With the prolific growth in e-commerce, attracting and keeping the customer engaged on a website has been the challenge for marketers. In most of the cases, e-commerce portals & their prospects are incoherent as the latter have no one to handle their queries and drive home the sale. The voice call support consumes a lot of time and often fails to convince the customer.
The customer care & support system is witnessing a paradigm shift wherein voice call systems are being replaced by live chat support systems. Live chats provide real-time answers to the queries posted by prospects & customers and keep them engaged to make the sale through.
Read further how live chat systems help the e-commerce portals to enhance the business and gain competitive advantage
1. Instant response for customers
It takes time for a customer to check out your toll-free number and dial it, only to wait for the IVR system to tell them to wait till the voice executive comes to handle the query. The FAQ segment may provide a few answers, but many a time’s customers wish for more information. Email support takes ages and social media requires a few more clicks to browse through.
“Within the online channel, the chat feature has become the leading contact source, as 42% of full-service customers indicate using a live online chat feature vs. Email (23%) or other social media forum (16%). Additionally, online satisfaction is highest among customers who use the chat feature.”
Communication with the customers using Live Chat, right at the product/ service page of your website replaces all the above with suppleness.
As per survey report, 57% of the respondents reported abandoning a website for lack of information. While at the same time 88% of the respondents added that a live chat support made their digital experience better.
Live chat executive can interact with customers queries quicker compared to any other mode and address their concerns in a better fashion. This move helps build stronger relationships, thus closing more sales for the e-commerce portal. Live chat executive help customers make better purchasing decisions by keeping them informed about choices that match or exceed their needs and interests.
2. Saves money & Increases Efficiency
Unlike voice support system, where an executive handles a single customer call, a live chat support agent can handle multiple chats. The move saves investment on infrastructure for handling voice calls & human resource costs.
The live chat support enhances both, the number of sales as well as average order value compared to voice call support or email support. The quality of the assistance and the active customer touch resembles real-time support at a physical store.
Thus, customers get helpful insight and opinion on purchase decisions. This impacts the awareness levels of the purchase decision and reduces the chances of returns or rejections.
3. Reduces Customer exit rate. Provides advantage over competition
As per a report by Forrester, about 44% of respondents claimed that most important feature of a website was having their questions answered by a live person.
The product or the service on offer is available at numerous e-commerce portals and shopping websites. The competition is getting fiercer day by day. Hence, once an e-commerce portal has spent a huge chunk into attracting customers, it is very costly to lose a customer to a competitor.
Live Chat system helps a shopping portal in keeping the customer engaged and prevents them from browsing further into a competitor website. The selling experience at each major touch points is altered favourably by the live chat system.
4. Boosts sales
Making a choice is made easy for a customer confused between offered options. Like a salesperson at a physical store, a live chat support executive makes it easier for the customer taking him or her through a wide range of offerings. The opinion offered often turns the customer in making prompt payments.
The live chat executives are armed with pre-researched data, information about products/ services, customer trends, and likes which helps them provide required information to customers in real time.
A trained Live Chat team can easily sell more by adding value at each point of interaction with a prospect.
5. Helps in Understanding Customer Purchase Behaviour
A live chat executive interacts with numerous customers and prospects which help accumulate data related to demands, required improvisation in products & services and also a view into what goes in a purchase decision or a reject decision.
Analysis leads to the leading trends and better offers, thus boosting sales. This also applies to understanding customers’ problems and expectations, creating more efficient systems.
Usage of Live chat system to provide the human touch while having an online purchase experience yields a goldmine of information to work out on. Additionally, the analysis also identifies the training needs of the staff members.
The faster the communication higher the purchases and thus, the profit. So, including live-chat in the e-commerce business can prove to be an important tactic.
Technology with a touch of the personalization will never go wrong!
