From instant purchases to overnight shipping, customers are used to getting what they want fast. As the expectation shifted to customer service, live chat came into the spotlight, soon becoming a powerful tool for businesses to engage customers and provide real-time support.
But in recent years, live chat has evolved from an extra support tool to an extensive platform for marketing, sales, and nurturing relationships. As more businesses started using live chat, the product designers expanded the channel’s capability to be more experience-driven than response-driven. Fast forward, businesses with live chat see more conversions, increased customer satisfaction, and low abandonment rates.
If you are considering live chat for superior customer engagement and service, here are the top 5 benefits of live chat software you should know.
Live Chat Benefits
1. Give Customers Timely Responses
When a customer calls you during a lunch break or a website visitor stops for a product inquiry, a timely response is key. Customers don’t want to spend their time on a phone call with your company; they want answers fast. Live chat solves the need for immediate interaction, as customers can reach a live chat agent faster than any support channel and initiate real-time conversations.
But you need to be realistic about your limitations. You can’t engage every user with a finite number of agents in live chat. Enter self-service Chatbots. Chatbots help you maximize your chat support efforts by covering your support team during non-working hours and when the ticket volume is high.
2. Increase Conversion and Sales
While browsing a website, prospective customers might have questions about the product or service. Getting them to take a demo will help. But most websites have multiple demo buttons and forms, making prospects lose interest. Live chat support can help you give instant answers while they are still on your website, actively considering a purchase. You can even use live chat tools to share calendars so your prospects can block a convenient time. Live chat can drive conversions and sales when utilized as standby sales assistants: helpful when required and unobtrusive when not.
Better customer profiling is another reason why live chat increases sales and the average order value. A live chat option allows service agents to have a complete customer profile, which they can use to customize the experience. An e-commerce company can easily know who abandoned their cart and whose free coupon expires soon. Live chat essentially helps your sales teams nudge hesitant shoppers towards a transaction. It is similar to drip emails but simpler.
3. Maximize Availability and Accessibility
Your customers and prospects don’t always reach you conveniently on your website or your primary communication channel. You may have to bring support where they are. 54% of customers use social media to research products — live chat can help you meet them at their tipping point of churn or purchase instead of waiting for them to reach you. While live chat and social media crossover sounds complex to implement and manage, in reality, live chat integrations have never been simpler.
Live chat offers easy integrations with social media messengers to let you initiative conversations with customers without requiring them to leave the app. Also, live chat need not stop with customer support. You can use targeted messaging to nurture your potential audience for conversion and retention.
4. Overcome Language Barriers
Solutions available today help companies cater to customers beyond geographical boundaries. However, growing globally requires building trust, which is possible only when you speak in a customer’s native language. Even simple conversations can become burdensome if neither of the parties can understand what the other says. Many live chat providers offer Google Translate integrations to allow agents to break this language barrier and engage customers in their native language.
5. Gain Insights into Customer Behavior
Nowadays, you have dedicated tools to gather quality customer data. Live chat is not one, but it can provide additional, unique insights into your customers’ buying behavior. How did customers land on your website? Why haven’t they booked a demo yet? Is the customer just browsing your website? You just need to ask. These are potential new customers who can give you fresh perspectives. You can also use this data to optimize live chat for a better customer experience.
For instance, if most customers say they are just browsing, you are probably initiating the chat too soon. Live chat services help you view customer pain points up close. You clearly know what to fix, and you can design your product in a way that meets the desired outcomes.
Live chat is Inevitable
Live chat solutions have the highest customer satisfaction rate at 92%. While many companies use a live chat feature, they hardly utilize its full potential. You can gain a competitive advantage simply by designing a wow-worthy live chat journey for your customers.
HappyFox Chat is a cost-effective live chat software you can use to provide a faster support experience, improve response times, engage website visitors, and bring support where customers are — website, social media, and mobile apps. Start your 14-day free trial and enjoy unlimited agents on all our pricing plans.
