What makes live chat support beneficial for online stores?

Adding live chat support to your online business is the next step toward taking your customer experience to the next level. With the availability of virtual assistants and chatbots, it’s easier, cheaper, and more efficient than ever to implement live chat. This feature is not just limited to large enterprises. Any business can get a live chat up through affordable call center services and running on their website. Even if it costs a bit more than expected, the benefits heavily outweigh the expenditure. Here are some of the upsides of live chat support in an online store.

1. Increase customer engagement

If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you can imagine the tedious process of reaching customer support. The customer will need to research and find your customer service representative’s phone number or email address. Then, they will need to get forwarded to the appropriate person that can resolve their issue.

Live chat streamlines this entire process. By simply heading to your website and clicking a few buttons, the customer can be entertained without fear of losing them. Clients can even specify that exact issue they’re facing before pinging one of your agents, removing the hassle of finding the correct department to forward the customer to.

It is better for everyone if the customer experience is channeled through a live chat window rather than having only a phone call option. However, it is always a good idea to be prepared and have omnichannel support rather than a single channel. By covering all your fronts, you can be ready to engage with the customer better.

2. Improving through data

Live chat doesn’t just connect your customers to your agents. It is also an invaluable feedback tool that helps you understand your customers better. Whenever a customer reaches out to you through live chat, they will be sure to let you know where your service or product is lacking. For example, the delivery time might be slow, or the quality of the packaging might be flimsy. Since live chat interactions are recorded, you can build a database of customer complaints and track the most significant issues that need to be taken care of.

Live chat can also help you understand opportunities for your business. Live chat can also supply metadata such as location, customer age, etc. By using this, you might be able to find new avenues for sales. In our experience, IdeasUnlimited helped clients find countries and cities where their marketing campaigns should focus, which yielded a massive increase in sales. There are many other creative ways to use data to boost your business and live chat is the first step in gathering information from your customer base.

3. Always online

Being available 24/7 as an online store has become mandatory. Too many other online stores doing the same and letting your customers order whenever they want can kill eCommerce platforms. Luckily, you don’t have to invest in a full-time labor force and rent out an office space that stays open all day. There are many ways to remain active throughout the day, thanks to Ecommerce Virtual Assistant of BPOs. However, having a live chat makes it easier to always be online.

Since live chat is an online function, you don’t need to hire in-house workers to take the helm. Live chat agents can be from any country, meaning that it is something that can be easily outsourced. You can have agents from different countries working together to ensure that someone always responds to live chat whenever a query comes in. Not only will outsourcing be more accessible, it is also vastly more cost-effective.

4. Boost sales

Customer acquisition is something every business strives for. Bringing in new customers while encouraging existing ones to return is the basis for improving your company’s revenue. The best way to do this is by engaging with them effectively (something we already touched on). However, businesses should look at live chat as directly correlated to an increase in sales figures. In our experience, adding live chat is pivotal for most companies that see a dramatic increase in customers who show interest in their products and services.

Conclusion:

Adding live chat to your site is easy but even more accessible when handled by professionals. IdeasUnlimited has been in the support service arena for more than 11 years. With omnichannel coverage and 24/7 uptime, we are primed and ready to help businesses start their live chat support with fast deployment. For more information, click here to find out how we help eCommerce platforms elevate their customer experience.