LiveChat User Management Guide

• Model type: role-based
• Description: LiveChat uses three fixed roles: Owner, Administrator, and Agent. There are no custom roles or granular permission sets. Permissions are predefined per role and cannot be individually adjusted.
• Custom roles: No
• Custom roles plan: Not documented
• Granularity: Coarse - three fixed roles only. Group-based chat routing provides limited scoping of chat access but does not constitute a permission layer.

1. Log in as Owner or Administrator.
2. Navigate to Settings → Team → Agents.
3. Click 'Invite Agents'.
4. Enter the new agent's email address.
5. Select the role (Agent or Administrator).
6. Optionally assign the agent to one or more Groups.
7. Click 'Send Invite'.
8. The invitee receives an email invitation and must accept it to activate their account.

Required fields: Email address, Role (Agent or Administrator)

Watch out for:

• Adding an agent increases the seat count and billing immediately upon invitation acceptance, not at invitation send.
• Invited agents must accept the email invitation before they appear as active and can handle chats.
• The Owner role cannot be assigned during invitation; it can only be transferred from the existing Owner.
• There is no bulk CSV import for agents via the admin UI.

• Can delete users: Yes
• Delete/deactivate behavior: LiveChat allows permanent deletion of an agent account from Settings → Team → Agents. There is no separate 'deactivate' or 'suspend' state - the only options are active or deleted. Deleting an agent removes their access immediately.

1. Log in as Owner or Administrator.
2. Navigate to Settings → Team → Agents.
3. Locate the agent to remove.
4. Click the agent's name to open their profile.
5. Click 'Delete Agent' (or the trash/remove icon depending on UI version).
6. Confirm the deletion in the prompt.

Watch out for:

• There is no soft-deactivate option; deletion is permanent and the agent cannot be restored - a new invitation would be required to re-add them.
• Deleting an agent does not automatically reassign their open or queued chats; active chats should be manually transferred before deletion.
• The Owner account cannot be deleted; ownership must be transferred first.
• Seat count reduction timing at billing depends on whether the account is on monthly or annual billing - annual plans may not receive prorated refunds.

• Where to check usage: Settings → Subscription (Owner only) - displays current agent count and plan details.
• How to identify unused seats: Navigate to Settings → Team → Agents and review the 'Last seen' or activity status column to identify agents who have not logged in recently. No automated unused-seat report is available in the UI.
• Billing notes: LiveChat bills per named agent seat. All plans are per-agent pricing. Annual billing offers a discount versus monthly. Adding agents mid-cycle on monthly plans is prorated; annual plan proration behavior should be confirmed with LiveChat support. Enterprise pricing is negotiated directly with LiveChat sales.

Every app managed without automation carries a per-action overhead, and LiveChat compounds this with invitation-based onboarding: each new agent must accept an email invite before they appear active or can handle chats. There is no bulk CSV import via the admin UI, so large team onboarding requires individual invitations sent one at a time.

The platform offers no soft-deactivate or suspend state. Removing access means permanent deletion - a meaningful operational risk for seasonal staff or employees on leave, since re-adding them requires a fresh invitation cycle.

Seat count changes on annual plans may not result in prorated credits; this should be confirmed with LiveChat support before offboarding at scale.

Practitioners consistently flag the absence of a temporary suspend or deactivate option as the sharpest operational gap, particularly for organizations managing contractors or leave-of-absence scenarios. The delete-only offboarding path is treated as a hard limitation, not a minor inconvenience.

The three-role permission model draws repeated criticism from teams that need differentiated access - for example, agents who can view reports but not manage other agents.

The lack of CSV bulk import is a secondary but persistent complaint for teams onboarding more than a handful of agents at once. Annual plan billing behavior on mid-cycle seat reductions is a noted source of uncertainty.

Common complaints:

• Users report that there is no way to temporarily suspend or deactivate an agent without fully deleting them, which is problematic for seasonal or leave-of-absence scenarios.
• Users note the absence of CSV bulk import for agents, requiring manual invitation of each agent individually for large teams.
• Users express frustration that there are no custom roles or granular permissions - the three fixed roles are considered too coarse for organizations needing differentiated access levels.
• Users on annual plans report uncertainty about whether seat reductions mid-cycle result in credits or are only applied at renewal.
• Users note that SSO/SAML is restricted to the Enterprise plan with custom pricing, making automated provisioning inaccessible to smaller teams.
• Users report that there is no SCIM support, meaning agent lifecycle management cannot be automated through identity providers even on Enterprise.

LiveChat is a practical fit for support teams that can operate within three fixed roles and do not require automated provisioning. Every app decision at this layer comes down to whether the manual overhead of invitation-based onboarding and delete-only offboarding is acceptable given team size and turnover rate.

Teams that need SSO must be on Enterprise with custom pricing; teams that need SCIM-based lifecycle automation will find no documented path at any tier. If either requirement is non-negotiable, the provisioning gap should be treated as a blocking factor before committing to an annual plan.

Bottom line

LiveChat delivers a straightforward role model and a functional admin console for teams willing to manage agent lifecycle manually. The invitation-based onboarding, delete-only offboarding, and absence of SCIM support mean that every app and identity workflow touching LiveChat requires hands-on administration.

For small, stable support teams this is manageable; for organizations with high agent turnover, seasonal staffing, or IdP-driven provisioning requirements, the manual overhead accumulates quickly and the Enterprise SSO gate adds cost before automation becomes possible.