add it as a customer service channel now.

1. Live chat is convenient for customers

“Whenever you see the opportunity to create a WOW moment, act on it!” – Shep Hyken

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Live chat is convenient for customers for several reasons:

A). It connects them instantly with an agent. There are no hiccups. No need to dial a number and press several buttons before you can talk to an agent.

B). Live chat allows customers to multi-task. This is perhaps the biggest benefit. Over 51% of customers like live chat because it allows them to multitask. Even if they have to wait for a few minutes, they can continue with what they are doing instead of staring at the screen.

C). The wait time is negligible. Since they can multi-task, therefore, even they have to wait for a few good minutes, they don’t mind.

D). The conversation can be saved. It’s easier to guide a user through text instead of voice. Links can be shared easily through live chat.

E). The customer queries are answered instantly. An email, on the other hand, has to be replied several times before the issue is resolved and it might take a few days in the process.

F). Customers can have their purchase-related queries answered right on time. According to a study, 44% of consumers said that having the ability to talk to an agent in the middle of an online purchase is the best thing ever.

Customers appreciate live chat as it helps them in making the right buying decisions.

2. Live chat saves money

Businesses are always striving to find a cost-effective customer service solution. A study shows that live chat is the best software to save money.

More and more companies were using Phone or email support as a customer support tools to get in touch with the customers. However, it takes time and is too costly to maintain and setup. While a live chat support tool is comparatively cheaper to implement in your website. Moreover, in this digital era, live chat is considered the best communication channel for customer service because of its benefits.

Live chat offers real-time services to the customers and thus, it saves a great amount of time, labor, and money.

 

The idea is to gain leads and convert them into loyal customers before your competitors even think of offering live chat.

Use live chat and quality customer services as your brand’s main feature. There’s a good chunk of people that prefer better experience to everything else. You should target those customers once you have mastered live chat and customer support.

The best competitive advantage is one that cannot be imitated. This type will be imitable, but only when your competitors switch to live chat too. If you are doing well with customer support, you don’t have to worry about imitation.

If you know the rules of the game, no one can beat you. Customers decide whether a company really offers superior customer service or not.

Use live chat, train agents, and take your business to another level.

Also Read: 15 Live Chat Best Practices to Deliver Superior Customer Service in 2019 

4.  It saves time

“When it comes to people, customers expect the same quick response they are used to getting from electronic equipment and technology.” –Shep Hyken

One of the ways of growing a successful business is by being productive. This is where live chat can help you.

There are several out there. But if you’re managing a team, Acquire, live chat software is an effective solution for managing customer support. Use the tool to prove your team’s effectiveness, and get feedback from customers.

To put this into perspective, Zopim analyzed more than 85K chats and found that on average an agent replies a customer query in less than 23 seconds, and average resolution time is no more than 42 seconds.

Imagine the time you can save as a business when you utilize a live chat.

This is not just about the time you save but it also saves your customer’s time.

Compare the average resolution time of live chat with the average email reply time of top 100 US retailers.

Compare it with the first call response times of the US companies.

Compare it with social media response time.

And compare it with the average response time of top 100 US retailers on Facebook and Twitter.

Isn’t it surprising?

Now imagine the time you and your agent can save.

Crunch the numbers and you will realize that live chat beats pretty much every other customer support channel, in terms of average response time by a big margin.

This means you can close more than 60 customer tickets in an hour with a single customer live chat agent. On the other hand, you don’t even reply to a single customer query in an hour on Twitter, Facebook, email, and phone.

Convert the time saved to money and you will know why live chat is the best approach to customer services. It has absolutely no match.

If this doesn’t convince you, nothing else will.

 

5.  Live chat increases sales

“Sale is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.” – Siva Devaki

From my personal experience, live chat boosts online sales.

As much as 83% of consumers need some type of online support when they are making an online transaction.

Customers need someone when they are buying products online. This is why people prefer buying from websites having the live chat feature to get the answers to their questions quickly. Live chat support during checkout process will increase conversion rates and sales.

As an example, Post Affiliate Pro reported a 23% increase in conversion rate when they implemented live chat on their website.

The idea is to have live chat agents available 24/7 so you don’t lose sales and customers.

However, merely having live chat feature isn’t enough; instead, you must train your agents as well. There should be at least one agent available at any given time to respond to customer queries.

What if there’s no one available to answer customer queries?

Forrester reported that 45% of US consumers would leave a website in the middle of an online transaction if there is no one around to answer their questions and concerns.

Another report says that 77% of consumers said that they need to talk to a real person before making a purchase online.

Not having live chat on the website means you are losing sales as well as customers. Can you afford to lose sales?

I don’t think so. Looking at the statistics and reports of the live chat, it can be concluded that live chat is important for increasing sales and to deliver the best experience to the customers.

6. Live chat builds long-term relationships

For the growth of the business, it is necessary that the company builds a long-term relationship with the customers. The long-term relationship with customers helps the company to stay ahead of the competition. Satisfied customers are less likely to switch and are less concerned about what they are paying.

Stats show that 89% of consumers have stopped doing business with a brand after a poor customer support experience, while another 86% of customers will pay 25% more for a better customer experience.

Live chat helps brands to build long-term relationships with their existing customers. When customers feel that their voices are heard, it’s more likely that they will share positive experiences with your company and this will build a stronger relationship between the customer and customer.

Live chat doesn’t just help bring new customers on board, but when your existing customers see that they have access to superior customer support, they will pay you 25% more and will stick to your brand.

Over 50% of consumers reported in a survey that they are more likely to deal with a company; they had a positive customer experience in the past.

According to Zendesk, 73% of consumers are having a view that friendly customer support makes them fall in love with a company, whereas 52% have made multiple purchases from a company after a positive initial customer service experience.

It all comes down to serving customers well the first time. If you manage to provide them with superior customer support through live chat on their first visit, you get a customer for life.

Thus, they become loyal customers. A loyal customer is worth up to 10x the first purchase.

There’s no better way to build this relationship than with live chat.

Conclusion

Kevin Stirtz said:

“Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.”

Thus, if your goal is to offer great customer service and to build strong customer support, then live chat is the best option. There are many other benefits of live chat software in customer service and other processes of the business. Implement this live chat feature as per your business requirements and boosts sales and revenue.