Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
Live chat still works, and it is on its way out: Zendesk retires it on 31 January 2028 and no longer sells it to new customers.
What live chat is
A real-time conversation with a visitor on your website. It exists while they are on the page, and it ends when they leave. Agents see who is browsing and can start a conversation.
What it does well
- Immediacy, when somebody is genuinely watching.
- Seeing visitors on the site, which messaging does differently.
- Short, transactional questions answered in a minute.
What it does badly
- Anyone who leaves. The conversation and the answer are gone.
- Out of hours. Chat is either unavailable or a form.
- Anything longer than a few minutes, because both sides are held in place.
- Any channel but the web.
It is not a choice any more
Zendesk Chat is a legacy product in maintenance mode. It is not available to new accounts, and it is removed on 31 January 2028. So the question is no longer whether live chat suits you but when you move to messaging, which covers the live case and everything else besides.
Where teams got into trouble with chat was choosing it for the immediacy and then not staffing it, which produced a widget that promised a person and delivered a form. Messaging removes that trap, because a conversation left waiting is still there when somebody picks it up.
If you already have it
It keeps working, and there is no urgency. Moving to messaging is a project rather than a switch, so plan it rather than doing it on a quiet afternoon.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.