You’ve probably heard a lot about live chat by now. But do you consider it something-nice-to-have or a must-have for your business? Here are some reasons why it should be the latter:
Customers Love Live Chat
Many studies have shown that customers respond positively to live chat on websites. For example, according to Maru/Matchbox's Customer Service Benchmark report website visitors prefer live chat over every other customer service channel including email and telephone.
Also, a Forrester Research Report, Making Proactive Chat Work, revealed that customers greatly appreciate having assistance via live chat during the sales process.
Irrespective of how you intend to use live chat for your website and business, you can expect customers to appreciate the real-time interaction and stress-free convenience it offers.
Live Chat Is More Efficient and Cheaper than a Call Center
Live chat is a much cheaper customer service channel than the more traditional methods like telephone and email. This is primarily because phone and email cost time and resources to properly set up.
Live chat, on the other hand, is relatively cheap to set up and run, and also comes with a bunch of extra benefits like the ability to address several queries at once and save time, man-hours, and ultimately money
This versatility that live chat affords is also the reason why it is so efficient when compared to other customer service channels. A customer service rep can only deal with one caller at a time; and this makes them limited. Live chat goes beyond by tackling several queries at once.
The fact that live chat is also entirely text-based provides a chance to review the entire interaction by analyzing transcripts, making it easier to optimize your customer journey and zoom in on your customer’s most pressing issues.
Live Chat Provides a Competitive Advantage
Live chat is still relatively new on the block. That means most businesses aren’t using it, and those that do, are probably not making the most of it. This is your chance to step into the void and make use of live chat to set your business apart from the competition.
With the advantages that live chat offers, it could become the edge or competitive advantage you need to dominate your space.
Live Chat Can Be a Timesaver
Would you be glad for faster response times to customer queries? Well, you should. A study conducted by Drift comprising 433 sales teams revealed that there is a 10x decrease in the odds of making contact with a lead after just a five-minute delay in responding to their queries.
People just don’t have the time to sit around waiting for a response in today’s fast-paced world.
Now, combine that with finding that a study carried out by Zopim which analyzed more than 85,000 chats and revealed the average live chat agent replies to a customer query in less than 23 seconds with an average resolution time of no more than 42 seconds.
To put this into context, live chat enables you to respond and close up to 60 leads each hour.
Conversely, the average response time on other channels like Facebook and Twitter typically extends from eleven hours to a whole day.
Live Chat Provides Availability and Trust
Website visitors are sure to feel reassured when they discover you have live chat. This lets them know that you are responsive, available, and interested in what they want. People appreciate having support on their journey.
Live chat also gives you the option of longer service hours—even in the evenings and weekends when call centers are usually closed.
This availability eventually pays dividends in terms of trust and more business in the long run.
Live Chat Increases Sales and Provides Service
Who says you’ve got to limit your live chat features to just customer support? You can get creative and bring it onboard the sales process as well.
For example, Forrester Research revealed that “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer".
Meaning live chat could be adopted as an effective sales tool if you are diligent enough.
It helps that live chat is customizable enough to be targeted precisely so that particularly complicated areas of the customer journey with a high dropout rate are targeted and fixed with a dedicated live chat agent.
Is there a particular page with high traffic and zero sales? Consider turning things around by setting up live chat for these visitors to help answer questions and handle objections when it is needed.
Long story short, if you run a customer-centric business, one that cares about providing the best customer service to customers, then you need a live chat set up as soon as possible.
Give me a call or email today and we can setup a live demo to show you just how easy it is!
