Salesforce recently wrote about the 6 Powerful Benefits of Live Chat Software on your website.
I will summarize those reasons here and give you one reason why SMS may be a better option.
Salesforce talks about the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Technological innovation continually redefines customer expectations, and businesses are trying to keep up. 82% of customer service decision-makers think they must transform to stay competitive.
Customers expect to have access to immediate customer support across all channels. Consumers want to talk with your company in real-time, and expect experiences to be connected.
An omnichannel approach to customer service is crucial for businesses to meet customer expectations. Live chat software has been part of the omnichannel approach. Is chat the right solution for your company? Online chat software enables support agents to talk to clients in real time but only while they are on your website or in your app.
Here are six reasons why live chat software could help your business and one important reason SMS could be a better option.
1. Customers prefer live chat support
Whether it’s used as a customer service tool or as part of the sales journey, live chat tools can give customers real-time interaction. Many consumers state that live chat is their preferred channel of support. There are three main benefits:
- For many customers, online chat software is more convenient and less stressful than speaking on the phone to a stranger.
- It’s easier to interrupt a session and return with the document or reference they need, and they can be sure they’ll be understood.
- Moreover, most customer service chat software includes the ability to voice call, screen share or send screenshots. This makes it an incredibly effective tool for resolving support issues.
2. Online chat software offers a connected customer experience
Innovative companies understand the paradigm shift to a connected customer experience.
3. Live chat software increases first contact resolution
There’ll always be some interactions that are best handled on the phone. But many simple queries can be resolved by a combination of live chat and an online knowledge base, leaving your agents free to deal with the large, complex support tickets. Customer service chat software excels at dealing with relatively simple queries that can be resolved quickly.
What’s more, live chat provides you with excellent tools for analyzing and improving the customer support experience, including:
- Transcripts of every interaction – which you search by keyword, theme, customer type, sales channel, support ticket outcome.
- Feeding customer data into your business CRM allows a 360 degree view of your customers.
- Common support questions help you pinpoint gaps or navigational problems in your online support content.
- This data allows you to create new content around these questions and further encourages self-service.
4. Online chat software builds trust
By having live chat tools on your website and making it available as a support option, you’re helping to build trust. Different people prefer different contact channels, and by presenting a wider range of options, customers will feel that you’re more responsive, more available and generally more interested in what they want.
5. Live chat software can drive sales as well as service
There’s no reason to limit live chat to customer support. Live chat can be an effective sales tool too, especially when it comes to reducing dropouts during the purchase process.
In short – if your business would benefit from a more efficient, more intelligent and more responsive customer service channel, you should be considering live chat for your website.
6. Live chat software vs. AI Chatbots
Keeping up with customer expectations is major goal for most companies. One cost-effective way of staying ahead of customer expectations are AI chatbots.
AI chatbots harness machine learning and natural language processing to automate certain responses. This could be checking an order or providing a customer with a copy of a sales receipt. Chatbots are transforming customer service in many industry sectors, particularly in customer service and sales.
7. When is SMS a better option than chat?
Everything written above is correct for SMS, but there is one major difference. Chat is limited to your website or app and SMS travels. SMS requires the user to give something to engage in the conversation – their mobile phone. In a sales conversation giving some information is a positive sign. Moreso, the user can ask another question without going back to your site or app. And you can follow-up with the prospect at a later time.
The user interface is familiar to the user. It’s her mobile phone (or sometimes an SMS desktop app).
Fastcall SMS used on a website
Fastcall uses the Salesforce web-to-lead form to start an SMS chat conversation. We are creating a Salesforce Lead and engaging in SMS chat.
We then move the conversation to the prospect’s mobile phone. Your users interact in Fastcall in Salesforce.
