One trend continues to shape the future of online businesses and e-commerce ventures – personalised customer relationship management. This has become a major influence on how a customer makes buying decisions.
A new breed of B2B and B2C buyers are telling companies to change the way they communicate with them.
These buyers want to communicate with you in real-time, on their terms. But how?
Businesses globally have a consensus that the most effective way to communicate with prospects is to meet them on a channel they prefer most. In the age of digital transformation, most of the time, this is on your website via live chat.
Despite its incredible potential to help you connect with your customers, there are a lot of online business websites that don’t use live chat. Some say it’s impersonal, some feel their staff numbers are too small to handle a live chat channel and some people simply haven’t had the time to investigate.
But you’re losing customers….
A good managed chat service allows you to get an edge on your online competition, giving customers an amazing online store experience. Tap into your customer base, convert them into buyers and even upsell them.
All these are possible with live chat software.
According to Forrester studies, more than 41% of customers expect live chat on your website. For mobile phone users, this number is as high as 50%. This means if you don’t have live chat services on your website, your customers feel ignored!
How Does Live Chat Increase Conversions?
Customers need instant gratification, especially when it comes to their questions regarding a product while looking for it online. If they have to send an email or can’t see what they’re looking for, it’s a missed opportunity for potential conversion.
Live chat empowers customers to get the information they are looking for from your business immediately. A great example comes from using live chat for the automotive industry. It helps Customers navigate stock, book a service and find opening times. This kind of instant help is preferred by many customers when they need information.
The chat icon itself sits calmly in the corner of your website until the user needs it. When the user types in a question, that question gets answered instantly. This is why most people use live chat.
Most of the time, customers who use live chat are looking for something in particular or are in the process of making a decision. Communicating with them at this point is crucial. The simple act of answering a customer’s query at the time they want to ask it, can make the difference between an opportunity or a customer leaving. Live chat is a great way of giving your customers additional value and increasing your conversation rates.
Other things that Live Chat helps you with that aren’t so obvious is keeping your customers up to date with your latest offers, informing them of special events or opening hours and also helping appease those customers that may be having an issue.
How Does Live Chat Increase Sales?
Apart from being an excellent customer support tool, live chat provides a direct line between you and your prospective customers. Your sales team can use the information from the chat to generate leads, improve conversion rates and identify opportunities to upsell.
Customers love this tool because it’s faster in solving their problems and provides a human touch. Sometimes they get confused by products and their features. Offering real-time solutions helps to accelerate their buying decision. Live chat brings the feeling of being listened to and understood.
An emarketer.com study concludes that more than 60% of consumers would return to a website offering live chat.
Installing the live chat tool on your website is cost-efficient as well, It makes sense that customers are more likely to buy when they are treated well and their questions answered quickly and professionally.
Live chat speeds up the sales cycle by creating a direct line between you and your prospects. Through live chat, you can exchange information with your website visitors in real-time and carry that conversation seamlessly across email, text and voice. You can build meaningful connections with your prospects in less time and contact your customers faster.
If you haven’t started offering live chat support yet, it’s high time you did it.
Punit