People want a great experience with brands. So much so that they're willing to leave to a competitor to get it. An astounding 90% of Americans say they judge a business based on its customer service. And another 58% say they'll switch companies due to poor customer experience.
When you deliver exceptional customer support, it promotes higher retention rates. And it can potentially drive more prospects to your organization. The numbers prove it—93% of customers are likely to buy again from companies with excellent customer service. And 38% say they're more likely to recommend a company with good customer service.
But what does it take to follow through on this demand?
Your first thought may be to adopt a chatbot. But sentiment for them has fallen to 28%. Americans find them ineffective, so 40% of customers are using other channels to obtain support.
Modern consumers desire service that's accessible, speedy and human. That’s why millennials prefer live chat for customer support over other forms of communication—something vital for businesses to note, considering the cohort is quickly becoming the world’s most powerful consumers.
So let's explore the benefits of using live chat and text messaging services, and how to successfully add it not just to your customer experience strategy, but also your sales
What Is A Text and Live Chat Service?
Text messaging and live chat services essentially create a digital customer service desk. Likely, you've used them on websites and applications to ask a question or deal with a problem. Some chat systems are proactive and pop up on your screen, while others require you to initiate them.
Unlike a chatbot, humans operate live text and chat solutions.
Why Are Text and Live Chat Services a Must-Have for Businesses?
Using a text messaging and live chat service for your business comes with various benefits. Here's a look at some of the ways your business can take advantage of text and live chat for customer experience and revenue growth.
Improve Your Customer Service
Offering a better customer experience is possible when you're accessible. With live chat and text, your customers can reach out to you whenever they need assistance. It also enables you to learn more about them, so you can continue making improvements. Roughly 43% of businesses say they gained a better understanding of their clients within a year of implementing live chat and text. You can use your live chat system to gather feedback and insights to enhance your products and services. Or even build a knowledge base to reduce the need for support. By adding text and live chat services, you're giving your customers fast responses and a person who not only understands their problem, but is able to effectively provide a solution.
Build Your Brand's Reputation
When your customer service experience is positive, it positions your brand as a go-to in your industry. Word spreads quickly when customers leave positive reviews about your company. One report shows 94% of American consumers will recommend a brand with very good customer service. Yet, only 13% of consumers will recommend a business with very poor customer service.
Increase Your Revenue Potential
Great customer service impacts your revenue growth. If people are willing to leave to a competitor due to poor service, then it leaves brands vulnerable. By offering text and live chat services, you can enhance the customer experience, which will lead to higher customer retention and more potential prospects (thanks to positive reviews and recommendations). You can also improve your lead conversion rate, as agents can proactively secure business from inquiries that come through your website, turning digital traffic into happy—and paying—customers. Both impact your revenue positively. One report shows 30% of companies saw a 5% to 10% increase in revenue within one year of using live chat.
Enhance The Efficiency Of Your Operations
One of the pet peeves consumers have with customer service is having to repeat themselves over and over. With text and live chat services, you reduce repetition for both your customers and support reps. And it improves the overall workflow for your team.
For example, your team can view feedback logs from other agents that interacted with a customer. This gets them up-to-date quickly on the matter, enabling them to get to the solution faster. It also prevents customers from having to re-explain their issues. Live chat and text allow multitasking to accelerate the time it takes to get to each customer. They can speak to several customers at once if the questions aren't too advanced.
An issue 80% of customer service teams run into while trying to provide quick and accurate solutions is juggling multiple systems. Another one-third of companies say their knowledge base is out-of-date or difficult to use. These are all challenges live chat helps customer support teams overcome.
How Text and Live Chat Services Help Businesses Scale
Adding a text and live chat service to your company can present a variety of benefits. But how exactly can you use it to improve your business? Here's a look at several ways.
Grow Revenue Without Increasing Overhead
Traditionally, when a company wanted to increase revenue, it needed to hire more people. Unfortunately, this also increased overhead costs to cover the additional salaries and benefits. Fortunately, there are now services that help with both— growing revenue and reducing overhead costs.
Text and live chat services give you access to expert sales and customer service reps at a fraction of the cost of in-house employees. With their assistance, you can witness higher customer retention and more closed deals. This also enables your in-house teams to focus on more important tasks.
While enterprise businesses often leverage outsourced live chat and text, you don't have to be a large corporation to benefit from doing so. In our research, we found that 74% of companies had fewer than 10 employees when they first adopted live chat. And 92% expected the cost per agent to be lower than $20 per month.
Build A More Qualified Sales Pipeline
Consumers want fast assistance. But they also want to speak to representatives who speak their language and can offer the best help. With text and live chat services, you're getting a team of salespeople who understand your business, products/services and customers. And who are trained in customer support and sales best practices.
Live chat agents will study your target customer to identify the best leads to target and which sales tactics to employ to close more deals. Note, that they should also be bilingual to accommodate Spanish and English-speaking customers in order to reach more people. Thanks to their expert support skills, you'll also have an increased chance of turning customers into long-term brand advocates.
Expand Your Operating Hours
Customers need assistance right when a problem occurs. If your customer service team goes home at the end of the workday, then you risk losing potential and existing customers who need after-hours help. With text and live chat services, you'll expand your hours of operation, so customers can receive support 24-7/365, even on holidays.
Provide Help With Efficiency And Empathy
Adding a human touch to your customer experience can turn a potentially horrible experience into a delightful one. But this is only possible when you have actual people managing your customer service.
Imagine a customer reaching out to your business to complain about a broken refrigerator. She's a young mom with a diabetic child. Without the fridge, she's unable to refrigerate her child's medicine to prevent it from expiring. A live chat agent is a person who can empathize with the situation and work harder to send a technician to the home to repair the unit quickly—these are the types of experiences that make a person likely to recommend your business and, more importantly, keep them coming back.
Make Better-Informed Business Decisions
There's a lot you can learn about your customers by looking at their requests, complaints, and feedback. But you need a way to collect and analyze this data and turn it into actionable insights. Text and live chat services integrate with your CRM, which is critical for placing valuable customer data into a central hub. With this intel at your disposal, you can develop detailed customer lists with data-driven reports.
In other words, you'll have the information you need to make better-informed business decisions. For example, identifying new customer pain points and how to resolve them. Or enhancing the buyer's journey by removing hiccups along the path. The more you understand your audience's preferences, the easier it becomes to design a customer experience to suit them. When you get this right, your customer experience will improve, along with lead conversion rates.
Human-Powered Text And Live Chat Services vs. AI-Powered Chatbots
There are two options for offering text messaging and live chat services to your customers. You can either use artificial intelligence or a human to operate it. The question is, which should you choose for your business? Let's take a look at the differences between the two.
What's The Difference Between Human-Powered Live Chat & Text And Chatbots?
The fundamental difference between human live chat and text and chatbots is how they operate— one uses a human and the other artificial intelligence. You can outsource text messaging and live chat services to a team of live agents who will study your business and its customers to better serve them.
An AI chatbot, on the other hand, requires programming. You have to code all of the possible questions customers may ask and the AI's responses. It's an iterative process that requires consistent updating based on the range of questions and problems a customer may need resolved.
What Are the Benefits Of Human-Powered Text And Live Chat Services?
Having a person at the other end of a text message or live chat comes with many advantages for businesses. For example, it will:
• Increase sales: Thanks to knowledgeable sales reps, you'll have a more qualified sales funnel and more closed deals.
• Maximize marketing ROI: Creates an additional channel to capture leads and proactively target website visitors, it also ensures you can respond immediately to high-intention customers who were motivated by your digital campaign to click through to the website.
• Improve conversion rates: Answer visitors' questions and keep them on the site and shopping (and when combined with call services, conversion rates can increase by up to 40%).
• Save money: Overhead costs reduce since you don't have to hire extra customer support staff.
• Improve customer experiences: Offer the convenience of speaking to a rep whenever, wherever they want.
• Offer round-the-clock service: Make your customer service accessible 24-7.
• Be more proactive: Provide answers to FAQs, send appointment reminders, service updates and more.
• Improve your reputation: People prefer doing business with brands that offer faster and better customer service.
What Are the Benefits Of AI-Powered Text And Live Chat?
Here's a look at some of the reasons why some businesses opt for AI-powered live chat:
• Automates customer service: No humans are needed to operate chatbots since they're programmed to respond to requests.
• Reduce costs: Since no people are needed, businesses reduce overhead costs that would otherwise go to staff.
• Fast service: Chatbots are available around the clock to answer questions and schedule calls with human reps.
• Scalable: No need to hire more staff over the holidays—chatbots can communicate with a sudden influx of customers.
The thing is, you can get all these benefits with people-powered live chat and text, plus the added value of a caring and attentive human touch.
Human-Powered Text And Live Chat vs. Automated Chatbots—Which Is Better For Your Business?
Sometimes, automation helps improve productivity. But there are limitations to what a chatbot can provide to your customers. Here's why the majority of consumers prefer human-powered live chat and text messaging:
• They can ask any question and get an answer (chatbots are limited to pre-programmed queries and responses)
• It enables multitasking— a customer can interact with a chatbot from their desk at work, or while taking on other tasks, or even while they're on hold on a phone call
• It's a convenient and efficient way to communicate (while on the go or on a desktop)
• They prefer live chat over speaking on the phone
• They feel more in control over the conversation
• It offers better information than phone calls
• They're directed to someone who can help right away (eliminating the frustration of dealing with a bot before finally being routed to a human)
Live chat is a better solution for businesses that are looking to add empathy to their customer service. And to avoid the limitations and frustrations associated with chatbots.
Why Nexa Is The Go-To Text And Live Chat Services Provider
The easiest way to empower growth without adding to your overhead, Nexa’s people-powered text and live chat service keeps your business running smoothly while converting web traffic into happy—and paying—customers. Communicate with your customers wherever they are, and improve lead conversion and customer experiences without lifting a finger. Here are some of the features our text and live chat clients love:
• 24/7/365 people-powered text messaging and live chat: We make sure there’s a real person available to answer questions, schedule appointments and qualify leads in English and Spanish, even in the middle of the night and on weekends or holidays. You get expanded reach and the ability to meet customers where they are, plus expert agents trained in your business, top sales and service expertise without the overhead costs, and an easy onboarding experience that helps you get up and running quickly.
• Live phone transfer: Combine with our phone answering and virtual receptionist service to connect qualified leads directly to a live agent for real-time lead conversion, scheduling, improved customer experience and more. Doing so has been shown to improve conversion rates up to 40% in some cases.
• Highly customized experience: We help you easily install a chat box on your website that pops up automatically to boost engagement and provide custom scripts and graphics to represent your brand. Create customized scsripts, set specific pop-up timing and speak directly to prospect and client needs!
• CRM integration: Our agents connect to your chosen industry CRM software so your sales pipeline is always up-to-date with accurate client information and live chat data. Nexa connects to the tools you already use, syncing lead and client data, and easily fitting into your existing workflow.
• Reporting & analytics: Get detailed reports on text messaging and live chat info, and integrate our text and live chat services with analytics to improve customer service, track leads and grow revenue. Data is managed in real-time by Nexa professionals and you can access it anytime, anywhere.
How To Implement Text And Live Chat Services For Your Business
Deciding to add a live chat and text messaging function to your customer service is an excellent step toward improving your customer experience. It can enhance your agents' ability to proactively reach out to site visitors to boost sales. And it empowers customers to get help in a way that's convenient to them.
However, integrating a text and live chat tool into your site can be challenging, depending on the platform you use. Fortunately, there's a simple way to add live chat without technical issues. By partnering with Nexa, you have experts on hand to walk you through the technical aspects of setting up the tool. We’ll give you the simple code to install the technology and integrate our platform with your website and other relevant tools. Then our live agents (real people!) will begin offering customer support and sales services on your behalf.
How To Implement Nexa’s Live Chat Services
• Install chat on your website. Nexa makes it easy to add live chat to your website, and match icons, windows, logos, color schemes, pictures and contact information to your brand guidelines.
• Customize the experience. Almost everything with Nexa’s live chat service is customizable, including the chat icon, script and proactive pop-up, even the finer details like how long to wait until a chat pops up for a website visitor.
• Create your custom chat script. Write and design a script to have live chat agents interact with current or potential customers in a way that matches their needs, goals and objectives—and even their stage in the buying cycle.
• Launch live chat services. Provide a 24/7/365 human-powered response to all live chat questions and concerns, plus accelerate revenue with our agents who know which leads are worth your time.
How To Implement Nexa’s Text Messaging Services
• Install a text number on your website. Nexa makes it easy to communicate with customers and leads wherever they are—at home or work, at the park, even the beach!
• Go from text to appointment. Your clients text your number to book an appointment, make a change or simply get an update—our agents handle the administrative side and you focus on providing great experiences.
• Client info is sent to your inbox or CRM. Client information is then sent directly to your CRM as well as email and text. You get real-time info so you can take real-time action.
• Launch text messaging services. Provide a 24/7/365 human-powered response to all text messaging requests as they come in, allowing you to accelerate revenue growth by meeting your clients where they are.
