Making it easy for your customers to get in touch with you is vital in building customer loyalty. So for your customer support, you should provide various options and allow the consumer to select the one that best fits their needs.
Email, contact forms, social media, phone and live chat are the main channels usually provided by ecommerce websites. But what do consumers really want? According to eDigital’s Customer Service Benchmark Report 2014, live chat has the highest satisfaction level of all customer service channels (73%).
A study titled Making Proactive Chat Work by Forrester Research found that: “44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by someone in real-time while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.”
Source: eDigital Customer Service Benchmark Report 2014
Using live chat can benefit your ecommerce business in multiple ways:
Create up-sell opportunities
Don’t let the conversation end after the consumer’s initial question has been answered. Train your sales reps to capitalize on the interaction and inform the customer on current promos, new products or discount codes.
Foster a sense of trust and confidence
Providing a direct way for your customers to ask questions or having sales reps guide them towards a solution that best fits their needs, will definitely guide them further down the purchase funnel. Through live chat you can also inform the buyer on warranties or other policies that will make them feel more secure about their purchase.
Reduce costs and improve efficiency
The fast implementation times, coupled by the reduced time-per-interaction make live chat a cost effective channel. For example, a support agent can interact with multiple customers at a time, something which is not the case via phone support. Saving just one second per chat can result in an overall time savings of 40-80 hours per year. Also most solutions offer advanced analytics and record transcripts. This allows you to easily evaluate and improve the performance of your support team. All these benefits allow you to fulfil more support requests with fewer agents and continually monitor their progress in order to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Decrease shopping cart abandonment rates
Your consumers might be abandoning their carts due to problems they are facing on your website. Offering an immediate way for them to contact you, will give you more insight into their pain points and also allow you to provide a solution on the spot before they get discouraged and abandon their purchase. Another incredibly effective way to identify areas that will improve conversions is via a website feedback solution like Usabilla.
Selecting the right solution
There are many live chat solutions out there. Some of the main areas you should take into consideration while evaluating different suppliers, are the following:
- Customization & Host Environment
- Software features
- Monitoring & Analytics
- Integration options
- Support & Training
- Price
You can access a detailed comparison of the most popular live chat support solutions here: http://live-chat-support-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
What experiences do you have with live chat software? Please share your recommendations and best practises in the comment section below!
Sources:
http://www.vivocha.com/2014/01/3-key-benefits-of-live-chat-for-customer-service/
http://blog.lemonstand.com/4-reasons-ecommerce-store-live-chat/
https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2014/04/customer-service-live-chat-gp.html
The post Creating Customer Loyalty: The Benefits of Online Chat appeared first on Usabilla Blog.
