It’s compelling.

Customers who prefer live chat over other customer support methods – 42%.

Customers who are satisfied after using live chat – 73%.

Customers who are likely to repurchase from a brand that offers live chat support – 52%.

(Sources: g2.com, kayako.com)

How does live chat fire up the conversion rates? It’s been suggested that live chat is the only means of providing real human interaction during an online purchase. Customers expect their questions answered and a sense of reassurance can be provided only through live chat.

During the final stages of the buying cycle, customers experience a sense of risk and what they have is just a computer screen in front of them. This is where the human element makes an impact. Live chat helps to replace that sense of risk with a sense of value through reassurance. This makes a huge positive impact to the buyer’s decision making.

Let’s look at some of the objectives of providing live chat on your website.

Objectives of live chat

• Provide customer service to existing clients
• Improve conversion rate of the website
• Increased checkouts
• Increased leads
• A combination of some or all of these

The math behind live chat

You would agree when we say that live chat is a business-critical function. It directly deals with potential customers and has the power to make or break your business. However, the reality is that providing this level of engagement to your website visitors who are potential customers can be quite resource-intensive.

Let’s look at statistics of providing the live chat services for one month.

30 days a month x 24 hours a day = 720 hours per month.

Converting 720 hours to 8 hour shifts = 720/8 = 90 shifts.

Converting 90 shifts to 5-day weeks = 90/5 = 18 weeks.

Resources needed per month = 18/4 = 4.5 full-time employees per month.

Without considering absenteeism, penalty rates, supervision, training or additional staff during peak times, you need 4.5 full-time employees per month. At an average of $5000 per resource, you will be looking at $22,500 minimum monthly cost.

You may argue that there’s always some excess capacity somewhere, and those resources can be managed internally to reduce the cost. But it’s easier said than done.

Deciding on managed live chat services

The single most important factor here is the quality of the traffic you bring to the site. Better quality leads to a higher conversion rate. When you get a hold of the number of leads, you will be able to calculate an approximate cost per lead. This cost versus the cost of managed live chat providers would be a major deciding factor to consider managed live chat.

What agreement terms do they have? Is there a lock-in period for the contract? How fast can you see ROI? What details are covered by the service level agreement? These are the questions you need to ask a managed live chat services provider to understand what you are committing to.

There needs to be management supervision to ensure quality chats, consistent customer experience and alignment with business objectives. Training for the chat agents needs to be delivered after clearly mapping the business process.

Competency

Is your managed live chat service provider competent enough to give support your potential customers? Let’s keep in mind that each website visitor has different needs, objectives and motivation and that a live chat experience on one site will be totally different from that of other sites. Important things to consider here are:

• Does the chat service provider quickly respond to the visitor’s first question?
• What is the first response to the website visitor?
• How efficiently they are able to engage the visitors?
• How much do they value the customer’s experience of live chat?

It’s important to keep in mind that the managed live chat service on your website is the first impression the website visitor will have of your brand. You need to make sure that’s a fantastic experience for the visitor.

The ideal managed live chat provider

Your managed live chat services provider should be genuinely interested in helping to grow your business through new clients. Your provider needs to work closely with you to understand your sales process, client profiles and how you qualify your marketing leads.

Your goals need to become their goals. They need to be focused on delivering value at each stage of the live chat process in terms of visitor engagement and quality leads.

Also read: Making Your Customers Happy – The Live Chat Way

• Author Details

Author Details

Tracey Horey

CEO of Live Chat Agent

Tracey Horey is a 20 year veteran of the Automotive industry and has been writing Automotive content and helping Dealerships optimise their digital space for over 15 years. Her experience working with various sized dealerships and her passion for exploring and understanding new tools for the auto industry has given her an in depth understanding of the challenges all dealerships face in a changing landscape.

accounts@livechatagent.com.au

1800 332 428