Live chat FAQs

To add live chat to your website, you need to choose a live chat software and sign up. The process of adding live chat is different for each live chat application in the market. Let's take SalesIQ as an example.

For some of the major CMS and ecommerce platforms, we have plugins to help you add live chat to your website easily. If you want to add it manually:

• Copy the embed code you see as soon as you sign up. You can also find the code by navigating to Settings > Brands > Choose the system generated brand or create one > Installation > Website.
• Paste it just before the closing </body> tag in your website's HTML code.
• Customize widget settings like color, welcome message, font, and more.
• Preview and test the chat window, and publish it to your website.

Check out our blog on how to add live chat to your website for detailed step-by-step instructions and tips to make your live chat operation smoother.

Change the color, font, button styles, logo, and welcome messages of your live chat widget to match your branding and website. SalesIQ also lets you display a custom sticker instead of the default widget. You can apply seasonal widget themes to reflect festival greetings and aesthetics in your website.

Grab your visitors' attention with chat triggers based on visitor behaviour when visitors show exit intent. For example, in SalesIQ, a live chat software, you can offer proactive assistance to a visitor on the pricing page by providing tips on what plan works best for their business or offer a discount to encourage them to stay and engage.

You can also set up a chatbot to trigger when a visitor spends a certain amount of time on a page without taking any action, to get details about their requirement and give them the nudge to the next step of the purchasing cycle.

Set up proactive live chat triggers or a chatbot on your checkout and payment pages to answer any questions prospects and customers may have on payment methods, delivery charges, returns, refunds, warranty, and more. You can also identify and address any bottlenecks in the checkout and payment process this way.

Use browser-based calling and screen sharing tools to provide live assistance. For instance, SalesIQ offers built-in audio calling, screenshare, and voice notes options right from the live chat widget—no software installation needed.

Use remote assist and screensharing options to guide prospects and customers through product demos and complex solutions respectively. This allows you to demonstrate features, view their screen for remote assistance, or even remotely access their system to troubleshoot, and answer their questions efficiently. With SalesIQ's built-in screensharing and integration with Zoho Assist, remote assistance can be done within the live chat widget, without moving to multiple tools.

Yes, you can enable one-click escalation from live chat to a voice call or screenshare with a live chat platform like SalesIQ. This helps instantly resolve complex issues without interrupting the conversation flow.

Saving common replies as canned responses reduce response times and boosts efficiency. In SalesIQ, you can store and reuse these responses in just a click—simply type “/” to instantly pull them up during a chat.

Check out these ready-to-use live chat scripts that you can easily customize and save as canned responses.

Maintain consistency in customer interactions by using predefined responses, ensuring your team delivers uniform messaging and branding across every conversation.

Additionally, SalesIQ’s Writing Assistant helps agents craft clear, professional replies in real-time—helping maintain tone, accuracy, and a great customer experience no matter who’s handling the chat.

To handle repetitive questions efficiently, use canned replies for quick responses and automate FAQ answers with an AI-powered knowledge base chatbot. Additionally, SalesIQ’s Smart Suggestions provide real-time reply recommendations, helping agents respond faster and more accurately. All these free up time for agents to focus on more complex inquiries.

Live chat agents can make use of canned responses and smart suggestions (AI response suggestions to questions) to respond to multiple chats at the same time without compromising on quality. In addition, SalesIQ's AI-powered Writing Assistant helps agents draft grammatically correct, professional responses with less time and effort.

You can also use smart routing to balance loads and set limits on concurrent chats per agent to make sure agents only have what they can handle.

Give them access to saved replies. They help new agents respond quickly with relevant answers from day one. SalesIQ's smart suggestions—AI-powered recommendations from articles, FAQs, and small talk content—make it easier by understanding user intent and suggesting relevant answers to queries.

Additionally, Whisper Chat in SalesIQ allows supervisors to silently guide new agents during live conversations. They can provide real-time suggestions or corrections without the customer being aware, ensuring that agents improve their responses on the fly.

Use profanity management to hide inappropriate messages and block IPs of spammers to prevent repeat disruptions in your live chat support. For example, in Zoho's live chat solution, SalesIQ, chats are blocked immediately when abusive content or spam is detected.

Yes, add such terms to the profanity library. If they come up in the chat, they'll be blurred automatically, the customer will be warned, and the chat will be closed if the behavior continues.

Yes, most live chat solutions offer seamless integration with CRMs and help desk tools. For instance, SalesIQ integrates with Zoho CRM, Salesforce, Zoho Desk, and Zendesk—and also offers APIs if you’d like to connect with other CRM or help desk platforms.

Use chatbots to automate your customer support and productivity tools like canned replies, smart suggestions, and AI-powered writing assistants to manage high chat volumes.

Get a live chat solution like SalesIQ that provides all of these features, helping you efficiently scale your customer support and handle increasing volumes without compromising on quality.

Use a live chat software that stores chat records with encryption and has compliance controls to protect customer data. Zoho takes data privacy very seriously and SalesIQ, Zoho's live chat solution is GDPR, SOC2, and HIPAA compliant among others. We have ‌Dedicated security and privacy teams that implement and manage our security and privacy programs. Chats are ‌encrypted using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), all files are scanned for malware using our automated scanning system, and all ‌our code is regularly audited and reviewed for security issues. For the complete list of our compliance and regulatory standards, please visit Zoho's security page.

Measure response time (first and average), chat volume, missed chats, average wait time, resolution rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT), and more. Here's a detailed article on live chat metrics and how to measure them.