Best Live Chat Solution for Website Visitors
Customer service can make or break your company. Instead of depending on a call center and phone conversations, consider adopting a digital customer support solution like live chat for your website.
Live chat has grown in popularity and consistently ranks as one of the best customer service options for companies. Chats provide top-notch customer experiences, reduce support costs, and provide a scalable solution to customer support. Plus, they provide data and insights into your target market.
Whether you are accustomed to live chat or new to the concept, SEO Design Chicago is here to improve customer interactions and take your customer chat support to the next level.
What are Live Chat Solutions?
Whenever you visit a website and see the “ask a question” or “chat” window in the bottom right corner of your screen, that’s a chat solution. Clicking the button opens a live chat window where support agents can address customer inquiries. Some chats are automated bots where you can click on an inquiry or topic, and the chat will respond with a predetermined answer. A live chat lets you connect with a real customer service representative to ask questions and receive guidance.
There are three primary types of live chat options:
- Text-only: The most common live chat functionality is a text-only solution. Text only means the customer and agent can only communicate through text to resolve issues.
- Video and voice support: Live chat widgets that allow video and voice support allow customers and agents to video chat or talk through their computers like they would a phone.
- Co-browsing: A more advanced live chat feature is co-browsing, which is when an agent can see and navigate a customer’s computer with their permission.
All three chat options are viable solutions. What you choose for your business can depend on your level of customer support, the complexity of your products or services, the availability of reps, and your budget.
Live Chat Solution Services
A lot goes into implementing, training, and maintaining your live chat. Working with a professional company like SDC can take some of the manual work from your team while ensuring you’re getting the best chat software for your business.
SEO Design Chicago provides Live chat solutions for WordPress sites, Joomla sites Drupal sites and any other CMS platform.
Implementing Live Chat Software
Choosing and implementing a live chat tool is half the battle of a chat solution. The team at SDC will learn about your business and research software that is best for your company. Once we help you find the right fit, we’ll implement the software and get it onto your website.
Live Chat Maintenance
SDC doesn’t leave you once we set up your company with the chat software. We’re here to train your team and maintain your chat. It’s important that your chat runs smoothly and customers are satisfied with their conversations.
Automated Chat Responses
Many chat options will allow customers to answer a few automated questions to see if there is a quick solution to their concerns. We can help you create these automated chat responses and will continue to improve them as we can get more data and insights on your customers.
Tracking and Insights
Tracking chat conversations and gathering insights can help you improve your customer service experience. The transcriptions and data from chats can help you determine common questions from customers and understand your customers’ needs.
Customer Support Benefits
If you are a customer service team that handles a variety of different inquiries about your business, you could use automation as a chance to redirect different inquiries to specific members of your team who are best fit to answer these questions.
For example, you could be a company that sells products online. You might have inquiries come in that are related to the quality of the products, the shipping of the products, or the return policies. You might have members of your customer support team who focus more on specific areas of your business than others. By creating automated responses, you can sort these inquiries into different categories, making it easier for these expert team members to answer them.
The downside to automated responses is that they can come off as impersonal. One of the biggest values that comes with live chat is that customers enjoy the quick and personal response. If your live chat becomes too automated, it can turn off customers, and it might not be able properly answer their questions in an efficient way. If you are a smaller team and you anticipate only a few inquiries per day, it might be best to keep everything manual to make sure you are providing the best service you can.
Benefits of Live Chat Solutions
Live chat software provides businesses with endless benefits. Implementing a chat tool is cost-effective, increases conversion rates and revenue, and increases customer satisfaction. It can also help you collect useful customer data that you can use for follow-ups and outreach.
Live Chat Messaging
Another benefit offered by live chat is that it is a communication method that is easy to use and already a part of our daily lives. Texting and instant messaging are the major form of communication, the younger the demographic the more this statement reigns true. With so many of us already used to communicating this way it is easy to utilize. More traditional forms of customer service communication, such as phone calls and email, are not as much of our typical daily lives anymore, making it more intimidating or obstructive to certain customers. Messaging is also a very casual method of communication, if a customer has a minor inquiry they are more likely to reach out via live chat rather than making a phone call.
The option of live chat gives them the chance to get their question answered, leaving that interaction with a better outlook on your business where they wouldn’t have otherwise.When it comes to managing live chat, there is less overhead than other forms of customer service. Once a live chat system has been developed for your website, the only thing your staff will need is a computer and access to the chat backend. Unlike call service customer service, you do not need to provide your staff with specific equipment and a dedicated place of operation. Most live chat customer service is done as an auxiliary task by team members already involved in sales support. Even if you need a dedicated team to operate your live chat, they can easily access it from multiple locations, making this job an easy work from home position.
Cost-Effective
Live chats are more cost-effective than phone support. While the goal of a live chat is getting customers connected with live reps to answer questions, many chats use automated responses and AI at the start of the conversation to help filter some conversations.
If a website visitor wants to know where to pay a bill or how to download something from your site, the chat can get them that information easily, freeing up the time of live agents for more robust questions and conversations.
Live chats also allow chat agents to help more than one customer. Chats also create a more streamlined process for agents to manage their conversations, improving response times and providing real time answers. Live chats also remove quality call issues and decrease the time required per customer.
Boosts Conversion Rates and Increase Sales
If your company has an online store where customers can purchase goods, implementing a live chat tool can boost conversion rates and get more items sold. According to Baymard Institute, roughly 70 percent of online shoppers place items into a cart and never go through with the purchase.
A live chat can connect shoppers while they are on your website and provide assistance to encourage a purchase. Customers can ask questions, and agents can make customers feel confident about going through their purchases.
Conversion rates don’t only apply to abandoned shopping carts. If a customer is comparing your business and services to a competitor, having a live chat can help them answer questions and learn more about how your service differs from other options. Customers with quick, digestible answers will be more likely to follow through with a purchase.
Collects Customer Data
Many live chat software prompt a chat by asking for basic customer data, such as a name and email. Getting that information from the customer makes it easy for the marketing and sales teams to follow up.
Live chats can also provide data on frequently asked questions and customer feedback on what is and isn’t working for them.
Improves Customer Satisfaction
Many customers don’t love calling a customer support line, waiting on hold, and navigating numerous automated voice bots before connecting with a service representative. Live chats make the customer support process easier and more accessible.
Having a low-stakes way to interact with a brand’s support team provides a more positive experience for customers, improving their satisfaction.
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Website Live Chat can open your website up to a new world of customer communication opportunities
Live Chat Solutions with SEO Design Chicago
Implementing and maintaining a live chat can feel overwhelming if you’re new to live chat software. Take some of your team’s stress by partnering with SDC for the best live chat solutions.
Our team of experts can help you discover the best chat solution, implement chat software, and manage live chats with your customers so you can focus your time and resources elsewhere.
Not only can SDC help with live chats, but we can also assist with any of your marketing needs. SDC is a full-service marketing company. Whether you need SEO services, content creation, or advertisements, we’re here to help you take your business to the next level.
Contact us to learn more about our digital marketing solutions.
FAQs
What is live chat software?
Live chat software is the program you use to connect with customers when they visit your website. Live chat software allows real-time conversations to help customers troubleshoot pain points and answer questions.
What’s the difference between a live chat and a chatbot?
A live chat is when an agent responds to a customer’s messages. Chatbots are an AI-powered agent that uses machine learning to send automated responses in a human-like manner.
Where can businesses use a live chat software solution?
Thanks to advances in the digital world, businesses can use live chats on nearly any platform to connect with customers and prospects. Websites are one of the most common places to implement a live chat, but you can also have chats on social media pages, mobile apps, messaging apps, and help desk platforms.
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