Before looking at our live chat features and what makes Talkative the best alternative to Tawk.to, let’s break down one of Tawk.to’s key selling points - is it 100% free?
Tawk.to is advertised as 100% free. This is slightly misleading, so let’s clear a few things up.
Tawk.to has a different business model to other live chat solutions on the market. Rather than making it’s sole profit by ‘selling’ it’s chat software, it offers a ‘hire a chat agent’ service. It charges $1 an hour for every chat agent a company hires, essentially making Tawk.to an outsourcing customer service company.
So, Tawk.to makes most of its money through outsourcing, which means it can offer a free version of its live chat service. However, this free version comes with some caveats. For example, to remove the Tawk.to branding on the live chat widget, you will need to pay $15 a month.
In other words, Tawk.to does offer free live chat, but to enhance the service to make it the best chat service, you will need to pay for it.
A free service always sounds great, but is it really the best? Like every product, you pay for what you get with live chat.
While Tawk.to is a good chat solution, it is a basic solution. If you want a simple chat that lets you answer customer requests in real-time, then tawk.to is sufficient, but live chat can do so much more than this! Why not….
For a complete customer engagement solution that allows you to reap all the benefits of live chat, Talkative is the perfect alternative to Tawk.to.
Easily integrate with Salesforce and Mitel so everything is manage from one dashboard
Use conversational chatbot capabilities to increase contact centre efficiency
Automatically mask sensitive customer data & comply with business sector security rules
Support customers around the world with real-time translation into 100+ languages
Seamlessly transfer interactions to voice, video & cobrowse to best serve customer needs
Integrate with WhatsApp and social media messenger apps to be where your customers are
1. Full CRM & contact centre integration
Talkative is designed to integrate with both Salesforce and Mitel (and we are working on more!). This integration means agents can handle all chat interactions from the same dashboard, making their job easier.
It also allows agents to match customers with data in your CRM in real-time, which means they can gain context to better deal with a query. With Talkative, you can set up simple pre-chat forms to gather customer information, such as name and email address, before a chat session to really get the most out of this integration.
2. Escalate to voice, video and cobrowse
Live chat is great, but it isn’t always the best channel to deal with customer requests. That’s why Talkative offers additional contact channels, including:
With all these channels as part of one package, an agent can seamlessly escalate from live chat to video, voice or cobrowse to best serve the customer’s needs and effectively resolve their query/problem.
Having all these different communication options up your sleeve can help you appeal to different customer preferences and demands, and really help your customer support stand out from the crowd.
3. Real-time translation
Another factor that makes Talkative the best Tawk.to alternative is its ability to translate chat conversations into over 100 languages in real-time.
Talkative live chat can automatically detect the language and translate from A to B and B to A immediately, allowing agents to maintain fast responses. It also allows both the agent and customer to see messages in the original language, which helps to mitigate any translation mistakes.
At the time of writing, Tawk.to only supports 27 languages and does not offer real-time translation. Instead, agents need to rely on pre-translated canned messages, meaning there is a limit on the responses they can send.
4. Virtual Agent capabilities
We believe intelligent chatbots are a great live chat supporting tool. By detecting user intent and connecting to company data, they can deliver01 personalised responses to common customer questions.
Why not let our virtual agent deal with customer FAQs, freeing live agents up to deal with complex queries?
As part of the Talkative system, the chatbot can seamlessly transfer a customer to a live chat exchange with an agent whenever it is needed, ensuring maximum customer satisfaction.
5. Messaging app integrations
The messenger app WhatsApp has 2 billion users worldwide, which means your customers are probably using it. Be where your customers want you to be by enabling WhatsApp communication!
Talkative live chat can be integrated with WhatsApp to make this happen. With our integration, WhatsApp messages are put through to the same live chat dashboard, and join the same live chat queue, allowing agents to answer WhatsApp requests in real-time like a normal web chat exchange.
6. Assign roles and permissions
Unlike Tawk.to, Talkative allows you to organise agent access by assigning roles and permissions. You can limit agent access to certain contact channels and/or chat requests, which makes it a lot easier to manage interactions in a busy contact centre.
7. GDPR, PCI and HIPAA compliance
Talkative live chat is 100% safe and can be adapted to fit any security needs you have.
8. Expert deployment assistance
A disadvantage of a 'free' service like Tawk.to is the lack of assistance to get the system up and running, and continued support and advice to fix little bugs. As an alternative to Tawk.to, Talkative offers expert deployment assistance as part of the price.
Our experienced developers will ensure everything is set up to work in the optimum way for your business, and will work with you to find the best way to integrate the Talkative solution with your website and existing systems. Continued support is also on hand whenever you need it.
You can configure and customise the chat service in any way you like: from setting up chat triggers to designing the look of your chat widget, it’s all up to you. Plus, you don’t need to pay extra to remove Talkative branding!
"The support and guidance we have received from Talkative has been invaluable and has enabled us to offer our customers the right level of service through live chat and meet expectations. We were able to work closely with Talkative from the initial scoping of the project through to implementation and post-launch improvements to ensure the product suited our needs and this was critical to the success." (G2 review)
Don’t just take our word for it, companies around the world have chosen Talkative as the perfect alternative to Tawk.to!
Why not try Talkative for free? Sign up for our 14-day free trial (no commitment required) or book a free demo below to see our solutions in action.