How Live Chat Software Can Boost Efficiency; Streamline Your Company

As a business owner, you are always searching for ways to streamline company time and resources. Streamlining your costs and boosting efficiency is an excellent way to improve your bottom line. After all, the less time your team spends on the task, the more they can focus on other tasks that provide more value. Of course, it is also less expensive if you have to hire fewer employees.

Continue reading to learn how live chat increases sales.

What is a live chat software?

Live chat software lets you easily talk to customers via your website. While it typically refers to software you use to communicate on your website, it can also apply to other platforms. For example, you can live chat with customers on Facebook Messenger or other platforms.

In many cases, live chat also includes chatbots. These computer programs interact with your customers instead of a live person. Chatbots are very popular in live chat for your business, but they are not always the best choice. That is because you would need the most advanced chatbot AI to pass for a human. This simply isn’t in the budget of most businesses.

People can tell the difference between bots and humans, which is essential. So is the fact that customers tend to prefer talking to a real person. That combination means that using a chatbot for sales may be counterproductive. In fact, 95 percent of online shoppers in one study who interacted with chatbots said they would have had a better pre-purchase experience if they had talked to a human. Think carefully before deciding to use chatbots, as it can lead to a seeming increase in efficiency at the expense of a poor customer experience. Simply put, a chatbot platform cannot live up to the customer expectations of personalised conversations and natural language.

What is a webchat software?

Webchat software is slightly different from live chat, although many people use the two terms in the same situations. The most important part of webchat software is that it lets you talk to customers on your website. This contrasts with live chat software, which can also work on other programs like Facebook Messenger.

The best customer service chat software will use webchat so your clients can talk to a real person. This is not an automated system. As mentioned above, this is a crucial distinction. You will be better equipped to turn conversations into conversions if a real person talks to the client.

What are website chats used for?

There are numerous ways that you can use website chats. Overall, they help streamline workflow while improving the customer experience. Remember that when you streamline your workflows, you will drive more to your bottom line, which is the ultimate goal of most businesses.

The following are just some of the ways that companies use website chats:

• Answering general questions, such as store hours and more.
• Providing sizing information to improve client satisfaction and reduce returns and exchanges.
• Answering customer queries about shipping, including policies and tracking shipments.
• Customer service in general.
• Handling customer complaints.
• Making sales.
• Gathering contact information from website visitors to generate leads.
• Scheduling sales meetings or appointments.
• Getting feedback on chat experiences.
• Gathering data and advanced reporting that lets you streamline processes, including the webchat itself.

The actual uses of a live chat app will depend mainly on the live chat features it has. This is why it is so important to carefully compare live chat apps before choosing one for your needs.

While most of these functions could also be performed with other communication methods, there are a few advantages of live chat or website chats, including:

• >63 percent of those who use live chat on a given website have a higher chance of returning to that website.
• 62 percent of customers say they trust an online store more if a representative is available on the live chat widget.

Companies that have used live chat or webchat to boost efficiency

Many companies have seen the improved efficiency that comes with live chat for themselves. Before taking a look at specific companies and their results, consider some relevant live chat statistics about the success of webchat:

• Incorporating live chat on your website can boost your conversions by 12 percent.
• Customers who engage with a brand spend 60 percent more on each transaction and buy 90 percent more often.

Nextiva

After creating a proactive chat strategy, Nextiva saw an 82 percent increase in leads. The company had 24.3 percent of chats convert to sales quotes. It also saw a 13 percent year-over-year chat lead-to-sale increase, and its chat volume doubled year-over-year.

Trane

Using Podium’s live chat solutions and other digital tools, Trane converted 77 website visits a month to phone calls. Additionally, 15 percent of webchat conversations become actual sales.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic saw live chat conversion rates of at least 18 percent every day. The company noticed that its customers who chatted converted 3.5 times as often as those who did not.

It saw a 15 percent increase in average order value compared to customers who didn’t use live chat.

In terms of efficiency, in particular, eight chat agents could do the same amount of work that 15 email agents had done.

The company also noticed a dramatic reduction in its backlog of emails by adding live chat. This let them clear email backlogs overnight or within hours instead of the longer previous times. This also reduced the number of support tickets, as the support teams resolved most issues in the chat window.

Customer satisfaction scores increased to over 80 percent.

Conclusion: Why local businesses should have a website chat

With a website chat, you will discover that your team can work more efficiently, and your processes will also become more efficient. Customers will have higher satisfaction rates, and you are likely to notice increases in revenue, leads, and productivity.