Live chat is the ideal space where a customer can quickly interact with the business and get quick responses. When you are looking for quick responses, you clearly seek an interactive live chat for assistance. In order to respond in a timely manner, using an efficient live chat plugin is not just sufficient. The page load speed, the response speed of the plugin, etc. play a vital role in determining the quality of service that is provided. No customer is bound to wait for a longer time, to get a response from the support service. The slower the response, the faster the customer tends to exit from your website. To keep customers engaged on your website, it is important to keep the response rate higher.
Live Chat plays quite a vital role, in the case of eCommerce websites. Live chat helps to clearly augment the conversion rates on your eCommerce site. If you are looking out for live chat plugins that will assist in optimizing your leads and generating potential customers for your business, then it is important to consider the following factors :
Factors to Consider when choosing a live chat plugin
Most businesses choose a live chat plugin on the basis of the following:
- Price
- Software Reliability
- Intuitive Integration
- Responsiveness.
All of these are factors important to consider while choosing your live chat plugin for support purposes. Most of the eCommerce platforms on WordPress use popular SaaS-based and non-SaaS based live chat plugins for support purposes. If you look out for live chat plugins, you can find both premium live chat plugins and free live chat plugins, which are better in one way or the other for businesses.
What are SaaS-based plugins?
SaaS-based plugins are ideally an alternative for on-premise applications that are completely managed on your own server rather than a third party server. SaaS-based plugins use licensing and subscription methods on an annual or even monthly basis for their plugins. It is completed based on a cloud and is centrally managed by its own server. Mostly they are accessed via a browser.
The major advantage of SaaS-based plugins are that :
- Managed by a third party completely.
- You do not need to worry about managing the server.
- Completely arranged by the third party it is easy to set up and use.
- Lower cost initially as it is based on subscriptions.
- Hassle-free upgrades as they are completely handled on another server.
- Ease of access as they are accessed via a web browser.
- Completely scalable as it keeps the options open to modify and enhance with the company’s needs.
Disadvantages of SaaS-based Plugins
Despite the numerous advantages you see in the case of SaaS-based plugins, a few disadvantages are also there.
- You do not own the data, as it is completely managed on another server.
- The lack of control over the server also causes connectivity problems. For example, when the server is down, during your business hours, you cannot use the plugin. If the third-party shuts down or transfers the company, your data also gets affected, which causes much damage to your credibility and sustainability.
- Performance is at stake when the server is dependent on a third-party. Several external calls have to be established between the servers to communicate which takes comparatively more time.
How does a SaaS-based live chat plugin work?
When you consider a SaaS-based live chat plugin for every single action, a request is made to the server. If the server speed is rather slow, as compared to the on-premise site, then the response time is hampered. It will, in turn, affect the quality of response in terms of speed.
Does SaaS-based live chat plugin slow the overall performance?
Mostly live chat is preferred by customers to get their responses quite quickly. If the server is not managed by you, then any problems that might arise during the conversation with your customers can clearly leave your clients stranded. In such cases, the performance clearly matters. For example when the third-party server is down during your regular work hours, then you may not be able to communicate with your customers quickly. It might even cause you to lose a customer. It is important to note that live chat plugins are an ideal source to augment your conversion ratio in terms of sales. Overall, when the servers have to make multiple calls to the third-party server for each and every data, the network is clogged and slows the overall exchange of information.
To Conclude
In order to reduce the overhead use of a third-party service to manage your data, it would be ideal to choose an on-premise plugin. In the case of WordPress, non-SaaS-based live chat plugin like WSChat are ideal to use. The major advantage of having an on-premise live chat plugin like WSChat is that it will augment your sales conversion. In order to avoid the difficulties and discrepancies caused by SaaS-based plugin as discussed above, WSChat can be completely managed on your server independently.
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