This post on How to use Live chat for eCommerce — regardless of the backend infrastructure or platforms you use.
Platforms for eCommerce such as WordPress eCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, or anything else — is independent of platforms and focuses on the big “why” and not the technical logistics of using Live chat software itself (that’s fairly intuitive). 👇
Live chat is big. It’s beneficial. The industry is growing.
According to some fantastic live chat statistics compiled by the folks at Gorgias, the live chat software market has been growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% from 2017 to 2023.
Live chat is a simple way to enhance your customer support and turn your e-commerce business customer service into a profit centre. The best part is that you don’t need to be a genius to do that, and you don’t need any expensive solutions.
Live chat, for instance, is a tool that helps you initiate customer support interaction from nearly anywhere on your website with human agents or chat bots.
First customer service automation typically lowers the speed to both first response and customer value and live chat is an easy way to get there for several businesses out there.
Second, customers have begun to expect an omnichannel approach. So, a single channel call centre isn’t enough.
Further, 40% of Millennials and Gen Z members would prefer to interact with a chatbot than a real person when they are in a hurry, than their older counterparts.
Third, live chat can help speed up customer response time (see below). Find a way to seamlessly combine chat bots, automated scripts, an actual live web interaction, depending on the complexity of the query and how you set it up.
Learning how to use live chat for eCommerce is the low-hanging fruit any eCommerce business can benefit from.
Ecommerce Live chat software can resolve simple queries without human intervention and can kick off more complex questions over to a human chat port chat support agentIn many cases (if you are using the right software that is) a customer doesn’t even know that the hand off happened and a real person has taken over.
Your Competition Will Use Live Chat
Live Chat = Sales, Revenue, & Profits
Save Money, Initiate Relevant Conversations
Personalize Scripts & Canned Responses
Change Your Mindset
No you aren’t putting a live chat there just because you have a way to respond to a customer queries. You are not putting a live chat there just because you have a way to respond to your customers when they come talking to you.
You are not even supposed to be using live chat just for sales or to push the products as they come visiting a site.
Surprised? In a recent survey, it was found that most brands and businesses actually use live chat to push products and services.
Initiating live chat software too engage with your customers comes from a “customer first”, we want to help you solve your problems in the best possible way, with speed, and by putting your needs first, while we pledge to serve you” mindset.
Your customers Need LiveChat: Are You giving it to them?
More than 30% of your customers “expect” Live chat on your eCommerce store, according to Forrester and TechJury.
According to Gorgias, more than 50% of your customers visiting your store on mobile expect to see a live chat option.
SuperOffice reveals that real-time support via live chat is taking over traditional phone support. Only 23% of customers report preferring email communication for support and over 16% of them report social media (any platform) and form as a preferred mode of support communication.
The majority of customers — over 42% of them, from that survey alone) — prefer real-time Live chat on your eCommerce website.
It’s simple: You have it or you don’t. If you don’t, you lose.
Live Chat is Super Quick [ + Positive ROI]
eCommerce sales, support, marketing, are some of the use cases for live chat.
However, there are many more use cases for live chat as well. You could trigger a wide range of automated tasks, route customer queries to the right departments or the designated live agent, help book product demos, qualify sales opportunities, and more.
In many ways, live chat offers quick customer support solutions while saving money (How does $300,000 sound? See below).
Did you know that chatbots (or automated live chat solutions) increased sales by an average of over 67%?
According to Intercom, around 26% of these sales started with simple chatbot automation. More than 35% of businesses reported that live chat bots helped them close more sales deals.
Plus, there’s also “speed” at which all of this happens.
Chat bots speed up response times by 3X, without you having to lift a finger. Businesses reported reduction of resolution times by a whopping 50%.
According to SnapEngage, most problems on live chat were resolved in an average of 42 seconds.
Simple and straightforward issues shouldn’t have to take an average of 3 days for your customers just to hear from you.
Period.
Your Competition Will use Live Chat & You Won’t?
By the year 2025, About 85% of businesses will use some sort of live chat support.
Gorgias data shows that by 2022 the majority of businesses are expected to incorporate some form of live chat experiences on their mobile apps or websites.
It is easy to see why.
According to Gorgias, in addition to the actual benefits of live chat, your brand can boost customer satisfaction and better customer experience.
Live chat leads to personalised interactions, more sales, and fewer costs while providing simultaneous and excellent support for multiple customers.
Live Chat = More Sales, Revenue, & Profits
I recently wrote just how more than 8000+ brands made a grand total of $1.1 billion by just being “proactive, nice, and awesome” with their customer support.
There is nothing like talking to your customers or visitors in real time through live chat to increase your website conversion rate.
This isn’t just some empty talk.
79% of businesses say that offering live chat features has positively impacted sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
Just by adding live chat to your website can improve your conversions by 12%.
Save Money, Initiate Relevant Conversations
Approximately 66% of customers expect an immediate response to their queries according to HubSpot.
Meanwhile, according to Intercom, organisations that use chatbots in 2019 saved an average of $US 300,000.
It’s just not about how live chat saves costs for businesses though; live chat can also help you initiate conversations that are relevant to your potential customers.
Instead of saying “How can we help?”, you could ask, “Interested in our pricing? Ask away” or any of the following examples:
“Would you like to learn more about these pair of tough, all-weather boots you love?” [ Customer checking out your boots]
“Looking for custom plans for your vacation to France next fall? ” [ Customers browsing vacation packages to France).
You can even trigger a live chat campaigns based on the URL to engage in conversations at automatically while still being relevant to what exactly your customers are looking (based on the page they are on).
The fact that you can also trigger pop-ups based on the pages they are on is another thing altogether.
Personalize Scripts and Canned Responses
Imagine the scenario: a customer walks into a store and asks you a question. Do you just stand there with a stoic face and just nod your head or repeat the same sentence like a broken record again and again regardless of what they’re asking you?
You don’t, right? Feels silly.
This is exactly what scripted live chat experiences are like.
You’ll be surprised to know that over 69% of companies used canned responses in their live chat service. Many customers have reported that they were turned off by auto-scripted chat bots.
While most companies do agree with this more than two-thirds of the companies continue to use these canned responses in their life chat.
Important note: This is not to say that you shouldn’t use automated responses at all. You need to understand that you have to have a life customer service agent who refers to a script, which is fine. Whether you use a live chat bot or an actual human customer agent you need to infuse your own personality and style while chatting with customers.
For instance, here’s an example of a scripted response that still has oodles of personality thrown in (or was it Toodles?). Sourced from Forbes and Gorgias
Gorgias calls these scripted responses ‘Macros’. You have a way to use Macros when you use Gorgias to personalize responses while still using automated responses for customer support, service, order confirmation emails, or pre-sales.
Learn more:
22 Live chat Statistics You Need To Know
Customer Service Automation Guide: Benefits & Best Practices
Your eCommerce business growth is in your hands. Simplicity is the name of the game. Throw in personality, a wee bit of quirkiness, and dollops of passion to serve should already give you the competitive edge you seek.
What are you going to do about live chat? How to use live chat for eCommerce in your opinion? Share your tips, insights, strategies at my LinkedIn company page. Or follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
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