Livechat is becoming more popular for businesses that offer online customer care. Customer support via phone is personal but doesn’t allow the agent to multitask. Customer support via email allows the agent to multitask, but does not require an immediate response and therefore slows down sales. Livechat is the perfect mix. It's personal and also efficient which is why livechat is a must for your business’ marketing and communication mix.
What is livechat?
Most likely you have already experienced livechat. It's that small chat window that pops up when entering a website in which you are asked if you need any help. In short, livechat is software that companies add to their website to communicate with customers in real time. For companies it allows you to answer questions immediately and customers receive a much quicker answer than compared to other communication channels like email, where a response may take several days.
How does livechat work?
It is not that difficult to implement livechat. There are a number of software solutions that offer chat software for your website. For instance if you want to use Google, you can simply install a google tag manager script and with that a branded chat widget appears in the lower right corner of your website. When a website visitor clicks on the widget a chat window appears. For websites based on Wordpress there are numerous plugins to choose from.
Reasons for using livechat
So now you know how easy it is to work with livechat, you still need a reason to start using it. That’s why we listed six reasons why companies think it's worthwhile to implement this type of communication on their website.
Reason 1 - Speak to visitors, prospects and customers in real-time
Nowadays consumers expect an immediate response. If an agent doesn’t respond within 5 minutes, potential customers are ten times less likely to maintain contact. If it takes more than 10 minutes, your chance of making contact has gone right out of the window. Livechat will help reduce the wait time. It prevents phone cues and endless waiting for emails, precious time in which a customer is likely to have found another company with a faster response time.
Reason 2 - Personalize conversations
With livechat customers receive a quick response. To give a more personal touch you can use emoticons, gifs, images and links in your messages. While bots may feel less personal, it does give you the opportunity to collect customer data to tailor the customer experience. For instance, you can start with an introduction of the bot, add an avatar and this gives the customer a sense of having a human interaction. With the help of AI and machine learning, bots can start a conversation, provide simple support and it's 24/7. Research shows that automatic responses by bots don't have an impact on customer satisfaction.
Reason 3 - Reach a higher ROI
Livechat is easy to implement and offers a better customer experience than phone or email. It also offers you the opportunity to collect data and with routing you are able to handle queries more efficiently. Now agents can focus on selling products, while basic tasks are being handled by bots.
Reason 4 - Communicate via preferred channels
With livechat you will reach the client on their preferred communication channels, like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter or via text. It helps you reach the client quicker and you will receive a much quicker response, independent of time and place. Another advantage is that you can offer 24/7 support, since opening hours are not applicable.
Reason 5 - Prevent cart abandonment
Another good reason to implement livechat is that you can service the customer while they are shopping on your website. While they shop you can assist them with their questions about the product, questions about delivery, remind them of a promotion or offer discounts. This prevents them from leaving their carts empty or abandoning a cart because they are left with unanswered questions about extra costs topped on the price of the product. Situations like these are why 80 percent of the carts are abandoned online.
Reason 6 - Integrate livechat
When you integrate messages from livechat to arrive directly into for instance a multichannel inbox, you make sure you will never miss a message and clients receive a response quickly. This will result in a more efficient workflow.
Livechat is a must
If your company wants to stay ahead of the game, livechat will help you do that. With livechat your customer care is handled efficiently. It helps decrease the response time, simple questions are quickly answered, clients are more satisfied and carts won't be left unattended which results in more sales. Want to know how to implement live chat for your business? Drop our team at Saysimple a message. We love to help you get started.
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