The business environment today is more competitive than ever. It’s true that consumers have a pool of brand options to choose from in just about every industry, meaning offering top-notch quality is essential for customer loyalty and business success. The question is, what are the most current and best practices that businesses can utilize in order to gain a competitive advantage?
This may not come as a surprise to many, but as technology has continued to evolve, people have seemingly become less patient. With various technologies making everything instantaneous nowadays, consumers are developing shorter attention spans. For business owners, this is a trend that is important to recognize in order to adjust your customer service strategies and ultimately keep up with consumers.
This is where the live chat feature comes into play…
What is Live Chat?
Live chat is a tool that connects your customers with human support representatives via instant messaging, allowing your website visitors to resolve questions or issues in real-time. This means spending less time sifting through FAQs and waiting to find other solutions.
You may also have heard of implementing chatbots to your website as a real-time support communication tool. While chatbots can be beneficial as well, it is important to understand the difference between them and live chat features. It really comes down to the fact that live chat connects customers with human support while a chatbot is just that, a bot.
The Benefits of Live Chat
- Improve Customer Service and CX
Statistics have proven that customers want to interact with businesses that make support easy, hassle-free, and most importantly, instantaneous. Unlike sending emails to a support team or being put on hold for long periods of time, live chat gives your customers a way to reach you in the exact moment they need a question answered or problem solved.
- Reduce Support Costs
Phone support is a more traditional practice that companies have used to service their customers, but it can also be very costly. From toll charges to person-per-hour costs, phone support comes with a variety of expenses that can add up quickly. On the other hand, live chat software is known to be much cheaper. In fact, Forrester research has shown that live chat is 17-30% cheaper than a phone call. This is because with live chat, customer service representatives are able to multitask and assist multiple customers at once. Therefore, companies are able to save on personnel costs since it really only takes a few live chat agents to help the same number of customers as a large team of phone support employees.
- Increase Conversions
Valuing your website visitors’ time and interest will go a long way in terms of gaining more sales and loyal customers. According to recent studies, if a customer engages with a live chat agent, they’re 2.8 times more likely to end up purchasing a product. Furthermore, 38% of customers reported making a purchase after having a good session with a live chat agent. With that being said, providing customers with a positive buying experience will also increase customer loyalty which will lead to even more sales in the future.
Experience the Power of Live Chat on Your Website
If you are looking for a new way to communicate, engage and actively assist your customers all while increasing your sales and lowering support costs, implementing live chat on your website could be your next digital marketing move.
At Beson4, we are committed to staying on top of the latest trends in the digital marketing industry to guarantee our clients’ success. Give us a shout to learn how we can help you!