Best Live Chat & Chatbot Software for Reporting

Imagine trying to drive in the dark without headlights. A sure recipe for a crash and burn. Without the right information at your fingertips, making good business decisions long-term feels similar.

If you're among those seeking the best live chat and chatbot software for your business, you're certainly looking for more than a communication tool. You're also looking for important data that could lead to vital insights. It wouldn't be far from reality to say that good reporting features can truly brighten your path to success.

We understand this challenge and aim to guide you through what makes certain reporting features stand out when considering live chat and chatbot software.

What Makes the Best Live Chat & Chatbot Software for Reporting?

Our research indicates that plenty of live chat and chatbot software are available on the market, yet not all reporting capabilities are the same. Excellent reporting should provide you with not only raw data but also actionable insights to improve your service delivery and customer experience.

To help you pick the right software, we've divided our evaluation of the best reporting features into five key areas. Each area represents twenty percent of what we believe makes up a reliable and effective reporting system.

Predefined Reports

Consider predefined reports as the basic reading glasses for any business. You put them on, and immediately, everything becomes clearer. A live chat and chatbot software equipped with solid predefined reports can instantly highlight the general health of your customer service department. These reports can provide insights like customer satisfaction scores, average handle times, first contact resolution rate, and peak traffic times. Which metrics are reported depends on the service scope of the software and how hard providers try to track detailed data.

In general, they are great when you want a quick overview of your operations without wasting time on complex data sifting. These reports come in handy for managers who need ready-to-view insights without delving too deep into analytics. It gives them a perfect snapshot of their team's performance at a glance.

The simplicity and accessibility of these predefined reports make them invaluable in fast-paced environments where decisions must be made quickly.

Custom Reports

If predefined reports are your reading glasses, custom reports would be your trusty microscope. These reports make the tool truly personalized, allowing you to dig deep into metrics that matter most to you and your team.

Custom reports allow you to outline how you view your data and in what detail. You can set specific parameters and isolate unique factors from the rest. Want to assess how many chats lead to successful sales during a specific promotional period? Create a custom report. Curious about the effect of a new script on the chat duration? Generate another.

Beyond addressing 'What's happening?', custom reports can help uncover 'Why is it happening?' making it an essential tool for businesses serious about improving their customer experience.

These bespoke findings are especially useful for strategists who make roadmaps based on data-driven insights. Being able to tailor-fit your data analysis process brings incredible freedom and specificity.

Exporting Feature

Ensuring your data is readily accessible and shareable, not just within the software but also beyond, can be critical for some businesses. It requires the ability to export reports, which is what we assess for this criteria.

As simple as it may seem, this feature empowers users to share key metrics and findings with stakeholders who may not have direct access to the software. Simply export the data in your preferred format, be it CSV, XLSX, PDF, or even JPG.

The necessity of this feature becomes clear when reporting reaches beyond internal evaluation and monitoring. It may extend into areas like client presentations or inter-departmental collaborations. It's especially significant in larger organizations where numerous departments may need access to certain data or if you want to integrate data into other third-party tools.

Predefined Dashboards

Next on our list are predefined dashboards. Their role in your live chat and chatbot software is similar to a personalized news feed. They automatically highlight vital statistics and trends for your business and can help you navigate to the main access points of the software.

These dashboards are ready-to-use data visualizations. They can showcase certain key performance indicators (KPIs), such as chats per day, response times, and customer satisfaction scores, or highlight any important messages and tasks. By presenting this data in an easily digestible format, it's simpler to identify strengths or spot areas that need improvement or urgent attention.

Predefined dashboards are your best companions for having everything in your view. They offer immediate insights and save you the hassle of navigating between tabs for core insights.

Custom Dashboards

Custom dashboards allow you to determine which elements and information you want to see. The possibility of personalizing how information is displayed means that every individual or team can adjust the dashboard to fit exactly what they need. If a particular agent's resolve time affects customer satisfaction in your business more than any other metric, you might give it center stage. Or, if you'd like to visualize the success of specific campaigns, you can create a dashboard featuring this information.

Apart from giving everyone exactly what they need to see, customizable dashboards also save precious time by reducing the need for staff to filter through irrelevant information. It makes advanced statistics as useful and digestible as possible.

10 Best Live Chat & Chatbot Software for Reporting

How to Choose a Live Chat & Chatbot Software with Great Reporting?

Choosing a live chat and chatbot software is not unlike choosing a business partner. Your decision should align with your needs, budget, and future growth plans. If you were to hire an analyst, you'd want someone who is organized, communicative, and reliable - the same should apply to your live chat and chatbot software.

Before taking the plunge, define what type of reports are most critical for your team. Predefined dashboards might be all that's required for small businesses looking for standard metrics and prebuilt analysis options. On the other hand, larger organizations and data-heavy operations might find investing in software with custom reporting and dashboard capabilities worthwhile.

Keep in mind that all functionalities are tied to the range of services a software provides. That said, if the software is not measuring the response time of your team, then you also won’t be able to use this data when creating a custom report, despite custom reporting being available as a feature. It’s important that you test or book a demo before making the final step of purchasing a shortlisted software.

Review the exporting capacities of any potential software, too – will you be able to share findings easily? Next, check how user-friendly the interface is. Everyone on your team should be able to navigate it with ease. Finally, don’t forget about the other features. After all, we are talking about live chat and chatbot software at its core, not reporting software. Make sure the tool you pick matches your business requirements.

You can find all these specs and more by using our Comparison Tool. It will help you get an in-depth look at software solutions and compare their differences side by side. Our overall Best Picks can further present you with a more holistic view of the top live chat and chatbot software if you're just starting your research.

And last but not least, you may also find it useful to try our unique Finder Tool, where we give you a tailored suggestion for software based on your business profile.