Customer Service VA · Live Chat Support

Live Chat Virtual Assistant

A chat widget with nobody behind it loses the visitor who was about to buy. One dedicated VA staffs your chat during your hours, answers in your voice and books the next step. Here is how it works.

Pre-sale questionsSupport chatLead captureHandover to you

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✓ From £5/hour ✓ UK-managed ✓ Dedicated VA, not shared ✓ No long-term contract

Rated 5.0 on Google.Trusted by our clients

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Our Clients

What They Handle

What a live chat virtual assistant does

Answers pre-sale questions while the visitor is still there

Product, pricing, delivery and availability questions answered in the minute they are asked, from your knowledge base and your rules.

Handles support chat end to end

Order status, account questions, how-to problems and routine complaints resolved in the chat, with the ticket logged in your helpdesk.

Captures and qualifies leads

Asks the qualifying questions you set, collects contact details, and books the demo or call through your booking link.

Escalates with context

Anything outside their scope goes to you or a named colleague immediately, with the transcript and a one-line summary attached.

Keeps the queue moving across channels

Chat, email and helpdesk tickets worked from one seat so a visitor who switches channel does not start again.

Improves the answers over time

Turns the questions that keep coming up into canned responses and help articles, so the chat gets faster every month.

Dedicated vs chatbot

A dedicated chat VA vs a chatbot or a shared chat agency

A chatbot answers what it has been scripted to answer and hands off the rest, usually to nobody. A shared chat agency puts a rotating agent on your widget who is also on twenty other widgets, working from a script you wrote once.

A dedicated chat VA is one named person who learns your products and your customers and stays on your chat every day. They can read a hesitant buyer, answer the real question, and offer the next step. They know when to say "let me check that with the team" and they come back. If you want the bot for after-hours triage, keep it; your VA takes over the moment your hours start.

Who It's For

Who a live chat VA is for

Stores where chat drives sales Pre-sale questions answered in the moment, baskets recovered.
SaaS and services with demos to book Your VA qualifies visitors and books the call while interest is live.
Teams answering chat late A dedicated VA gives your chat widget a real person.
Support teams without headcount to add One VA covers chat, email and tickets, supervision included.

Live chat virtual assistant with a chat progress card: open, resolved, avg reply

Cost Comparison

What a live chat VA costs depends on where you hire

With Ant Assist the entry rate is £5 per hour for the first 6 months on the Entry tier, 3 months on Mid, 1 month on Expert.

A dedicated Ant Assist VA compared with a UK in-house hire and a UK agency, full time.
	RecommendedAnt Assist£952 a month£800 a month for the first 6 months at £5/hour	UK in-house hire~£2,866/mo	UK agencyapprox. £3,500 to £4,500
Who manages the work	IncludedOur UK team supervises	Not includedYou do	PartlyThe agency
Recruitment and onboarding	IncludedIncluded	Not includedYou recruit and train	IncludedThe agency matches
Employer NI and pension	IncludedNone to pay	Not includedYou pay both	PartlyBuilt into the rate
Office and equipment	IncludedIncluded	Not includedYou provide	PartlyVaries by agency
Holiday and sick cover	IncludedCover provided	Not includedYou find cover	PartlyVaries by agency
Replacement if it is not right	IncludedReplaced, no restart cost	Not includedRe-hire from scratch	PartlyVaries by agency
Contract	IncludedRolling monthly, 30 days' notice	Not includedEmployment contract	PartlyVaries by agency

UK agency figures are an approximate range around the £25 per hour agency benchmark our calculator uses.

What the £5/hour entry rate includes

Dedicated VA, never shared
UK-hour aligned support
Management and supervision included
Recruitment and onboarding included
Office infrastructure included
VA replacement available
No NI, pension, or holiday costs
No long-term contract, rolling monthly

These are typical estimates. Get your exact numbers in the full calculator. Or read how much a virtual assistant costs in the UK.

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Process

How to hire a live chat VA

First call

A short call about your tasks, your tools and the hours you need covered.

Matching

We pick a VA from our in-house team for your work and introduce them to you.

Onboarding

Together we write down your rules and set up your access before day one.

Live cover

Your VA starts on your hours from our managed office, supervised from the UK.

Ongoing management

A UK team reviews the work each week; hours scale up or down as you need.

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Why Managed

Why a managed chat VA beats a bot or a marketplace

Managed, not just placed.

Your VA is recruited, trained and supervised from our own in-house office. Not a shared agent pool, not a freelancer profile.

Replaceable without restart cost.

If the fit is wrong, we replace the VA and carry the handover. No re-recruitment, no starting from zero.

No NI, pension, or holiday overhead.

One hourly rate; the employment costs sit with us.

Language and cultural alignment with UK customers.

Trained on your tone of voice and your scenarios before they answer a single chat.

Your data stays yours.

Every VA signs an NDA and a data-processing agreement, works through password managers, and you can revoke access at any time.

Rolling monthly.

Scale hours up or down, pause, or cancel with 30 days' notice.

Rated 5.0 on Google.Trusted by our clients

FAQ

Common questions about hiring a live chat virtual assistant

Yes. Your VA works as a named agent inside your own chat platform, whether it is a standalone widget, a helpdesk with chat built in or a marketplace messaging tool, so transcripts, ratings and customer records stay in your account. Onboarding covers your canned answers, your knowledge base and your escalation rules before the first chat is answered.

During the hours you buy, a visitor gets a human reply while they are still on the page, which is the point of staffing chat with a person rather than a form. Agree a first-reply target at onboarding and review it in the weekly numbers; when traffic peaks beyond one person, chat is split between two VAs or the overflow goes to a bot you already have.

Yes, within the rules you set. Pre-sale questions are answered while the buyer is deciding, the next step is offered, a demo is booked or order details taken, and a lead that needs a specialist is qualified and handed over with the transcript. Prices and promises come from your material, never invented on the chat.

Your choice: an offline form the VA works through first thing, a bot for after-hours triage with the VA taking over in the morning, or extended and weekend cover at additional cost when the traffic justifies it. Whatever you choose, nobody is left waiting on a widget that nobody is behind.

From a written voice guide with real examples, the canned answers you approve, and a first week in which every reply is reviewed before release. After that, transcripts are sampled weekly and corrections go into the answer library, so the chat improves over time rather than drifting.

By the hour, never by the chat. £5 per hour for the first 6 months on the Entry tier; after the promotion the customer service rate card applies: £5.95 per hour full time (£952 a month for 160 hours) or £6.50 per hour part time (£520 a month for 80 hours). A busy day costs the same as a quiet one, and recruitment, supervision and office costs are included with no employer costs on your side.

Didn't find your answer? Browse more common questions in the Help Center.

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