As a business owner, you are always searching for ways to streamline company time and resources. Streamlining your costs and boosting efficiency is an excellent way to improve your bottom line. After all, the less time your team spends on the task, the more they can focus on other tasks that provide more value. Of course, it is also less expensive if you have to hire fewer employees.
Continue reading to learn how live chat increases sales.
What is a live chat software?
Live chat software lets you easily talk to customers via your website. While it typically refers to software you use to communicate on your website, it can also apply to other platforms. For example, you can live chat with customers on Facebook Messenger or other platforms.
In many cases, live chat also includes chatbots. These computer programs interact with your customers instead of a live person. Chatbots are very popular in live chat for your business, but they are not always the best choice. That is because you would need the most advanced chatbot AI to pass for a human. This simply isn’t in the budget of most businesses.
People can tell the difference between bots and humans, which is essential. So is the fact that customers tend to prefer talking to a real person. That combination means that using a chatbot for sales may actually be counterproductive. In fact, 95 percent of online shoppers in one study who interacted with chatbots said they would have had a better pre-purchase experience if they had talked to a human. Think carefully before deciding to use chatbots, as it can lead to a seeming increase in efficiency at the expense of a poor customer experience. Simply put, a chatbot platform cannot live up to the customer expectations of personalized conversations and natural language.
What is a webchat software?
Webchat software is slightly different from live chat, although many people use the two terms in the same situations. The most important part of webchat software is that it lets you talk to customers on your website. This contrasts with live chat software, which can also work on other programs like Facebook Messenger.
The best customer service chat software will use webchat so your clients can talk to a real person. This is not an automated system. As mentioned above, this is a crucial distinction. You will be better equipped to turn conversations into conversions if a real person talks to the client.
What are website chats used for?
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There are numerous ways that you can use website chats. Overall, they help streamline workflow while improving the customer experience. Remember that when you streamline your workflows, you will drive more to your bottom line, which is the ultimate goal of most businesses.
The following are just some of the ways that companies use website chats:
- Answering general questions, such as store hours and more.
- Providing sizing information to improve client satisfaction and reduce returns and exchanges.
- Answering customer queries about shipping, including policies and tracking shipments.
- Customer service in general.
- Handling customer complaints.
- Making sales.
- Gathering contact information from website visitors to generate leads.
- Scheduling sales meetings or appointments.
- Getting feedback on chat experiences.
- Gathering data and advanced reporting that lets you streamline processes, including the webchat itself.
The actual uses of a live chat app will depend mainly on the live chat features it has. This is why it is so important to carefully compare live chat apps before choosing one for your needs.
While most of these functions could also be performed with other communication methods, there are a few advantages of live chat or website chats, including:
- Customers feel more comfortable compared to talking on the phone, improving customer satisfaction.
- Customers get a faster response than they would with email, frequently instant support.
- Improve the customer experience.
- Improve customer satisfaction.
- Shorten your sales cycle.
- Improve engagement with customers.
- Auto triggers and proactive chat can further improve engagement.
- Reduce the rate of cart abandonment.
- Canned responses can provide quick answers to common questions.
- Routing can further improve efficiency.
- Agents can typically handle multiple customers simultaneously, with experienced ones taking five to seven.
- Some services let you move website chats to text, making it even easier for customers to use the system on the go. This chat feature improves customer satisfaction by allowing customers to chat via their preferred communication method.
The following live chat statistics help show you how much customers appreciate webchat. They also highlight that customers expect a live chat feature on your website.
- Website visitors that use webchat have 2.8 times the chances of converting, improving the results of your sales team.
- 70 percent of Americans report successfully resolving issues over live chat instead of calling or email support.
- 63 percent of those who use live chat on a given website have a higher chance of returning to that website.
- 62 percent of customers say they trust an online store more if a representative is available on the live chat widget.
Companies that have used live chat or webchat to boost efficiency
Many companies have seen the improved efficiency that comes with live chat for themselves. Before taking a look at specific companies and their results, consider some relevant live chat statistics about the success of webchat:
- Incorporating live chat on your website can boost your conversions by 12 percent.
- Customers who engage with a brand spend 60 percent more on each transaction and buy 90 percent more often.
- Website visitors who use live chat tools bring 4.5 times as much value to your company as those who do not interact.
- Offering live chat support increases your conversion rate by 3.84 percent and your revenue by 6 percent.
- Webchat increases revenue by 48 percent for every chat hour and increases the conversion rate by 40 percent.
- 38 percent of customers say they bought a product because of their live chat session.
- Live chat saves 15 percent to 33 percent over phone support. Additionally, using live chat apps reduces phone calls by 12 percent.
- Live chat optimizes the annual cost of customer care by 2.6 times.
- Implementing live chat can reduce the overall cost per transaction by 70 percent.
With those statistics in mind, take a look at some examples of actual companies that have seen results from using live chat or webchat.
CheckMark
After starting to use live chat, CheckMark saw an increase to new sales of 20 percent.
Logical Position
After incorporating a live chat, Logical Position saw an increase of 30 percent to 40 percent inbound sales. The company had a rise of 150 percent in inbound leads.
Manchester Mill Music
Manchester Mill Music saw improved efficiency and sales using the Webchat tool from Podium and its ability to move the conversation to text. The company saw an average of 115 or higher webchat leads every month, in addition to other benefits from other Podium tools.
Nextiva
After creating a proactive chat strategy, Nextiva saw an 82 percent increase in leads. The company had 24.3 percent of chats convert to sales quotes. It also saw a 13 percent year-over-year chat lead-to-sale increase, and its chat volume doubled year-over-year.
Trane
Using Podium’s live chat solutions and other digital tools, Trane converted 77 website visits a month to phone calls. Additionally, 15 percent of webchat conversations become actual sales.
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic saw live chat conversion rates of at least 18 percent every day. The company noticed that its customers who chatted converted 3.5 times as often as those who did not.
It saw a 15 percent increase in average order value compared to customers who didn’t use live chat.
In terms of efficiency, in particular, eight chat agents could do the same amount of work that 15 email agents had done.
The company also noticed a dramatic reduction in its backlog of emails by adding live chat. This let them clear email backlogs overnight or within hours instead of the longer previous times. This also reduced the number of support tickets, as the support teams resolved most issues in the chat window.
Customer satisfaction scores increased to over 80 percent.
Conclusion: Why local businesses should have a website chat
With a website chat, you will discover that your team can work more efficiently, and your processes will also become more efficient. Customers will have higher satisfaction rates, and you are likely to notice increases in revenue, leads, and productivity.
