Live chat is becoming a must for businesses who want to connect with as many potential customers as possible. It’s understandable – 87% of purchasing decisions now begin online, according to Salesforce. So online customer experience is critical to success.
Your website is your busiest shop front and it just happens to be open 24/7!
Live chat offers a very powerful way to effectively ‘staff’ that shop front on a 24/7 basis, and that is why more and more digital marketers are turning to live chat to deliver customer service through a real-time engagement online and to maximise conversions in the moment.
We’ve put together 10 quick wins you might not have realised can be achieved with live chat:
1. Start real conversations sooner
This is what live chat it is all about! Regardless of your business, it is inevitable that your customers’ behaviour will have changed significantly over the last decade.
Consumers simply don’t want to come into your store or branch and ask you questions face to face as they used to. They certainly aren’t picking up the phone to ask initial questions like they used to; they are often not at that stage when they visit your site.
However, many of them will engage with you via live chat.
Textual conversations are now becoming the norm.
Whether its Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or good old-fashioned SMS, customers are now most comfortable engaging in this way.
If you offer them a means to enhance their visit to your site, they will engage with you in this way to fast-track their information search. In a method that is becoming increasingly comfortable and convenient for them, they will start more conversations with you sooner in their buying journey.
It’s as simple as that!
2. Capture additional qualified leads
An increase in web conversion is the ultimate win with live chat.
Businesses are constantly fighting to convert as many opportunities from their website as possible. To do this, you need to start as many online engagements as possible.
With live chat, you have a platform to do exactly that.
If you provide the right level of customer service at the point your user engages with you via chat, then you have a fantastic platform to qualify the opportunity, making sure they are a customer that fits your business and vice versa. Nurturing them through immediate conversation will turn them into a lead for your sales team to follow up.
Result.
3. Reduce website bounce rates
Maybe you’re an ecommerce platform. Live chat is proven to have an especially great impact here.
By targeting specific points in a buying journey, live chat can have a massive real-time impact on the number of conversions on your website.
A classic example is by targeting basket abandonment.
Where users are showing signs of leaving your website with items still in their basket, a personalised message offering assistance to help ease any customer concerns can massively reduce the number of customers that abandon your website.
4. Prioritise high value opportunities
Your website may have some products that are much higher value opportunities than others. Many websites do.
Live chat is brilliant here.
Deployment rules can be set up to track customers exhibiting specific traits of interest in purchasing your higher value products. It can then prioritise these opportunities accordingly with proactive and personalised invitations to chat.
Maximising your high value conversions!
5. Filter out time-wasters
We are all fed up with time-wasters. Well enough is enough. A good live chat lead is a well-qualified lead.
To give you a feel for the quality of a lead you can expect from a well-handled live chat conversation, Yomdel’s chats that convert into leads last on average 12 minutes.
Now imagine if you were handling a 12-minute conversation with your prospects. Within that 12 minutes you would be able to find out exactly what the scale of that opportunity is and whether it warrants the time of your team to follow it up. It is no different with live chat.
Every lead you receive from a well-handled live chat conversation should be a hot opportunity, that should be prioritised accordingly.
No more time-wasters.
6. Happier customers
With a fully managed live chat service you can offer an exceptional customer experience and be there to advise your customers at a time and in a manner that suits them.
Research has proven that customers prefer live chat over other service channels. It has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at 92% (Zendesk).
Your customers will be so much happier if you can be there for them immediately via live chat, rather than having to wait “48 hours for one of your team to get back in touch”.
7. Be open for business 24/7
When are your customers online? Always!
Your customers are busy people. With the internet at people’s fingertips, they will be online and researching your brand at a time that suits them. This might be 1pm in the afternoon on a Tuesday when you might be there to help, if capacity allows.
But it is just as likely to be 10pm on a Friday evening when you have well and truly checked out for the week.
With a 24/7 managed live chat service, you can be online and engaging with people at a time that suits them, without you having to lift a finger.
8. Engage with people whilst they are ‘busy’ at work
We’ve all done it. Well I certainly have. Whilst I am ‘busy’ at work, I might do a little bit of research looking at my next holiday, thinking about my next car, or possibly that house move.
I can be inconspicuous enough browsing your website quietly. However, if I have questions to ask it is less likely that I will pick up the phone for fear of giving the game away!
Live chat provides me a method of engaging with you there and then, when my interest is at its peak.
The first 5 minutes of a user interacting with a brand is the most important, be available through live chat when it counts!
9. Build brand loyalty
Your brand is special. Everyone’s is. Getting users to buy into your brand and business online is becoming ever more challenging, because CHOICE is instantly at their fingertips. Also compounded by attention spans getting shorter and shorter.
A well-managed live chat offers the platform to build rapport with users at a time that suits them, and thus builds competitive advantage. Slowing them down on their whirlwind journey around the internet and getting them to invest their precious time in your brand, before they move on to your competitor.
We know that 63% of consumers who used live chat on a website are likely to return to that site (eMarketer). Use this opportunity to build a relationship with that user and your brand will be one step ahead of your competitors’ immediately.
10. Implementation is easy (well with Yomdel it is!)
You might think that with all these benefits, it is difficult or sophisticated to get up and running with an optimum service.
Don’t worry, with Yomdel on your side, it is easy!
We do all the work learning about your business, training dedicated operators, creating a bespoke chat box and working with your team to implement quick, simple code on your website when the time is right.
You don’t have to worry about a thing. Our live chat experts will take the lead and guide you through every step of the process. The time you spend on getting it set-up is minimal.
If you are interested in finding out more why not get in touch. We would be happy to talk live chat best practice, how we approach it and discuss the Yomdel service too (if you are interested). Click here to get in touch.