When it comes to your business website, no doubt you want to put your best foot forward. You want to present your products and services in an attractive light, and you want to give potential customers a positive experience when they visit your site. One of the best ways you can do this is by incorporating a live chat feature.
Live chat is a form of online support that allows you to communicate with your customers in real-time. It's a great way to provide customer service and increase sales by answering questions and helping customers make the right purchase decision.
What Exactly is a Live Chat?
So what is Live Chat? Live Chat is a tool that allows you to directly
communicate with your customers (and potential customers), via text,
in
real-time. It's a great way to answer your customers' questions and resolve
issues quickly, so they can make an informed purchase decision without delay.
You can also use Live Chat to help guide your customers through the purchase
process—hand-holding them through the checkout process and even after they've
made a purchase. This helps improve conversions by reducing cart
abandonment.
Why are Live Chats Beneficial?
If you're looking for a new way to communicate with your customers, live chat
is definitely a great option. It's been proven that companies who use live chat
see an increase in sales, as well as an increase in customer satisfaction.
Customers love the convenience of a quick and easy way to ask questions.
Live chats are becoming more popular, and it's easy to see why: they're
beneficial for both the customer and the business. For customers, live chats
offer nearly instant responses,
which is a boon in today's market where attention spans are shortening. For
businesses, they allow employees to stay on top of communication
and can even be
used to connect with customers who are visiting your website!
How Does Live Chat Increase Sales?
Live chat has been used in customer service for a long time, but it's only
recently that companies have started to realize that live chat can also be an
incredibly valuable sales tool.
So how does live chat increase sales? Check out these three reasons why it
works:
- Give Instant Answers
- Increase Customer Satisfaction
- Improve Your Sales Process
Customers who are shopping online don't want to wait for answers before they decide to buy a product or service. Live chat enables you to give instant responses.
Live chat lets you provide personalized service to every customer, which will help them feel cared for and lead to higher customer satisfaction.
By using live chat, you'll have a record of past conversations, which will help you learn more about your customers and improve your sales process over time.
Are There Different Kinds of Live Chats?
There are actually a few different kinds of live chats, and they have
different functions.
Hybrid live chat is the most common: It's when the company
initiates a
conversation if the customer has been on the site for a certain amount of time,
clicks a certain number of pages, or visits a specific page.
Reactive live chat is when you have to ask for help from an
agent by
clicking on a button that says "Help," "Need Assistance," or "Live Chat."
Proactive live chat is when the company automatically starts a
conversation with
you without you asking for it.
Should My Live Chat Be Available 24/7?
One question many businesses have about their live chat is whether or not it
should be available 24/7.
The answer: yes!
If you're available 24/7, you'll have more opportunities to connect with
prospective customers who might have questions about your products or services.
Customers also tend to like being able to get answers from a real
person that
can help them make more informed decisions about what they want.
However, there are some cases where it might not be feasible for your company's
needs. If you only offer services during certain times of day or week, then
offering 24/7 live chat support may not be necessary.
Is it Better to Have a Live Chat with a Virtual Agent or a Real Person?
The debate is on. With the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, machine
learning, and AI-enabled chatbots, the question of whether it's better to have a
live chat with a virtual agent or a real person comes up more and more.
Is one preferable over the other?
To answer that question, we need to look at what each type of chat offers
the user.
Although there is some overlap between the questions that can be answered by
humans and by bots, there are also distinct differences. For instance:
Real people can provide personalized responses based on their
knowledge of the
customer as well as their past interactions with them. This level of
customization is simply not possible for AI-enabled chatbots, at least not yet.
What was once an exclusive feature of human-to-human interaction
is now
available through live chats with virtual agents.
As technology advances, so does our ability to connect with others in a human
way over digital channels.
Live chats with virtual
agents
offer customers an experience that feels unique to them. As we begin to merge
these two worlds, it will be interesting to see how this all shakes out!
What Kinds of Questions Can Be Answered Over a Live Chat?
With a live chat feature on your website, you can answer just about any question your potential customers have. Where can I buy this product? What's your return policy? Do you know who sings this song? If you don't know the answer, at least you can let them know you don't know the answer.
Final Thoughts
Live chats are a great tool to have on your website as it allows you to interact with customers and solve problems on a real-time basis.
Live chat is a sales-boosting tool that's often ignored by businesses. When implemented correctly, though, it can have several benefits. Not only does live chat increase sales, but it also increases customers' lifetime value and decreases the amount of time that your team needs to spend on each customer service case. Hire our team of specialists to ensure high-quality inbound/outbound calls and live chat services for your business!
