15 Reasons Why You Should Add Live Chat on Your Website
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Live chat is arguably one of the most essential features to implement on behalf of your brand – especially when working on your conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies. If you leverage live chat to improve your marketing game, it can directly impact your revenue, ROI, and long-term performance.
In an increasingly digitalized world, where instant gratification is key, adding live chat boosts engagement and conversion rates. Considering that up to 90% of first-time website visitors don’t convert, you should use every advantage to get customers to take that last step.
Before we delve into the more extensive reasons your website needs live chat support, let’s understand what it is and how it differs from using chatbots.
What is Live Chat?
Live chat is a software application designed for websites that allows you to chat with your visitors/customers in real-time. It offers an instant, authentic connection with your customers who have questions, comments, or concerns.
With live chat, you also don’t have to worry about dealing with different time zones. You let your potential customers decide when and how long they want to chat.
That’s why most customers prefer a live chat on a site. Data shows that 75% of customers prefer it over any other channel.
Live Chat Stats and Benefits
Having a live chat feature is one of the best moves you will make as a brand. It’s no surprise that almost every website comes with live chat support.
Here are a few statistics that reveal why live chat is so critical.
1. Live Chat Is Popular
- According to a recent article, 44% of online consumers believe that live chat is an important website feature.
- As per Invesp Infographic, 63% are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat.
- Live chat has the highest satisfaction rate (73%) out of any form of customer communication. Email communication has a 61% satisfaction rating, while phone support has 44%.
2. Live Chat Is Considerably Cost-Effective
- Live chat is usually cheaper than phone support. It will cost you around 17 to 30% less than a phone call.
- Organizations that used chatbots in 2019 saved an average of $300,000.
3. Live Chat Increases Conversions
According to Kayako’s survey:
- 79% of businesses believe offering live chat improved their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
- 63% of people who spend between $250 to $500 a month online are the most likely to buy from and be loyal to companies offering live chat.
- 51% buy again from a company if they offer live chat support.
Live Chat Vs. Bots
As you can see, adding live chat on a site is a necessity – but we’re not talking about chatbots. Live chat (with real agents) offers a much more humanized approach and facilitates a true connection with customers.
Other distinguishing factors include:
| Live Chat | Chatbots |
| Interact with your customers in real time. | Only mimics human interactions with your customers. |
| Handled by human agents who understand customer emotions better. | Handled by machines, which may not understand human emotions to the same extent as a live agent. |
| Can solve complex issues relatively quickly. | Geared towards resolving routine or repetitive queries. |
| Can handle a maximum of 3 to 4 chats simultaneously. | Can handle any number of chats at the same time. |
Can Live Chat Work for Marketing?
Marketing is all about context and intent. When someone starts chatting with an agent, they are actively shopping (with a clear intent). Live chat allows you to drop in at exactly the right point in their buying journey.
With a live chat on a site, you can:
- Improve customer support which helps build brand loyalty.
- Increase customer engagement.
- Provide instant response, which drives more sales.
- Build rapport with customers.
- Reduce repetition for your customers.
- Stay connected 24/7.
- Collect real-time consumer behavior data.
All of these capabilities translate into a stellar marketing approach that will help you generate more leads, sales, and conversions.
15 Reasons to Add Live Chat to Your Marketing Playbook
Live chat has become increasingly relevant, especially as the pandemic put digitalization on a fast track. According to a recent survey, 70% of CEOs and business leaders believe that the pandemic accelerated digitalization by months or even years.
This makes it necessary for your brand to create a lasting first impression on your online shoppers and visitors. That’s where live chat can help, and here are 15 reasons why.
1. Improve Your Sales Funnel
In a traditional sales funnel, customers are on their own once they land on your website or landing page – and that’s risky. Even the smallest distraction or hurdle can cause them to leave. You want to guide them to a successful sale.
With a live chat feature on your website, you can keep them glued to the screen and provide immediate answers to pressing questions. This will help you close the sale quickly and efficiently.
2. Turn Interactions into Leads
You can use live chat to generate leads. A chat agent can easily collect contact information from your potential users. You can then use this data to get in touch and close the sale later.
More importantly, you will have the entire chat history on record. This will help you understand what customers want and how you should approach them. That, in turn, increases your likelihood of closing a sale.
3. Be Available 24/7
Digitalization has changed customer behavior and expectations significantly. For example, 90% of consumers rate an immediate response as “important or very important” when they have a support question. Because Foxxr managed live chat service makes you available 24/7, you can swiftly respond to any queries, regardless of the time zone.
4. Rank Higher in Search Rankings
As mentioned in the first point, with a live chat on a site, you can make visitors stay a little longer. This increases the dwell time and reduces the bounce rate. Your visitors will spend more time on the site as live chat agents interact with them. As we all know, a higher dwell time and lower bounce rate can lead to a better ranking in Google search results.
5. Better Customer Service
The faster and more responsive the customer service, the better. With live chat support, you can provide your customers with the opportunity to reach you exactly when they need it.
6. Reduce Operating and Marketing Costs
Operating and marketing costs are significant expenses for most companies. Live chat increases conversions, engagement, and lead generation while keeping customer support costs down. It also generates unique upsell opportunities throughout the sales funnel. This helps reduce the overall operating and marketing costs.
7. Shorter Resolution Time
We live in a world of instant gratification. Today, most customers want an immediate response from you.
Unfortunately, most phone calls go on hold, while emails take at least 24 hours to get a response. Live chat offers the best chance to resolve customer issues in minutes, even during peak hours or seasons.
8. More Convenience for Customers
Live chat allows you to answer customers’ questions quickly, which makes them happier and puts you that much closer to finalizing the sale. It’s a win-win for everyone.
9. Scale as Your Business Grows
Maintaining the quality of your customer service can be challenging if you are a growing business. With automation, you can readily scale live chat on a site. Lower your average response time and serve all your customers efficiently.
10. Collect Valuable Data
Today, most companies have a data-driven marketing approach, and live chat support makes it easy to collect real-time data. Every live chat history is a goldmine of consumer behavior. You can learn about their pain points, emotional triggers, and more. All this data can help you engage and support your customers better.
11. Expand Your Outreach
Thanks to globalization and digitalization, brands and businesses can quickly expand their services across borders. This also increases the challenges involved in offering 24/7 customer support. What’s more, you can also get multilingual live chat support if needed.
12. Build Rapport with Your Customers
Live chat agents get to interact with and observe every customer’s behavior. They can adjust the conversation style and tone depending on the situation. This helps build a rapport with all your customers, establishing a personal connection with them. This then helps generate more leads and conversions.
13. In-Built Reporting and Analytics
Most live chat tools also come with in-built reporting and analytics. This means you can quickly analyze how successful your live chat support is with metrics like average chat time, resolution time, response time, and agent performance.
14. Boost Your Marketing ROI
Live chat support results in higher lead generation, enhanced customer satisfaction, better scalability, higher conversion rates, more cross-sells, and better average order value. Live chat has the potential to open up so many marketing opportunities. These are just some of the many benefits of live chat that can help increase your marketing ROI.
15. Stay Ahead of the Curve
As you have already seen, a live chat on a site offers excellent customer support, improves engagement and lead generation, and increases conversions. Still, many businesses haven’t adopted this digital communication channel yet – but now is the time to do so.
Live Chat Best Practices
With live chat on a site, you can convert website visitors into prospects, dramatically improve your customer support, and reduce your website’s bounce rate. However, it is an effective tool only if you know how to use it best.
Here are a few best practices that you must implement for great live chat.
1. Provide a Personalized Experience
Making a live chat experience more personal helps you instantly connect with your prospects. It will help turn your visitors into repeat customers rather than one-off visitors.
In a live chat, personalization is about understanding what the customer wants and linking it with the information you already have on them.
Keep track of previous engagements (conversations, purchases, complaints, etc.) with the customer. Mention relevant information to demonstrate a personal connection. For example, you can address the customer directly. A simple “Hi, Kelly, how are you?” can go a long way.
2. Track Your Live Chat Data
It is also essential that you track your live chat data. Data tracking allows you to measure your service level standards (SLAs) and quantify live chat performance. Adopting the right metrics can provide a consistent user experience and elevate it as and when needed.
You can track live chat metrics such as:
- Completed chats
- Missed chats
- Average chat time
- Conversion rate
- Website-to-chat conversion
- Average response time
- Average wait time
- Customer satisfaction score
3. Optimize Your Live Chat Approach
You will need to optimize your live chat approach to use it as a marketing tactic. First, consider the intent for each page and target high-intent pages. This intent could be anything like subscribing to a newsletter, learning more about your product or service, and making a purchase.
You will need to base your live chat support on the intent. For example, if a visitor lands on your home page, you can start a conversation by saying, “Hey, what brings you to the (company name) website today?”
On the other hand, if the visitor is on a specific product page, you could start the conversation by saying, “Hey there, you seem interested in our XYZ product. How can I help?” This tailored approach can help you generate and nurture leads effectively.
4. Respond Quickly and Correctly
Customers expect you to respond quickly and accurately. You don’t want to be in a position where the customer knows more about your product/service than your live chat agent. That would be an embarrassing and awkward conversation to have.
Likewise, you don’t want them to wait. The average response time for live chat support requests is 2 minutes and 40 seconds. We recommend trying to respond in less than a minute.
The longer your visitors have to wait, the more likely they are to bounce. If you are busy, be upfront about it. You can use an automated response to share the expected wait time.
5. Ask Your Customers to Rate Their Experience
If you really want to make the most of your chat feature, you need to learn from your users. It’s a good idea to incorporate a “post-chat survey” of some kind. Whether you’re asking for specific feedback or simply requesting a star rating, you’ll learn how you can improve your chat and customer service.
Let ‘Live’ Chat Get You More Leads
Live chat is one of the best features to have on your website. It’s certainly a faster and better way to communicate with your customers.
With the world fast becoming digital-first, it’s a must-have tool. You can use live chat to increase conversions, optimize your sales funnel, create better engagement, and boost your marketing ROI. Most importantly, you can quickly and efficiently incorporate it into your marketing game.
Do you need help leveraging your live chat on your website and social media? Get in touch with the experts at Foxxr. We will help you win your customers over with tailored and effective strategies. Contact us today to learn how we will help your brand.
