With most things (people, products, services) maintaining an online presence and providing seamless interactivity has become the rule rather than exception. When people are on their mobile devices, they expect to have whatever they need within a few swipes or clicks away.
Live chat support has been growing in popularity on the business and consumer end. A study has shown that close to 60 percent of online shoppers prefer live chat support to any other form of interaction.
In the digital culture of instant gratification, live chat is an important element to consider for your website. As attention spans continue to shrink, the response time people demand will decrease with it. There is perhaps no better way to respond to the needs of your customers than by having a live chat option on your website.
Let’s take a look at a few perks of having a live chat marketing strategy:
Virtual Sales Assistant
Having a website without live chat is like having a store with no sales associates. Live chat provides a two-way line of communication that’s mutually beneficial for you and the customer.
At the customer’s end, they have access to ask you various questions about your product or service. The allows them to get their concerns out of the way and click the “buy now” button. On the business end, it’s a tool that can aid in closing the sale. Aside from that, it allows you to gather analytic data in real time and helps to better the understand of consumer behavior.
Product Enhancement
Part of the analytic data that you can gather from live chat is user feedback. When solicited properly, this type of feedback can lead to vital product enhancements you may otherwise not have known you need to make. By carefully designing a system within the live chat tool, you can, for example, attach automated tags for each chat to categorize user feedback.
Not only does this allows you to improve your end product, but all the other aspects of your business as well—from your website, your links, to the existing means of support available.
Remote Working
For bigger businesses that have a global reach, which entails consistent client contact for all hours of the day, you need to understand the significance of remote working with live chat.
An example of remote working is employing live chat operators in different time zones who could simply log in to your web-based live chat software to address the needs of your customers 24/7.
This element is often overlooked by businesses, and it leads to frustrated customers who need support, only to find the live chat status to be offline. Certainly, remote working requires substantially more resources, but there is a price to be paid if you want to keep ahead of the curve.
Potential to Drive Conversions
Driving conversions with live chat is yet another mutually beneficial element of this marketing tool. It’s too easy to drive confounded customers to a competitor when that user stumbles into trivial confusion.
Live chat plays the role of safe guarding those occurrences, while also allowing you to either push other available services, convert, develop customer loyalty, or just utterly maintain a relationship with your customers.
If you have ample resources to be consistent with your live chat tool, it can be utilized for all your business needs (in terms of consumer data, pushing sales, etc.), while also addressing most of your clients’ requirements.
The continued growth of e-commerce requires businesses with an active online presence to up the ante when it comes to customer support and interaction. The resurgence of the live chat has opened up doors to enhance the user’s online experience. As the live chat support movement gathers steam, businesses need to keep a keen eye on it.
It’s important to note that you need to be fully aware of your resources before you dive into integrating live chat on your website. Having the live chat option that is either buggy or inconsistent can do more harm than good in most cases, so it’s paramount to understand what you’re trying to get into.
The bottom line: Those who realize the vast potential of this tool faster than others, will have a significant edge for years to come.
