What Are the Benefits of Live Chat on Your Website?
By
Jeff Mosler
December 2, 2021
Wondering, what are the benefits of live chat? Other than convenience, live chat offers many advantages to your business. Read on to find out.
Live chat is taking the customer service industry by storm. This website function can garner some of the best customer experience and the highest customer satisfaction rates of any support channel, making it an intriguing option for businesses looking to expand their support and outreach channels.
What are the benefits of live chat? In this article, we’ll talk about what live chat can bring to the table for your business. From 24/7/365 support to lead conversion capabilities, live chat could skyrocket your customer support and marketing efforts. We’ll also discuss AI chat vs. live chat to help you determine which solution is right for your business.
Read on to explore the importance of live chat service and brainstorm how this tool could fit into your business model.
#1 24/7/365 Support
The benefits of live chat on website functionality are numerous, but one of the most important features of this communication channel is its 24/7/365 accessibility.
Your staff members are off the clock as soon as business hours are over. Of course, as an owner or partner, you may be used to work encroaching upon your personal life. Nonetheless, it would be ideal if all members of your team could enjoy their time off while making sure customers can get answers to crucial queries during times including:
Evenings
Weekends
Holidays
Staff retreats
With live chat, your customers can reach out to a virtual receptionist at all hours of the day, every day of the week. A live chat tool provides access to support so that leads can ask questions while you’re at home, at the gym, or having dinner with friends and family.
Live chat’s constant availability provides a huge boon to the accessibility of your business. In an era where optimizing our time is crucial for success, giving your customers the opportunity to reach out for support from their dining room table, from the treadmill at 5 a.m., or from the tent where they’re camping for the weekend is simply a smart customer service choice.
#2 Support on Your Customers’ Terms
As millennials gain more buying power in the economy and begin to dominate target demographics, businesses must adapt to their preferred communication methods. To that end, it’s a well-known phenomenon that millennials, on the whole, dread talking on the phone.
With live chat support, you can communicate with current clients and high-quality leads on their terms. While many customers will make a phone call if it’s the only way to get support, some would rather choose a business that offers chat support from the outset instead of having to oblige the occasional phone call.
Plus, with live chat optimized for mobile, you also extend customers’ opportunities to reach out for support.
Some circumstances are perfect for multitasking, but not for phone calls. While chatting with a customer service representative over the phone on the train ride home would annoy the other passengers, your customers can get support via live chat while they commute.
The ability to use the live chat option in waiting rooms, in line at the drive-thru, or on public transportation makes it a flexible, accessible option that is likely to satisfy your phone-shy clients and increase customer engagement.
#3 Correspondence in Writing
While phone calls can be recorded and reviewed later, some business owners simply prefer communication in writing.
Written correspondence via live chat is ideal for a variety of reasons:
While email is the dominant written correspondence method for businesses and customers, it doesn’t carry the same urgency as starting a live chat session. When customers sit down to request written support with the live chat option, you can potentially solve the issue on the spot rather than asking them to wait for a response.
Written support is also more accessible for customers who are hard of hearing, have a speech impediment, or have an accent. Instead of worrying about understanding or being understood by the person on the other end of the line, they can communicate without worry via the live chat tool.
Live chat combines the convenient documentation of written communication with the instant reply of a phone call.
In addition, documentation in writing is often useful during disputes with customers. Evidence in writing is usually much more persuasive than recorded phone calls.
#4 Delegation of Customer Service
Does your business have only one or two designated phone lines? If so, a customer calling for support will usually have to be transferred by the receptionist to the appropriate party, requiring at least some time on hold.
In contrast, when customers connect with a business via live chat, they’re automatically put in touch with a customer service representative instead of a general line to all office employees.
As a business owner, sacrificing even a few moments of your time to address a misdirected customer service call can be inconvenient and put a wrinkle in your schedule for the entire day. With live chat outsourcing, business owners can ensure that customers seeking support are automatically directed to the appropriate party.
Plus, even if the live chat virtual receptionist decides to take the customer’s information and pass it along to the business owner for a callback or email, it will arrive with the appropriate intake information rather than catching you off guard.
#5 Lead Conversion
Live chat is an excellent customer service tool, but it’s also incredibly useful for lead generation and vetting. If a potential customer uses the live chat feature to ask about products or services, the virtual receptionist can immediately switch to sales scripts to try to convert the lead into a sale.
Since some potential clients have an aversion to phone calls—as discussed above—it can be difficult for marketing staff or virtual receptionists to vet them over the phone. But, by inviting leads to use the live chat feature on their terms, you can showcase your business’s multichannel support functions and increase the likelihood of lead conversion.
By entrusting lead vetting and conversation to a virtual receptionist via live chat, businesses can also reduce their cost per lead (CPL), a critical piece of business marketing campaigns. Instead of leaving lead vetting and conversion to the business owner—and contributing to increased overhead—you can leave the marketing work to a lower-cost professional.
Live Chat vs. AI Chat: What’s the Difference?
Now that we’ve covered the importance of live chat on websites, let’s take a look at the ways to integrate this support function.
There are two customer support chat options available on the market today: live chat and AI chat (also called Chatbots). We’ll explore the differences between these two tools to help you determine which is right for your business.
AI Chat, AKA Chatbots
AI chat is an automated option for customer support. There are clear benefits to using AI chat for your business:
AI chat uses pre-written scripts, giving you more control over responses.
They can solve simple problems with no need for staff involvement.
They respond nearly instantly.
But, AI chat significantly lacks personality. While chatbots are useful for collecting contact information for customers or leads, customers seeking support are significantly less likely to resolve a complex problem without interacting with a real person.
The impersonality of AI chat shouldn’t be underestimated. Older populations are still somewhat uncomfortable with or easily frustrated by automated answering machines and similar technology, and businesses that rely on these tools could potentially alienate these customers.
While AI chat is useful for simple tasks like data collection and basic problem-solving, customers with complex shipping or product questions are unlikely to achieve a satisfactory response from a chatbot. Businesses that expect a high volume of customers to utilize chat should consider an alternative option.
Live Chat
An alternative to AI chat, live chat is an instant chat tool operated by humans. While live chat virtual receptionists use scripts for guidance, they have human personalities—because they are people.
Other advantages of live chat include:
The ability to provide solutions to complex problems – Rather than providing only simple data collection and minor problem-solving (which live chat operators can also do), live chat is as useful a customer service tool as a phone call or email. AI chat falls just a bit short of the mark in terms of thorough service.
Superior lead vetting – If your business is interested in using chat features for lead vetting, live chat operators can ask more complex questions about potential clients’ needs, their budgets, and how they’ve used other products or services in the past, all of which give the virtual receptionist a better idea of whether or not a lead is high-quality.
Ability to instantly transfer a chat to a phone conversation – AI chats can provide customer service phone numbers for customers seeking support, but the receptionist they call won’t know the specifics of the customer’s case. On the other hand, live chat operators can convert a chat to a phone call if needed, and they already have all of the information they need to help the customer since they have collected it during the chat.
While AI chat has its place, live chat generally produces better outcomes for business owners and their customers.
Add Live Chat Support with Nexa
The capability to provide support with an instant response is a huge asset for businesses in the digital age. Live chat is thus incredibly beneficial for businesses—it’s an excellent tool for customer support, lead generation, and complex problem-solving.
If you’re looking for 24/7/365 chat support that won’t disappoint, reach out to Nexa. Live chat is just one element of our omnichannel support network, alongside phone, email, and SMS texting services. We’re experts at live chat, and we know how to help you use this powerful tool to grow your business and improve your customer relationships.
If you’re looking for sophisticated live chat that will convert leads and solve customer queries, you’ve come to the right place.
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
