Live chat serves several important purposes for businesses and customers. At its core, live chat provides real-time communication between businesses and website visitors. This allows businesses to immediately engage with prospects and customers to provide assistance, answer questions, qualify leads, and close sales. Some key purposes of live chat include:
Providing Real-Time Assistance
One of the main purposes of live chat is to provide real-time assistance to website visitors. When a customer has a question or needs help while browsing a website, live chat gives them instant access to the business’s support team. Agents can immediately answer questions, provide product recommendations, troubleshoot issues, and guide customers to the information they need. This is more efficient than phone support since customers don’t have to wait on hold and agents can see what page the customer is on.
Qualifying Leads
Live chat also enables businesses to qualify leads in real-time. When a prospective customer lands on a website, a live chat agent can immediately greet them and start a conversation. The agent can ask questions to determine the prospect’s needs and interests, and provide information accordingly. This helps businesses identify qualified leads faster than forms or emails alone. Agents can provide demos, pricing, and other details to prospects to move them further down the sales funnel.
Closing Sales
In addition to qualifying leads, live chat also gives businesses the ability to close more sales directly through the chat window. Agents can answer questions, recommend products, provide pricing options, and take payment information through secure live chat software. This means customers can complete purchases without having to pick up the phone or leave the website. Being able to close sales quickly and easily is a major benefit of live chat.
Improving Customer Satisfaction
Live chat also improves customer satisfaction levels. Customers today expect businesses to offer multiple real-time customer service options. Live chat gives customers instant access to the information they need. Issues can be resolved faster, negative experiences can be turned around, and customers can get personalized assistance. Happy customers are more likely to recommend a business and make repeat purchases.
Differentiating from Competitors
Offering live chat is also a way for businesses to differentiate themselves from competitors. Many customers now expect to see a live chat option on websites. According to research, 77% of customers believe live chat is important on a business’s website. By adding live chat, businesses can position themselves as modern, innovative, and customer-focused compared to competitors who don’t offer live chat.
Reducing Phone Call Volume
Live chat can also help reduce phone call volumes for businesses. Customer service agents spend significant time answering repetitive questions and addressing common issues over the phone. With live chat, many quick questions and simple issues can be handled directly through the chat window. This frees up phone agents to focus on more complex issues. Overall call volume can be reduced, improving operational efficiency.
Generating Valuable Customer Insights
Live chat conversations provide valuable insights into customer needs, pain points, and preferences. Agents can collect feedback in real-time through chat surveys or conversation cues. They can also access transcripts of past conversations to identify trends and opportunities. These customer insights can then be shared with product teams, marketing teams, sales teams, and executives to help drive better decision-making.
Enhancing SEO & Social Media Efforts
Adding live chat to a website can also help boost SEO and social media efforts. Live chat increases time spent on pages, which signals relevance to search engines. Many live chat solutions are optimized for SEO as well. And happy customers from live chat are more likely to share about their experience on social media, generating word-of-mouth marketing.
Allowing for Personalized Service
Unlike static self-service resources, live chat allows agents to provide personalized service tailored to each visitor. Agents can greet customers by name, answer specific questions, recommend relevant products/offers, and provide service tailored to the customer’s needs in real-time. The ability to provide 1-on-1 personalized service at scale is a major benefit.
Reaching Mobile Customers
Live chat is also critical for reaching customers on mobile devices. Mobile traffic continues to rise, and mobile visitors expect instant access to assistance. Live chat gives mobile users the ability to get questions answered and make purchases without having to pick up the phone. This improves conversion rates for mobile shoppers.
Supporting Multitasking Visitors
People today are often multitasking while browsing online, such as simultaneously checking social media on their phone. Live chat allows customers to get assistance without having to stop what they are doing. They can ask questions and make purchases while still focusing on other tasks. Live chat meets the needs of busy, distracted visitors.
Reaching Global Customers
For businesses with global target markets, live chat enables real-time communication with customers around the world. Language barriers can be crossed easily with translation functionality. And live chat works across all time zones, allowing businesses to provide high-quality assistance 24/7 no matter where customers are located.
Improving Team Collaboration
On the business side, live chat improves collaboration between teams like sales, customer service, and tech support. Agents can seamlessly transfer chats to ensure customers get the right assistance. Supervisors can monitor chats and step in with coaching. And support teams can collaborate in real-time behind the scenes while assisting customers.
Generating Valuable Data
Live chat platforms provide valuable usage data to help businesses improve. Features like real-time visitor tracking, conversion reports, agent performance dashboards, and detailed transcripts help businesses optimize everything from traffic acquisition to agent training. The data also helps quantify the ROI of live chat.
Allowing Quick Assistance Across Devices
Customers today use multiple devices, often simultaneously. Live chat allows businesses to deliver seamless assistance across devices. Customers can start a chat on their desktop, continue the conversation on their smartphone, and eventually make the purchase on a tablet. The omnichannel support is critical.
Improving Accessibility
Live chat also makes customer service more accessible to people with disabilities. Those with hearing impairments can access assistance without having to call and use a TTY/TDD system. Live chat works seamlessly with screen readers as well, enabling real-time support for the visually impaired.
Conclusion
In summary, live chat serves a wide variety of important purposes for modern businesses and their customers. It enables real-time communication, sales enablement, lead generation, increased conversions, improved customer satisfaction, reduced calls, valuable insights, personalized service, support across devices, enhanced collaboration, data-driven optimization, and more. Adopting live chat helps position businesses for success in today’s highly competitive ecommerce landscape while meeting the rising expectations of customers in real-time.
Here are some key data points on the purpose and benefits of live chat:
| Benefit | Statistic |
|---|---|
| Increases On-Site Conversion Rates | Live chat can increase conversion rates by 20% or more |
| Reduces Shopping Cart Abandonment | Live chat reduces shopping cart abandonment by up to 70% |
| Improves Customer Satisfaction | 73% of customers say live chat is one of their preferred customer service channels |
| Drives More Sales | Businesses using live chat report 20-30% increased average order value |
| Provides Faster Resolution | Live chat has an average response time of under 1 minute |
| Enables Personalized Service | 63% of customers say the ability to ask real-time questions is important |
| Can Reduce Call Volume | Live chat can decrease phone inquiries by over 50% |
| Drives More Engagement | Pages with live chat have 2-3 times higher user time spent versus pages without |
Sources:
- https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/live-chat-benefits/
- https://www.comm100.com/livechat-software/benefits.html
- https://www.ipediasoftware.com/blog/live-chat-statistics
In conclusion, the data shows the manifold benefits and purposes of live chat for both businesses and customers. Adopting live chat can lead to significant ROI through more sales, higher satisfaction, lower costs, and valuable data-driven insights. For optimal results, businesses should ensure proper implementation, training, management, integration with other channels, and continuous optimization of the live chat platform.