What is Live Chat and why does it matter for business?

If there’s one thing that changes businesses more than any other it’s technology.

One of the newest technologies that lots of businesses are implementing is Live Chat software.

But what is Live Chat and why does it matter to you?

Let’s find out.

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a piece of software that let’s someone on your website to talk directly to a member of your team by typing a message.

It works like texting or using Facebook messenger, but it can only be used by people on your website.

Different Live Chat providers offer different functions and features, but the main purpose is always the same, and that is to give visitors to your site and quick and easy way to talk to someone if they need more information.

Why does it matter?

Live Chat is in its early stages as a business tool, but it has already proved itself to be valuable for 2 main reasons – to provide customer service and to capture more leads from web visitors.

Lead Generation

When a user visits your website you need to capture some data from them so you can market to them in the future. This becomes even more vital if you’re paying to send traffic to your site (and let’s face it, we all are in one way or another!).

Live Chat helps you to capture more leads in a number of ways.

The first is that many businesses will require you to enter your email before you talk to them on Live Chat. This means that immediately you have a contact detail for that web visitor.

Someone is more likely to give you their email over Live Chat than they are for something like a newsletter as Live Chat provides them with something of real value – information.

The second way that Live Chat helps you to capture more leads is it stops people dropping out of the sales funnel. If someone has come to your site with the intention to buy but they can’t find the information they need to make that decision, they will drop out of the funnel.

With Live Chat this happens less as they can simply use the Live Chat to ask a question and get all the information they need to make a purchase.

This helps more people convert and helps you capture more leads.

Customer Service

In this day and age customer service is vital to every business.

Customers can get anything they want online, so you’re less likely to be able to control the market with unique products or the best prices.

Instead, customers are choosing the businesses that provide them with the best customer experience, and Live Chat will help you to do that.

But how?

By giving the customer options.

For example, sometimes a customer might have a silly question that they don’t think it’s worth phoning up about. It could be something as simple as “do you do it in any other colours?” or “what size batteries does it take?”.

If you offer Live Chat on your site they can simply type their question into the box and get a response. It’s quick, easy and simple.

This provides a great experience for the customer as you’ve answered their question and they’ve not had to go to the effort of phoning you or sending an email.

Another reason is that some people simply don’t like talking on the phone.

Thanks to smart phones, more and more younger people prefer to use messengers when it comes to talking to businesses.

For those people, giving them the option to use Live Chat instead of phoning up will dramatically improve their experience.

However, if you want to provide a truly exceptional level of service with your Live Chat, it needs to be fully supported. Fortunately, we can help.

Live Chat Outsourcing

One of the reasons Live Chat is such an effective tool to have on your website is it gives people immediate access to the information they need.

That only works however if there is someone ready and waiting to respond to those Live Chats.

In a lot of small businesses, people will have multiple roles and they aren’t always ready to talk whenever a chat comes in.

For example, you might expect your receptionist to manage the Live Chat, but what about when they’re already on a call or tending to guests?

The visitor to your website is left waiting and has a poor customer experience.

To prevent this from happening you can outsource your Live Chat service.

When you outsource your Live Chat management there are a team of people waiting to respond to any chats that come in from your website, so you know your web visitors get a great experience straight away whenever they start chatting.

If you want to make the most of Live Chat on your website, outsourcing is the way to go.

Find out more

So that’s it.

It’s pretty simple really, Live Chat lets customers talk to you how they want, when they want, and it makes the most of any traffic you get to your website.

If you want to know more about outsourcing your Live Chat to get a completely managed Live Chat service, visit our Live Chat page here.

If you have any other questions about Live Chat don’t hesitate to get in touch – in fact, why not try using that little Live Chat box down there on the right.

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