We are passionate supporters of live chat software, as you can see at the bottom right of the Square Media website (if we are online). By having first-hand knowledge of how live chat functionality has helped my clients and myself as a customer, it was among the first things we set up on our website. I wanted to share our findings on the customer/client benefits of making use of chat software on your website.

Live chat: Customer benefits?

1. Multi-Tasking

The worst feeling ever is having to waste your lunch break because you’re on hold to a provider. Thanks to live chat, you can go ahead doing your day’s work or skimming social media whilst waiting for a ‘ping’ sound to notify you that the agent has replied.

2. Chat Transcriptions

Whenever you call a company, you hear the typical “Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes”. The company may get a copy of your call but you don’t unless you have a recording function/app turned on. With a lot of live chat software, you can receive a transcript of the conversation afterwards for your records. This enables you to find what was mentioned and can be used in the future should any issues arise.

3. Right Place, Right Time Customer Service

There’s nothing more annoying, being a customer, than not being able to get hold of someone when you have a problem, especially when it is an online, digital or technical issue. Live chat provides the option of speaking to someone as soon as you encounter a problem or just have a question that needs answering. This decreases the need for call back requests, expensive 08 numbers and waiting 48 hours or 2 working days for an email reply.

4. No “On Hold” Music

Another frustrating experience many people would admit to is being put on hold with a classical music or 90s pop. This simply doesn’t happen with live chat. You can select your own background music (or glorious silence) whilst waiting to be transferred to another department or agent.

5. Cost

What’s more infuriating than having a problem or question? You guessed right, paying to get it solved. A lot of individuals spend a small fortune annually on premium rate phone calls or having to stop work to make a support call. With live chat, there is no cost to the customer and hence, no resentment from the onset of your agent’s conversations. In the end, everybody goes home happy.

 

Live Chat: Business Benefits?

1. Right Place, Right Time Customer Service

Of course, this is beneficial to both user and brand. For brands, live chat provides a direct method of communication right on the website and makes your staff available to the customer whenever they need them. Sure, this will be more beneficial to clients who get a chunk of queries about how to use something or where to find things on their site. But it’s clear, in the world of real-time customer engagement; users expect to be able to contact someone virtually – in an instant.

2. Cost

There is no complicated wiring or infrastructure needed to install live chat software. A simple piece of code and subscribing to the right package is normally all that blocks your path. Your business may already have employed a receptionist, call center staff, and/or sales team to man the phones. Why not assign each of them a time slot where they also man the live chat platform? This means that there is very little investment required to allow this service for your customers.

3. Data, Data, Data

Whether you’re a customer, business or even an agency, there’s no such thing as having too much data. Live chat software provides an additional layer of data to your present tracking and attribution tools/methods. Of course, the data you receive varies per platform but generally, live chat delivers;

• Referring Link: Find out where the customer came from on or off your site. You can use this to analyse what they might be looking for and to start conversation if they haven’t already.

• Operating System / Device: This will let you know if the customer is viewing your site from a mobile, tablet or desktop and which operating system they are using.

• Idle / Viewing: You can find out if the customer is currently reading pages or idle, e.g. not actively moving their cursor or scrolling.

• Time on Site: You will be able to see if the customer has just come onto the site or has been on it for some time and therefore more likely to require your help.

• Number of Visits: Is this a new visitor or someone who has already been on the site several times?

• What they are typing, as they are typing! Sometimes customers will start typing away and then change their mind and re-phrase their response. This offers you a window into their thought process and often you can begin penning your response before they’ve even pushed ‘send’.

• Number of Chats: Is this their first chat or have they been talking to agents before? If so who?

• Location: Using the customers IP address, the majority of chat platforms will tell you the country and if it’s a business, even the name of the company the customer is from.

4. Increased Sales

Sales personnel love live chat because it allows them to push customers towards certain products or services without needing to ‘hard sell’. A customer that visits your website is likely to have already developed an interest in your product or service, hence, you can proactively engage them instead of hoping they make a purchase. For instance, one of our clients created a Trigger which offered new visitors a £100 coupon – which could be redeemed for one of their packages.

Through live chat, new visitors to the website would get the following message:

“Hi! Please leave a valid email ID and phone and we will email you a £100 coupon which is redeemable on all packages”

This lucrative offer inserted in the trigger helped convert traffic on the company’s website into potential leads for the sales team – With very little effort required!

 

As you can see, Live Chat is a very important and simple addition to make for most businesses. It is incredibly cost effective and provides one of the highest returns on investments we’ve seen for any single website addition! For this reason Live Chat is always recommended as part of our Search Engine Optimisation Services!

Extra Tip: Did you know that there is a FREE method of implementing Live Chat Functionality? Tawk.to is one of the only completely FREE Live Chat Systems out there. It might not be the best, but if you aren’t sure if having Live Chat Functionality is right for your website – There is no cost involved in giving it a go! We will even set it up on your website for free! Just get in touch with our team and one of our programmers will walk you through the process.