According to Econsultancy, 73% of customers were satisfied with their live chat experience, surpassing all other channels including email and phone. This statement is pretty enough to prove that you should not underestimate the impact and efficiency of live chat. Live chat can be used as the tool to boost the sales.
63% of customers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat as opposed to one that doesn't. Live Chat Software does not have any kind of superpower that it will instantly boost your sales. You need to work smarter, use various tactics and train your human resource well to maximize sales from the live chat.
Even if your website gets a large number of visitors to your online store, it doesn’t mean all of them will be going to buy your product or service. That is the reason you need to implement business strategies to increase conversion rates.
‘Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.’ -Horst Schulze.
Below are the tactics that will be useful to you to increase the conversions of your website:
1. Availability of your agents
The prime purpose of live chat is to assist your customer whenever they need any kind of help. You can’t predict that the customer will need your help only in a particular time.
A) Why not available 24 x 7 x 12:
9 to 5 schedule may be good for your working hours, but remember not necessarily all of your customers will prefer to visit your website at that particular time. Therefore, make sure your reps are available in rotational shifts so that more leads can be generated within 24 hours.
Also, your customer will not necessarily stop seeking help on weekends. Perhaps, during weekends they are more likely to shop online. Therefore, plan the shifts of your reps accordingly.
For example, The Art of Admission integrated live chat support for 24 x 7. This helps the customer to contact them instantly and anytime. Eventually, this will help to generate more leads, and more the leads, the more the conversion!
B) Integrate your Live Chat tool with email:
In case, if it is not possible to be available 24 x 7, then at least integrate your live chat software with your email so that you can have information that how many visitors visited your live chat window and their details. This strategy will also work to increase conversions with the help of live chat.
C) Integrate your Live Chat tool with VOIP:
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is that technology that allows you to make voice calls through a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular phone line. So, that if there is any customer who wishes to talk to you instead of having a live chat, you can call them.
2. Use Canned Messages Wisely
Canned messages save a lot of time of agent as well as of customers. Most of the time customers have general queries related to the products or services in this case by doing analysis if the proper canned response is made ready it will save a lot of time. Customer service agent should always craft canned messages carefully so that they don’t come across as too robotic.
Make sure that your live chat agent engages with the visitors on a more personal level and use canned messages only when necessary. This type of strategy/approach will make the customers happy and they will feel comfortable in conveying their needs and this will increase the conversion rates and builds a good image of the company.
3. Use Pre-Chat Surveys
With live chat software, you will be able to customize pre-chat surveys, These surveys will help in collecting basic contact information such as names and email address, Customizable pre-chat surveys also allows to create fields to gain valuable information about the customers such as special interest or other data.
On the basis of this data, you can route visitors to the appropriate department. This increases rates of conversions.
4. Target returning visitors / Trigger
[ctt template="1" link="cXDjf" via="yes" ]“Customer engagement efforts are much more effective when marketers can anticipate what visitors are searching for.” – Jeff Fuhriman[/ctt]
A returning customer is the one who has made a purchase in the past. If they’re back, means they probably came to make another purchase. This is the best opportunity a company can grab to take your relationship to a higher level. You can send personalized recommendations via live chat by observing the customers past purchase history. You can even give special offers or discounts to the customers to make customers happy and to increase the chance of conversions.
For example, if your customer is looking for a pair of Adidas shoes, here you could also offer a special discount on gym clothes. Thus, with this marketing strategy and a proactive approach through live chat, you will be able to boost customer engagement and conversions and sales.
Returning customers are valuable to the business. In this case, you can set up live chat triggers that start a proactive chat with a customer based on specified conditions that u define. You can proactively start the conversation to welcome them and you can even offer discounts on particular pages, IPs etc. and this will decrease cart abandonment rates and boost conversions.
5. Quick response:
‘There are many, many aspects of customer services around the world, but you customer always expects speedy resolution from you.” -Anonymous
According to Forrester research, “53 percent of US online adults are very likely to abandon their cart if they cannot find a quick answer to their question.”
Honestly, nobody likes to wait, so your customers. If the customer has to wait more than 120 seconds, then probably it creates a negative impact for a company. Therefore, you should arrange and recruit the staff in such a way that there are agents for the customer.
If the customer’s query is responded quickly, then the customer will take the positive impression in his mind which will increase the company’s prestige. Thus, this will create a long-lasting relationship with the customers and will improve customer retention rates and attract new customers.
6. Give importance to your customers:
“Sustaining high levels of service is a constant effort, Customer service is a journey, not a destination.” – Shep Hyken
According to Ruby Newell, it takes 12 positive experiences to make up for one unresolved negative experience. The stat clearly states that it is very important to offer exceptional customer service to the customers. Customers interact with the brands during his journey. So it is crucial that every touch points deliver positive experiences to the customers.
Customer service is an integral part of customer experience. Live chat software is an undeniably the best way to communicate with your customers. Therefore, give your customer preference as well as treat them special.
Don’t give an automatic or robotic response to the customers during conversation through live chat. Such robotic response creates a negative impact on customers and may leave your website. Having a real person that help customers through a purchase process adds confidence in them.
Below tips will help you to make your customer feel special:
A) Assist/Guide your customer to find a particular product if you could not provide it:
Every customer is genuinely concerned about their needs, hence if you will help even with knowing the fact that they are not monetarily beneficial to your organization; it will help you to increase the trust and respect of the customer towards the organization.
Maybe next time when he is thinking to buy a product, he will definitely think of your website. With this proactive customer service approach, you will be able to convert visitors to customers and generate more leads.
B) Ask the customers for a suggestion:
Only the customer can accurately express what he feels about the product, service, and brand. If you will ask them such a question like “What you like most about the product?” “What’s something that bothers you about the product or service?” or “How can we make our product better?” it will surely make them feel more personal and they will appreciate your efforts. It will make them feel that they are actually the part of your organization and you will be able to win their trust.
Hence, by taking feedbacks through live chat you can actually work where improvements are needed and this will increase conversions and sales.
C) Appreciate them:
Doesn’t matter if they make a purchase, or give some random advice, you should appreciate their efforts and thank them now and then for thinking about the brand. This will make them realize that you value your customer.
D) Know them:
It will be overwhelming if you know their name before initiating the conversation. You can let them fill up the small form that includes name, email address and objective of chat so that you can assist them accordingly.
The above tactics will help you to make them feel special, which will ultimately win their trust and they will be more likely to purchase your product or service.
4. Follow-up after chat:
“Persistence, persistence, persistence. I’m surprised how few entrepreneurs follow up.” –Mark Suster
According to the Marketing Donut, 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting. Follow-up is the most important part of online sales. The same survey states that 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy.
As shown in above image, only 2%, sales are made on the first contact, therefore it will be not wise to believe that you will definitely convert the sales on first chat; you need to take follow-up after the chat with all available contact resources of the customer.
There are some customers who are thinking to buy a product or he/she is half convinced; if you will take the follow up, then there are more chances that he/she will make a purchase. Follow-up reminds them about the purchase that he/she was willing to make.
Sometimes it also happens that the chat is disconnected in between the conversation. It may happen due to various reasons, like internet connectivity or any other issue from both the sides, but if you follow-up by the email; there are more chances that the customer will re-initiate the process of online shopping. Follow-up will help you to generate more sales and so, your conversion rate will improve.
This can be done via – in-app message, email or phone calls.
The Last Word:
It is true that increasing the conversion rate is not an easy task, but it’s not impossible to boost conversion rates with live chat. By implementing all, several or even one the above tactics/strategies we have discussed here, you can expect higher numbers of conversions.