What is live chat? Live chat is a tool that allows you to chat directly with your website visitors in real-time. Think of it as Facebook Messenger for your website!
One of the things that makes an online chat system such a good tool is its customer service capabilities. Many businesses are now using this tool as a way to provide more information about their products and services to their website visitors and to manage customer service inquiries. What once may have taken 24 hours via email to solve, can now take minutes through a chatbot tool.
In this blog post, we are going to discuss the benefits of having an online chat system on your website, which live chat software is the best and if you stay till the end, we are going to show you how easy it is to integrate live chat into your VEVS website.
Firstly, how does live chat work? It is a fairly simple system to navigate and involves entering a few details about yourself, from which you will then be connected with a customer support agent, where you will be able to chat with them about your queries/questions, issues etc. in real time. It is a must-have tool for any website and this is the case for a number of reasons.
Here is an overview of 5 of the best live chat benefits:
- Reduced Customer Support Costs
- Faster Problem Solution
- Competitive Advantage
- Increased Leads & Marketing Opportunities
- Increased Sales & Revenue
Reduced Customer Support Costs
Traditionally speaking, customer service that is handled over the phone has its limits, because a customer support agent cannot speak on two phones at once, it becomes impossible and impractical. However, an online chat system allows for those same customer support agents to communicate with multiple customers at any given time.
By having the ability to deal with more customers at once, it allows businesses to have smaller customer service teams, therefore saving them money and reduce their costs. With proper training, most live chat agents can handle anywhere from 3-6 chats simultaneously.
In addition to reduced customer support costs, it also decreases marketing spend. Why? Because by being able to chat and answer questions with a website visitor whilst they are on the website, it reduces the chance of them leaving before they make a purchase, in turn reducing remarketing advertising spend, which you would need to spend in order to get them back onto the website.
Faster Problem Solution
Have you ever been faced with a problem when buying or selling products or services online? The majority of us have! And how many times have you had to wait at least 24 hours to receive a reply back to your email? Probably, quite a few. With the introduction of live chat software, you can now have those same problems solved in a fraction of the time. Rather than having to wait for a customer support agent to go through everyone else’s requests before they get to yours, they can now deal with your issue, right there in the moment.
If you would like to know what this means for businesses, it means fewer escalated customer complaints. It means having the ability to resolve issues faster and more efficiently.
According to Newvoicemedia.com, U.S. companies lose more than $62 billion annually due to poor customer service!
The American Express Customer Service Barometer said that “7 out of 10 U.S. consumers say they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that delivers great service”.
Competitive Advantage
Although live chat comes with its many benefits, there are still many many businesses that are not using it. This comes with its advantages because when comparing your business to your competitors, one of your USPs becomes your integration of an online chat system. If your website is able to offer better, faster and more efficient customer service, then your target customers are going to be more inclined to choose you over your competition.
Increased Leads & Marketing Opportunities
For those of you that thought live chat was just a customer service tool, you are wrong, it is much more than that. It is a lead generator, a data collector, a customer acquisition funnel. It will provide you with an increased amount of leads and a whole host of marketing opportunities.
When a customer or website visitor uses live chat, they need to provide a few details about themselves. These details usually consist of their name and their email address. Upon providing said details and submitting them, they are then connected to a customer support agent and can begin their chat. Even if a website visitor does not convert, they are now inside your sales funnel, so you can remarket to them again and again and encourage them to return and finalise their purchase.
This allows businesses and websites to add another ingredient into their marketing mix and use live chat as a lead generator and customer acquisition tool.
Increased Sales & Revenue
Live chat does increase sales and revenue and it does it through a number of means. First, by providing a personal relationship between a customer support agent and a website visitor, it helps that visitor to trust the business and have any questions they may have answered, and answered whilst they are still on the website (a very key element) Secondly, by having customer support agents available 24/7, it means no sale can slip away!
77% of consumers say that they need to talk to a real person before they make a purchase online and what better way for them to do that than whilst they are active on the website.
Which Live Chat System Is Best?
We have compiled a list of the 3 systems that we believe to be the best in the business!
How to easily integrate live chat into your VEVS website
Adding an online chat system on your VEVS website is super easy, and we created this screenshot showing you how easy it is to integrate it into your site.
And here is the final result. Now your clients can easily chat with you.
If you still need assistance, then please get in touch with our support team via your admin page, where you can keep track of the thread through our support ticket system.
