Top Reasons to Use Live Chat Software on Business & Ecommerce Websites
I have been handling client websites for a while now. And I know that creating, running, and managing a website can be a demanding task in itself.
But when it comes to servicing your site’s visitors, things become even more difficult. A vast portion of several business owners’ money and time is invested in producing the “perfect” services and products that they feel customers will certainly want to buy. But it is also important to remember that if they do not put enough consideration into customer support and service, then it won’t help their business grow in any way. Instead, it will simply turn out to be an unfortunate waste of resources.
If you seriously want to connect with users and, if you haven’t already, gain their approval for your brand, then you should definitely consider going for live chat using a live chat software for your business or eCommerce website.
Why Live Chat software?
Modern live chat software are now pre-programmed with readymade replies and artificial intelligence to perform various actions and allow you to participate in conversations with your website’s visitors.
If you haven’t implemented live chat on your website yet, you should definitely consider doing it as soon as possible. In this article, I will show you how you can use a live chat software to build stronger relationships with your customers and improve conversations on your business or eCommerce website.
Why should you implement live chat on your website?
There are a lot of benefits you can avail of by adding the live chat feature to your site, as described below.
- It encourages your customers to make purchases. It is unlikely that people will start buying products as soon as they visit your site. You must put in time and effort in developing a relationship with visitors until they are satisfied with the information they have, and feel ready to start making purchases. The live chat facilitates the process of taking customers through the buying process and makes them more confident to purchase your services and products. In fact, it almost serves as a domino effect in increasing sales and boosting conversions.
- It helps you develop strong relationships with your customers. If you give your customers a chance to chat with your business, even in the form of artificial intelligence, they will certainly be inclined to trust you more. Today, there are a vast number of e-commerce options in the market for people to choose from. Thus, it is very important for you to build a reliable and friendly relationship with your target market. That will ensure that they will keep coming back to you in the future.
- It provides convenience for both the business and the customer. Engaging in conversation with customer service tends to be a stressful and irritating process with long holds that result in the wastage of time. On the other hand, live chat allows your business and its website visitors to communicate instantly with each other. Thus, it allows you to meet their needs with much more efficiency.
- It decreases the costs of customer support. If you choose to hire a team of customer service representatives and give them sufficient training for their job, you will end up spending a whole lot of money. On the other hand, if you implement the live chat feature on your website, it will significantly reduce support costs. You can then invest this money elsewhere for the growth and benefit of your business.
Implementing live chat on your website is well worth the effort. Let’s see how you can build better relationships with your customers and gain more conversions:
Live Chats help you know your customer well
It doesn’t matter whether you have the most state-of-the-art live chat software available in the market unless you are familiar with your target audience. Your customer base is comprised of these people, and they need to find your services and products relevant. Each and every area of your marketing is affected by how well you know your ideal customers and determines how much your marketing strategy benefits from a successful live chat. If you fail to market to the right audience, your business will receive fewer sales and conversions.
Thus, it is very important for you to be familiar with your target market before implementing the live chat feature on your website. You should make effort to collect user data with the help of polls, surveys, social media, and email. You also need to research your competitors’ customers and find out more about their current interests and the factors which propel them to make purchases. After you collect this information, you can use it to create comprehensive buyer personas which allow you to assist website visitors with much greater ease.
After mapping out your customer profiles and learning who exactly you are marketing to, you will find it much easier to select the live chat software that serves your business goals the best.
To develop an emotional connection
Bain and Company have observed that a business tends to spend 5 to 25 times more money for acquiring a new customer than retaining an old one. Needless to say, you need to create a remarkably rewarding first-time experience for visitors in order to convince them to keep coming back.
For that purpose, you need to set your brand apart and build solid relationships with customers by forging an emotional connection with the help of live chat technology. If you look at them as nothing but consumers, they will end up approaching your competitors instead. Modern customers know that if a particular brand does not bother to provide a positive experience to them, another brand certainly will.
If your brand is eager to help visitors, offer support and answer their queries, your customers will naturally feel more comfortable. Apart from the live chat option, you can also utilize chatbots for decreasing the need for live representatives and humanizing your brand.
Chatbot marketing is a contemporary tool that uses artificial intelligence to offer fast and reliable service to your site’s visitors. Chatbots also excel at making user engagement lengthier and gathering useful feedback from visitors, which you can use to refine your conversion strategy even further.
Take the example of the chatbot designed by National Geographic to imitate Albert Einstein. This bot was used to promote a new show based on the world-renowned scientist’s life. People could visit the website and engage in conversation with the Einstein chatbot regarding anything they wished. Later, it was observed that this website’s engagement received a remarkable boost of 50 percent. It is clearly evident that chatbot technology is a highly valuable tool for you to consider.
To provide more content
In order to build a loyal following, emerge as a leader in your industry and get your business to turn up in search engines, you require content marketing. Visitors will frequently require your live chat feature for navigating to another page on your website. It doesn’t matter whether they are looking for your FAQ page or a specific product – you can increase website conversations and improve engagement with the help of live chat.
In case users are looking for help with a particular question or topic covered by your brand, live chat can help them find the relevant blog posts on your site. It has been noted that companies with blogs get 97% more links to their site than those that don’t have one. You are undoubtedly wasting a major opportunity to make your brand grow if you do not have a blog yet.
Apart from this, you can also lead visitors to your social media content, which will allow them to keep engaging with your business even after exiting your website. That said, you must always remember to only direct them to information that is relevant to their interests and requirements. If you link them to material other than what they ask for, it will appear to be an overly promotional move and could drive them away from your brand forever.
To provide solid customer support
It is very important for you to create a meaningful experience for customers in order to convince them to do business with you, and encourage them to keep returning for more. A vital role in that regard is played by high quality and reliable customer support which meets the expectations of your consumers and gives them what they are seeking. With the help of live chat, you can easily provide assistance for online visitors – newcomers in particular. Your brand has but one chance to make a positive first impression, and you must make sure not to squander it. Your website must guide visitors where they need to go and offer effective solutions to issues they have.
Before chatting with customers, it is important for you to set clear expectations and leave no room for confusion of any sort.
For example, if you intend to make your website’s live chat feature available only during office hours, then you need to mention this fact clearly on your site. Otherwise, if a customer expecting 24/7 assistance discovers that your customer support team is unavailable, then he or she will obviously be displeased.
The very purpose of live chat is to be fast and convenient; thus, it has to work efficiently and tackle the customer’s issue as soon as the conversation begins.
If you want to provide an exceptionally good customer experience, you must consider the most common issues faced by customers on your site. You can create a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page to decrease the need for visitors to contact your brand. They can instead invest that time in browsing products on your website.
To gather feedback
You must always keep in mind that you aren’t simply using the live chat feature on your business website for chatting with users and directing them to your content. If you want to come up with a superior marketing strategy that is better suited to your ideal customer, it is very important for you to gather user data as well.
You can learn a lot about your website’s users by going through their conversations on live chat. Apart from gathering information, you can also question them and add their answers to your roster of customer personas.
Once a conversation ends, you can send out a customer survey form for visitors to rate and review their experience with the live chat system of your company. If you want to improve your website’s customer service practices and serve the needs of your users ably, you need to consider their feedback seriously.
Remember to ask relevant questions, keep the survey short and friendly, and do not forget to express your gratitude for their responses.
Conclusion
To conclude, live chat is an invaluable feature that is used by several businesses to improve conversions, generate leads, and increase sales. It helps in lowering the pressure being faced by you so that you are able to make yourself available to your visitors 24/7. Also, it arrives at the root of the problem with remarkable speed and efficiency. Apart from being highly convenient to use, it also moves your customers through the sales funnel and makes sure that they are happy. Thus, it is definitely to your benefit to consider incorporating the live chat feature into your conversion strategy henceforth.
Here are some of the top live chat software that you enable and use on your websites: