The option of interacting directly through a live chat has become an expectation for the modern customer: more than half of all customers prefer to chat with someone in real time via chat rather than making a call or write an email. Implementing a live chat on your website will bring you benefits that you will see directly reflected with the increase in your online sales. However ¨ with great power comes great responsibility ¨ you will find some challenges to overcome, to have a successful chat that your customers love, and not a decorative chat bubble that generates dissatisfaction or frustrations.
Let’s start with the benefits of implementing a live chat:
Increase your conversion rate
Multiple studies have shown that the main benefit of implementing a chat on your site is a 20% increase in conversion rates.
A Virgin Airlines study showed a 3.5 times higher conversion rate for customers who interacted via chat compared to people who had emailed the company. They even found that chat users had a 15% higher average order value compared to non-chat users.
Reduce cart abandonment rate
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges facing online businesses, with global average rates of nearly 80%.
According to the Baymard Institute, unexpected costs are the main reason consumers abandon their cart before completing their purchase.
When shipping costs or delivery times vary, e.g. Eg by country or product category, customers are often adrift wondering costs or browsing the website to find the information they need.
With a chat on your cart page, you allow your customers to solve all their queries without leaving the purchase page
Competitive advantage
On how many websites have you found the live chat option?
It is true that many companies have already implemented their webchat in recent years, but not so many (or successfully) that it has become commonplace. Live chat is still new enough to set your brand apart from the competition.
Implementing a new channel involves planning, costs and adopting a new strategy. It is important that you can face the basics of implementing a chat on your website, or look for companies that can help you in the start-up and operation of the service.
Let’s look at the challenges of implementing a live chat:
Human Agents
A chatbot is a chat agent with Artificial Intelligence, which can take advantage of machine learning and natural language processing to automate certain responses, however the technology still does not imitate the empathy or sales capabilities of a human attendant, and in matters sales sell is
Chat Center Network is an option to access teams of human agents available 24 hours a day. So you can offer a 24/7 digital service, with a flexible cost, without neglecting the empathy and closeness of having a human serving your customers.
Hiring agents for high and low season
Creating a schedule for live chat tool support can be difficult. With chat, customers expect a quick, real-time response, this means having enough agents to handle requests.
Even with unlimited resources, providing 24/7 live chat customer service requires rigorous scheduling and a host of flexible resources. Important sales dates, product launches or promotions, or even incidents can vary the traffic considerably, having to increase or reduce the team of agents.
There are complete live chat solutions, such as Chat Center Network, where you can pay directly per conversation, ensuring that you always have agents connected to provide immediate response 24 hours a day.