk.to?
There are two ways to see when there’s a chat that you may need to respond to. The first is through enabling audio and visual alerts. You can do this through the ‘Sounds & Notification’ settings in the Tawk.to dashboard.
The second is by keeping an eye on the colour-coded chats listed on the left-hand side of the dashboard. Grey-coloured chats are those that have been responded to by another agent. Green-coloured chats are those that you’ve already responded to yourself. And pink-coloured chats are those requiring a response.
To respond, select the relevant chat in the sidebar, and click the ‘join’ button (in green) to enter the conversation. You’ll then be able to communicate in real time with your customers and visitors.
Pros and cons of Tawk.to
Pros
- Forms an all-in-one platform to manage all aspects of customer communications at every stage
- Goes beyond basic chat, offering many features for tracking and monitoring the customer journey
- Has excellent support, with agents available to assist via chat and email 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week
- Software is 100% free – you only pay if you choose to use the services, such as hired agents
Cons
- Costs up to $15 per month to remove the ‘Powered by Tawk.to’ logo on the widget
- Sophisticated backend can take quite a bit of time for beginners to get their head around
- Automatic responses (known as ‘triggers’) do not change the chat status to ‘answered’
- Dashboard doesn’t keep you logged in – you’ll need to log in fresh each day
Tawk.to alternatives
According to Tawk.to itself, there are currently 206 live chat competitors… and that figure is growing almost every day! As experts in WordPress maintenance, we know that there’s no single plugin that will meet the needs of every business. That’s why we think it’s important to provide alternative options for you to consider and test to see what works best for your business.
Melu Live Chat
Our first alternative recommendation is Melu Live Chat. The big difference between Tawk.to and Melu is that Melu is a managed chat service. This means that the ‘hired agents’ you pay extra for with Tawk.to are included with Melu. So, unlike Tawk.to, Melu isn’t free. It can, however, be a very cost-effective solution for businesses that don’t have the resources to manage all customer communications internally. You can try Melu for free for 14 days to see if a managed chat service could be the right fit for you.
LiveChat
LiveChat is very similar to Tawk.to. However, it does seem to tick a few more boxes in terms of advanced chat tools and customer engagement functionality. For example, with LiveChat, your customer service team can proactively reach out to website visitors, based on their online behaviours. Ask yourself if you’re looking for an all-in-one free messaging solution. If so, Tawk.to is likely to suit you better. For a more comprehensive customer engagement tool, consider LiveChat. LiveChat costs from $16 per month to use.
Tawk.to summary
Today, more than 3,800,000 businesses, including Domino’s, Adidas, and Chevrolet, use Tawk.to. Are you ready to be one of them? Try out Tawk.to live chat and see how the WordPress live chat plugin can help you to create more personalised online experiences for your customers. If you feel that perhaps Tawk.to isn’t right for you, check out our list of the best live chat plugins for WordPress on our blog.
