Imagine you’re shopping at your favorite shoe store, looking for the size of the shoes that caught your eye, but you can’t find them You look around for a helpful employee, but no one is around. There is only a sign on the wall with a phone number for a representative. You could use it, but you don’t feel like making a special call to ask a quick question. So you start to wonder: “Do I really want these shoes?”
Eventually you decide you don’t want them after all, and you walk away without buying anything.
The exact same thing happens on your site when you don’t have live chat. Most customers are not going to wait for an email response or wait in a phone queue to ask a question about a product they are considering buying. When customers can’t get an answer quickly, they will leave your store and look elsewhere.
If you’re still not convinced that your e-commerce site needs live chat, read on to see the arguments why chat in your online store can be a good decision.
73% of customers say that respect for customer time is the most important component of good service. That’s right: it’s not about free shipping, easy returns, or even being nice – good customer service is about not wasting customers’ time.
Offering live chat support is the most effective way to respect your store users’ time. It doesn’t require customers to leave their shopping experience to get answers, and they don’t have to call or wait for someone to respond to an email.
Live chat also saves time and makes more profit for your business. It allows customer service representatives to handle more than one person at a time, making their job more efficient.
If you use live chat software, you can save even more time in the first place by providing customers with instant answers from your knowledge base, so that – in some cases – they don’t even need to speak to a support agent.
When a customer has a question and can’t find an answer right away, they’re likely to hesitate before making a purchase. Such questions quickly turn into doubts.
Let’s say a customer has a question about shipping costs to their city, but that information is not included on your site. The shopper may not be sure if the shipping cost will be cost-effective for them, and they may begin to have doubts about whether to even undertake a product purchase.
Live chat gives customers the opportunity to get immediate answers so they can safely continue shopping.
With live chat, you can ask customers for feedback as soon as their issue is resolved in chat – which is more convenient for them than a phone or email survey.
Plus, because it’s happening in real time, there’s no delay like with a phone or email interaction when the sentiment after a conversation can fade. Instead, you capitalize on the momentum of the interaction that just took place.
A friendly chat window offers instant support from a real person, which feels more like a traditional in-store experience.
Plus, live chat can be programmed to start with a friendly “How can I help?” inquiry that mimics what we encounter in stationary stores.
Main photo: Pixabay/pexels.com
