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As the world of live chat grows and evolves, so do live chat software tools and best practices to reflect the move made toward sales and support environments within a business. Here’s the latest live chat news to address issues important to decision-makers involved in live chat software arenas who are looking to keep up with the ever-changing live chat space.

Starting off this week is news revolving around HootSuite’s adopting real-time chat to its dashboard. The move was made to become more flexible in an increasingly social world, where social networking plays an enormous role in today’s technology and communications landscape. This new addition was officially launched on September 26, where the almost five million worldwide users of HootSuite would enjoy collaborating with multiple individuals in real-time chat with anyone, anytime, either within the company or off-site.

“One of the things we’re seeing as a trend is a need for organizations to work together more effectively,” commented HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes. “Conversations are a tool to help people collaborate more effectively and we’re excited about it.” By integrating active chat into the HootSuite platform, the company hopes to truly make an impact on the social networking field.

In other news this week, Irish company Blooie insists that analytics are redefining chat. The company’s solution enables websites to host real-time conversations by pairing users together via similar interests in specific online content, websites and topics, this article explains. 

“Ninety percent of website users never engage beyond reading an article or watching a video,” said Blooie Co-Founder Mark Ryan. “Instead, they head off to social networks, often to share content rather than discuss it. The likes of Twitter (News - Alert) are building their businesses on the content of others and that’s a genuine problem for site owners, one we believe Blooie can help solve.” The company’s new take on chat is looking to directly address this issue.

Wrapping up this week is news of recent research revealing that live chat is the key to improving customer service satisfaction. The research, presented by the Social Media Customer Service report, surveyed more than 1,000 U.K.-based consumers between the ages of 16 and 64, finding that instant response to customer service queries is becoming increasingly essential, according to Alice Cappelli, a social media assistant at CorpComms Magazine. Live chat works to address this high demand for instant response.

“In a year-on-year comparison, six percent more consumers stated that online chat was their preferred method of interacting with customer service representatives, while preferences for e-mail dropped three percent and phone support dropped one percent,” Cappelli continued, proving just how online chat’s numerous innovative features truly work to increase customer service satisfaction.

For next week’s exciting news from the Live Chat Community, be sure to check back in, same time, same place – only here at TMCnet!