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Live Chat Guide for New Business

Now people hate long waiting times and frustrating service scenarios. Live chat support is everything that you and your customer will love – fast, convenient, personal.

But there are some things you need to know to fully experience the benefits of live chat support. Whether you’re new to the topic or want to up your game, this guide will give you a clear picture of what is live chat support, how does it work and the benefits of using it.

What is Live Chat?

Online chat is a great alternative to phone calls or emails. Live chat is a medium that allows you to support your visitors in real-time, via messaging. Using live chat software embedded on the company’s website, customers can send their questions to a person who can quickly reply to them. All you or your visitors need to do is to type the message inside the chatbox and send it.

How Does Live Chat Work?

Let’s start by installing a chat tool on your website. Every chat solution has two views — the agent and user views. Once you install the live chat tool, your customers can view the live chat widget on the bottom right-hand corner of your website. They can use the live chat much like any of their favorite chat apps. They can type text and attach files. They can also use emojis and the like. Your agents have a lot more abilities and powers at their side of the chat. They can access something called the agent dashboard. Your agents will have options to view the conversations based on priority.

Live chat offers a personalized customer experience, better brand interactions, a competitive edge, and a way to feel your customers’ pulse. Implementing a live chat solution for your business can be used by your marketing, sales, and customer support teams.

How Live Chat Benefits Your Small Business?

Live chat is beneficial for both you and your customers. Your customers get instant support through it. But if you are a business owner you will get plenty of advantages of using live chat. Let’s get a complete overview of all the live chat advantages.

Increase sales and conversations:

According to the widely quoted research by the American Marketing Association, B2B companies that use live chat experience a 20% increase in conversions.

It’s hard to imagine a physical store without any service personnel there to assist customers; this element was the first to go when businesses entered the digital era. Similarly, while browsing your website, your customers may have questions about your product or service. To send an email, they need to enter their inbox and leave your website. Then, email response rates are far from instant. But with live chat, you can answer them immediately, while the customer is still on your website.

Connecting with customers at the right moment and assisting them encourages quick decision-making. Triggering the right messages based on the visitor’s journey resolves the queries instantly as a result sales conversions increase. So, the first major benefit of using live chat on your website is the potential to increase sales.

Boost Customer Loyalty:

Trust and loyalty are extremely important in the business world. Also, customers’ loyalty comes when they trust you. Building long-term relationships with customers is an absolute necessity because it increases satisfaction and improves customer experience.  If a buyer doesn’t trust you, they will not build a long-term relationship. Live chat is a fantastic way to build long-term relationships with your customers.

 Customers value businesses and are loyal to those who treat them as a person through personal conversations. Satisfied customers are less likely to switch to the competition.  When customers feel you are there to listen, bonds are easier to form, and loyalty comes from that. By personalizing the live chat sessions with your visitors you build a personal connection in between that helps in more conversions and business growth.

Reduce Support Costs:

According to BT, a live chat session is a full 20-30% cheaper than a phone call.

Phone support was the number one customer service channel favored by many companies. However, this can be very costly for both person-per-hour costs and toll charges. Live chat, on the other hand, is a lot cheaper than phone support.

On the other hand, customer service agents can handle only one phone or email request at a time. But can engage in as many as six simultaneous chats, depending on the complexity of the issues involved.

Improve Customer Experience:

With email, your customers need to send an email to your support team and it’s hard to know when they’ll get a response back. But with live chat, you give customers a way to reach you at the exact moment that they have questions or problems they can’t solve. It’s a great help for businesses in quickly solving or addressing customer concerns before it becomes a pain point. The efficiency and immediacy of the experience are the reasons customers prefer using live chat.

Gain a Competitive Advantage:

As we have told before, customers move quickly when they can’t find what they are looking for. There is no space for bad service anymore and live chat is a powerful solution to ultimately improve your customer experience. But many companies haven’t implemented live chat yet. Here a great opportunity lies for you. If your competitors don’t offer live chat, that gives you space to do it right, earn their customers, and boost your business.

Adding Live Chat Option on Your WordPress Site:

If you have a WordPress site, adding the live chat option to your site is a matter of a few clicks. Just install the WordPress Private Message plugin and configure it on your site. This plugin not only provides the live chat option but also allows site members to send private messages. To know more details about its features and installation check, How to Add a Private Messaging and Live Chat System in WordPress?

Live chat can be a game-changer for your small business, and also time-saving for your customers. To add the live chat option on your site and grow your business fast. Check here, if you want to get the most common live chat scripts and customer service phrases.