Today phone and email are not the only communication channels customers use to get in touch with companies. They prefer using various messengers and social media platforms over always busy phone and slow email. However, keeping customer communication in Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp or Telegram is not the best solution for businesses that want to improve their customer service level. Supporting customers on all these messengers requires having all these apps installed from agents’ side, so that they could respond customers on various channels. This in turn may lead to mess in customer records and poor customer service level. From the other side, if your company offers assistance through particular messengers which some of your customers do not use, they would need to install them and lose their valuable time.
Modern companies need one communication channel which can be easily used by their customers without additional installations and let support agents use one app for all support requests.
Live chat is one of the most popular and efficient tools that meets these requirements. It can be used not only on websites but also integrated with emails, ads and even social media platforms. This means your customers can get in touch with you using live chat even if they are not on your website. They can click your chat link posted in an advertisement, added to email signature, integrated within your mobile app and shared on social media platforms. From the other side, your agents will use one application where they will handle chat requests and keep track of customers on the website.
What is live chat and how it works
Let's start with explaining how live chat tool works. Live chat is a widget which can be added to a website, mobile app, email or social media profile and allows your customers to get connected with your customer service team. When your customers click a live chat icon on your website, they see a pre-chat survey and after filling it out their chat request is directed to your agents. Your agents accept chats and continue conversations in private chat rooms. This type of communication is very convenient both for your customers and for your CS reps:
- Your customers can use chat wherever they are on any device
- Your agents can handle several chats concurrently
- Your agents can get chat requests from various channels: your website, email newsletters, social media profiles and mobile apps
- Both parties can multitask while using live chat tool
You can see how live chat works by clicking a live chat button in the bottom right corner of our website.
Now after you have tested live chat and understand how it works, we will answer the question: Why your company needs live chat?
Fast a convenient communication channel
First of all live chat tool added to your website helps to build personal approach to customers and strong relationship. On various ecommerce websites web chat has become integral part and modern customers cannot imagine other ways to get in touch with a business. They do not want to talk by phone or wait for email response. They want to chat in a convenient manner without getting distracted from their activities. Moreover, they expect fast and accurate responses. If you have a dedicated customer service team, they will enjoy using live chat tool, as it allows multitasking and inviting co-workers for assistance.
Live chat saves time and money
Live chat is very cost effective as your agents can handle multiple chats at the same time. Moreover, they can multitask and accept phone calls or answer emails while waiting for customer’s response on chat. Let us list here the main benefits of having live chat help on your website:
- Increases customer service team efficiency with help of convenient chat routing options
- Reduces overall customer service costs
- It takes a couple of minutes to have live chat up and running
- Increases customer satisfaction level
- Helps to boost sales and website conversion rate
Detailed reporting
By utilizing live chat on your website, you get detailed statistics not only on your agents' performance, but also will have access to some valuable details about your website traffic. Let us list here the main reports which will help you improve both your customer service quality and website usability:
- Stats about chats per agent and department: you will see here the number of chats, missed chats, acceptance rate, etc. This will help you see whether your chat routing works fine for your agents, what is their load and whether you need to hire more reps.
- Agent success data: your customers can rate your agents and this way you will see the satisfaction level.
- Pages where the chat button was clicked: it is important to see that pages where the live chat button is clicked most of all. It will help you improve your website user experience and analyze what confuses your customers on specific pages.
- Referral sources: by generating such reports you will see how successful your advertising campaigns were.
Live chat allows handling chat requests from different channels
We have already mentioned that live chat can be added not only to your website, but also to your email newsletter, email signature, social media profile and even mobile app. This way by clicking a chat button on your website or your chat link on other platforms your customers will get in touch with your team. At the same time your agents will handle customer service cases through their live chat app without being distracted on other channels. This definitely does not exclude those requests which will still come to your email address or posted directly on social media, but still live chat will significantly reduce the distraction level of your team and help to increase efficiency.
Still have doubts about adding live chat to your website?
At Provide Support we offer free 10-day fully functional free trial and 24/7 customer service. It will take about 15 minutes to integrate live chat service with your website and start assisting your customers. Integration is a matter of activating a live chat app or inserting a short snippet of HTML to your website. No special programming skills are required for this. Our agents will be glad to assist you with any questions and help with adding live chat to your website. Just do not hesitate and try!
