Which chat plugin to use?

Tell me this isn't something every marketer go through at some point in their career.

Should we use Facebook Messenger? WhatsApp? Web chat?

When I headed LEAD, I made the decision to use a web chat plugin on the website. It turned out to be a great decision.

Web chat

People who contacted us through a web chat – regardless of whether it's a live chat or if they dropped an email, were generally more serious.

Maybe because users had to put in their email and phone number, it filtered out the non-qualified leads.

Recommended web chat softwares:

• Intercom - One of the best, but expensive.
• Lucky Orange - More of a web tracking software, but chat is functional.
• LiveChat - Standard chat stuff.

WhatsApp Chat

Having a WhatsApp chat was by far the most tiring way to support customers. In my experience, prospects who send a Whatsapp message tend to want an instant reply.

WhatsApp also seem to attract some prospects who, after awhile will ghost the conversation. Perhaps its the low-entry barrier to just clicking on a button and sending a WhatsApp message.

Recommended WhatsApp web chat software:

There are many widgets available, that shows up a WhatsApp button on your website. When clicked, it'll open a chat on your WhatsApp. That is as simple as it gets.

If you're looking for a messaging platform, many businesses use Respond.io or Wati

Facebook Chat

Facebook chat seems to work fine, but in my experience many prospects that come through Facebook also isn't too serious. Again, I'm not discounting that it works, it does – but just a large number of prospects that comes in are not quite serious.

Facebook chat also seems to attract a lot of spam. Plus, users need to have a Facebook account (and logged in) for the best chat experience, so that's a bottleneck there.

Recommended Facebook chat software:

There are tons of plugins for Facebook chat if you use a website platform like WordPress or Shopify. Or you could just go straight to Facebook and get a developer help to code a chat to your site.

What I recommend is to use a chat aggregator that combines all your social platform chats into one platform. Some tools I've used and find useful are:

• Hubspot – The O.G. of all marketing softwares. Freakin' expensive. But worth, if you know what you're doing.

So, web chat wins?

No, not necessarily.

The question you should ask is – which platform are my ideal customers on? Are they the type of customers who prefer using WhatsApp or social messaging apps? Or are they the kind of people who prefer using email?

Different business serves different kind of people.

Your job as a marketer is to identify what your customers prefer using, and meet them there.

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