Posted on February 5, 2022 in Live Chat

3 Reasons Your Business Needs Live Chat Engagement

“An operator is standing by” is an old TV trope that shows just how far we have come over the last few years in customer communication. Communication has evolved greatly between customers and businesses even in the last five years. With the digital explosion we saw people using contact forms, reading FAQs, watching videos and many other ways of getting help with sales or support calls. One of the things that started becoming relevant and useful was “Live Chat”. Live Chat is when there is a real person who is communicating in real time answer customer specific questions. Live Chat has gone from -something that a few companies had to the present day of a customer expectation that almost makes it necessary. Here are three reasons your business needs live chat engagement

Convenience, Speed and Personalization Improves the Customer Experience

Customer Experience, or CX as commonly referred to is a huge buzzword these days. While there are measurable KPIs and technology that can be involved, ultimately CX means does the customer have a positive interaction with your company? People are so busy that when a company offers a convenient, fast way to get something accomplished that makes for a positive experience. Live chat gets answers quickly. Email, on average, takes about 12 hours for someone to get a real answer. (Not just the auto-reply that someone will be back in touch with you). The most important correlation to CX and Live Chat is that the customer has a personal interaction with a real person. There is a feeling that they matter. Your brand has evolved from a shelf with things on it, to a worker asking if the person needs any help. Think about how the experience would feel in, for example, a grocery store when you want help. It goes the same for online.

Timing of the Moment

We live in the instant gratification “now” economy. People want next day shipping, instant answers, texts replied to in seconds, etc. Whether good or bad, technology has made much of these things available. The strongest likelihood to buy is while they are on your website. While there are still people in early stages who are still in the discovery phase and not ready to buy yet, when someone is ready to buy they want the process quick and seamless as possible. Any question or roadblock should be able to be answered quickly in order to keep that buyer’s sentiment and momentum going. People often buy with emotion. If you don’t offer live chat and other methods are slow to respond then the customer will often find someone who can answer them now. If they leave your site, the odds of you recapturing that customer’s attention is very low.

Increases Sales, Leads & Conversions

Ultimately any business has some sort of goal with their web visitor. They want to engage that person to commit to some sort of action. This action moves the person to the next stage of the buying cycle. Other forms of communication are often just promises to respond sometime in the future, whereas live chat answers a question now. Moves the customer forward now. When someone commits a desired action on your website it is called a conversion. Your average conversion rate is extremely low- about 2.35% When you look at all the effort, time and money that you spent even getting the person to the site, you can start to see how a stronger conversion rate would help your business overall. Neil Patel, one of the most respected marketing minds in modern day, wrote this on his blog and showed case studies. “Live Chat Can Improve Conversions Rates by 45% or More!”

BirdSeed’s Live Chat Tool

BirdSeed was built around the idea that Live Chat was often not done correctly. We built a simple tool that allowed for live chat to be convenient, easy to use and integrate and FREE. While we were building it we realized that while Live Chat has tremendous advantages, it is not ALWAYS the best solution for every customer in every situation. So when we designed our tool, we included a simple box that the business could offer Live Chat AND other tools. This addressed not only the need for an incredible live chat platform, but also answered the question of how to communicate with people that had other preferences. A business can set Live Chat hours to certain hours of operation and with one simple click of a button the customer has all the tools at their disposal that a business chooses to offer. No cluttering up the website with all of these necessary tools.

Organized. Simple. Powerful.

Bringing it all together

There are numerous reasons why a company would want live chat. Three of those discussed today included how Live Chat allows for a better customer experience due to convenience, speed and personalization; hitting the timing when the customer is most likely to buy and; showing how Live chat increases sales, leads and conversions. BirdSeed is a unique and powerful live chat tool, however with other features that addresses areas that live chat alone can’t solve. Discover what BirdSeed can do for your business at BirdSeed.io

Until Next Time,

Robert Urban – CMO of BirdSeed 

Current CMO of BirdSeed and best-selling author, Marine veteran and PhD.  Offers expert-level strategy and execution for SAAS and technology business through relationship driven marketing, content and sales while leading and managing people from all different backgrounds. BirdSeed is headquartered in Orlando, Florida.