If you ask customers about how they want to communicate with your customer support team, you’re likely to be told that they prefer live chat over other channels. It’s because compared to phone support, email, or social media correspondence, live chats are considerably faster and more efficient.
However, it’s not just the prompt responses that make live chat better. CrewBloom, your reliable remote staffing agency shares some of the top benefits of live chat for customer service:
It Improves the Overall Support Experience
As a customer, you want to get answers to your queries and you want them fast. Live chat is able to deliver just that. This gives customers the assuring feeling that someone knowledgeable is handling their concern. It is better than how it is with emails that do not tell you when you’ll get an answer.
It Helps With Customer Acquisition
Live chat allows you to talk to potential customers and provide them with useful information that will give them the confidence to purchase from your website or get your services. It’s a great way to build trust with prospective customers from the very beginning.
It Eliminates Repetition for the Customers
One of the most frustrating things about contacting customer service is having to repeat your issues every single time you speak to a new agent, which often happens when your call get transferred to a different department or when a call is dropped.
With advanced live chat software, it will easy for agents to see the customer’s concern from the history of the chat, as well as other helpful information that they have already provided. This means the customer won’t have to repeat anything to the agent.
It Helps Boost Productivity
Customer service agents who speak to customers on the phone are only able to cater to one person at a time. On the other hand, most agents can juggle several live chats at a time. Of course, if the customer’s issue is complex, they may have to focus on that one first. But most of the time, with simple queries, it is not impossible for the agent to handle up to five live chats at a time.
It Helps with Customer Engagement
Live chat increases interaction with existing and new customers. This, again, is because most people are more comfortable chatting with agents instead of speaking to them on the phone or sending them an email.
When customers see that there’s a chat option, they’re likely to ask a question or explain a concern before completely giving up on using your products.
As you increase your engagement, you establish an excellent impression on your customers and give them a good reason to stay with your brand. It will greatly help if your chat displays the name of the agent and the photo to make it more personal.
It Can Provide Customers with 24/7 Support
Unless you are outsourcing staffing for customer support that means you have agents answering calls from people 24 hours a day, your customers can only call you during work hours. With live chat, you can make it available 24/7 so that people can reach you any time they need to, no matter what time it is.
If 24/7 support isn’t possible for you, you may design your chats in a way that people will be directed to potentially helpful information.
It Allows You to Build Rapport Easily with Your Customers
While in the chat, agents can observe the tone and mood of the customer and match that so they can build rapport. They can be formal or informal depending on how the customers approach. Agents also have the opportunity to start a friendly yet professional and helpful relationship as representatives of the brand, which will be good for the image of the company.
It Gives You an Edge Over Your Competition
If your competition still has no live chat option, having one can give you the opportunity to nail it with yours and sway their customers to make a switch. Consider this: if you were the customer and you are choosing between two similar products. You decide to reach out to know more about them, but only one has live chat support with an agent who answers all your queries. You are probably going to choose the brand with the live chat support, right? This is because customers prefer brands that they can communicate with easily.
It Gives Your Business the Data It Needs to Make Decisions
Another good thing about live chat is that you can easily collect the data gathered during exchanges between the agents and customers and use that to make informed decisions. This is especially easy if you have advanced chat software that allows you to organize the chats and filters them for review purposes later.
This can help you see which products are performing well and which ones are constantly causing problems with the customers, what the most common concerns are and what solutions are offered to the customers. The data you gather can guide you in deciding which products to keep, which ones to improve, and which ones you can continue to market as is.
Conclusion
Live chats come with all the benefits above and more that they’re basically a necessity for businesses today. They’re not just for major brands either. In fact, they can be of great help especially to small businesses that need to increase engagement and build their brand reputation. Not only that but it can also provide companies with the information that they need to further improve their products or services.
As your business grows, you might find that you’re going to need more people to handle your customer service, whether that be phone calls, email support, and yes, live chats.
CrewBloom is a trusted platform that can help you with customer support outsourcing. We can connect you with highly-trained professionals that can handle customer support, sales, and more. Contact us to find out how it works!
