The Internet is indeed growing immensely into a multi-billion dollar industry. Over the years, it has played a significant role in economies and become the new preferred medium for everyday communication. In fact, everybody uses the Internet in almost everything they do, including paying bills, ordering food, or fulfilling any kind of purchase.
As a result, consumers have also become technologically savvy. They expect companies to deliver engaging customer service either in-store or online. Study shows that tech-savvy customers expect a faster response. By fast response, it means that they should get a reply in less than 5 minutes.
How can businesses provide a faster response while maintaining outstanding customer service?
Live chat.
Live chat allows consumers to communicate with operators in real-time. It is one of the most excellent and dynamic ways for businesses to interact with their existing and potential customers without having them call or send an email. With live chat, businesses can turn every interaction into a better experience that could result in customer satisfaction and higher revenue.
Executing live chat customer support can be beneficial to both your business and customers. Let’s tackle the eight reasons why live chat is a must-have tool to add to your customer service channel now:
Live chat is convenient for customers
Live chat is convenient for customers. They don’t need to dial a number just to talk to a representative. When a customer wants their concerns resolved immediately, live chat is perhaps a great tool for this task. One of the features of live chat is it can promptly address customer queries. While email often requires a lengthy conversation, live chat can provide answers quickly and in a singular session.
Also, customers can have their purchase-related questions answered on the spot. This is an enormous advantage considering some customers think the ability to talk to an agent while purchasing online is one of the most excellent perks of business and e-commerce websites. Customers truly appreciate your help when they are deciding to buy something.
Live chat provides 24/7 support
Providing 24/7 customer service can be a game-changer for your company. Some companies cannot hire agents to cover all the shifts, especially if they are operating only during business hours. But, by activating a chatbot, you can now offer self-service to your customer. Since chatbot can upload necessary data and knowledge base about your services, they are reliable enough to provide answers to customer basic queries.
Say, a customer wants to ask about a product or service from your company. Unfortunately, there are no customer service representatives available the moment they reach out to your hotline. You cannot predict when your clients are going to contact you, and that is why implementing live chat is the best option for businesses.
Offering real-time customer service whenever and wherever your clients are can help you is not only instrumental in achieving marketing goals but it also increases revenue and improves customer experience.
Live chat provides a competitive advantage
Today, it has never been more crucial than ever to stand out among your competitors. While several companies are already implementing live chat in their customer service, there are still some who have not tried to add it to their marketing strategy.
Some companies think that it is even relevant for their business. The thing is, it does not matter if you are a startup, an SME, or a corporate company. What matters is the many benefits a live chat contact channel can give to your business. If you decide to use live chat tools, it could be to your advantage especially over a competitor who only uses a single mode of communication to connect with their customers.
The number of business rivals in the industry is growing tremendously each day. Don’t be left behind and get one step ahead of the competition.
Live chat saves money
Live chat is cost-efficient.
If the calls are flooded, businesses tend to hire more agents. But, with live chat, efficiency increases since it allows agents to handle multiple conversations simultaneously. Therefore, companies don’t need to hire more staff.
Also, live chat increases the average order value and saves product return expenses since customer service agents can help the clients pick the right product or service. It is a convenient alternative that suits modern customers best. As a result, the shopper is satisfied and is less likely to return the item.
It diminishes overall help desk center costs by bringing down the waiting queue time compared to a call center service.
Live chat saves time
Customers expect a speedy response, mainly because they are used to the lightning fast performance of most apps and gadgets they are using today. So if you want to grow a successful business, you have to maximize productivity as much as you can. How can businesses do that?
Live chat can help you to analyze response time and cut back the time spent significantly to resolve issues. A study shows that when an agent uses live chat, they can answer customer queries in less than 23 seconds and the average resolution time is no more than 42 seconds. This just proves that live chat has faster response times than other customer support channels. You don’t just save time for yourself, but also for your customers.
You can convert the time you save into money. That way, you’ll be able to identify how else you can expand the benefits of a live chat channel to boost conversions and retain existing patrons.
Live chat increases sales
Live chat boosts sales.
Online services have tremendously risen since the start of COVID. Along with this, people also began to use online transactions more frequently. They prefer buying from websites, platforms, and online stores. Consequently, the need for live chat support is essential for a time like this.
Live chat can increase conversion rates. How? Since it can offer 24/7 support that is vital in every business, this also means that it can interact with your customer anytime. This would prevent your existing and potential customers from leaving your website in the middle of a transaction. And, if you can answer their inquiry quickly, this could lead to sales.
It is reported that around 38% of customers successfully purchase following a positive conversation with a live chat agent. Statistics say that adding a live chat widget on your platforms will typically lead to a 20% increase in conversion rates.
Without live chat, you are also losing sales. Looking at the insights, it’s clear how important live chat is for conveying the best possible customer experience and increasing sales for your business.
Live chat builds long-term relationships
Live chat helps to sustain your business by building long-term relationships with customers. Since live chat can increase satisfaction and improve customer experience, customers are more likely to stay with your brand.
When customers feel you are there to listen and empathize with them, it could turn them into loyal customers. On the other hand, some customers who have had an encounter with poor service might switch to a competitor and leave your company for good. That is not to say that unsatisfied customers cannot be appeased and offered an alternative solution to make up for their initially negative experience.
It only goes to show how it is important to create an excellent experience and provide exceptional customer support with the help of live chat from the first time a potential lead or a customer connects with your business. This could result in getting a customer for life and building strong and solid relationships with them.
Live chat improves customer service productivity
Live chat is a great tool for multitasking and improving the productivity of your support team. With live chat, you can efficiently solve multiple customer inquiries while attending to other tasks. Since agents can only answer one person at a time on a phone call, you cannot expect too much productivity from them. But, that’s not the case for live chat. If you train and familiarize your customer support team with the features of your live chat service, you enable them to boost productivity and deliver customer satisfaction more consistently.
Using canned messages and chatbots spares a lot of time for your customer support representatives. Imagine clarifying or rehashing the same problem over and over. This can be repetitive, frustrating, and tiring for your team and your customers. Assigning FAQs to chatbots and enabling self-service through live chat allows your agents to spend more time and energy tackling complex customer concerns.
Conclusion
Today, live chat is undeniably an effective way of winning the customer support race. Customers are getting used to live chat technology and enjoying its features.
Recently, the drastic shift towards contactless services quickly made live chat into a must-have tool for businesses. It gives your business a head start on your competition and watch your sales and revenue grow steadily. Beyond improving the customer experience, live chat unlocks the opportunity to increase agent productivity, and use accumulated customer data to develop more efficient and customer-centric services.
The eight reasons listed above are proof that live chat is truly needed by big and small companies. If you want to be at the top of the game, then adding live chat is one of the best and most practical ways to succeed. If you give your customers the type of communication they seek, you’ll see customer satisfaction scores skyrocket. With live chat, you can provide a genuine, high-quality, end-to-end customer experience.
Live chat plays a critical role in providing support that helps you to make quick decisions. Hence, it is one of the foremost crucial communication channels for businesses and holds paramount significance that should not be ignored!
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