Every brand’s reputation is built solidly around customer service. Today, customer expectations are growing and shopping habits are fast changing. In a digital world with unlimited options, your business will need a lot of input to stay ahead of the competition.
Each time your customers visit your site, questions and requests will often arise. The average consumer wants those issues resolved as quickly as possible. The faster you can attend to a site visitor’s request, the more prospective customers you’re bound to retain. Using live chat is one of the more effective approaches to stay ahead of the pack.
In this article, we’ll discuss the major advantages of using live chat on your site and mention some live chat tools that we recommend. Let’s get to it!
A Brief Overview of Live Chat Technology
Live chat functionality is an online customer service solution that helps businesses engage their website visitors using online chat, help desk software, and other website analytics capabilities. In other words, brands use live chat to interact with their customers and solve their problems in real-time.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software could also be considered a vital cog in the wheel too. This is made up of two main elements: the website chat widget and the agent application.
The website chat widget is the customer-facing aspect you'll see when visiting a website. Traditionally, this is displayed as a small chat box at the bottom right corner of the page. The customer can simply click on it to start a conversation.
In contrast, the agent-side application lets you receive communication requests from visitors and respond to them appropriately. This way, the seamless flow of data back and forth through the CRM software helps businesses improve their customer service and boost performance in several ways.
7 Advantages of Using Live Chat on Your Website
While there are a number of advantages of live chat, here are seven benefits it can offer your business.
1. Live Chat Boosts Sales and Conversion
Here’s the biggest area every business can benefit from using live chat. The ability to answer your potential customer’s questions immediately and professionally builds trust. In many cases, this can help eventually sell your product or service.
Live chat essentially helps you show your customer around your online store like a sales assistant would in a physical shop.
The American Marketing Association discovered that, on average, B2B companies with live chat on their website enjoy a 20% boost in conversions. Also, customers who use the chat feature were found to be three times more likely to complete a purchase.
2. It Increases Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
In a nutshell, if you want your visitors to be more satisfied with your website and business in general, consider live chat.
When eDigital Customer Service Benchmark polled 2,000 consumers, they discovered that the majority of customers preferred live chat over email or phone support.
Oracle also learned in their consumer research study that 90% of consumers viewed the Live Chat button as an assurance of help if they ever need it.
As such, live chat support provides a substantial edge in the bid to gain your customer’s loyalty and keep them satisfied. The faster you can solve their problems, the higher the customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
3. There’s a Reduction in Support Costs
Customer support can be costly. This is true for both the business and the customer. However, live chat can substantially subsidize these costs. It typically costs more to run a call center than to implement a live chat solution.
For example, you can pay as low as $16 per user, per month to run a live chat app such as LiveChat. It even gets better with free options such as tawk.to. However, while a free solution is tantalizing, only the premium plan offers access to features such as chat history, automated triggers, and more.
In the same vein, you’ll typically need more personnel to keep a call center running than you would when using live chat. A Telus International research reports that live support agents can handle as many as six chats simultaneously – practically impossible with phone support options.
4. You Can Easily Generate More Leads
Unfortunately, many visitors will not make a purchase when first visiting your site. No matter how convincing the chat agent is, some consumers will always have doubts or other reasons to not pull the trigger. However, live chat can help you to generate a lead from every user you speak to.
It is always advisable to request user information – preferably an email address – each time a visitor accesses live chat. However, even when you’re not able to collect user information, statistics show that 63% of consumers are more likely to return to a website with live chat support.
5. Live Chat Improves Your Site’s Overall User Experience
User queries on sites without live chat would normally see them have to open a new browser tab or pick up a phone. This could impact their overall user experience negatively.
However, with live chat, virtually all the resources they need for an informed purchase decision can be accessed there and then. This will essentially lead to less abandoned carts and longer site visit durations.
Forrester Research says that 57% of customers abandon their purchase due to unanswered questions. While it is commonplace to find the chat widget on home pages and product pages, it’ll be a smart move to include it on your error pages too. A live chat agent can easily point visitors in the right direction after experiencing a 404 error.
6. It Can Be an Additional Means of Data Collection
A quality live chat support provider keeps a record of all the chats between you and your customers. Apart from this, vendors such as Olark also offer full integration with Google Analytics.
The data you generate here can prove invaluable. For example, you can assess how chat requests are made on your site, discover your users’ major pain points, and even create your own custom reports.
This way, you can improve your customer service and marketing strategies to drive more sales and conversion.
7. You Can Use Live Chat to Gain a Competitive Advantage
Finally, adding live chat to your site can give you a much-needed advantage over your competition. You might be surprised to learn that the majority of businesses are still not leveraging the power of live chat.
A study by SuperOffice found that only 9% of websites use live chat to provide real-time support to their customers. Armed with this knowledge, you may want to use live chat support to differentiate yourself from your direct rivals in your industry.
Conclusion
It’s clear how important a role top-notch customer service plays in every business. With the steep competition in almost every industry today, it doesn’t take much to lose a prospective customer. Irrespective of the niche, live chat can up your chances significantly.
Responsive customer support by live chat can easily boost your sales and conversion. Your website can also benefit more from offering live support. Your site’s overall User Experience (UX) will improve, your customers will likely be more satisfied, and you generally get to spend less on support.
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