When visitors find your website, they typically come across it with a purpose.
Your customers – whether they are someone who has already bought from you or someone who has yet to make a purchase – want answers, and they want them fast. They want to know more about your product or service.
Many times, they may have a need that can’t be fulfilled by information found on your website. They need to take that extra step to ask you a question or seek clarification.
When a customer is looking to take that extra step, the best way to handle it is to meet them halfway. Live chat software is the way you do it. According to one study, 83% of customers who interacted with live chat were satisfied with the experience.
From a customer service standpoint, there are multiple advantages to investing in live chat software. Let’s walk through them.
You will stop leaving leads on the table
Your company puts a lot of money into getting people to your site. Whether it’s through your advertising dollars or resources put into developing content for search engine optimization (SEO), you’ve dedicated time, funding, and resources to get eyeballs on you. That means that when people do visit your site, you want to make the process of getting in touch with you as seamless as possible.
That’s where live chat comes in as the most attractive option for the site visitor who has a question.
Think about it from your prospective customer’s perspective. Let’s say they’ve just performed a Google search with keywords you’ve targeted. They read your “About” section and they’ve decided they want to make a purchase. The only hangup is they have one question about your product they need to be answered before they can give you the sale.
To get them to pull the trigger as fast as possible, would you want them to ask that question through:
- A lengthy form they have to fill out, then wait for a response?
- A phone call where they need to first track down your phone number, leave a message, and wait for you to get back to them hours, days, or possibly weeks later?
- A chat agent on the site they’re currently on, armed with the answers to the precise questions they have?
It’s a no-brainer. Live chat software gets leads who are on the fence from “no” to “go” faster than any other form of communication you can offer them on your website.
With live chat, you won’t let any leads fall through the cracks due to inaction. They’re all dealt with as soon as they log on to your site.
Increase conversations and conversions
Above all else, your customers want to feel as if you’re hearing their questions and concerns. There’s no better way to make them feel appreciated and listened to than through the rapid dialogue of a live chat.
Live chat enables you to have a conversation with your customer. It can help establish a rapport between you and them. It makes the encounter feel “real,” even if they’re interacting with a bot.
Your interaction isn’t the customer sending a request via a website form, followed by an answer, followed by them clarifying the question, followed by another answer. They receive instantaneous results.
The conversational quality of live chat will lead to more conversions. Because you can get your prospective customers answers much faster, you’ll be able to convert more of them into sales.
Shorten Your Sales Cycle
Your sales cycle with each prospective customer is going to include five stages:
- Prospect. This is when your customer first encounters you and your product or service, or you first become aware of a lead.
- Connect. At this stage, either you are reaching out to your customer or they are reaching out to you.
- Research. Your customer is aware of what you offer, but they want to learn more. Now you can give them the additional information they need to make their decision.
- Presentation. They have the information they need. Now you can make your pitch based on your value proposition and the unique needs of your prospective customer.
- Close. Once you’ve made your case, presented your customer with the information they need to know, and addressed any of their concerns, you’re ready to make the sale.
Depending on your customer, different stages of this process are going to take longer than others. No matter what stage you’re at, however, it’s important to know that live chat can help speed up any part of the process.
Moving through the sales cycle is all about establishing open lines of communication with your customer. Live chat does this better than just about any way you can think of.
Quickly qualify and disqualify
Unfortunately, not every customer will be a good fit for what you offer. As much as we’d like to offer every solution for everyone, sometimes it’s just not meant to be.
With live chat, you’ll be able to disqualify customers you know aren’t a fit much quicker than if you communicate with them via more traditional methods. You can do this based on the type of questions they ask or the responses they give.
Live chat allows you to identify the customers who aren’t likely to buy and move on. It gives your sales team the ability to focus on the leads that give you much better odds of closing the deal.
Get qualified leads in the hands of your best salespeople
Finally, once you’ve qualified the prospective customers with the best chance of moving to a closure via live chat, you can now direct them to your best salespeople.
While the immediacy of live chat is wonderful for your customers, it’s also better for your company. It means you receive the questions faster, identify your qualified leads faster, and can get them in touch with your best salespeople faster.
Your top salespeople have the tools needed to answer your prospective customers’ concerns while also closing deals faster.
Enhancing both of these qualities will help move your leads from a prospective customer to a happy customer much quicker. It also helps you filter the contenders from the pretenders and gets the qualified leads into your best salespeople’s hands faster than any other method of communication.