10 Reasons Why Your Website Needs Live Chat
Gone are the days of revenue-centric companies. In our current time, if a business wants to grow financially, customer service must be the top priority.
Customers that have had great experiences with a brand will most likely buy again and even tell their peers about it. Remember the last time you made a purchase you were so proud of that you wanted to tell everybody? That happens every single day for satisfied customers.
Great customer experience is paramount to great revenue numbers.
How Customer Service Affects Sales
Great customer service directly affects how people spend on products and services. That is especially true for millennials, aka the new market. According to a study by Finance Online, 67% of people are willing to pay extra for excellent customer service. Also, American Express cites that millennials are willing to spend 21% more for great customer service.
A key factor to superb customer service is communication. Simple as it may sound, it is actually a big problem for many brands to cope with the communication needs of their businesses.
What the customers want (and businesses need to establish) is a no-nonsense, free, and accessible way to contact the brand.
Without a shadow of a doubt, live chat hits all of those criteria mentioned above.
Not convinced yet? Here are;
10 Reasons Why You Should Implement Live Chat on Your Website
Live Chat is Real-time
Customer service used to mean long queues and unending wait times on the phone. When email innovated customer service, it still usually took 24 hours for a response from a customer service representative. Unlike all these, live chat offers real-time assistance and a response time that generally takes less than 5 minutes.
Live chat is designed to look and feel like an instant messaging application, so customers expect prompt replies. As if they are chatting with a friend on the other side of the line.
Live Chat Can Address Problems Before They Escalate
Whether we like it or not, problems will always arise. We may not know exactly when they come, but one thing is for sure; the longer a customer waits, the more enraged they will be. And when emotions are high, sometimes, logic gets thrown out the window. If this happens, even petty problems can cause massive headaches.
Long wait times can make a customer breathe fire. So, if you can resolve an issue as soon as it appears, you are saving yourself and your business from stinky Yelp reviews.
Live chat is a great opportunity to address problems before they escalate.
Live Chat is Cheap
Let's face it: customer service, when scaled, can be extremely expensive. As they say, it's an investment for returning customers. But it does not always have to be pricey, especially since live chat entered the scene.
Customer service representatives over the phone can only take one customer at a time. All the while, live chat agents can reply to as many as 6 customers at a time, according to Telus International. Simple math will conclude live chat is cheaper. Take note, we have not yet taken TeleCom subscriptions into account.
Live Chat is Non-intrusive
Have you heard of Telephobia? This is when people are afraid to talk over the phone. It is highly linked to social anxiety wherein making a call is seen as a task that poses a possibility of being ridiculed or freezing up when one makes a mistake. For people suffering from telephobia, speaking over the phone feels too intrusive.
Live chat finds its strength in this area. Apart from preserving a customer's social battery, live chat barely requires personal information so customers can more comfortably discuss the issues they are encountering.
You'll Get Free Authentic and Insightful Data
Perhaps, one of the most important assets you will have as an established business is authentic data from your customers. With the data you have, you can properly position marketing efforts to yield the best results.
Live chat can also be integrated with tools such as Google Analytics. It will give you a view of whether or not your marketing campaigns are performing well.
The information you will be getting comes from real people. Live chat is a channel for you to understand where your customers are coming from (emotionally), and use this to your advantage by appealing to their emotions when offering products.
You Can Cultivate a Long-Term Relationship with Customers
When we feel good about a product, we tend to always purchase again. One of the biggest factors to a great customer experience is prompt action to a problem. When issues are quickly resolved, customers feel like they are indeed your company's priority. With live chat customer service, you can increase your customer retention rate by 5% and grow your revenue anywhere from 25% to 95% (Bain & Company).
This means that when more issues are promptly attended to more customers are satisfied, and first-time customers will be come-backers. According to the Pareto Principle or 80:20 principle, 80% of a company's revenue will come from 20% of its customers. And that 20% are the repeat-buyers.
You Can Increase Customer Engagement and Satisfaction
Here's a fresh, hot fact for you: live chat has the greatest customer satisfaction rate among all customer service channels. According to this research by ZenDesk, 92% of customers say they are satisfied with live chat, closely followed by voice at 88% and web form at 85%.
Customer engagement and satisfaction translate to great numbers for any business.
Live Chat is Human
In a study conducted by Glance, 67% of customers hang up when they hear a robot on the phone with only a limited number of responses. Live chat is strong in this area. Customers may be greeted by bots but are ultimately assisted by humans. Customers can freely explain themselves without using keywords and phrases to get a sensible response.
Another advantage is that live chat agents can be fluid with their tone and phrasing to remain completely adherent with the brand.
Live Chat Increases Sales
Being operated by real people, agents can take control of the conversation. So, live chat is an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell your products and services. With an awesome customer service experience, customers are 64% more likely to try a company's new offering (Qualtrics).
It is definitely easier for customers to consider buying other products when they are speaking with actual people. Think about it, when you are at the mall to buy a phone (for example), you will want to be assisted by an expert and you are likely more receptive to their upselling into a higher model.
Live Chat is Projected to Stay
Because live chat is affordable, satisfactory, and revenue-generating, it is clearly here to stay for the long haul. According to this report by Data Intelo, live chat is projected to steadily grow as an industry for the next couple of years.
If you want to stand out among the competition, live chat could be the component you need!
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