Live Help Chat Benefits For Your Business
When it comes to online shopping, many customers feel a strong “Us VS Them” mentality when it comes to answering questions, or getting quality customer service. This is especially true when it comes to real-time interactions with customer service. Why risk losing customers, when it has become increasingly easy to add live, and precise, customer service chat & support? Live Help has the ability to provide convenient, real-time answers, to a consumers customer service needs. All without inflating a company’s staffing budget, or affecting its bottom line.
Let’s look into how Live Help can improve your business, and some tips on how to maximize customer service effectiveness.
1. Customers Love Live Help Chat
In this mostly digital age, customers still value help from a live person while shopping in the e-marketplace. Studies show that many online consumers prefer the option of having questions answered by a live customer service representative while shopping. One independent study suggests that this feature is one of the top services consumers look for when shopping online.
Why? Simply put, an online chat system provides customers with immediate access to help, wait times are often much less than when using a call center, and customers can easily multi-task while waiting for assistance. Additionally, Live Help chat also replaces the tediousness of dialing that old 800 number, and navigating through the endless maze of “press this” options.
90% of customers consider Live Help chat as a fast and useful alternative. Emarketer.com recently released survey results that found 62% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers live customer service chat.
The report goes on to state,”Live chat cannot solve every e-commerce problem, however. ATG’s “Customer Service Survey” found US online shoppers preferred live help over the phone via click-to-call when dealing with sensitive or complicated information, technical problems or a large amount of money.”
2. Live Help Proves To Be Cost Efficient
Using independent research Live Help software has consistently demonstrated that it can save on both the amount of time a customer service representative spends on a given task, and the overall expense of using a standard telephone based service. Unlike telephony, with live help a single agent can engage with many customers simultaneously. This drastically lowers the cost per interaction and improves response times to address questions and concerns a customer may have.
Some of the most notable cost savings are:
- Live help reduces the overall average interaction costs.
- Live help increases agent efficiency by allowing them assist multiple customers simultaneously, reducing the need for more customer service agents.
- Agents spend less time interacting with customers via the phone. Waiting time is cut to a fraction of time by allowing agents to multi-task during chat conversations. Even more so when compared to a traditional call center.
3. Live Chat Increases Sales
The simple fact is, Live Help increases sales by engaging with customers at key moments in their online retail experience. Live Help can stop a customer abandoning the online shopping experience, using real-time, customer service driven help. The general consensus among users in marketing forums, blogs, is that Live Help will generally lead to improved sales and customer satisfaction. Don't let your customer be driven from your website by poor customer service interaction. Instead, offer them live customer service help, and ensure their repeat business.
ust like in a brick and mortar store, you are more likely to retain prospective customers if you are able to talk with the customer, and offer real time assistance. Live Help helps bridge the gap between the online marketplace and quality customer service. Ensuring the customer feels valued, and secure in their business transactions.
By engaging consumers in real time, each visitor feels valued, and you are building a lasting relationship between consumers and your unique brand.
4. Live Help Provides Brand Loyalty and Strong Customer Relationships
Internet consumers prefer Livehelp Chat over other customer service routes because it doesn’t disrupt the customer’s shopping experience. Users often comment on the lack of delay in service, such as what you would deal with using email based support. Giving the consumer what they want from a customer service representative helps create happy customers, brand loyalty and repeat business.
Online shoppers simply prefer Live Help to the phone based customer service!
TELUS International has recently released study results, which have seen multiple top retailers are still not providing chat based customer service. This is essential for companies that are still trying to build a business and reputation. In the future, this Live Chat feature will be a key component for websites that wish to stand out above the competition.
“Almost two in 10 live chat respondents did more than 75% of their holiday shopping online, compared with 14% of those who did not chat. A further 25% of chatters made 51% to 75% of their purchases on the Web, versus just 10% of those who did not participate in the chat service.”
Live help bridge the gap between the old way of conducting business and the convenience and impersonal nature of today’s online commerce. Through live help software, you can save money on customer service, increase your leads, and give your business many other profitable advantages over your competition.
5. Live Help Provides Instant Leads
A frustrated customer, whose needs have yet to be filled, may turn to social media to vent about their recent experience. This is commonly called a “pain point”, and marketing teams regularly “mine” social media, and message boards, for these pain points. Online marketers, and other industry leaders know the value in turning these pain points into profits. Using those points as reference, they can adapt content and use it to the benefit of advertisers and future customer’s.
These live help features provide instant access to customers’ pain points, and our customers have the ability to use this unique experience to get real-time answers regarding all of their customer service inquiries, all while working hand in hand with customer service agents.. Additionally, customers can ensure that a product will ship & arrive online, or that a promotion or coupon will provide the discounts they advertise.
In addition, as Live Help representatives talk to customers, they can receive immediate feedback on ways to improve a company’s products and services. Properly addressed pain points can turn into sales opportunities. Potential customers who are willing to contact your business before purchasing are much more likely to convert.
Here Are Some Tips to Using Live Help Efficiently
Live Help can increase your e-marketplace’s potential, if it’s executed correctly. Here are some important tips to ensure that you make the most out of the Live Help Chat software:
- Avoid “robotic” responses. The whole point of having live help available, is to provide a warm, human voice to a customer's online shopping experience. Automated greetings or responses can kill the effectiveness of live chat, and give consumers the impression that they are still dealing with an automated system.
- Provide cheat sheets and FAQs to improve customer service representative performance, and to make it easier for them to answer customer inquiries quickly and accurately.
- Proper Training is a must! Representatives should have a complete knowledge of your inventory, common customer complaints, and navigation of various features.
- If you have a problem sourcing local employees to cover off-peak hours, consider outsourcing during those times.
- Consider hiring customer service agents that also have a significant amount of sales experience. By combining inside sales, and customer service representatives, a company can reduce staffing costs, and use Live Help to its full potential. Employees that have sales experience will be more likely lead customers towards sales, and increase the possibility of upselling additional products.
- Don’t forget Social Media! When live help agents receive positive feedback from online visitors and customers, instruct your representatives to, nicely, encourage your visitors to “LIKE” your Social Media pages, and/or leave a comment.
- At times you will experience a dramatic increase in online chat volume. Customers will inevitably have brief wait times, however, being prepared for this increased volume will ensure that a representative will be with them quickly, if not immediately.
- Provide your customers with helpful, easy to use chat features, like the ability to modify color, rate chat conversation, and the availability to request a transcript of the entire chat.
- Be aware of your peak retail hours. If you own an East Coast retail e-marketplace, there is a very real chance that those customers will shop during different peak hours than West Coast shoppers. Use site analytics to determine peak shopping hours for your site, and staff customer service while the most visitors are using your site. Never assume when shoppers will be available, without looking into your websites statistical information.
If your online business is not taking opportunity of Live Help software as part of its customer service solution, you're missing extremely valuable opportunities to help grow your business and make customers happy. Prevent shopping cart abandonment and missing sales, building strong customer relationships, and future leads. Start by integrating and using live help within your organization today.