Consumer expectations have completely transformed during the pandemic, and the labor shortage means service teams need to do more with less. A simple tool your business can begin using quickly and easily to help combat this issue and gain a competitive edge is live chat.
In this blog, we define live chat customer service, detail why customers love this CS tool, and dive into the many benefits of live chat.
What Is Live Chat in Customer Service?
Live chat is when a customer support agent helps a customer in real time through a chat widget on a company’s website. It differs from an automated chatbot experience in that chatbots already have pre-determined and pre-filled responses used to automatically answer common questions. With live chat, real agents can quickly answer a customer’s questions based on their needs and provide a more customized and personalized experience.
What Are the Benefits of Live Chat?
With today’s efficiency mandate, it’s important to use tools that allow your business to provide excellent CS with little effort whenever possible. This is where the undeniable benefits of live chat come in, powering effortless and efficient customer service
But there’s more. Here are eight additional CX and business benefits of live chat:
- Convenience Is Everything
According to recent consumer research by Kustomer, younger generations continue to veer away from phones as the top method of communication with brands, and towards digital-first channels like text and live chat. One reason for this shift may be that live chat is often more convenient for many consumers than calling a business and hoping to speak to a representative.
There is also the added benefit of the potential customer never having to leave your website. When a customer needs to call or email a business with a question, they are typically shifting their focus to make that call or write that email. When communicating via live chat, the customer remains on your website where they can then complete their purchase after having their questions conveniently answered all in one place.
- Providing Quick Answers Leads to Higher Sales
Modern customer service expectations are constantly changing, but there has been growing demand for easily accessible information and instant gratification in customer service. Utilizing a live chat tool on your business’s website can help satiate the modern customer’s need for immediate answers to their questions.
Rather than taking the time to search through your website and possibly growing frustrated by not being able to immediately find an answer, the customer can type their question directly into the live chat box that pops up on your website’s home page.
The agent can either answer the customer’s question directly or guide them to the appropriate section of the website they’re looking for. This opportunity to clear any roadblocks the customer might have with the product or service they’re inquiring about is one of the major benefits of live chat.
With all of their questions answered, the customer is less hesitant to buy the product — leading to more sales.
- Save Money and Time
When it comes to employee productivity, communicating with customers over the phone is becoming increasingly inefficient. Even the most talented customer service agents can only speak to one customer at a time when helping someone over the phone. With live chat, agents can manage multiple conversations at once.
While the customer finds information needed by the agent, the agent can simultaneously be in communication with other customers. Without wasting any additional time or money, increased productivity through live chat leads to serving more customers, and more customers receiving quick and correct answers to their questions leads to higher sales.
- Capture Leads 24/7
With 24/7 live chat service, your business can collect customer leads any time. Think about when the majority of customers are researching products or services they’re looking to buy: after business hours and on weekends.
From a serious purchase to casual online shopping, some customers may be on your website in the middle of night and are unable to call your business, or would have to wait at the earliest until morning for an answer via email.
Employing a 24/7 live chat service allows a business to interact with that casual online shopper any time, collect their contact information, and convert them from a browser into an active customer ready to purchase your product or service.
- Increase Personalization
Infusing personalization in digital communication is becoming a must-have in every business’s CX strategy. At first, one might think that communicating quickly and digitally could mean losing the personal touch required for great customer service, but this is actually not the case when it comes to modern chat. With an advocate on the other end of the chat, customers can have their complex issues listened to, understood, and addressed in real time.
Customers who want to communicate digitally are going to find a way to do so, and this often leads to reaching out via email. Although you can provide great customer service in an email, there is still the potential a customer service rep might end up going back and forth over days, sometimes even weeks, with the potential buyer.
Putting that much time between each communication takes you further and further from the point at which the customer was originally inquiring and ready to purchase. The space between each interaction can lead to details being forgotten and customer needs never properly being met.
Through live chat, you can give your customers a more personalized experience based on their unique challenges and needs right at the moment when they are looking to buy. If agents can make the customer feel heard, understood, and supported right in that moment — the customer is more likely to make their purchase.
- Collect feedback
One of the most important benefits of live chat is that customer feedback can be measured directly within the chat conversation. Just like a company asks for feedback at the end of a phone call or in a follow-up email, agents can prompt your customers to complete a post-chat survey at the end of a live chat conversation.
Live chat transcripts are also a great tool for agents to look back on customer interactions, whether it be their own or another employee’s, as a training tool to gain insight into why the customer may or may not have made a purchase.
All of this feedback is an important CS tool that helps the business learn and grow, leading to a better customer experience.
- Increase CSAT
It’s no secret that customers love live chat, so it’s time for business to get on board. When we really put ourselves in the customer’s shoes, it’s easy to understand why live chat increases customer satisfaction and leads to higher customer satisfaction scores (CSAT).
Imagine you’re a customer and you’re finally ready to buy the high-end blender you’ve had your eye on for months, but when you get to the website you realize the brand sells almost ten different types. Just when you’re getting ready to delve in and research each model, a live chat window pops up with an agent asking you if you need any help picking the right blender for you.
Rather than getting overwhelmed by the many options on the website (and possibly even leaving to continue your research later), now you can tell the agent exactly what you need out of your blender and they can at least narrow down your options, if not lead you directly to the blender of your dreams.
According to recent consumer research conducted by Kustomer, 79% of consumers get frustrated when they can’t contact customer service on their preferred medium or platform, and 81% of consumers would abandon a purchase due to a poor service experience.
Live chat allows you to instantly meet your customers where they are and provide immediate and quality CS, which leads to high customer satisfaction.
- Competitive advantage
Although customers continue to appreciate the benefits of live chat, businesses aren’t adopting it. Only 25% of surveyed customer service organizations are currently using chat, and 18% report they currently use chatbots.
When taking into consideration the effortless, fast service that modern customers demand, the vast majority of businesses are missing a huge opportunity and leaving themselves open to competitors.
By using live chat, you’re choosing to provide a convenient solution to customer questions and issues; your business can more easily capture and cultivate leads; and your employees can create a fast yet personalized CX. Providing these key CS expectations is bound to give your brand a competitive edge.
Elevate Your Overall CX With with Kustomer’s CRM
Live chat is just one of many tools for providing great customer service. If you’re looking for further support on how to create the best customer experience for your clients with a customer service software solution that includes live chat, start your free 14-day trial of Kustomer’s CRM today.
