Benefits of Including Votiko’s Live Chat Support on Your Website

Consider this scenario: You’re one of the best sales reps at your highly competitive retail company, and your computer suddenly goes crazy.

Your list of potential clients is inaccessible, your phone line is down, and you’re trapped clicking madly at the rainbow pinwheel of death that’s afflicting your screen. You require immediate assistance to get out of this position.

So, where do we go from here? Should you send an email to the software company? You can’t possibly wait an entire day for a response.

Do you contact the company’s customer service department? It could take a long time merely to connect with someone, and you can’t afford to sit on hold, which will only result in a rep wanting to contact you again.

What about the live chat option on the website? There is no backlog, no hold time, and getting immediate replies appears to be the best option. Plus, rather of sitting on the phone, you can keep working while you wait for a response.

The scenario above is just one of many examples of how including live chat into your website may significantly improve your clients’ customer service experience. Live chat is quickly becoming a typical medium for support teams; according to a 2015 report by Forrester Research, chat support adoption has nearly doubled since 2009, and chat services have continued to demonstrate significant utilisation since then.

In that poll, 65 percent of respondents claimed they’d used live chat as a support channel, up from 38 percent in 2009. With the increased popularity of live chat, phone and web-based lineups have become more manageable, since the hybrid nature of this new channel provides users with a more expedient support outlet.

Customers may be afraid to call help or send you an email because of huge call queues, long response times, and long holds. On the other hand, obvious wait times on your dashboard might put pressure on support staff to move conversations along as quickly as possible, raising the risk of your team overlooking problems or even offering inaccurate answers.

As the domino effect continues to cascade, the aggravation experienced by both your customers and your support team can harm your company’s reputation – and potentially result in the loss of valuable customers.

You can assist alleviate these frequent customer service barriers, boost your support team’s daily productivity, and provide your firm a competitive advantage in four ways by adding a live chat function to your website or business:

 

Benefits of Customer Service Using Live Chat

Improved Convenience

When it comes to offering excellent customer service, your support team’s accessibility, as well as the speed with which you respond, are two critical components in producing a pleasant user experience.

Adding a chat service to your website can address both of these goals because chat channels relieve client tension by responding to their needs more quickly. Unlike a phone line, most live chat companies do not have a call queue where users must wait on hold before speaking with a representative. If all reps are occupied or offline, the chat widget on the website will either be graphically marked that there is a rep ready to help, or it will indicate that the chat option is not available.

Chat channels eliminate the need to put consumers on hold while troubleshooting, in addition to spending time waiting to talk with a representative. According to a 2016 study, the most common complaint customers had with support personnel was being put on hold for too long. In fact, of the nine options offered in the study, being put on hold for an extended period of time received 42 percent of the votes as the most aggravating.

Adding chat to your site can completely eliminate this negative experience. Your customer service representatives will be able to troubleshoot on their end while maintaining a continual flow of dialogue with customers. Without having to formally put the consumer on wait, chat communication naturally causes 3-4 minute pauses between responses, allowing agents to dig more into a case and then return to the discussion.

Customers, on the other hand, don’t have to be glued to their phone or computer while live chatting with customer service – they may work alongside the professional at the same time. Customers value their time, so if they anticipate long wait times, they may be hesitant to pick up the phone and call your help line. By include live chat in your support offering, you show your consumers that you’re committed to providing more immediate solutions across platforms by eliminating time-consuming bottlenecks like waiting on line.

 

Increased Productivity

Your support reps should expect an increase in work efficiency as a result of the enhanced convenience of a more accessible support team.

Most live chat systems allow support personnel to handle multiple cases at once, allowing your team to work more efficiently as a whole. With the built-in delays between responses, this usually gives enough room for reps to handle three or more cases at the same time. Because of this unique capacity to handle many discussions at once, a representative can virtually treble their production on chat.

Even if you’re not taking numerous talks at once, the channel’s structure enables for faster transitions between scenarios. As one conversation concludes, another appears, and the salesperson can simply accept it via clicking “accept” rather of picking up the phone or dialling a number. While there is a learning curve when switching from a phone to a chat rep, once that hill is conquered, reps’ multitasking abilities and capacity to communicate swiftly and urgently will improve.

While the workflow on live chat can increase a rep’s statistics performance, the inclusion of a live chat service can also smooth out minor, day-to-day speed bumps. Reps, for example, aren’t required to remember or recite prepared opening and closing comments, nor are they have to wear a cumbersome and unpleasant headset all day, which might make it difficult for clients to hear you. Reps don’t have to deal with language or audio obstacles with clients who may not be able to hear or understand them completely.

Even simple logistical enhancements like these can dramatically improve a representative’s overall focus by eliminating those oft-overlooked distractions that can obstruct an employee’s everyday effectiveness.

 

Cost-Effectiveness

Because live chat allows reps to take on more cases in the same amount of time, you can employ the same number of reps to double or even triple your potential to handle more support cases. This can save your company a lot of money because you won’t have to increase your payroll to fulfil the increased demand for customer service during peak hours.

Chatbots that can automate the distribution of cases to the appropriate assistance source can also be used with live chat. If programmed correctly, some can even answer simple questions and handle less-complicated tasks. You won’t have to pay the bot (at least for now), and your team will be able to interact with more consumers and at a higher frequency than ever before. By broadening your support team’s reach, you’re not only improving their bandwidth, but also enhancing your engagement with your clients.

Your ability to influence clients during the evaluation and decision stages of their buying process will also rise as a result of their increased participation. Online shopping and touchless purchases are increasingly becoming the preferred consumer experience, but it’s critical to maintain human interactions with your clients in this impersonal buying environment. According to a Forrester poll, 53% of customers said they would abandon an online purchase if they did not receive a prompt response from the customer service team.

Fortunately, live chat can be used as a proactive communication tool because businesses prominently display the chat button on all of their pages, giving customers the option to get help at any time during their transaction. This gives you the strategic advantage of having a direct channel of communication with customers right when they’re debating whether to buy your product or one of your competitors’.

Increased User-Friendliness

Chat can be thought of as a middle ground between phone and web channels when it comes to customer service.

Chat, like the centre of a Venn diagram, is a happy medium between these two channels – and for most support teams, it is as well.

Chat, for example, unlike phone calls, does not necessitate an immediate answer while still allowing for a fluid dialogue. As previously stated, the built-in pauses during a conversation allow the representative to gather information or troubleshoot in order to better answer to the customer’s questions. During a chat discussion, the consumer can clearly state the problem, which the representative reads, comprehends, and then efficiently troubleshoots.

In contrast, during a phone conversation, the representative must listen once, quickly establish the customer’s needs, and then proceed to troubleshoot at any time. This allows the person to be more sure in their response to your consumer in a shorter amount of time. When using a live contact for assistance, 66 percent of clients want a rapid response or resolution, according to a study. Chat relieves the burden on the support representative and gives them time to consider how they might address both the customer’s tangible and intangible needs.

Next, read about innovative customer care technologies to understand more about various customer support media.