Nowadays there are so many different options when it comes to helping your clients and customers online, and thus it might prove to be challenging to choose the best way to go about it. However, one of the tried and true methods is investing in a customer support software. This kind of software allows you to handle customer queries from multiple communication channels at the same time, all within one solution.
Solutions like these, such as LiveAgent for example, allow you to transform and organize all incoming customer communication into tickets, making things easier for your agents. This kind of software supports every relevant communication channel for both your agents and your customer’s convenience. In the end, it’s all up to the customer to choose how they’re going to contact your support team, and providing them with multiple options is a huge benefit.
However, there are certain technology trends gaining momentum in the past few years, and one of those is live chat. Live chat is one of the most popular communication channels out there and today we’re going to explain why it is a great idea to use live chat software to handle incoming customer queries.
1. Live chat is convenient for web users
Live chat is very convenient to use because it enables customers to contact you directly from your website. By using a customer support software, you should be able to create your own chat buttons by simply inserting a few lines of code into your websites. The whole process takes only a few minutes to complete, so it’s definitely worth it. Furthermore, research shows that customers prefer to use live chat rather than other communication methods. You can check out the statistics about it here.
2. Instant communication
Customers are not often the most patient people in the world, so providing them the means to contact support instantly is highly beneficial. The sooner they can solve their problems or get their questions answered, the sooner you can convert them into loyal and paying customers.
3. Multiple functionalities (switching to email in case agents are unavailable)
Even when your agents are working as hard as they can, the incoming customer demands and inquiries can be overwhelming. Customers are bound to ask questions after hours, and not every business can be available 24/7. Luckily, live chat won’t let you down in situations like these. Advanced live chat functionalities such as automated replies can be crafted to handle specific customer queries. This feature can also be useful when repetitive inquiries haunt your inbox and you want to increase your productivity without having to personally answer every single ticket.
4. Solve problems ASAP
Let’s take it back to what live chat is all about — speed. As we concluded in the previous section, live chat is all about instant communication, so the goal is to answer your customer’s problems and questions as quickly as possible. With the right live chat software, you can even get to see what your customers are about to ask. That’s right, you can see what they are typing as they’re typing it before they have the chance to hit send. Functionality like this enables you to prepare your answers, gather up all the necessary information, and provide the customer with lightning-fast support at all times.
5. Answer simple questions from customers
Sometimes customers don’t necessarily need help from support agents, but rather guidance. Even though every good business website should have a self-help section devoted to this particular purpose, it’s rare that every question is covered in these sections as the focus is usually on the most frequently asked questions. Because contacting a support team via email is not always worth it due to long waiting times and the fact that customers might get impatient and frustrated, live chat is usually the best solution. By contacting customer support via live chat, customers are able to solve their issues quickly, meanwhile, agents can benefit from pre-prepared auto-replies.
6. Competitive advantage
Surprisingly enough, live chat is not that frequently utilized by businesses and there are still a lot of them that don’t take advantage of this great communication tool. This means that by offering live chat on your website, you can get ahead of your competitors by providing immediate and impeccable service.
7. Increase customer satisfaction
All of the points we mentioned above are leading up to more important reasons why it’s important to utilize live chat — the first one being customer satisfaction. Solving even the tiniest issues or answering the least relevant questions for your customers might seem like a hassle, but it pays off in the long term. Customers remember even the smallest things and the fact that you were able to help them out when they needed it earns you some big points in their notebook. Remember, a happy customer is a loyal customer.
8. Helps build your brand
HBuilding a successful brand was never just about a fancy logo and a nice typeface. Building a brand means building a unique personality through your service which can be displayed by communicating with the right attitude (to which your customers respond positively.) Whereas email might seem too formal, live chat allows you to let your personality shine when chatting with customers.
9. Increase in sales
A strong brand brings in big revenue. If your customers are loyal, your brand is strong, and your support is top-notch, there are next to no reasons why your customers shouldn’t buy from you. Great customer support really goes a long way in increasing your ROI and bringing your customers back to buy more. In fact, communicating with customers is so important that according to research by Business2Community, more than 77% of customers feel the need to talk to a live person before making a purchase.
10. Saves your money
Have you ever thought about how many customers one agent can help simultaneously? Using live chat not only helps your help desk solve problems faster, but also more efficiently. Using live chat, agents are able to handle multiple chats at the same time without compromising resolution speed. Furthermore, live chat can decrease purchase abandonment, as customers are more likely to abandon their purchase if they don’t get answers quickly enough.
There you have it, just a few reasons why having a live chat software can help your business tremendously in the long run. LiveAgent offers you the fastest live chat available on the market at this time. If you’re intrigued, consider trying it out – you can have it for free for 14 days without any strings attached. Furthermore, you get a ton of other tools besides live chat packed into one help desk solution. In case you want some information, you can always have a look at LiveAgent’s website or reach out through live chat. 😉
About the Author
Alexander Sipka a content writer in LiveAgent. He is responsible for crafting all the news our product team put together and enjoys editing our product videos. In his free time, he loves to draw, design, and take pictures but he won’t say no to gaming or a good night out either.
