What is live chat?

Live chat, explained

Live chat sits between email and phone. It is faster than email, less intrusive than a call, and lets customers multitask. For online stores and service businesses, the chat widget is often where pre-sale questions and order enquiries arrive.

The problem with human-only live chat is coverage. Customers expect a quick reply once they see a chat window, and small teams cannot staff one around the clock. Showing an “online” widget that nobody answers is worse than showing none.

AI has changed the model. An AI agent can answer immediately at any hour and escalate to a person during staffed hours, or collect contact details when nobody is available. The important part is being clear with the customer about whether they are talking to AI and when a human will reply.

Widget design matters too: where it appears, what the greeting says and how quickly it loads all affect whether customers use it.

How to measure it

Track first response time, resolution rate and CSAT for chat, split between AI-handled and human-handled conversations.

Common mistake

How SuperBot relates

SuperBot adds an AI-first chat widget to any website with one embed snippet, or via apps and plugins for Shopify, Wix, WordPress and WooCommerce, Webflow, Squarespace, Square Online and Adobe Commerce, with handoff to your team's shared inbox.

• Designing a chat widget that customers actually open
• AI chatbot by platform
• SuperBot pricing

Related terms

• ChatbotA chatbot is software that holds a text conversation with a person, usually in a website widget or messaging app. Rule-based chatbots follow scripted flows and keyword triggers; AI chatbots use language models to understand free-form questions and generate replies. In customer support, chatbots answer common questions and route the rest to people.
• Shared inboxA shared inbox is a single queue where a whole team can see, assign and reply to customer conversations, instead of messages sitting in one person's email. It shows who is handling what, keeps the conversation history in one place, and prevents both duplicate replies and conversations that nobody answers.
• Human handoff (escalation)Human handoff is the point where an automated system such as a chatbot passes a conversation to a person, ideally with the full conversation history and context attached. Good handoff rules trigger on low confidence, sensitive topics, explicit requests for a human or signs of frustration, and tell the customer what happens next and how long it will take.
• First response time (FRT)First response time (FRT) is the time between a customer contacting support and receiving the first reply. It is usually reported as a median or average over a period. Automated acknowledgements are often excluded, because FRT is meant to show how long customers wait before someone, or something, actually starts helping.
• Omnichannel supportOmnichannel support means serving customers across multiple channels, such as email, chat, phone, social and messaging apps, with a connected history, so a customer can switch channels without starting over. It differs from multichannel support, where channels exist side by side but each conversation is isolated from the others.