can agents reply to live chats from front end?

Hi
I tried many times to reply to the customers from the front end ,however i found that the front end chat is just for chatting as a customer more than receiving customer’s live chats to reply on them. So, can agents reply to live chats from the front end?or they have to login to back end ?
please if this issue is resolved before help me to find the post because i couldn’t
Thank you