Live chat is a wonderful way to provide customers with quick access to your customer service department 24/7. The good news is, it has never been easier to find and implement a live chat solution that is right for you.
Here are some of the key benefits of implementing live chat as well as some tips on how to choose the best software for your organization.
5 Benefits of Live Chat
1. It Offers Immediate Solutions
Live chat gives customers the ease and comfort to seek guidance and help right from their home or office. It offers an instantaneous solution rather than emailing and waiting for a response and later be pitched continually for products. Many people do not even like sharing their personal information and may avoid filling out a ticket, which usually requires such information. The on-demand nature of the web will allow you to respond to issues directly and save the time spent fielding email responses.
2. It Provides Convenience to Customers
For potential customers, getting help from a live chat is a confidence booster. According to research, 44% of customers feel that the most important feature a website can offer is live help in the middle of an online purchase. Good software includes visuals and sounds, which allow customers the convenience to move about while waiting for a response. There is also the visitor footprint feature in live chat software that allows customers to avoid having to repeat themselves and the steps they took which led them to live chat. It allows sales rep to see the pages they visited, the time they spent on the page and whether they are a repeat customer or not. This saves time and frustration.
3. It Opens Doors for Sales Opportunities
Most live chat sessions end after solving a customer’s inquiry, however, therein lies the profit booster, which many companies miss. At this point, you can train your customer service reps to let customers know of a sale, promotional offer or other prospect that they may be interested to purchase. The customer is saved of the effort to find out about it themselves and, if lucrative enough, just might opt for it. To gain the most from live chat support, look for software that is compatible with tablets and mobile devices to provide on the go service.
4. You Can Personalize Your Service
While live chat is considered more interactive than email, it is still talking to a machine, rather than a person, to many customers. You can personalize your live chat service by simply providing an icon with the service rep’s name and photo during the chat process. This gives the customer a face to connect to the words typing across his screen, which makes the entire chat process warmer and more personal. bestecommercebuilders.com covers more of the topic here.
5. It Will Give Your Business an Edge
An important reason to consider live chat functionality is that it will set you apart from the competition. Live chat could be the differentiating factor while other things like product and pricing may be similar to that of a competitor.
How to Choose the Best Live Chat Software
If you are considering the addition of live chat to your website, there are a number of software options to choose from today. Before you begin shopping for software for your company, here are some tips that will help you pinpoint the best live chat software for your specific needs.
1. Consider Your Hosting Capabilities
Make sure the live chat software you choose will be compatible with your website. While most software options work well with Windows operations, it may be significantly more challenging to find tools that work equally well with Macs. Consider what can easily be built into your current infrastructure and run without numerous hiccups to frustrate your customers and your service staff.
2. Look for User-Friendliness
Live chat is only effective if it is easy for both your customers and employees to access and operate. Live chat buttons should be prominently displayed on various pages of your website to ensure customers can connect with live help from any location. Some software packages allow the live chat transcript to be emailed to the user after the chat has ended – a valuable service touch for some companies. In addition, some software offers the ability for customers to leave messages via live chat when the service is not currently operating.
3. Decide How Much Help You Need
When shopping for live chat tools, you must determine whether you will man the live chat internally through your own service staff, or whether you want to outsource the service. Companies that are going to man the live chat themselves may want to consider a package that includes mobile access to ensure employees can access the site through various tools, including tablets and smartphones.
4. Examine Flexibility and Adaptation
As your business grows, your live chat may need to grow along with it. Choose software that will allow for the addition of operators later on, so you can continue to appropriately staff your live chat using your original tool. By the same token, you may want a package that allows service employees and customers to chat with employees in other departments, so choose tools that can accommodate this need as well. Tracking and monitoring may also become more important as your business grows, so keep those features in mind as well.
5. Check Out Reviews
As you begin to narrow your choice of live chat options, begin studying a few online reviews to find out what other users are saying about the live chat software. Some review sites provide rankings of software based on numerous features to help you select the packages with the features you need most. Many of these websites may also come with recommendations from software experts, based on the usability and performance of the software, as well as other characteristics.
Live chat is a huge boon to customer service departments today, allowing organizations to provide yet another option for customer contact. Finding the right live chat software can allow you to interact with online customers on a whole new level.
