Live Chat Commerce

Overview

Live chat for e-commerce goes beyond basic support — agents can assist customers in finding products, adding items to their cart, and applying discount codes, directly reducing purchase hesitation. Shopify Inbox (free), Tidio, and Gorgias Chat provide this out of the box with commerce-specific features like cart visibility, product card sharing, and order status bot responses. Only build a custom chat system if your commerce-specific requirements (custom cart manipulation, proprietary bot logic, white-labeled experience) exceed what these tools offer.

When to Use This Skill

• When adding live chat to a storefront to reduce pre-purchase questions and increase conversion
• When agents need to see a customer's current cart contents during a chat session
• When implementing automated order-status responses so agents handle only complex issues
• When measuring chat-to-conversion rate and revenue attributed to live chat
• When a third-party chat widget needs deeper commerce actions than it supports natively

Core Instructions

Step 1: Determine platform and choose the right chat tool