Statistics Show You Need Live Chat, But You Also Need To Do It Right!

If Live Chat isn’t part of your customer service support, then you’re missing out on valuable opportunities to improve. Online messenger used to be seen as a “nice add-on,” but today’s B2B buyers and consumers come to expect Live Chat as part of a comprehensive customer service department. Responsiveness is now easier than ever with Executive Boutique’s outsourced Live Chat, available to your clientele 24/7.

Live Chat Statistics

Research tells us Live Chat is too good to pass up:

• Low-Cost Customer Service: Live Chat customer service is 17-30% cheaper than a phone call, allowing agents to help three or more customers at one time, according to Forrester Research.
• More Effective Lead Generation: Live Chat increases conversions by 20% or more, with a 300% ROI rate for the average sales team (American Marketing Association). Up to 77% of customers won’t buy from a site that doesn’t offer Live Chat support.
• Improved Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: Live Chat has the highest customer satisfaction levels at 73%, compared to 61% for email support and 44% for phone support (eDigital Research). Live Chat gives 90% of customers confidence that they can get help from the brands they’ve chosen if necessary (Oracle). In fact, 63% of customers say they’re more likely to return to a site that offers Live Chat.
• Meeting Customer Expectations: 42% of customers say they prefer Live Chat to email, social media, or forums. They like the ability to multitask and shop while having their questions answered (JD Power & Associates).

These days we’re all so busy. People like that they can have their questions answered, without being put on hold or transferring from queue to queue. Offering Live Chat lets you serve more customers, making the most of your time. The average Chat inquiry is answered in 42 seconds, thus reducing the amount of time a customer has to consider investing time and money elsewhere. With online support, you can offer a personal touch, which is particularly crucial when customers have items in their shopping carts.

Live Chat Represents Top Caliber Customer Service – When Done Right

As with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way to approach Live Chat. One study found that 21% of Live Chat support requests go ignored. In order to be successful with Live Chat, you need to:

• Give Live Chat the attention it deserves. Live Chat requires its own specialized training that may differ from phone or email support training. Using pre-written templates, cheat sheets, FAQ’s, and going over patterns in Live Chat inquiries will improve your customer service in this unique department.
• Prioritize your communications with the busy Live Chat cohort. While you may have 10 hours to respond to an email, you can’t let a chat request go more than a few minutes before users abandon your site. Failing to answer Live Chat inquiries will lose business and customer loyalty. Live Chat needs go beyond 9-5, with support 24/7.
• Be prepared for traffic spikes. Agents can handle multiple interactions at once, but peak seasons can cause floods in demand. Having enough trained agents prepared to handle increased requests ensures seamless operation.
• Be proactive. Don’t wait for prospects to contact you. Have automated technology in place to greet website visitors when they first arrive on the site, when they visit key conversion pages, after a set amount of time browsing the site, or once items have been added to the shopping cart.
• Connect your Live Chat correspondences with your in-house CRM. Ultimately, Live Chat should fit into the bigger picture of lead nurturing, conversions, and loyalty. Get each customer’s contact information and keep record of your interactions to understand the customer life cycle and maximize your relationship. Following up after a Live Chat experience kicks your service level up a notch.  

Should You Outsource Live Chat?

When you outsource Live Chat, you cut right to the chase with the best customer service representatives, industry-leading processes, and state-of-the-art technology. Top reasons to consider outsourcing Live Chat include:

• You are looking to reduce costs associated with customer service.
• You don’t have the time or staff to handle FAQ answering.
• You have internal resources, but your team’s time is better spent doing what they’re already good at.
• Test the waters to see if Live Chat is right for your business, using a flexible team of trained experts.
• You know you need Live Chat to succeed, but don’t have the expertise to reach its full potential.
• You have an in-house team, but their hours and willingness to work holidays/weekends/overnights is limited.

Your dedicated staff from Executive Boutique gets trained to know your business inside and out, acting as an extension of your in-house team. Our agents have the operational skills to service a number of requests any time, day or night for peak efficiency. Outsourcing Live Chat gives this channel the specialized training it deserves, but at a lower cost. You can scale up with additional employees during busy times or scale back down when times are slow. You don’t have to worry about hiring, firing, employee benefits packages, or scheduling hassles. Instead, you can have confidence that your Live Chat team is operating seamlessly in the background at all times. Contact Executive Boutique to learn more about outsourcing your live chat services to our Cebu City, Philippines business process outsourcing call center.

Additional resources:

1. AMA, How B2B Marketers are Leveraging Live Chat to Increase Sales, https://www.ama.org/Documents/how-b2b-marketers-leveraging-live-chat-increase-sales.pdf
2. e-Digital Research, Customer Service Benchmark, http://www.edigitalresearch.cowww.edigitalresearch.com/pdf/sample-benchmarks/Customer%20Service%20Benchmark%20March%202014.pdf
3. Oracle, Cross-Channel Commerce: A Consumer Research Study, http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/commerce/atg/cross-channel-commerce-survey-333315.pdf