Everything you need to know and how to explore this tool to engage the audience on your website. Live Chat tool is a great opportunity for companies to improve their engagement with users, making them spent more time on the website and promoting interactions during live streams.
Nowadays, immediacy is a strong point to attract and retain customers. In other words, the response time that your company offers to a question or problem is what will make it remarkable for the user — whether positively or negatively.
Because of this profile, Live Chat is one of the fastest-growing communication channels, ensuring more satisfied customers and more engaged users.
In this comprehensive Live Chat guide, you will find out everything you need to know about this subject, including:
- Details about the concept of Live Chat;
- Importance of Live Chat;
- How to use Live Chat to communicate with customers;
- Benefits of Live Chat.
The Live Chat emergency
The digital transformation has undoubtedly considerably changed the way society behaves. Smartphones, especially, have contributed to what is called the Culture of Immediacy.
In other words, waiting is no longer an option.
If we think about communication over the phone, for example, it is incredible to think that at the beginning of everything a call took several minutes to be completed, passing through an operator and then being redirected to the person we wanted to talk to.
Nowadays, you can make an application call and get immediate contact with someone, wherever you are.
When it comes to marketing and the company’s relationship with the user or customer, things are not different.
Throughout the purchase process, waiting for service was never a very welcome situation. But the difference is that there was not much to do.
If you went to your favorite store and took too long to be served, you might even be irritated, but you would still have to wait your turn.
However, these days it cannot happen. With purchase options in your hands, the customer who expects may well switch stores, as the options are much more varied and accessible.
Also, the audience wants to be connected, by discussing the products, services and brand reputations. That’s why social media have been getting so popular in recent years.
Therefore, companies need to quickly adapt to this new culture, reducing response time and seeking to keep their target audience on the website for longer.
It is in this context that the Live Chat proposal arises.
What is Live Chat?
Live Chat is a strategy that proposes to serve the more immediate and exploratory public, who always want to know more and who cannot wait long for the answers to their questions.
This tool can be presented to the user in two main ways:
- As a window that opens as the user browsers the site;
- As a specific button strategically placed on the screen in case the user wants to chat;
In both cases, the user will be connected to someone, who can answer questions, solve any navigation problem or discuss the website content.
The tool, which has been used for a long time by sales and customer support teams to offer assistance, is now becoming a favorite of marketing teams too, due to its potential for engagement.
Through Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, one of the great trends in digital transformation, these intelligent chatbots use natural language processing to understand users’ requests and respond accordingly.
However, as opposed to what was done a few years ago, today chatbots are just the way between user and company. They should not offer automated responses to customer questions, as they will not be satisfied.
The goal is to provide an instant communication channel with a human operator behind all the technology.
# Subscribe stay on top of news on our blog
Importance of Live Chat
You don’t want to leave a potential lead waiting for hours until your question is answered. We are living in a world where everything is instant: connection, video, music, food…
On the other hand, identifying and serving this customer requires a tool that can link the interests of both involved, reducing the noises that prevent this relationship from becoming closer.
Therefore, Live Chat is the ideal option for the company that wants to provide real-time interaction to that customer who is browsing its website, knowing its products, services and studying the reliability of the brand, for example.
He may be deciding there whether or not it is worth doing business with you. If he likes what he sees, he most likely wants to contact you next, but how will he do it?
E-mail is far from being a quick answer and the modern public knows it well. The phone is also not as efficient, as a single call takes all the time from an operator.
Live Chat is a tool that can be incorporated into your website, being visible to the user while he is browsing. For this reason, it is a much more inviting form of contact.
More than that, the same attendant, when well trained, can handle multiple simultaneous conversations without difficulty, being more agile than the phone.
One of the main advantages of this strategy is that it can be used for companies in any segment.
Currently, it is found on e-commerce sites, digital banking platforms, company domains that offer services focused on B2B, for example.
- 51% of consumers say a business needs to be available 24/7.
- 42% prefer Live Chat functions because they do not have to wait;
- 92% of customers feel satisfied when they use the Live Chat tool;
- 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person during an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.
How to use Live Chat communicate with customers
Live Chat is an important communication tool between the public and the company. When it comes to a marketing strategy, it can serve the purposes of:
Relationship
The relationship between customers and the brand is one of the challenges of marketing teams.
It is necessary to work on the perspective of trust, the feeling that the brand is concerned with what its audience needs and is committed to being present, forming a partnership.
In this sense, live chats personalized with the name and photo of an attendant, for example, are great for further humanizing the service, even on an online platform.
As modern users are more than used to chatting via messaging apps, this is a way to naturally make the public more comfortable using the tool, becoming more open to dialogue with the brand.
So the relationship is strengthened.
Support
Again, when it comes to supporting, immediacy is even more important for customers and responding quickly is one of the main challenges of marketing today.
With the evolution of bots, it is possible to direct any customer questions to the service through Live Chat, which acts as a filter, eliminating bureaucracies that delay the resolution of the situation.
Instant chats refer to immediacy, showing the customer that he does not have to spend days waiting for an email response or filling out extensive forms.
With a quick message, they can communicate what he needs and be served in minutes.
Therefore, if e-commerce customer had problems to finalize an order, for example, he can quickly request help.
Engagement
Live chat can also be used to generate engagement between the audience and the content produced by the brand.
For example, with the Artificial Intelligence feature, it is possible to map what website visitors are consuming.
If a user spends a lot of time on the page of an article about a certain subject, the bot can suggest some related content, as well as offer help to clarify possible doubts about that specific topic.
Thereby, you can refer the user to have the right conversations with the attendant, considerably increasing the chances that he will become a lead.
In this way, a customer who spends more time reading about a service offered by a certain company can, through Live Chat, be invited to learn more about the features and values of contracting it, directing the marketing team to a much more likely lead.
# Subscribe and stay on top of news on our blog
Live Chat benefits for companies
As you could see, the Live Chat is a great opportunity to create a connection between customers and your business.
Also applying le to different purposes, this tool can generate significant benefits for companies.
So let’s get straight to the point and show you in more detail what they are:
Agility and accessibility
The union between agility and accessibility is essential when talking about support. Compared to other service channels such as telephone or e-mail, it is possible to observe this differential in Live Chat, because:
- Searching for a phone number, dialing, waiting to be answered and in some cases having to bear the cost of calling, is a huge hassle for users;
- Customers want to communicate their needs as soon as possible and, just by sending an instant message, they will be closer to that;
- There is no need to waste time switching to another service, such as email or applications, just click on the Live Chat and report the problem;
- There are no business hours limitations, the chatbot can help the user even when the attendant is not there, maintaining the flow of communication or suggesting useful links at any time of the day, including on weekends;
- There is flexibility in service, where several Live Chat operators can contribute to the solution of the problem, without the customer feeling uncomfortable with the need to repeat what they want several times.
Proactive support
Serving a customer quickly is important. But it is the least that your company must do to generate leads.
On the other hand, something that really impresses the consumer is the brand that offers help even before he needs to ask for it.
This is called proactive support. In the case of Live Chat, support takes the first step towards interaction with the user.
In this case, the tool includes mechanisms that make it possible to identify that the user is having trouble finding information, sending messages such as:
- “Did not find what you were looking for?”
- “Need help?”
- “Are you in doubt about our products/services?”
It is also possible to map specific user actions allowing operators to reach exactly a specific visitor, addressing them with even more specific questions.
Expenses reduction
The objective of any company is to optimize processes and reduce costs. This is due to the following perspectives:
- Versatility. As stated before, a single operator can handle more than one conversation at the same time, something that is not possible with phone calls, for instance. Consequently, the company will save resources on hiring these professionals;
- Fast communication. Live Chat is an instant channel, where the customer has the freedom to directly communicate their problem, reducing service time and, as a consequence, allowing more users to be served;
- Fewer complaints. Dissatisfied customers can lead to various losses for companies, whether due to product returns or complaints in court and financial charges. The faster the response, the less chance that these problems will become real.
More conversion
Fast service is one of the factors that wins over the target audience, as it offers immediate assistance with the purchase decision.
This purchase journey, however, is not always so clear to the user. Many doubts and obstacles are part of this path and Live Chat can be essential to help you make everything clearer.
Several points can hinder a customer from completing a purchase, such as:
- Little information about the product or service in question;
- Disorganized or difficult to find information, which makes the purchase decision difficult;
- Questions about extra fees, such as shipping;
- Questions about the terms of purchase, such as shipping and return deadlines;
- Differentiating your product from the competition.
By having an instant response channel for these types of problems, you will be removing these barriers and making the sales process more noise-free, converting more customers.
Customer loyalty
A good marketing team not only attracts new leads but retains those that have already been won.
After all, you don’t want a customer who took so much effort to be lost to your competition, right?
This is all about relationships and the trust that the public places on the brand. A truly loyal customer does not mind paying a little more to be attended to quickly in case of any problems.
The customer wants to be respected and wants to receive attention from the brand in which he invests his money.
Live Chat is a way to always offer a quick response and impress this customer who trusts your service so much, making him sure that they chose the right brand.
# Subscribe and stay on top of news on our blog
Useful data for strategies
Modern companies are increasingly discovering the power of Big Data and Analytics in the process of defining strategies.
Live Chat is also a powerful tool in providing insights that allow you to improve the customer service, as well as your website and the content disseminated through it.
The conversation history can point to several improvements to be made on the site. If many customers ask for the same information, for example, it means that it is not clear in the content.
It is also possible to evaluate which product has attracted the attention of page visitors.
Another possibility is to analyze the content links suggested by the chatbot. Those with the most clicks can reveal the interests of the target audience that are most popular in a given period and can be decisive for a campaign strategy.
Through the records, investment possible to evaluate the performance of the support team. What is the average resolution time for requests? How many customers were served in a day?
Real-time feedback
In addition to data analysis, real-time feedback can help the company solve more pressing problems that may be hindering traffic on the site.
Thus, it is possible to include an evaluation of the service right after the end of the session.
With this small gesture, it will be possible to know how satisfactory or not the user experience was and, from there, take the necessary measures so that bad evaluations do not repeat themselves.
Visualization of the problem
The modern world is guided by prints, links and attachments. Why not take advantage of this to make the user experience much more complete and dynamic?
After all, describing a problem or question about the site can be much more time-consuming and frustrating than expected.
Imagine that you have a beauty products e-commerce and, when trying to add a product to the shopping cart, the customer receives an error message and the action is not completed.
For an operator who has never seen that error before, it can be quite difficult to understand what is happening through a phone call, for example.
Not to mention that this service would not be at all efficient for the user, who would certainly choose to give up the purchase instead of contacting support.
Through the Live Chat, just send a print and follow the operator’s instructions, being a much more practical and better understanding alternative.
Personalized experience
Today’s consumer does not want to be just another one. He wants to be unique and receive total attention.
Live Chat also offers this type of experience, as it is similar to instant messaging by application.
Although it is not as close as the telephone call, the presence of an operator who can provide more humane responses is sufficient to convince the customer that he is receiving exclusive service to his needs.
Automated service
The automation of processes is one of the benefits of digital transformation for companies, seeking to optimize the time of the teams by making operational activities more flexible.
Thus, the support or marketing team is not tied to repetitive tasks that end up consuming a lot of time, being able to serve the customer efficiently while focusing on business strategies.
Return of investment
The ROI Live Chat is one of its biggest benefits.
According to what was published by Startus Magazine, including Live Chat on your company’s website can convert 20% more customers, with a ROI rate of 300%.
That is, in addition to being an automated tool that reduces staff costs and provides relevant data for the development of products and services, the financial results obtained through it are equally powerful.
Innovation
If there is an innovative service option on the market that can help your company attract more customers, why stick to traditional and less attractive methods?
Investing in more digital solutions is also a way to make a good impression on users.
For B2B companies this is even more important, because through simple automated tools it is possible to make a presentation with a strong impact, showing that your business always seeks to offer the most innovative and efficient in the market.
Opportunity to beat your competition
Live Chat as a form of engagement has not yet had its potential explored by the market.
Even though it is the type of service that users already expect these days, investing in new possibilities for applying this tool is a way to stand out among the competition.
Personal connection
How Live Chat operators communicate with users is very important. It is a chance to reflect and further strengthen the brand’s voice, that is, the way it wants to be remembered.
For that, you need to know your target audience well, of course.
If your brand is in the clothing industry and aimed at the younger audience, for example, perhaps the attendants can adopt a more relaxed and friendly posture. It’s an opportunity to win the customer’s sympathy.
On the other hand, if you have an IT support website and your customer is someone who does not understand anything about technology, it makes no sense to use very specific terms of which he is not aware of. In that case, the goal is to make things easier.
Community engagement
For those who produce content, Live Chat can be a great way to engage an audience.
For example, while users consume the content on your site, they can also chat with each other and debate their individual opinions.
This is a way to keep them longer on your channel, as there is no need to go to other places — as social media — to share the content and find partners for discussions.
Conclusion
Live Chat is an opportunity to innovate your brand’s communication and is growing every day. It is a modern and cost-effective tool, in addition to excellent conversion and engagement rates.
Seeking to provide the best customer experience, it can be much more than just an embellishment for your website.
The Arena group Live Chat tool is simple to use and allows you to create and embed a chat in minutes. So you can add Live Chat rooms wherever and whenever you want, keeping your audience active on your website. Do you want to know more about it? Take a free trial!