Modern customer experience demands quality service at a rapid pace, and brands are constantly looking for ways to meet this expectation. While social media engagement and messaging apps are excellent paths to customer engagement for millennial customers and those on the go, live chat shows consistent promise as a prime channel for driving sales and customer satisfaction. An ATG Global Consumer Trend study found that 90% of customers find live chat helpful. An eMarketer survey provided even more telling details: 63% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat, while 38% claimed to make a purchase due to the live chat session itself. Keeping these statistics in mind, here are five reasons live chat is essential to brand growth and great customer experiences alike.
A great benefit of live chat is its convenience for your customers. When they are pressed for time or having trouble making purchase decisions, a well-timed chat pop-up can save them time and frustration. Customers generally wait far less than they would on the phone and may continue browsing and multitasking while interacting with an agent. Direct and immediate access to service creates a seamless customer experience.
A live chat solution is an optimal tool for reducing purchase abandonment rates and turning browsing into sales conversions. According to Customericare, more than 60% of customers abandon their online shopping carts, and 80% of the same respondents claimed they would have purchased had support been provided during checkout. As live chat support eliminates the confusion that customers often experience over issues such as shipping costs, delivery times, and product availability, sales increase and customer confidence is won.
Certain channels such as voice are often very costly for contact centers. Live chat offers the major benefit of cutting down the time agents need for service interactions while enabling them to conduct several chat sessions at once. In addition, the more effective live chat sessions are, the less customers need to place calls. Increased agent efficiency also means a need for fewer agents, resulting in further savings for the company.
These days, making customer service humanized and personal can be a challenge due to the overwhelming use of technology for quick resolutions. Live chat, however, makes it possible to offer both advanced technology and a human touch. The conversational nature of chat is one humanized feature of the channel, making it possible to communicate in natural terms for more immediate and personal contact. However, video chat takes the human touch to the next level by providing face-to-face engagement. Given the popularity of video calls in daily life, customers are given yet another natural and familiar way to communicate with brands. Through text, audio, and video, live chat therefore makes it possible to understand customer pain points right away for quicker solutions to greater service, marketing campaigns, and products customers truly want.
Being proactive is a sign that your brand truly cares about its customers. With live chat, customers may benefit from proactive service when it matters the most. For example, if a customer has spent more than a few seconds browsing a page on the brand website, he may need further assistance. A pop-up chat invitation at that moment can mean the difference between customer churn or long-term loyalty, perhaps convincing the customer to purchase or helping him solve a technical issue that was causing frustration. Creating seamless customer experiences relies partly on using the best technologies to deliver them. For that reason, live chat is an ideal channel for engaging customers at exactly the right times for greater satisfaction, brand growth, and long-term loyalty. Stay tuned for our next blog post on best practices for creating the perfect live chat experience.
