In the always-connected world, people want answers and they want them now. A lot of potential customers aren’t willing to take the time to make a phone call or wait for a business to open. This is where Drift can help.
Drift adds a live chat platform to a website. It’s equipped with several useful features such as bots and a scheduling system for meetings.
Drift is focused on automated lead collection and providing support tools for professional sales departments. Here is a brief review of Drift including its benefits and its flaws to see if its a good fit for your company’s website.
Drift is not only a chat tool for your agents but also provides automation support. Bots serve as a lead collection tool even when agents are unavailable. Plus Drift’s bots can be easily customized to respond to specific responses and questions to fit a company's customer base.
Drift displays well on a variety of different platforms and devices. So when a customer uses a smartphone or tablet they will get a user experience that’s comparable to a desktop or laptop. The interface itself is polished and nice to use no matter what the platform.
Drift isn’t a difficult feature to add to your website. And it’s easier to implement than some other choices. Drift also works well with HubSpot making for a smooth integration and has Salesforce and Slack support.
Drift’s bots collect and organize the information provided by visitors. That means people looking to make a purchase in the near future are notated and contacted directly by your sales team via the chat software. A scheduling tool also helps manage meetings automatically reducing busy work on the sales side.
Users note that when they needed support from Drift with program use and customization responses were quick and helpful.
Backend management of the app itself can be a bit confusing and there is a learning curve in terms of becoming skilled with Drift and customizing its features. The dashboard was a common complaint with people finding it hard to use and not as intuitive as they would prefer.
Drift has several different pricing tiers each offering more features than the last. Where this can become a problem is if you have a smaller business that has limited funds but you need specific features only found in higher tiers.
Like many service providers Drift upsells through various dashboard messages, emails, and newsletters. While not a deal breaker you may find this a bit annoying.
Exporting chat logs can produce formatting bugs when exported into different formats. Other bugs reported by users are incorrect dates, alerts not popping up, and occasional crashing. Despite the occasional oddity users didn’t say this made the program unusable or ineffective for daily use.
Businesses increasingly need to consider some type of live chat feature to be competitive in today’s marketplace. Customers these days are impatient when it comes to communicating with companies and Drift can help. Drift engages customers, provides support to visitors, and helps drive leads to your sales teams.
Drift a well made and versatile app with powerful tools to help promote and manage marketing and sales inquiries. However, on the downside, it takes time to learn how to use and pricing tiers can be a bit confusing. Like most ‘in development’ software it has a few bugs, and you’ll receive the occasional sales emails from Drift. Overall, this is a solid tool that I can recommend in the website chat arena.
