If you start searching for Live Chat solutions on the internet to find the best software, you can find many solutions. This will say that there is definitely a live chat app for your needs and you just need to decide what you will use it for.
In this relation it is extremely important to have a website today, so that you can attract website visitors, no matter if your business has a physical store or not. With a physical store you have the chance to communicate with customers face to face, but it is different online.
I will give you some statistics from Forester Stats and what they say is:
- 73% of customers responded that the most important thing your company should value is actually their time.
- 51% of customers are more likely to buy again from your company if you offer them a live chat solution.
- 75 % of customers responded that they will use a live chat versus being disturbed by being called back.
Customers today would want a very fast response to their queries and you would need to give them the best possible experience to make them buyers. Customers are also very impatient and about 90% of them would like to have an answer to their questions within 5 minutes.
What does that mean? It means it is time to think about a live chat to fulfill this gap. Why is investing in Live Chat the right solution for you:
Omnichannel Experience first
Your customers can contact you from different channels like social media, email, phone and so on. These different customer touchpoints should be integrated within your live chat app for the best customer experience. Your employees/agents recognize your customers, no matter how and when they reach out to you for assistance. Omni Channel experience in this case reduces your customers’ concern and helps with good opportunities in your support for them.
Live chat will Boost your Online Sales/Conversions
If you have a Live Chat on your website, it gives your customers the impression that they can get help when they need it. They will really appreciate these efforts and this can boost your online conversions with your agents and also turn prospects into buyers.
Provide Real-Time Customer support when it is really needed
Live Chat is a software, which allows your customers to connect with your company in real-time. This communication is faster than other channels and 33% of customers would like to see this service offered on your website. As a result, many travel agencies, financial institutions, hotels, eCommerce and other businesses are integrating Live Chat on their website and manage to have improved response times.
Live Chat Engages your customers with conversations
If you have analyzed the latest customer experience trends, you already know that customers would like to interact with websites that have live chat. In this way they can have a good perception of your business as live chat allows them to call you for free and send you messages.
Additionally, your customers will have a better relationship with your agents. And all this can happen while they are on the road with mobile and other devices. That’s exactly the main point.
The Pros and Cons of Live Chat
If you are looking to add a live chat software to your customer support strategy, then you are a big step ahead. As customer service for business has become a great concept today, you need to take into consideration some of the Pros and Cons of having a live chat on your website.
But how do you do that? You can read a lot of articles on the internet to have a better insight of what the benefits are, but we suggest that you write down first what is important to you.
We have also done this for you with the points underneath! In this sense we have surveyed anonymous consumers and businesses to find out what they think about live chat.
You basically don’t need to worry about what makes live chat customer service great or frustrating,
Let’s see what we can point out.
Pros and Cons of live chat software.
Live chat pros:
- People easily spread Good experiences through word of mouth. 29% of live chat consumers have told friends or colleagues about a positive live chat experience.
- Live chat on websites can increase sales with 38%, as consumers answered they were more likely to buy from a company that offers live chat support.
- Customer Loyalty increases with live chat, as 51% of consumers said they were more likely to stay with or buy again from a company that offers live chat.
- Customers are also happy to spend more! 63% of people usually spend between $250-500 a month for online purchases. They said they are more likely to buy and be loyal to companies that offer live chat communication.
Live chat cons:
- Live chat software can sometimes have poor user experience: 38% of consumers thought user experience was not good enough, and 43% of businesses agreed.
- Customers find scripted responses frustrating. 29% of customers answered that they found scripted responses most frustrating, and 38% of businesses agreed with that.
- Waiting with an agent gave additional pressure: 24% of consumers responded that long waiting time was the biggest frustration for them. 19% of businesses confirmed their customers were frustrated by long waiting times.
- One does not have a great chance of having a good live chat interaction: 47% of customers have not had a very nice live chat experience in the previous month.
- Customers don’t like repeating themselves: 9% of consumers said their customers were most annoyed of needing to repeat themselves. 16% of businesses agreed over that.
Regarding our Live Chat surveys, we can say that it is clear that live chat drives revenue and loyalty. Then it becomes a little difficult to state why a satisfactory live chat experience is so hard to be seen. To get deeper into this, we need to ask ourselves two additional questions:
- If businesses are using their customer support model in the right way?
- And why customer satisfaction is so inconsistent regarding live chat usage?
Let’s see if businesses are actually prioritizing the right channel, Phone Support vs Live Chat.
Well, we found that some businesses may be overstaffing telephone support. They believe their customers are 42% more likely to pick up their phone for support, and 35% of customers are more likely to start a live chat interaction.
If businesses can actually set up more resources for live chat, there is a good chance to improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs, right? This reallocation of resources won’t fix the problem quickly, so we need to ask ourselves a bigger question:
Why is it so difficult to offer a Live Chat Solution on your website?
It was seen that customers didn’t want the typical user experience of live chat tools. In this connection support teams didn’t want to give customers this user experience anyway.
One of the largest disadvantages of typical live chat software is the challenge they put on the support managers, whether to even offer live chat as a communication solution.
Regarding the limitations of typical live chat software, it is tough for managers to use the live chat in tandem with other tools to scale live chat support as their business grows.
Businesses need to actually match consumers’ channel demands for resolving issues!
As a support manager, you don’t want to leave customers hanging and waiting to connect with an agent. You can’t also afford to risk understaffing a live chat team.
It has become vital for the customer to get a reply under 5 minutes, as they may use another channel for help and give you negative feedback.
As an example, companies very often receive typical chat conversations that look like this one:
“Even though we’re happy to help customers, we’re from another side frustrated that they couldn’t give us more context on what they’ve tried. This also includes where customers are and what they’re trying to purchase.”
So, your response to this could be quite easy.
How can businesses be more effective and get ahead with live chat support?
Values for the customers
There are four key points from our research that are vital in your evaluation of your Live Chat software.
Choosing a live chat solution that puts people in the first place.
Customers and agents can quite often be frustrated by the limitations of the traditional live chat software. A lot of Customers have a poor user experience and many teams can’t really improve their service.
This is mostly, because they accept chats and don’t consider to put more focus on the personal context. Communicating with customers should be actually quite effortless like chatting with a friend.
Investing in providing great communication experiences.
Customers don’t like scripted responses and also repeating themselves. In this connection businesses usually know their customers experience a problem, but guess what. Personal and memorable experiences are extremely important for satisfaction and loyalty.
Current live chat solutions aren’t really built too much for personal experiences. Support must be of high quality and also personal and on time.
Being memorable through personal touch with customers.
It’s sometimes really about context. You need to use customer data to please customers. We all take some steps to help ourselves before supporting customers and it is essential for support teams to understand the customer support journey.
Great Chat Experience produces a significant Return on Investment.
A live chat is actually a software to increase sales, and many customers are happy to use it. They believe in your service and they also report they’re happy to increase their loyalty. In this way they spend more with businesses that offer this support option, which will Increase sales to your company.
Support teams have the great chance to increase customer retention, keep customers loyal, and increase revenue for their business. So, what are you waiting for?
Benefits of selecting a proper live chat tool
Conclusion
As we saw from previous points above, choosing the right Live Chat can be quite challenging and also time-consuming. There are so many useful features that one company can use, so it becomes very confusing to decide upon.
Some software for example like Chatbots are more focused on automatized answers and not so much on a personal relationship. Others are more explorative and try to offer Live Chat Solution for better User Experience.
Others try to discover and propose other features for their customers like ticketing and so on. It is solely up to you what you would prefer as a solution to your company, regarding what your products/services are and what and where your customers are.
Our live chat is considered from one point a chat software to increase sales or sales free live chat.
From another point however, we at Live Chat Alternative have come up to the point that it’s best to put Customer Experience and Trust in the first place. This means that one should put more effort into building better customer relationships through Live Connection.
Customers don’t need to start chatting with you and spend time, as it is in traditional live chat software. They can instead just press a single button on your website and call you for free or send you a message.
With these features we focus a lot on providing features and software that gives your customers Trust and Engagement.