Over the past few years, live chat customer service applications have generated a lot of attention in the marketing world.

Today’s customers need you to connect with them when it is most appropriate. In recent years, this need has led to business practitioners obtaining live chat services, as most current transactions are occur online. When customers are browsing or shopping on your website, they will definitely have questions, complaints or issues they would love to share. Stepping up at this point can be very beneficial to the business owner as well as the client.

Benefits of Using Live Chat Services

1. Building trust

Every time a representative of your company pops up on the website’s live chat page, customers know that your company is available to address their concerns. Done on a consistent basis, this creates a level of belief in the customer, and satisfied customers will have no qualms about coming back .Chances are that they will talk positively to others about your products too.

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2. Collecting valuable client information

When clients come online, information of non-personal nature makes its way into your forums. This information includes location and gender. From the information you collect, you can build a profile of your clients and deduce what class they belong geographically and in terms of gender. For example, if elderly females keep logging in to complain about service delivery, there must be something in your service that is not working for that class of people. This information is important while evaluating performance.

3. Increasing sales

Customers come to websites to browse and make purchases. At any point during the purchase, there are likely to be issues that need your attention. When you are on the live chat customer service application on your website, you can handle these concerns up to the point where your client is satisfied enough to make the purchase. Online customers are impatient, and when someone gets things mixed up with no one on hand to help, they move right along to the next seller.

Customers are less likely to move on to the next site if someone is available to help them make a purchase.

4. Insight

There is no better way to connect with your clients other than the live chat facility. This approach gives you a chance to talk at a personal level. You get to learn your customers, their tastes, preferences and prejudices. When you find out that many clients complain about the same issues, then it is about time the company covered the angles where most problems seem to be emerging.

5. Live chats reduce service costs

Live chat customer service applications cost very little to build and maintain. Afterwards, customer care agents can handle multiple customers at once. In situations where company agents use telephones, a single customer care agent can only handle one customer at a time. In general, a telephone conversation takes longer than a live chat and is more vulnerable to network related breakdowns.

By using live chat, your company can save on running costs and human resource. Since you have fewer agents on the phones, you can direct the excess human labor to overwhelmed areas of the business.

Insider Tips on Perfecting Your Live Chat Customer Service

With ineffective live chat services, customers abandon their shopping carts and simply move on. However, there are ways to make the experience better for you and your clients.

1. Professionalism

Customers look for a positive experience when they reach out to you. They do not have a responsibility towards your company but you as the face of the company at that moment have a responsibility towards them. While they can be rude and pushy, always remember to stay polite, avoiding responses that may come off as rude or unco-operative. Customers who have had a negative experience with your company will tell their experiences to others, and you do not want the story to be that company agents were unhelpful.

At times, even with the best interests at heart, your explanations to your clients might seem ambiguous. A good move would be to try several different approaches and keep your patience until the client is satisfied.

Always be friendly, positive and formal.

2. Strive to understand your customer

Customers prefer live chats because of a variety of reasons. There is a need for you to know these reasons to serve each client in a unique way. Customers who avoided the phone may have done so to steer clear of the hopscotch they would have had to go through to get to an agent and therefore need immediate service on live chat. A client who avoided email services could have done so to avoid wordy conversations. This customer goes on live chat to attain service through a very brief yet fulfilling exchange. Give them just that.

3. Embrace a customer centered approach

Customers need your attention. Take a personal approach and put the customer right in the middle of things. Let them know that you are in the process of handling their concerns and give them updates to avoid pauses that they may misinterpret as lack of concern .Try this: “Let me check with the manager”, “Give me a minute so I can check the details for you” or “I’m going to get you a quotation right away”. Make it all about the customer. Always be courteous so they come back.

4. Avoid scripted conversations

Always make your customers feel like they are talking to a human being and not an android. Always make the experience personal. Communication and marketing experts have noted that most customers report that they experienced better handling when customer care agents did not sound like they were reading from pre-programmed scripts.

Research shows that more customers (73%) prefer live chat than email (61%) and the phone (44%).

The popularity live chats have garnered over time ties directly with their level of satisfaction with services offered. While this method of support has proved effective, the dynamics of the online market place are ever changing and marketers are moving to build systems that can process requests while avoiding overwhelming the available care agents. In general, a live chat customer service agent can juggle between 3 and 5 conversations with clients.