The short answer
Choose live chat if you have someone whose job is to sit in the inbox during business hours, and your questions need human judgement. Choose an AI chatbot if nobody is free to reply within a minute, or if most of your enquiries arrive in the evening and at weekends.
How they compare
Response time. Live chat is as fast as the person on shift. When they are busy or it is out of hours, the visitor sees an offline message, which is a contact form with another name. An AI chatbot replies in seconds, at any time.
Cost. Live chat software is usually priced per seat, and the larger cost is the person staffing it. An AI chatbot is usually a monthly plan with a conversation allowance.
Answer quality. A trained person handles unusual questions best. An AI agent that answers from your own pages and documents handles the common ones well, and a good one says when it cannot find the answer.
Lead capture. On live chat this depends on the person remembering to ask. An AI agent asks every time, and saves the name, contact details and what the visitor wanted.
Next step. A person can book a meeting by hand. An AI agent connected to your calendar books it in the conversation.
What a small business usually needs
A business with a few people has no one to staff a chat window. The owner is on a job or in a meeting, and the message is read two hours later. In that situation live chat gives a slower experience than the visitor expects, and an AI agent gives a faster one.
What N3 Chat does and does not do
N3 Chat is an AI agent. It answers from your content, captures the lead and tells you by email or Slack. When a visitor asks for a person, it gives your phone number, email and opening hours and offers to take a message. You read every conversation in your dashboard inbox.
It is not a live chat desk with agents typing replies in real time. If that is what you need, use a helpdesk tool. Our comparison with Intercom covers the difference.
A way to decide
Look at your last twenty website enquiries. Count how many arrived when nobody could reply within five minutes, and how many were questions your website already answers. If both numbers are high, start with an AI agent. You can try one on your own site in the free demo.