Is live chat worth the investment?

Although ecommerce is growing rapidly and is fast encroaching on the dominance of in-store experiences, one of the things you can’t replicate is having a sales assistant physically at hand to ask if a shopper needs help with anything – or can you?

Using live chat technology is billed as the next best thing and it is growing in popularity in online stores in the UK.

According to a study by BoldChat, some 54% of the UK’s online shoppers used a live chat function in 2012, up from 41% in 2011. A further study by Whisbi found that 44% of those who abandoned their shopping carts did so because of the lack of customer interaction.

So what benefits can you garner from using a live chat function?

Customers get help easier and quicker

When someone is looking for something online, they can often come across either problems in finding what they need, issues around the check-out process or simply further questions. When these issues occur, the quicker they can be resolved, the more chance a retailer has of getting the sale.

Having a chat function means that customers don’t have to scramble around the site looking for a number to call – many shoppers simply wouldn’t bother with doing so and skip off to another site. They also don’t have to pay for a call and while they wait to speak to someone, they can do other tasks, unlike being attached to a phone handset.

Your customers will feel engaged and cared for

When customers are greeted with a friendly welcome and someone willing to listen to their queries, the screen and faceless retail site becomes more human. If a site has someone waiting to speak to them right then and there, a customer will be more likely to feel appreciated.

“Online consumers can be turned off quickly because it costs them nothing to exit one ‘store’ and enter another. They will, therefore, choose a site that offers them the easiest and most enlightening experience and the one that makes them feel the most secure and re-assured,” says Dylan Fuller, UK Country Manager at video chat providers Whisbi.

“Having a friendly face ready to engage in conversation is inviting and makes the customer feel more engaged from the outset. Often, as indicated by the results in this research, it is the lack of the personal touch and the lack of a face to the business that undermines consumers’ trust in making a purchase.”

You should see a rise in profits

As we all know shopping cart abandonment is a huge problem for ecommerce sites. There can be many barriers to getting a customer to go through with a sale but a large majority of those could be eradicated by having someone on hand to steer them through the process.

Having someone there to answer questions in real-time should also go far to tackle returns as your customers will generally be better informed about the choices they are making.

Using this method of customer service should also save on call centre costs as your team can deal with several enquiries at once.

Great customer feedback

Getting customer feedback is an essential part of developing your site and your products. Live chat gives you the ability to get these without really having to ask your customers for their opinions. As customers come across problems or barriers on your site they will come to you for answers and you can pin-point these areas as something to look at.

Any questions that might arise about individual products can help you to spot potential gaps in their product descriptions which you can later add to.

However…

It’s important to remember however that all of the benefits of using a chat function could be reversed if you don’t have the resources to make sure someone is always available. Just like a telephones that never gets answered, a consistently unavailable ‘live chat’ function is very frustrating for users.

“It’s wise to look before you leap,”  says Phil Rothwell, marketing director at ecommerce software supplier SellerDeck. “Although it is a less demanding service to implement than phone sales, you still need to have the hands on deck to cope with demand.

“Before implementing these kinds of services it is important to analyse the types of exchanges you have with customers and ensure the features are the right fit for your business. One of the nice things about these services is that they are easy to pilot in a controlled environment (turning them on for a few hours a day), so you can evaluate their potential before fully implementing the service.”