Top 10 Live Chat platforms

Latest news about Live Chat platforms

2022. Take Blip lands $70M to grow its omnichannel messaging service



Take Blip, an online messaging platform for businesses, has raised $70 million in a Series B. Take Blip customers, which include Coca-Cola and Nestlé, get tools to automate conversations with chatbots that can hand off complex issues to customer service reps. As do many other vendors in the messaging space, Take Blip also provides analytics to monitor reps’ performance — a feature with which some might take issue (particularly considering the company retains data for up to five years). That it’s necessary to maintain a certain level of service. Take Blip can compete against a growing number of rivals in the omnichannel messaging space: Glia, MessageBird and GupShup


2022. Tidio raises $25M to automate customer service interactions



Tidio, a platform that aims to become a one-stop shop for companies corresponding with customers across different channels (e.g., email and SMS) has raises $25M. Leveraging a combination of live chat apps and AI-powered chatbots, as well as analytics, Tidio attempts to scale customer service operations even at small companies without the benefit of dedicated staff. Customer service automation platforms like Tidio aren’t exactly cutting edge. To name a few, there’s Ultimate.ai, a data-ingesting, bot-builder platform and Ushur, which offers a service for businesses to create AI-based communication flows. Ada also slots into the category — it features chatbots powered by a natural language processing engine.

2021. Emotive raises $50M to make text marketing more conversational



Emotive, a conversational text marketing startup, saw 466% year-over-year revenue growth in 2020 and now has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. Emotive enables text marketing that feels like a real conversation with another human being, rather than just another email blast. While Emotive works with larger customers, its sweet spot is mid-sized e-commerce businesses on Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce. Because those businesses usually don’t have any salespeople of their own yet, Emotive serves that function. It can start conversations around shopping cart abandonment and promote sales and new products, resulting in what the company says are 8% to 10% conversion rates. The platform largely relied on human responders at first, and although it’s become increasingly automated


2021. Glia raises $78M for its integrated AI-based customer service platform



Glia, which has built a platform that not only integrates and helps manage different customer support channels, but also provides tools to help agents proactively get into a customer’s app or web page to help them find things or fix issues, is today announcing that it has picked up $78 million, a Series C. What makes Glia quite interesting and different from these are some of the twists it uses to engage with users. One of these involves being able to give agents the ability to actually get on the screen of the user in question, in order to both guide the user around the screen, and to see what the user is doing on that screen. Alongside this, Glia provides tools to agents to let coach them on questions to ask, phrasing to use, and links for answers, and Glia also develops virtual customer service assistants, to help with more basic questions.


2020. Facebook Messenger's new chat plugin for business websites allows to reach non-Facebook users



Facebook is making it easier for businesses to leverage its Messenger service on their own websites. Until now the customer chat plugin, that allows customers to talk directly with a business on the business’s own website using the Messenger service, required the website visitors to be logged into Facebook, limiting adoption. The updated plugin will now allow customers to talk to businesses without being logged in, Facebook says. Instead, a “continue as guest” option will be available. However, on the business’s side, they’ll still be able to use all their same tools to manage their conversations with these online users, whether logged in or not.


2019. Salesforce brings AI and Quip to customer service chat



Salesforce Service Cloud customer service got some AI updates. For starters, Salesforce is using machine learning to deliver article recommendations, response recommendations and next best actions to the agent in real time as they interact with customers. The company is also using similar technology to provide response recommendations, which the agent can copy and paste into the chat to speed up the time to response. Before the interaction ends, the company can offer the next best action based on the conversation. Salesforce is also using machine learning to help route each person to the most appropriate customer service rep. Finally, the company is embedding Quip, the company it acquired in 2016 for $750 million, into the customer service console to allow agents to communicate with one another to find answers to difficult problems.


2017. LogMeIn launches livechat software Bold360



LogMeIn, the company, best known for its collaboration and meeting tools, is targeting the "white space" in the customer service and engagement market with a suite called Bold360 to manage multiple channels, chat, and video. Bold360 aims to provide one view of all customer touch points as well a unified interface that can handle chat, text, and video. Automation technology will enable customer self service support and free up agent workflows. The wild card is whether LogMeIn can crack a crowded market and carve out a customer engagement niche to complement systems already in the field. Bold360 has no code integrations with Salesforce and Zendesk so agents can pull customer data into one interface.


2015. Live support chat Zopim goes Premium



Customer service software provider Zendesk unveiled the Premium version of its live support chat  Zopim, designed to help growing businesses scale their live chat operations. Zopim Premium helps businesses provide exceptional customer support while they grow. The new plan will include workforce management tools, the ability to scale your operation, and greater customizability. These features will equip support team managers with the tools they need to manage customer expectation and agent productivity. Zopim Premium is designed to provide managers with greater insight into their operations so they can manage customer expectation and agent productivity while remaining efficient at scale. Real-Time Monitoring offers metrics on customer satisfaction, chat queue activity, and agent load—helping ensure you meet your SLAs and even detect potential problems before they escalate.


2014. LivePerson buys co-browsing tool Synchronite



Customer service chat provider LivePerson has bought German startup Synchronite to get its co-browsing and video-chat technology. The deal should help LivePerson boost its real-time customer service product by allowing agents to see what the customer sees, so they can guide him through form-filling, completing purchases and other functions of the client’s website. Other outfits doing similar things include Unblu, LiveLook and Firefly. The purchase price for Mannheim’s Synchronite was not revealed.


2014. Zendesk buys Live Chat provider Zopim



Zendesk, the cloud-based helpdesk software provider has made its first acquisition — Zopim, a Singapore-based startup whose flagship product is live chat software that is used by some 120,000 websites in 140 countries. The deal is worth up to $29.8 million. As a result of the Zopim acquisition, Zendesk will be phasing out its own chat software and integrating Zopim’s “superior” one into its platform. It gives Zendesk a product that is already widely used across hundreds of thousands of websites, representing an opportunity to sell those websites other Zendesk services if they do not use them already. It also, of course, gives Zendesk another product that it will be able to upsell existing customers with.


2012. LogMeIn acquires popular web chat BoldChat for $16.5 M



LogMeIn, the longtime maker of remote access tools, has acquired Bold Software, a provider of web chat and customer communications software. The company says it will use the technology to offer additional features and capabilities to its customers on LogMeIn Rescue, the company’s support product. Bold Software’s “BoldChat” product is a live chat and click-to-call customer service solutions that is used by thousands of retail, financial services, manufacturing, software, and telecommunications organizations. Meanwhile, LogMeIn’s customer care services are used by tens of thousands of helpdesks and call centers, including 50 of the world’s top mobile operators and support organizations like Best Buy’s Geek Squad and OEMs like Sling Media.