Live Chat is a tool for instant communication between a brand and its customers. Moreover, it’s a business feature that will make your company convert more visitors and offer better service.
Whether you’re involved with big retailers or small brands, a Live Chat will help you connect to your consumers in the best possible way. Real-time answers are one of the reasons customers love to make deals with companies that offer this tool.
But there’s so much more you need to know about Live Chat, especially since one of the following year’s marketing trends focuses on providing a greater customer experience.
Since we’re on the subject, both things are highly related to each other — but I’ll get into more details later on. Here, I’m also going to tell you everything to understand how to use this feature and create a positive brand perception for your business, plus how to choose the best live chat software.
Just one more thing before you learn all about acquiring a Live Chat as a marketing tool for 2021: it will only take you as far as you’re willing to put your efforts. What does this mean? It’s worth nothing to work with this type of chat if you don’t create a strategy and work to see the most beneficial results it can offer.
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The growth of Live Chat
First, let’s start with some background on this tool. As I said, it is a communication tool, and its purpose is to connect brands with their customers. The concept has been around for many years, but only recently, companies started developing modern software that actually focuses on the customer experience.
Most customers prefer to make deals with companies that offer Live Chat. It’s more practical and convenient for them to talk, ask for help or support from the brand’s attendants.
Because of its many benefits, both for the brand and the customers, this feature has grown exponentially over the last few years. Even though companies still aren’t living the tool to its full potential, the process of adaptation has started.
In fact, many companies know this feature is important, they have a solution for their brand, but they also know they aren’t using it as they should to see the impact Live Chat can have.
Statistics that prove you need a Live Chat
Since it has gained much attention, companies wanted to learn some statistics and understand how important Live Chat really is. After all, numbers and facts are big helpers to make more intelligent and assertive decisions.
After gathering data from several business and customers, these are some examples of statistics that show how Live Chat is growing and making itself a must-have solution:
- It’s expected to grow as much as 87% in the next months
- 46% of consumers prefer Live Chat over other communication channels
- B2B companies saw a 20% increase in conversions after they started using Live Chat
- This tool is 50% cheaper than phone customer support
- 79% prefer this channel because they get faster responses
Once again, I’ll repeat that: these numbers are only true if you work to make them that way. For example, customers prefer this chat because conversations are instant and faster than other means, right? So, if your customers are to think that way, you need to make sure attendants will be available to make real-time answers happen.
Do you see what I’m saying? It’s quite simple, really. Use it right, get the results. Leave it to chance, and you’ll be losing money.
How Live Chat and Customer Experience go together
If you haven’t made the connection so far, I will make it clearer for you: Live Chat IS customer experience.
What encompasses customer experience? Mostly, it is about the entire exposure and participation a person will have with your brand. From the first contact to closing a deal, every single moment is considered inside this experience.
And how important is CX? Well, I’ll recur to the statistics here one more time and there are two thing I want to show you:
- 96% of consumers say they consider this to be a deciding factor to encourage them into being loyal to a brand
- Businesses that focus on customer experience see a revenue up to 8% higher than their competition
CX is about increasing the customer lifetime value as well. The better the experience, the more long-lasting the relationship will be. This means that customers will either buy more frequently or make bigger purchases at once. Whichever happens, each customer will be worth a lot.
You probably know this already, but maintaining a customer is less expensive than acquiring new ones. So make sure to have a proposition to create loyal consumers.
Create a positive brand perception with Live Chat
As you may have noticed, offering good service is also related to how your company is seen through the eyes of the consumers. Are they giving you compliments or complaints? Are they recommending you? Are they coming back or making unique purchases?
Additionally, tracking consumer behavior is vital to understand their connection with the brand. If you know who looked at a product page, who added to the cart and gave up, and so on, you will know what kind of strategy to use as a follow up.
As you gather data, your whole team can analyze the information and have some insights on how to improve marketing, sales, and the customer experience itself.
Why do you need a positive brand perception?
I know this is probably a somewhat foolish question, but it needs to be answered. That’s because you must understand the benefits of having a good word of mouth.
Most decisions nowadays are made based on how your company is known in the market. If people give you good reviews, you’ll have higher chances of getting new customers. However, if your reviews are bad and full of complaints, people won’t think twice before turning to your competitors.
It’s all about increasing customer retention, attraction, and loyalty.
How is this related to Live Chat?
You’ve seen above how Live Chat and CX are part of the same thing. Which means, when you give customers a good service through this feature, it will pay off in customer satisfaction.
Once you get clients to be happy with what you give them throughout interactions, they will be more likely to talk you up. In reality, 89% of consumers say they would recommend a brand after a positive experience.
Hence, your brand will start getting recognition and be more attractive to make deals with.
What to do with your Live Chat to enhance CX and brand perception?
Simply put: you need to humanize your service. Create a real connection, asking and answering questions without sound like a pre programmed machine — one of the reasons why Live Chat is surpassing chatbots too.
Of course, you can use chatbots when your agents are so busy the response time will be longer. In these cases, your can program the bot to say “hi, an agent will be available in 3 minutes, would you like to wait or can I help you in the meantime?”.
Besides, you should always ask for feedback from your conversations. When problems are resolved, ask the customer if they can help you by answering a few quick questions about the service they just got.
This is good to see what worked, what needs to improve, and to get to know your consumer better as well.
Summing up: why you need a Live Chat for 2021
Now, I just wanted to make a short list that will give you all the reasons to acquire a Live Chat for your marketing plans for 2021. That is:
- increase customer retention
- enhance customer engagement
- improve your marketing strategies with proactive service
- increase your revenue by using Live Chat for sales strategies
- give the best customer experience
- improve your brand image
- increase lead conversions
How to choose the best Live Chat software
“What do I need to consider to choose a Live Chat?” is a question that may have crossed your mind. And I will tell you what you need to know.
Features
What are the features the software has? Does it offer proactive chat? Does it have visitor monitoring options? Will your customers be able to use it through mobile? This is all important to ponder when you’re choosing a Live Chat solution for your business.
You shouldn’t go with the software that has more features. It’s necessary to check their quality and make your decision based on real facts.
Security
Will your information be safe inside this software? What about data from your customers? The last thing you want is a data leakage incident.
Make sure to be hiring a trustable Live Chat system.
Support
Since this tool is likely to suffer updates and renewals along time, you might encounter some difficulties to use it. Will there be a support team to answer your questions when that happens?
It’s very important to receive support. If they keep you waiting, it means you’ll be keeping your own customers waiting. And we don’t want that, do we?
Pricing
I wouldn’t say the price itself is the most important factor, but the cost benefit your chosen system has. Is it worth its price? How long will it take for the tool to “pay itself”? What’s the ROI for the software?
Have these questions answered, even if through projection, and put it to weight on your decision.
Customization
Not everyone takes this into consideration, but I find it crucial. Will you be able to put your own twist on the looks of the chat? Personalize colors? Use logo and create agent profiles?
Remember to learn more about this element before making your final decision. Keeping your brand’s image and visual identity on the chat is a matter of consistency.
Reports
Is the software you have your eye on checking all of these items? Here’s one more you need to rock off: team productivity reports.
To understand how your service is going, what needs to be done and who needs more training can be read in monthly reports the Live Chat system can offer you.
That is, considering the software you chose actually offers this feature.
How about you give a chance to Arena Live Chat?
At Arena, we can offer you everything that has been talked about and even more. To learn more about our solutions, simply go to our products page.
However, if you are already interested and ready to start reaping our Live Chat’s benefits, go ahead and start your free trial period. You’ll have up to 14 days to learn all about our tool, how to use it, and see how fundamental it is to your business.
