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If you’re thinking about implementing live chat support for your online business, you’re not alone: around 67% of B2C businesses now use live chat as part of their overall customer service provision. If you’re still on the fence, then we can help: below, you’ll find the five key reasons to bring a live chat facility on board and some tips to help your business get up and running.

Improves Customer Experience

The best reason for implementing live chat in your business is because it can significantly uplevel the experience of your customers. And happy customers mean returning customers. Live chat is appreciated by customers as it enables them to get the answers they need immediately, at any time of the day or night.

People are increasingly expecting a 24/7, on-demand service from all the businesses they have dealings with – and a live support service can help provide this.

Creates Better Conversion Rates

Recent research revealed that people using a live chat service are nearly three times more likely to convert than those who don’t engage with a business in this way, as a means to build trust and see your conversion rate increase. As a result, bringing live chat on board is something of a no-brainer.

Increases Staff Productivity

With a high number of inquiries now being dealt with by your live chat facility, agents’ time can be freed up to get on with more important – profitable – things! Whereas staff members can only deal with one phone call at a time, they can oversee and manage multiple calls when live chat is on board, so they can get more done faster and easier. For example, a customer service agent can typically handle five quick and simple live chats at once. Even in complex cases, it’s reasonable to expect a customer service colleague to juggle two chat threads simultaneously.

Boosts Customer Engagement

If you make your live chat option highly visible and accessible, you’ll likely see a significant increase in consumer engagement – these are likely to be folk who would have decided not to bother with your product if the only way to get hold of support was via phone or email.

Live chat, therefore, gives your business a great way to make a good impression – grab this opportunity with both hands!

Builds Good Rapport

Linked to the above point, live chat gives customer service staff a chance to build a relationship with inquirers, building the sort of rapport that’s vital to, in time, creating a solid base of loyal customers. As opposed to regular emailing, live chat is an effective way to deliver a more personal, ‘human’ service.

How to Create a Live Chat Strategy?

So, you’re sold on the idea of implementing a live chat support facility in your business. Great! But how to go about getting started? Here’s what you need to know.

Choose a Live Chat Platform

To get the most suitable live chat platform for your business’s needs, check that it’s omnichannel and can integrate with the other tools and apps your business uses, and find out whether it has an API. In terms of building the live chat facility itself, look for an option that incorporates a high-quality rich text editor, has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface, and offers a good level of customer support.

Focus on Support Training

For your live chat service to work as well as possible, your team needs to be properly trained. This should be both in terms of the technical side of running the system and in soft skills. For example, all staff members need to understand the importance of empathy, patience, and courtesy to take your live chat provision to the next level.

Keep Customer Experience Front and Center

Always keep an eye on the end-user experience when it comes to designing and implementing your business’s live chat facility. Using chat surveys to get an on-the-ground idea of the level of service and how your users are reacting to it is a great idea that’ll allow you to make any tweaks necessary.

Analyze Key KPIs

Deploying KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is an effective means of measuring how well your business’s live chat service is performing. Some good KPIs to regularly assess include FRTs (first response times), customer satisfaction ratings, first contact resolution, the overall cost per chat, and the visitor-to-sales conversion rate.

Link to AI Chat Bots

For the most seamless customer service possible, consider deploying live chat along with AI chatbots, which can provide information to querents without the need for an agent to be involved at all. This can speed up response times and boost staff productivity still further.

Implementing Live Chat in Your Business: The Takeaway

In today’s world, more consumers than ever before expect live chat to be available as standard from all the businesses and brands they engage with. Live chat is a fantastic way to boost engagement, build a loyal customer base, and drive up conversion rates. Deploying this facility also may not be as difficult or costly as you think – choose the best live chat platform for your needs, get the proper staff training in place, and prepare to see the results!