Today’s shoppers expect businesses to be lightning-fast when it comes to answering questions and resolving issues.
They know that they’ll probably be put on hold if they call phone support. The email support team, on the other hand, might take 24 hours or more to respond to their query.
That’s why the majority of consumers prefer using live chat to communicate with businesses.
There’s plenty of reasons why you should consider offering real-time support to your customers.
In this post, we’re going to go over the top eight benefits of live chat, and discuss why this type of support is a necessity in today’s competitive business environment.
Live chat enables you to take a proactive approach to customer support
While chat support enables your website visitors to reach you instantly, its true power lies in allowing you to take a proactive approach to customer support.
Your chat support agents can reach out to customers and initiate conversations with the intention to both engage customers and help them make a purchase.
Most live chat software allows agents to send chat requests both manually and automatically (based on pre-defined rules).
It’s also able to let agents know what page on your website a visitor was looking at, as well as provide other useful information that can help agents provide better support and have an easier time guiding visitors towards making a purchase.
Taking a proactive approach to customer support shows prospects and customers that you’re looking after their needs and are there to help them at every step of the process.
Live chat reduces customer support expenses
Live chat customer service is up to 33% cheaper than phone support.
Forrester Research
Offering real-time support can help to reduce expenses for your business significantly. According to Forrester, live chat customer service is up to 33% cheaper than phone support.
Businesses spend $1.3 trillion on customer service calls every year. Around 80% of these calls could be transferred to chat support at reduced costs.
This is largely due to the fact that chat agents, once they’ve received proper training, can assist multiple visitors at the same time. According to Telus International, chat support agents can handle up to six support requests at once.
This is known as chat concurrency, and can help you achieve significant savings on personnel costs by allowing you to manage customer support requests with a smaller number of agents.
Chat support has also been shown to be more effective than email support, with a chat agent being able to do as much work as 15 email support agents.
Moreover, chat support usually demands fewer resources for the initial setup compared to phone support.
Live chat helps you provide a better customer experience
Live chat has the highest satisfaction levels out of all customer service channels.
eDigital Customer Service Benchmark Report
Chat support enables you to provide a better overall experience to your customers. Being able to get support instantly makes the shopping experience so much more convenient and enjoyable for shoppers.
83% of shoppers need help at some point during the buying process (Forrester Research). Live chat is the preferred method of communication for most of these shoppers. (Aberdeen Group)
It’s been shown that live chat has the highest satisfaction levels out of all customer service channels. This is most likely a result of its superior efficiency, as well as its ability to provide an immediate experience.
How efficient is chat support? Well, it takes around 42 seconds, on average, to resolve an issue through chat. That’s quite impressive.
Being able to provide answers to shoppers immediately is critical. A Forrester Research study showed that 57% of online shoppers abandon their carts if they’re not able to get their concerns answered quickly.
Additionally, 44% of consumers state that having their questions answered by a real person while shopping online is very important to them.
51% of them say that they like live chat because it enables them to multitask, something they’re usually not able to do while talking to phone support.
Finally, since shoppers are able to multitask while talking to chat support, they don’t mind waiting a few more minutes to get the help they need.
You can build trust more easily using chat support
90% of consumers state that seeing a live chat button on a website makes them feel more confident about buying from a website.
Oracle
Building trust is hard for online businesses because shoppers usually aren’t able to interact with a real person while on a brand’s website. If consumers don’t trust your business, they won’t buy from you.
Live chat can help you change that. By having a chat support agent engage and develop rapport with shoppers, you’ll have an easier time gaining consumers’ trust and making them feel more confident about making a purchase.
According to research by Oracle, 90% of consumers state that seeing a live chat button on a website makes them feel more confident about buying from a website.
In fact, chat support is so good at building trust that 63% of consumers state that they are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat support.
Offering chat support is also crucial for retaining customers and developing brand loyalty. As much as 97% of consumers claim that excellent customer service is crucial for staying loyal to a brand.
Chat support can help you develop deeper, long-term relationships with your customers, improve customer retention and brand loyalty, as well as nurture brand advocacy.
Chat support can help you generate more sales
Online shoppers that use live chat are three times more likely to make a purchase.
Forbes
There are numerous studies which show that live chat helps businesses generate more sales.
Businesses that offer chat support on their website generate as much as five times more sales compared to businesses that don’t provide chat support. They also experience up to 30% less cart abandonment.
38% of shoppers who take advantage of chat support state that they’ve made at least one purchase in the past as a direct result of a chat support session. These shoppers also spend 10% more per order compared to those that don’t use chat support.
With online shoppers that use live chat being three times more likely to make a purchase, implementing chat support on your website should be a no-brainer (Forbes).
You can learn more about your customers’ needs and pain points by using live chat
Businesses that collect Voice of Customer data experience ten times higher year-over-year revenue growth.
Aberdeen
Chat support allows you to gain an insight into your customers’ needs and pain points through both pre-chat surveys and actual chat conversations.
Chat histories can be sorted, filtered, and analyzed to reveal patterns in customer behavior and help you improve your products and your customer service.
Chat support can provide you with Voice of Customer (VOC) data that you can use to discover issues your customers frequently encounter, as well as enable you to prevent these issues before they happen.
According to a study by Aberdeen Research, businesses that collect VOC data experience ten times higher year-over-year revenue growth compared to businesses that don’t take the time to collect this type of data.
Chat support enables you to gain a competitive advantage
Only 9% of businesses offer live chat support.
SuperOffice
As much as 62% of mobile shoppers expect websites to offer live chat support. 80% of them state that they’d use live chat if it were available (Moxie).
Moreover, it’s been shown that 58% of U.S. shoppers use live chat regularly while shopping online. Millennials, in particular, are fond of chat support.
However, only 9% of businesses offer live chat support.
By implementing live chat on your website, you’ll be able to reach more customers, gain an advantage over your competition, and have an easier time standing out.
Live chat allows you to measure and analyze the performance of your customer support team
The performance of your email support can be measured to a certain extent. Phone support performance, however, is very difficult to measure.
On the other hand, live chat software provides businesses with the ability to keep meticulous records of a variety of customer support metrics, create custom reports, and view and analyze agents’ chat histories.
Having access to all this data enables you to improve your customer service and provide a better experience for your customers.
Today’s businesses need live chat support
Most shoppers run into one issue or another when shopping online. If they can’t reach a business’ customer support quickly, they’re most likely going to give up on making a purchase.
Implementing chat support on your website can help you avoid this. Live chat enables you to guide your shoppers through every stage of the buying process and make sure that they complete their purchase.
Since it’s more affordable than phone support, live chat is also an excellent way to reduce customer support costs. Moreover, chat support enables you to provide a better shopping experience for your customers and helps you build trust and develop a deeper relationship with your customer base.
If it’s more sales you’re after, live chat won’t disappoint. It’s been shown that businesses that use chat support on their website generate five times more sales compared to businesses that don’t take advantage of live chat.
Chat support is also a great way to learn more about your customers, their needs, pain points, and preferences. It can help you gain an edge over your competition as well as allow you to improve your customer service.
Use Gist to get started with live chat today
Gist is a marketing automation solution that allows you to implement chat support on your website quickly and easily.
Our live chat software can be set up to answer your most frequently asked questions without a support agent present. You can also use Gist to qualify leads and book meetings automatically.
The Gist live chat experience can be completely customized to fit in seamlessly with your brand and website.
Proactive and real-time messaging, instant notifications, canned replies, and a unified inbox are just some of the features available in Gist.