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Unless you live under a rock, you’ll have heard of, and likely used, online chat on a website. It’s used across every industry all over the world. While phone was once the dominant customer service channel, live chat is quickly taking its place.
If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably still wondering if online chat on your website is right for you. Let us take you through the four most simple but important reasons why you should add online chat to your website.
1. It’s your customers most popular channel
Let’s begin with perhaps the most obvious reason why you should add online chat to your website – it’s popularity. Customer service teams can have many different objectives, but the most universal goal that they share is to make customers happy – and live chat helps you achieve this.
79% of consumers prefer live chat over any other channel. It also has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at an impressive 92%. Why?
– It’s accessible: the vast majority of today’s consumers are online and want a way to connect with their brands digitally. An online chat widget installed on a website is incredibly easy to access and use.
– It’s fast: the real effectiveness of online chat lies in its real-time, quick nature. A visitor can go to the company’s site, type a question and receive an answer – all within seconds. Compare this to notoriously-long wait times and multiple agent transfers on phone, and there’s no surprise it’s so popular.
– It allows for multi-tasking: with online chat, even if a customer has to wait for a little, they don’t so much because they know they can do other things while they wait for a response (and even on-the-go from their mobile phone).
– It’s personal: although customers aren’t speaking aloud to agents on the phone, the nature of online chat still allows them to develop a personal connection and instill some character and fun into the conversation.
2. It’s the most cost-effective channel for your business
For years, phone support was the traditional form of communication between businesses and customers. However, this channel can be extremely costly – both in terms of toll charges and person-per-hour costs.
Online chat is far more cost-effective. Even with a paid version, it can be up to 30% cheaper than phone. This is largely due to chat concurrency – with online chat, agents can manage multiple chats at one time, while phone operators can only even handle one conversation.
– Marcus Pentzek, Head of Customer Service, YOYBUY
3. It’s an incredibly effective sales tool
Studies consistently show that online chat is a great sales tool, and companies who use it well are really reaping the benefits. It’s been shown that live chat can 3x – 5x more conversions and deliver huge levels of ROI.
Take Fitbit for example. The Health Solution Division set up Comm100 Live Chat and generated $6 million in new pipeline and closed almost $4m in business. Xylem Analytics, a provider of water technology, also set up Comm100 Live Chat – they generated more than $750,000 in new business opportunities.
These numbers make one thing clear: online chat is effective in generating leads and making sales. Because live chat provides visitors with instant access to your support staff and sales team, your team has the perfect opportunity to turn these visitors into paying clients or customers and importantly, stop them abandoning before a purchase is made.
Proactive chat is instrumental in this. While your website visitors have the option of clicking your chat button to connect with your agents, better online chat widgets allow your agents to reach out to the customer. Agents can do this manually when, for example, they see a customer on the checkout page for a long period of time. However, with sophisticated monitoring and tracking features, online chat platforms can even alert agents to this, as well as many other actions.
Watch the video: Proactively invite visitors to chat
4. It increases your market reach
The internet is key to expanding your audience and business – it makes it possible to expand your reach far beyond your local area. However, this also poses challenges. Being so far away and possibly within a very different country or culture, you need to gain your customers’ trust. Communication is the most tried and tested method to gain this.
With online chat on your site, customers who live anywhere in the world can contact you and get immediate responses from real people. This is particularly helpful for international customers who may be put off from contacting you over the phone because of expensive international dialing rates.
Live chat can help you expand your market reach to areas you may never have considered possible. So, if you do get an inquiry from someone on the other side of the world, you can give that person the same welcome and consideration you would someone who visits your office or shop.
If this hasn’t convinced you to get online chat on your website yet, then you just need to look across to your competitors – are they offering online chat? I bet they are, and if they’re not, then this is your chance to get one step ahead.
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