There are many reasons why customers prefer live chat over social media, email, and phone call support. Live chat support is fast, efficient, and convenient. The benefits of live chat include giving customers a faster and more convenient way to get in touch, improving the support experience, boosting agent productivity, and helping your customer support staff get to know your customers better.
On the other hand, live chat can also be bad, despite its potential. If agents are slow so respond or don’t have the right information to solve the problem at hand, there’s no way it’s going to improve the customer experience. Let’s dig a little deeper into how live chat can solve customer’s problems and improve overall satisfaction.
Live chat statistics
Live chat has extreme potential to create an excellent customer experience. There are many statistics that prove it, some of which being:
- 75 percent of people prefer live chat over any other channel
- 44 percent of consumers say that being able to ask questions of a live person when they’re online shopping is one of the most important features a website can offer
- 63 percent of Millennials prefer live chat to answer basic customer support queries
- The average customer satisfaction rate for live chat in the tech industry exceeds 87 percent (1)
Reduced response time
Response time is a crucial component when it comes to providing good customer service. 82% of consumers say the number one factor that leads to a great customer service experience is having their issues resolved quickly. (2) Generally, most of the customers abandon an online transaction or conversation if their questions or concerns are not addressed quickly enough. The two most common customer service frustrations are:
- Waiting for a sales or support representative
- Being put on hold for a long time
One way to ensure a fast response time is to use bots as the first point of customer contact to address customers’ queries and handle basic questions. Bots provide instant answers, therefore boosting the customer service experience. However, this is not to say that a bot will be able to answer every question they receive, but they can definitely benefit the customer in many circumstances.
Increased team productivity
Live chat allows instant connection with customers and a no-stress resolution with live engagement tools. Automating the tasks reduces the manual intervention, which can mean that the extra hours gained can be used to provide better customer service to boost the overall customer experience.
Live chat also allows tracking, viewing, and monitoring the agents and team performance. Using live engagement tools and analytics makes conversations both interactive and effective. Analytics specifically help narrow down problem areas so you can work on finding solutions to them. Using strategies like these can help boost team productivity, which will ultimately influence customer experience in a positive way.
Overall benefits of live chat
Live chat boosts your customer service team’s productivity by making it easier for them to juggle multiple chats at once. While a person can only be on one phone call or reply to one email at a time, with chat they can make a quick response and look at another chat while waiting for someone else to respond. For trickier issues, they might need to focus their attention on only one or two chats, but if they’re working in multiple chats full of quick and simple questions, handling five at once is much more manageable.
97% of global consumers say that customer service is very important or somewhat important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand. (3) Although this statistic isn’t specific to live chat, providing great customer service is all about showing customers you care and solving their issues quickly no matter how they choose to interact with your business. By having one-on-one conversations via live chat, you can help build an emotional connection with customers and drive loyalty.
Sources
(1) RingCentral
(2) Reve Chat