9 Reasons Why You Need Customer Service Chat

Without a doubt, customer service chat, also known as live chat, has become recognized as one of the fastest and most effective technologies used by online businesses worldwide to offer website visitor assistance, drive sales, and boost conversion rates.

Approximately 69% of shoppers in the U.S. expect online shops to provide live chat features on their page, and about 73% of consumers consider customer service chat to be the most desirable way of communicating with online businesses.

And the numbers don’t stop there by a long-shot–as a matter of fact, we could write an entire article solely based on impressive live chat usage statistics across the globe. But, what is the “hype” really about?

In other words, what exactly makes customer service chat such a popular tool and how does it help online business thrive in today’s market?

Problem and Solution Analysis: Why Live Chat Is Winning

#1. Provide Fast Customer Service 24/7

Problem: Online businesses nowadays truly need a way to respond to customer inquiries fast and with ease–and if it’s 24/7, even better. In the end, if you don’t do it, somebody else will. Be it a human or a chatbot, it is critical to provide rapid and effective chat box assistance to retain customers and keep your business growing.

Solution: Live chat offers the ability to reply to website visitors within seconds. Actually, one of the primary business benefits that 79% of online shoppers find in web chat support is rapid response time. Be it through human support or chatbot assistance, a fast reply can be achieved with ease. Chatbot support as a feature allows eshops to deliver automated replies when set up correctly, helping online businesses keep their customer communication smooth, and most importantly, driving those online sales needed to keep the shop doors open.

#2. Resolve Visitor Inquiries and Customer Needs EFFECTIVELY

Problem: If your business fails to offer customer assistance that actually resolves the requests of your visitors, it is unlikely you will get return business. Relying on customer service via telephone and email alone can be a real mess, and let’s face it, this old model of customer support is evolving and reinventing itself very fast as it heads towards digitization.

Solution: Customer service chat is the wave of the future–it is the step towards digitization that has satisfied customers for years all over the world. The fast resolution of payment and checkout issues all the way through to general support inquiries has made live chat support the most popular choice for customer service in the eyes of the average consumer. As the demand for faster and more effective support rises, online businesses will find that by moving to a web chat solution they are more able to truly help customers and reap the benefits of overall customer care satisfaction from their visitors.

#3. See Detailed Metrics About Your Website Visitors

Problem: Not knowing your customer makes it more difficult to understand their needs. Without some way of seeing what site your visitor came from, or the country where they’re based, as well as other juicy metrics that are trackable via API, you are at a loss in terms of making informed business decisions.

Solution: In an industry where rapid and effective customer care is a major part of achieving business success, e chat not only helps break the ice, it also provides numbers and data about your visitors and customers, as well as your customer service team’s performance. Knowing your customers is a necessary step to understanding what your website should offer in terms of products and services, which in turn means increasing business opportunities. Providing customer service today without the ability to automatically pull metrics and data about your website visitors would be nothing short of missed opportunity.

#4. Thrive with a Win-Win Business Solution

Problem: Creating satisfied repeat customers that want more of your online business–that’s the tricky part! Understanding how to best leverage your live chat solution for your business needs is a critical part of the successful ecommerce business puzzle.

Solution: Live chat has a unique and very important business benefit that must be mentioned: win-win ecommerce–the visitor wins by getting quick and premium customer care, and the business wins by having frequent opportunities to capitalize on each conversation, which means higher conversion rates. In the end, there is nothing better than having your cake and eating it too, and web chat solutions offer the opportunity to sell more while also satisfying customers according to their own standards.

#5. Send Files and Transfer Information with Ease

Problem: Not having a fast and effective way to send files, images, and any other document that facilitates the buying process for customers can result in a waste of your time and your customer’s time. In a fast-paced world, every second counts for you and your visitors, and your website cannot afford to lose business simply because it ineffectively sends information.

Solution: The majority of customer service chat products today allow for the fast and easy transfer of everything from image files all the way through to text documents of any nature. The great advantage here apart from saving your time is saving your customer’s time, and giving them an immediate medium from which to download information that they need to have on hand for their order. The other benefit this has is that you can easily resolve customer questions through image illustrations, so if they ask you, “What does it look like?”, you can send a picture rather than spend time with a lengthy description.

#6. Automate to Facilitate Customer Care Efforts

Problem: E-shop life without automation in today’s ecommerce world is a major handicap. The high influx of customer queries combined with ever-expanding catalogs of goods means that working smart will outdo working hard. Online businesses with no way to automate FAQs or assist customers via chatbot options leads to wasted time, energy, and resources.

Solution: When it comes to web chat, additional features such as chatbots are part of the powerful, modern-technology punch it packs for your webshop customer service strategy. Tired of wasting time answering the same questions over and over and again? Do you hate having to repeat the same options and instructions for visitors over chat every time? Sick of attending to visitors who waste your time asking irrelevant questions or mistaking your store for something it is not? Chatbots will help you with all of these scenarios–a smart webshop that knows how to best use these resources will thrive by automating these tasks and no longer spending hours of time dealing with them, all while increasing sales by offering the right options suited to your page.

#7. Sync Customer Service Efforts within Your Team

Problem: Especially for the large online shop owners, when you have a high volume of visitors and customer requests, it would be impossible nowadays to manage all of these inquiries without a team of agents. Your agents need to be in the know of their colleague’s tasks, and even more importantly, have a fast and easy way to assess which visitors need help and which agent must step in to resolve a specific case.

Solution: In general, customer service chat products today are all equipped for team usage. You have the ability to share one dashboard, distribute chats across agents, control access rights for different purposes, see team performance statistics, and more. In the end, customer service teams with ten or more people are nothing new, and though the modern webchat technologies of today will help manage the onslaught of questions and needs via chatbot, your human agents need an effective solution they can work with in unison to maximize productivity.

#8. Evolve into the Future of Communication

Problem: This is not a good time to be behind in the “evolution of communication”. We are moving faster and faster towards instant messaging as the most desired form of communication for consumers due to a priority being placed on speed of response. As a matter of fact, according to Hubspot 90% of consumers believe that an ‘“immediate” reply is “important” or “very important” when responding to customer service questions.

Solution: With a chat app, you are up-to-date with current market technology standards and customer needs, both. In fact, there is literally no good reason not to apply a modern approach to your business that is so approved by your potential buyers, statistically speaking. Speed matters, and not having a webchat product could very negatively impact business. In the end, the numbers don’t lie–right now live chat technology takes the cake in terms of customer satisfaction and cutting-edge customer service communication technology.

#9. Remember, The Customer is Always Right

Problem: Are there alternatives to using chat solutions? Sure there are, but why not use the technology that your shopgoers want most? If rapid response time has become an utmost priority to consumers when it comes to providing a positive shopping experience, give it to them! Short of that, you may find yourself up sh*t’s creek if you cannot match your competition’s diligence and service standards.

Solution: Customer service chat, again, provides a win-win scenario for your business: drive online sales through fast, friendly, and easy conversations while attending to customer needs. The proof is in the pudding, customer satisfaction ratings show that live chat is a more popular service solution than email, app, social media, and phone. The customer is always right is a business standard that has been around for over a century, and in the case of e chat it is a no-brainer that this technology is what your potential buyers want to use to communicate with your online business.

Smartsupp Live Chat

Smartsupp’s customer service chat solution offers all of the features you will ever likely need to give the best care to your website visitors, with an extra that no other live chat provider offers–video recordings (but, we’ll get back to this topic in a minute).

Here are some of the primary capabilities Smartsupp offers that will help you drive your online business:

• Win-win Customer Service: Delivers human and chatbot support that will be there for your website visitors every step of the way.
• Unified Multichannel Apps on One Dashboard: Provides Live chat support via chatbox that comes with website and Facebook integration, as well as email integrations and notifications.
• Relaxed and Flexible Customer Communication: Offers a customizable widget to personalize your chat, contact form to help acquire more reliable leads, and a FREE live chat app for mobile phones.
• Integrated Team Customer Care Efforts: Distribute chats across your team of agents, gather team performance statistics, and categorize and organize chats with Conversation Tagging.
• Improve Online Sales by Working Smarter, Not Harder: Leverage chatbot engagement and automation, and take advantage of shortcut texts to spend less time typing and more time taking care of business.
• Key Visitor Insights and History: Facilitates data gathering and conversation history, renders Visitor Lists of all the people on your website, and automatically provides video recordings of your visitors’ session on your site.

CHATBOTS–Today’s Cutting Edge Communication Technology

Never leave your visitor’s waiting when they contact you via chat. The key to instant customer care when your hands are full with other requests is a chatbot that has been set up correctly. Smartsupp allows you to use the chatbot as a first filter and reception to greet website visitors and identify those that are more likely to make a purchase. Automate your FAQs, provide help, and even render Visitor Lists via chatbot to save time and resources.

Why are video recordings that competitive edge you can’t be without?

Unlike any other customer service chat vendor, Smartsupp provides full session recordings of your visitors’ activity on your site. This means that you are able to spot where customers may be having their product purchases facilitated and where you likely need to make improvements (or, even where you may need to fix bugs) to ensure a smoother online shopping experience. In the end, video recordings give you the extra pair of eyes you need in order to maximize your website’s selling potential.

Smartsupp comes loaded with all of the tools that make a customer service chat worth purchasing. Give Smartsupp a test drive for yourself to see how you can improve your online sales and conversion rates, all while delivering premium customer care.

Conclusion

When it comes to satisfying customers, meeting today’s technology standards as a business, and facilitating your webshop’s ability to thrive, live chat solutions are the most popular choice for online stores. The overwhelming amount of evidence supporting this claim is only further solidified by its current (and growing) popularity. A fast-paced world requires a fast-paced solution, and the customer service chat clearly takes the cake.

Give live chat software a try today and feel the difference for yourself, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!