Live Chat Guide to Small Business in 2021
There are several digital customer service solutions available to small businesses, but just one stands out as providing real-time, accessible, and cost-effective support — live chat.
It should come as no surprise that live chat has swiftly become the most popular digital customer care medium for both small and large enterprises. How many channels provide as many benefits to both the client and the business as live chat does? (We’ll come back to this later.)
The global live chat software market was valued at $590 million in 2016, but a conservative estimate predicts that by 2023, it will have risen to about $1 billion.
Small businesses all over the world are using live chat to provide customer service from their homes, offices, and even on the go. If you’re looking for the best live chat software for your small business in 2021, keep reading to learn everything you need to know about small business live chat software.
1. What exactly is live chat?
Live chat software is a programme that allows you to provide real-time assistance to website visitors. If a consumer has a query, they can simply click the chat button (which is usually located in the bottom right corner of the web page) to launch a chat window. They then connect with an agent and exchange textual messages (as well as communicate over audio and video chat, but that’ll come later).
Sales, marketing, and customer service departments are the most common users of live chat. The finest live chat software will be able to connect to the company’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, allowing the live chat agent to quickly obtain visitor information and give more personalised service. Which brings us to the question of how live chat can help your small business.
2. What are the advantages of using live chat for my small business?
Live chat has numerous advantages for both customers and businesses. This is why it is such a popular support option for businesses of all sizes. Let’s get started.
- Lower your expenses
Many organisations used to prefer phone support as their primary customer care method. However, both person-per-hour rates and toll charges can add up quickly. Live chat, on the other hand, is far less expensive than telephone help. According to Forrester Research, live chat customer assistance is 17-30% less expensive than phone help.
The reasons behind this are straightforward. A live chat agent can handle two or three discussions at once, but a phone representative can only answer one consumer query at a time (while still providing attentive support). This is known as chat concurrency, and it can help firms save money by allowing them to hire fewer agents.
The Live Chat ROI Calculator is a good place to start.
- Boost your sales
Assume you’re a customer on your website. They’re considering ordering the dining table and chair set, but they’re not sure how they’ll return it. They leave without purchasing because they can’t find the information they need and don’t want to wait hours or even days for an email answer. The consumer might have asked these questions, received an immediate response, and completed their order if this website featured live chat.
Live chat isn’t merely for boosting revenue. If your marketing aim is to generate leads or sign-ups, live chat is a terrific way to assist your customers along their journey. You can learn about a visitor’s interaction with your site using live chat analysis tools (time on site, entrance information, pages visited, and more). This aids in narrowing down your lead’s follow-up category. Pre-chat surveys can also be used to categorise leads and save contact information, and the wrap-up tool can be used to flag hot leads for follow-up after a conversation has ended.
Improve your Lead Generation Cycle with Live Chat (recommended reading)
- Increase customer retention
Customers were 84 percent satisfied with their live chat experience in 2020. Only 61 percent of email users and 44 percent of phone users were satisfied, according to the findings. In other words, live chat is by far the most popular customer service channel, and this has genuine economic benefits, such as increased loyalty.
We all understand how crucial customer loyalty is to a company’s success. It encourages recurring business, which is much less expensive than obtaining new business — ranging from 5 to 25 times less expensive. By giving a great live chat experience to your clients, you increase the likelihood of repeat business and significantly reduce your marketing costs.
- Identify customer annoyances
There is no such thing as an ideal business. Customers will always have issues or dislikes, ranging from difficulties accessing the website to concerns about shipping charges. What sets a company different, though, is how it handles these consumer complaints. Do they actively listen to their consumers and try to solve their problems, or do they just hope it goes away? (Perhaps the former!)
Live chat is an excellent way to learn more about what your consumers are thinking. The chat transcript is saved in the system every time a customer interacts with an agent about their concern. Administrators and supervisors can access it at any time to learn about a customer’s problem or requirement and work to solve it.
3. Important features to be aware of
The finest small company live chat software usually has the same basic capabilities, but there are a number of nuances that are sometimes neglected. These distinctions are what set a good live chat solution apart from a superb one.
Here are the main live chat features that will help you take your live chat customer care to the next level, as well as what you should look for while looking for customer service solutions for your small business.
- Audio and video conferencing
In 2020, audio and video chat will play a significant role in digital customer assistance. In fact, “video has now been used by 55 percent of consumers to communicate with businesses.” This is because it enables agents to provide more personalised experiences and to assist in the resolution of difficulties that would benefit from face-to-face discussion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this has become even more critical, and it will likely remain so.
Look carefully at the feature list because not all live chat solutions have video chat. Check to see if it’s browser-based (many aren’t), so consumers and agents can start a video chat with just one click and no additional plug-ins or software required.
- Surveys before and after the chat
Understanding your consumers’ pain problems is the first step, as we said before in this blog. Keeping track of live chat transcripts can be beneficial. Post-conversation surveys within the live chat window are another approach to learning what your consumers are thinking.
Post-chat surveys allow your visitors to provide feedback on the level of service they received at the conclusion of the session, as well as any other general input. It’s a fantastic way to find out how well your agents are doing and what your consumers are thinking.
Pre-chat questionnaires have a distinct, but equally vital, aim. These are the forms that your visitors must fill out before starting a live chat with a representative. They allow you to collect information about your visitors and learn about their problems so you can assist them more promptly and efficiently. It may appear to be a minor element, yet it is critical to giving effective support.
- Agent supervision
It doesn’t matter if you’re in charge of two or two hundred agents. You must have complete control over your live chat activities. The level of agent management varies greatly amongst live chat systems, so here are the important things to look for to ensure that you can keep a close eye on your agents while getting the most out of them: Queue management is made easy with automated chat distribution.
- Queue management made easier with automated chat distribution.
- Chat monitoring in real time for quality assurance and training.
- Participate in chats to assist others.
- Remove agents or mark them as unavailable.
- Have a conversation with agents
- Privacy and security
Any consumer contact channel must provide security and privacy. You can’t risk your customers’ information falling into the wrong hands because your live chat software lacks the most up-to-date and comprehensive security features. The level of security varies greatly between different live chat platforms, so be sure to double-check what safeguards they have in place. SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and GDPR are some of the most important compliances to check for.
4. How much does it set you back?
We think that every company, regardless of size, should be able to deliver the greatest support and service to their clients. For more than 11 years, Votiko has helped huge firms interact with their customers through live chat; now it’s time to ensure that small businesses can do the same.
Our award-winning platform outperforms the competition in terms of capabilities, flexibility, and security. And, sure, it’s all free. Votiko Live Chat allows you to serve every visitor, even when you’re on the go, with features like pre-chat surveys, file sharing, preset messages, and more. Contact for a free trial right now!
