With eCommerce rising high like a volcano, setting a footprint is crucial than ever. Trends come and go but it’s important to know which ones are worth investing in. Live chat has been here for a long but not many businesses are aware of its advantages. In this article, we will see how live chat isn’t just another trend that comes and goes, rather it is here to stay and benefit businesses worldwide.
Imagine looking for a pair of denim trousers online and you catch hold of one. The first thing that you would see is the price, and if that’s okay, you will move to the size. Unfortunately, the size is out of stock and you would like to when it is back in stock. What will you do? You’ll look for customer service support. However, you end up finding no source of support except the toll-free number, and calling the toll-free will definitely eat up your time, so you end up disappointed and abandon your purchase.
Now imagine a visitor going through this experience on your eCommerce store. In the times where every other business is selling online and the competition is cut-throat, you wouldn’t want to lose a potential sale just because you lack customer service support. After all, customer satisfaction is the key and you have to offer them the best in order to become the best. This is where live chat and eCommerce virtual assistant support comes into play. The scenario, above, would have been different if there was live chat support to help with the size availability.
Live Chat And The Digital Landscape
Today, 79% of consumers prefer live chats because they offer instant responses. Also, live chat has the highest consumer satisfaction rate at 92%. Thus, ignoring live chat essentially means ignoring your customers, and that’s one of the fastest and worst ways to lose business.
Also, in this fast-paced digital world where speed is the king, customers want things instantly – and they usually get it. Live chat software helps you in building real-time conversations with your customers and prospects while they’re on your website. Its super-quick and convenient nature make the customers love it more than any other digital service channel.
Now the good news is: live chat has a lot more to it than just providing quick customer support. Here we have rounded up the top six benefits that live chat brings for eCommerce businesses.
Let’s get started!
Top Benefits Of Live Chat For Your eCommerce Business
1. Boost Sales and Conversions
The first and foremost benefit of live chat is the potential to increase sales. In fact, a study found that B2B companies who use live chat experience a 20%, on average, increase in conversions. And the reason is quite obvious.
When prospects and customers browse your website, there’s quite the possibility that they might have certain questions and queries in their minds. With live chat on your website, you can respond to their queries immediately – while they are still on the website.
Thus, you can hold them by hand and help them make the buying decision. It’s like having a sales assistant on your website 24*7. In fact, 50% of consumers say that having a live person answer questions in the middle of a purchasing decision is one of the most important features a brand can offer.
2. Reduce Costs
Implementing live chat in your business can help you save costs, and we aren’t kidding. Here’s the thing: customers usually contact you via phone or 24*7 email chat support service, which is time-consuming for both parties involved. Also, this can be quite expensive as you will have to hire people to answer the calls or respond to emails.
On the other hand, live chat allows your customer support agents to address multiple queries simultaneously. Depending on the complexity of the issue, a customer service agent can handle as many as six simultaneous chats. This means you’ll need a smaller team to handle customer service requests, which means lesser support costs. According to stats, live chat costs 15% to 33% less than phone support.
In addition to this, live chat streamlines your customer support processes by allowing you to resolve customer issues right off the bat while minimizing unresolved backlogs.
3. Gain a Competitive Advantage
Considering the competitive eCommerce marketplace, having unique features on your website is crucial to gaining an advantage over other businesses. Live chat support is one such feature.
Firstly, you can respond to customer queries immediately. There’s no need to put any incoming requests on hold, transfer or postpone ticket resolution (unless necessary) since you can address multiple queries at once.
Secondly, it makes it easy for customers to get in touch with you or contact you. Not every customer might be comfortable or might have the time to talk over the phone. With live chat on your website, such customers can contact you easily without any hesitation and with minimal effort.
Thus, live chat support prevents any bottlenecks that might have occurred, in the customer support process while helping you serve your customers better. When customers are satisfied, the chances of conversions are high and so are the chances of beating the competition.
4. Personalized Experience
Whenever a customer makes a call to a customer support agent, she/he is entirely new to the agent they talk to. The agent doesn’t know his preferences, likes/dislikes, and whether he/she is a returning customer.
Professional online customer support services and live chat app allow you to see relevant sales information of the buyer such as last visited pages, time spent, chat history, or email address. This helps in offering personalized assistance and a seamless customer experience.
5. Reduce Customer Hesitation
Toll-free call services are known to one and all and have been providing ease and convenience to numerous customers worldwide. However, a lot of people hesitate while explaining their queries or talking to the customer care agents on the phone. Also, minor problems like poor network or miscommunication while talking on the phone can hinder customer experience.
Luckily, live chat helps customers in freely explaining their queries, without hesitating, and gets an instant response. Though at times, it might be difficult to recall or manifest the queries over the internet, live chat is still the most vital attribute that connects customers and representatives. Live chat stats reveal that 63% of Millennials prefer getting customer support through chat.
6. Gather Better Customer Insights
Besides providing seamless customer support, increasing conversions, and boosting sales, live chat allows you to learn more about your buyers by collecting customer data, which, in turn, helps in creating an effective marketing strategy.
Further, once you gain customer insights, you can find different ways to improve your products/services as well as promote your business while attaining great heights. To achieve this, you must review your chat histories and transcripts to gather relevant information or phases/words that your customers use to describe your products. Thus, with valuable data on your side, you can not only offer better products but satisfy your customers.
7. Build Meaningful Relationships
According to stats, a whopping 92% of customers feel satisfied when they use live chat when communicating with companies, more than any other communication method.
While eCommerce, in general, provides convenience to you and your customers, it also poses a challenge when it comes to building customer rapport as customers might be skeptical about making transactions with someone they have not met in person.
However, this can be resolved with eCommerce virtual assistant support or live chat software as it allows you to have a direct conversation with your buyers, solve their queries instantly and thus build meaningful relationships with them.
Live Chat Is Here To Stay
As more and more businesses continue to sell online, the need to meet customer expectations and provide them with instant support will be crucial. Having real-time interaction with your customers and prospects will not just develop trust but help you in serving them better and building a connection with them. The best part is, live chat has the ability to do all of this, and a lot more, both for your business and customers. Thus, it’s crucial than ever to switch to live chat software and online customer support services to stay ahead as well as upright.
