In this digitally-savvy era, customer expectations are higher than ever. Meeting their demands by solving queries in an instant represents the most challenging task businesses face today.
Customer support is one of the areas most in need of a real-time revamp, exactly because customers demand these rapid solutions. Waiting times can prove a source of great frustration. Live chat tools have emerged as an attempt to combat this challenge.
Read on to find out how live chat, in combination with cobrowsing, can take your customer from the old school to join the real-time revolution.
On the quest for a real-time customer support system
In this competitive world, it’s important to build a rock-solid customer support system. To ensure the long-term growth of your company, make sure you deliver excellent customer service through real-time assistance for customers.
Big companies like Amazon and Apple regard customer support as the most important aspect of their business. Looking at their growth graph, we can see the success putting customers first brings.
Everything nowadays is so fast-paced, and so naturally customers expect their questions answered quickly too. To address this, build a customer support system that provides answers in real-time. Live chat software creates a better customer service experience for website visitors by providing those instant answers they seek. Fast service is crucial for boosting satisfaction and increasing conversion rates.
Take a look at these stats:
- Customer satisfaction: 73% of customers are satisfied with live chat tools.
- Customer retention: 63% of customers said that they like to revisit an online business which is equipped with live chat tools.
- Conversion: 77% of customers said that they are not likely to make a purchase without a live chat support.
These are just some of the statistics that show why live chat is light-years ahead of other customer support techniques.
But why is live chat the best communication tool?
Because when using live chat:
- Your customer reps can handle multiple customer calls simultaneously.
- Your customer reps can answer every single customer query in real-time.
As a result, your customer reps become more efficient, reducing operating costs. Furthermore, by improving customer experience, you get more sales.
But that’s not the end of the story. When live chat tools work in tandem with cobrowsing, your customer support becomes supercharged. Many companies are starting to see live chat in combination with cobrowsing software as the pinnacle of real-time customer support.
How does cobrowsing empower the live chat experience?
American Express noted response rates (industry standard) across different communication channels:
- Phone - queries answered within 12 hours
- Text - queries answered within 1 hour
- Email - queries answered same business day
- Blog post comments - queries answered within 8 hours
- Social media - user comments answered within 4 hours
This is the current state of communication standards, not even coming near to ‘real-time’. Newer, smarter tools are needed to provide true ‘real-time’ customer support and set a new benchmark.
Live chat tools have the edge when it comes to solving this issue and that’s why integrating live chat with cobrowsing creates a killer combination.
Cobrowsing is essential for a great real-time support stack, enhancing direct communication between agents and customers. Cobrowsing technology enables agents to access customers’ web browser windows. On top of that, customer reps can easily locate the customers’ mouse cursors on that page.
Agents can then guide customers by highlighting different web elements on certain pages. The entire process is lightning fast.
But the real ‘wow’ comes when live chat is added.
While cobrowsing enables you to guide customers visually, the live chat window is there to provide whatever other guidance is needed simultaneously.
A website is the face of your online business. Make sure you can use it to communicate effectively with customers by using these live chat tools.
Live chat + cobrowsing = a winning combination
This is the key take-home. Creating a customer support system from live chat tools combined with cobrowsing is the biggest factor in developing a real-time experience.
Consider the following points regarding how the combination shapes real-time customer support:
- It offers a complete view of agents’ and customers’ screens.
- It’s a two-way interaction. Agents can continue conversations through live chat while viewing customers’ screens.
- Software stacks can run on every known platform. This cross-platform compatibility is a basic requirement in a successful software stack.
- No extra software installation is required for cobrowsing. Moreover, if clients want to use cobrowsing software alone, without the rest of the live chat tools pack, it’s available.
- Customer reps can easily use the software and get access to their customers’ screens.
- The whole communication is secured with PCI DSS encryption standards. So, there is no risk of data theft with live chat tools.
- Pre-chat windows provide some extra magic. According to Kissmetrics, pre-chat surveys or pre-chat windows enable agents to set the tone and direction of a live chat session.
All these factors show why cobrowsing is the cornerstone in providing a real-time customer support system.
Be there in real time
Having multiple customer communication channels and offering an accurate, real-time customer support service is something every business needs to achieve. A sure-fire way to get there is by integrating modern communication tools like live chat with cobrowsing into your software stack.