According to a recent study, Live Chat has a 73% satisfaction rate as a way for customers to interact with businesses. Text-based channels allow for faster response times, are more scalable than phone support, and in most cases, lead to happy customers.
Read and discover the main aspects you need to know before implementing live chat on your website.
Live Chat is today the preferred customers' digital engagement channel, and the approval rate keeps on growing. Every company should integrate this customer support system to satisfy the customers' expectation of a fast, meaningful and personal assistance during their experience on the website.
It is confirmed that the best online customer engagement goes through the messaging system: it is the key to provide the real-time support that customers ask for.
Businesses that at first were doubtful about the utility of such a channel, have soon changed their mind and are now trying to make the most of live chat.
In a survey conducted in 2018 by Bold 360, it came out that businesses are aware that customer support needs to provide live chat. Moreover, 71% of them think that by 2021 live chat will become the most-used channel, surpassing traditional customer service communication channels.
With this in mind, it is important to know some important aspects that will condition the choice of the integration of a live messaging system; but before let's discover what live chat actually is.
What is Live Chat?
Live chat is a customer service channel that allows real-time communication between businesses and customers, also from different devices. With live chat, a visitor who needs help can ask for assistance through it or can be contacted by a customer service operator. Companies that adopt live chat can, in fact, arrange in advanced some automated chat invitation rules, which allow the engagement of the customer following specific events.
When you decide to include a live chat in your website, it is useful to take some considerations into account, aiming to use it at the best.
Customers expectations
First of all, it is important to consider customers' expectations: the chat service must satisfy the customer's desires. According to research, in a few years the customer service will be even more important than the price and quality of the product in customers' opinion. For this reason, it is fundamental for businesses to meet their customers' expectations.
For a customer who has to do many tasks at the same time and who needs to resolve issues quickly, live chat is always the best channel, thanks mainly to the immediacy of its service.
For example, if a customer verifies a problem with his telephone company and needs to solve it quickly because he needs to use his mobile phone for work, he can ask for assistance on the telephone company's website and chatting with an operator, also during the trip towards his office; in this way the customer can solve his problem very quickly and without loss of time at work.
Agents full-time presence
Now let's take into account one consideration: the main difference between live chat and live messaging is that live chat ensures to the customer an immediate answer. Live messaging ensures an answer as well, but it doesn't promise it to arrive immediately. This causes companies to be aware that if they integrate a live chat system, they will have to provide agent availability during the time slot that the service is active.
Following this consideration, we can say that live chat requires a bigger amount of work and bigger costs for companies; however, there is a great profit in this application and it is the big lead conversion.
According to EConsltancy, 46% of consumers agree that live chat is the most efficient way of communicating with a support team, while 29% of consumers think that the information they received from live chat agents is better than what they received over email.
If you want to engage with prospective customers and existing customers, and ensure that they complete the purchase, you need to be present and ready to offer your help whenever they may need it.
Multichannel availability
Whatever device your customers are accessing your site from, you must be able to offer them consistent reliable service. For example, if you are planning to introduce live chat on your website, then you should ensure that it is responsive and able to be used on every device.
The live chat works well for customers who are contacting companies on the go. Especially since they can be used like any other social network we are so accustomed to.
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