Live Chat Support Outsourcing

Live chat for customer service

In customer service, live chat works because it provides a channel for clients to quickly have their issues resolved.

Whatever a client’s issue is, their disappointment, anger and annoyance will only be amplified if they have to sit on the phone for an hour getting it fixed.

For example, if you’re an SaaS company and your service goes down, with live chat an enquiring client can quickly be informed “apologies, the service will be up again shortly”.

In a matter of seconds the client has the information they need, and though they may be disappointed, they know they’ll be able to use the service again soon.

Without live chat the client would be required to phone in, work their way through a complicated computerised switchboard, only to be put on hold while they wait for an operator.

During this time they become more and more aggravated wondering why the service they pay for isn’t working, and why they’re wasting their time being put on hold.

This turns a relatively small issue into a real grievance which customer service will then have to deal with.

Much like customer service, one of the benefits of live chat for sales is how quickly it lets your salespeople interact with potential clients. Perhaps a lead lands on your site and is impressed, but they can’t find the one vital piece of information they need to make a decision. Normally, they’d drop out of the funnel at that point and go looking on a competitor’s website.

All good salespeople know that a fresh lead is a hot lead, and that it’s important to talk to new enquiries as quickly as possible. And it doesn’t get much quicker than talking to a potential client while they’re still on the website.

Live chat allows salespeople to talk to new enquiries while their buying intent is still at its highest.

Right there and then your salesperson can explain why you have the right product for them, and hopefully convert the lead.

This is the ideal scenario, and while it might not always go that way, live chat can still be used to stop potential clients dropping out the funnel by allowing them to ask a question and get the information they need then and there.

Simply put – live chat lets salespeople maximise the potential of every visitor to the site without anyone having to pick up the phone.

Live chat is already being used very effectively in a lot of B2C interactions, particularly on ecommerce sites, and it is seeing great results.

When House of Fraser implemented live chat on their sites, they saw the average basket size increase by 20%, and conversions reach as high as 29%.

With impressive results such as these it’s no wonder lots of businesses are looking to use live chat as part of their customer journey.

However, while the use of live chat is now well established in B2C and ecommerce, in the corporate and B2B world it can still be an unknown quantity.

This is no reason to stay away from live chat though, as it can be easily and effectively used in any business.

Live chat services are not just helpful for your customers; they are good for your business, too. Firstly, they increase sales. Research shows that live chat services can increase customer conversions by up to 20% and that customers who seek out support through live chat are three times more likely to buy a product or service.

They are also more efficient than a phone service. While phone operators can only speak to one customer at a time, chat operators can speak to multiple customers at once, improving efficiency without sacrificing the support and service provided.

And lastly, they help to reduce the number of inbound calls. If you are already struggling to keep up with your call volume, a live chat feature could bring you some much-needed respite. By allowing your customers to resolve small issues quickly and efficiently via live chat management software, you minimise the workload of your phone operators and free up their time to handle the more complex queries.