Adding a chat window to your website takes minutes. The real question is who answers when it opens. In Comm100’s Live Chat Benchmark Report 2025, which analyses more than 220 million chats from 2024, customers waited an average of 23.6 seconds for the first reply. The figure comes from a software vendor and its own customer base, but it shows the scale this channel works on: seconds, not hours.
This article explains how small and mid-sized service teams can staff and manage live chat so that it delivers what it promises, and how to move a conversation to the phone without starting over.
Why an unstaffed chat is worse than no chat at all
People who send an email expect to wait hours. People who open a chat window expect an answer while they are still on the page. If none comes, the impression is worse than if the option had never been there. This is not a new problem: in an older test by CRM vendor SuperOffice, 21 percent of enquiries sent to 1,000 websites in 2017 went unanswered even though chat was shown as available.
A May 2025 survey by the German digital association Bitkom does not ask about live chat as such, but it shows the expectation behind it: 62 percent of online shoppers in Germany want a quickly reachable human contact for service. Of those who had used one, 86 percent were satisfied, compared with 50 percent for chatbots.
How many chats one person can really handle at once
The biggest attraction of chat is also its biggest risk: one person can run several conversations at the same time. Comm100 suggests two concurrent chats for most agents and three to four for experienced ones. Anything higher should remain the exception, because every additional chat lengthens the pauses in each conversation. A simple example helps with planning:
- Chat duration: Comm100 measures an average of 8 minutes 50 seconds, so roughly nine minutes.
- Two concurrent chats: That works out at a little over 13 chats per hour per person on paper.
- Realistic utilisation: At the 70 to 80 percent that the trade site Call Centre Helper describes as healthy, around ten chats per hour remain.
The most common trap in smaller companies lies elsewhere: chat runs on the side, handled by someone who also takes calls. As soon as the phone rings, the chat stands still. Fixed chat shifts work better, or at least a clear rule for who takes over when the person responsible is on a call.
Only offer chat when someone is there
Chat does not have to run around the clock. It just has to be honest. Five rules help:
- Link visibility to staffing: The button appears only when someone is logged in and has capacity. Otherwise a form with a realistic response promise takes its place.
- Set a first-response target: Call Centre Helper recommends under 60 seconds. What matters is that you know your own figure and can keep to it.
- Do not count automatic greetings: “We’ll be right with you” is not an answer and does not belong in the metric.
- Start small: Begin on pages where visitors need the most clarification, such as pricing, ordering or contact, instead of showing the window everywhere straight away.
- Throttle during peaks: When things get tight, show chat on fewer pages before the queue fills up.
Moving to the phone without starting over
Some things are hard to type: contract details, upset customers, or explanations that still have not landed after the third question. Decide in advance when the team should actively offer a call or callback instead of carrying on typing. What matters then is that nobody has to repeat their request: whoever takes over sees the chat history.
A chatbot in front of the team changes little. At Comm100 accounts using an AI chatbot, bots fully resolved 45.8 percent of chats. Handing over to a person is therefore not an exception but part of normal operations.
In myContactCenter from ilogixx, telephony, chat, email and WhatsApp come together in one interface. That makes this kind of switch easier: the team does not work in separate tools, and the history stays with the case when a chat turns into a call.
What to measure and what to settle beforehand
Four figures are enough to begin with:
- Time to first human reply: on average and at peak times.
- Abandoned chats before the first reply: these show more directly than any survey whether staffing is sufficient.
- Chats per person per hour: the basis for all further planning.
- Satisfaction after the chat: Comm100 reports an average of 79.9 percent for 2024.
Data protection also belongs before launch. In Germany, if the chat window stores information on the visitor’s device, consent may be required under Section 25 of the TDDDG; other EU countries have comparable rules based on the ePrivacy Directive. You will also need notes in your privacy policy, a data processing agreement with the provider and a retention period after which chat transcripts are deleted. Settle this with your data protection officer before the window goes live.
Conclusion: staffing first, then the window
Live chat is not a technology question but a promise to your website visitors. If you work out the capacity beforehand, link the button to staffing and prepare the move to the phone, even a small team can respond quickly.
Would you like to add live chat to your customer service or manage an existing chat better? Book a consultation through the online calendar at ilogixx.de. Together we will look at how chat can be staffed in your team and where myContactCenter can help.
