5 Ways Live Chats Transform Businesses

Saphyte Team

3 min read

Updated: May 18th, 2022

Live chats are the new cool way to gain leads and convert them into customers. Find out how this technology can transform your business.

Ever visited a business website and wish someone is there live to chat with you? Turns out it’s common nowadays for consumers to chat with businesses and expect a response in real-time. This new consumer habit is forcing companies to change how they communicate with customers. For many companies, setting up live chats on business websites is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

But before we discuss how you can benefit from live chats and how to have one for yourself, here are some important stats about live chats.

What you should know:

More than 41% of customers expect your website to have a live chat. For mobile users, this increases to 50%.

Around 42% of customers prefer live chat versus 23% for email, and 16% for social media.

Today, there’s only around 9% of companies that use live chat on their website.

Around 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a business that offers live chat support.

About 79% of businesses report that implementing live chat helped them achieve customer loyalty, increased sales, and better revenue.

Live chats also helped companies achieve a 3.84% increase in conversion rates and a 6% overall improvement in revenue.

More importantly, website visitors that use your live chat to talk to you are usually a good indication that they’re willing to pay more for your products and services. They’re estimated to be worth 4.5 times more than visitors that don’t use your live chat.

What is a live chat?

Ever visited a website where a small chat box (often located in the lower right corner of your screen) popped up to greet you? It usually says there “Hi! I’m [insert name of rep]. I’m ready to answer your questions.” Some live chats also say “Hey there! We’re here to help. Let us know if you have any questions.”

Live chats are just like the regular chat rooms or chat boxes that people use to communicate with others— except that here, in this case, it’s an active 24/7 chat box that addresses any customer’s questions or concerns right away. A live agent or sales rep may be chatting with you— some use artificial intelligence that detects keywords and responds accordingly.

In summary, they allow customers to communicate with customer service representatives in real-time via their browsers, rather than having to interact with a representative on the phone.

Benefits of live chat

Here are some benefits of implementing live chat:

Create more valuable qualified leads

Improve customer satisfaction

Reduce customer churn

Provide personalized support

Enhance customer loyalty

Reduce operational costs

Create more valuable qualified leads

Customers engage you through the live chat app for plenty of reasons— they might be inquiring about a specific product or service or about a promo they’ve seen on any of your marketing channels.

No matter what the concern of your website visitor is, that person is a valuable potential customer. And any prospect could turn into a loyal customer for your business. In fact, as mentioned earlier in the stats, website visitors that contact you via live chat apps are estimated to be worth 4.5 times more than visitors that don’t use your live chat.

You can then use their contact information to engage them later on and/or include them in your drip email marketing.

Read more: How to Create Your First Email Campaign as a Manufacturing Company

Improve customer satisfaction and enhance customer loyalty

A real-time update to supply the customer’s needed information and a fast response to a problem or concern are guaranteed to improve customer satisfaction.

Not only does real-time updates help leads become customers quick, they also boost customer loyalty, which allows for repeat purchases in the future and encourage referrals. Overall, these would increase your sales.

Reduce customer churn

One of the challenges that businesses face is when customers leave and choose to buy from competitors. There are many reasons why customers do this— they’re probably dissatisfied with your product/service, your competitors offer better prices, or they have trouble using your product or reaching out to you for concerns.

To address all these quickly, a 24/7 live chat would give customers the impression that you’re always available to provide solutions and address their concerns with your product/service.

Provide personalized support

Personalized support is what customers expect every business to give nowadays. And live chats allow you to do that.

They let potential customers and existing ones to specify what they need from you— letting you provide the information, product, or service that they specifically need. A personalized support also lets you stand out from the competition.

Reduce operational costs

When you integrate the live chat app into a CRM system, it lets you centralize the operation and remove duplicate content and double work.

CRM systems let you track your previous engagements with a specific lead or customer, and it lets you continue where you have last left off. This provide a sense of continuity and eliminate annoying repetition. Plus, you get to enjoy the features of your CRM like automation so you won’t have to do things manually again.

Read more: Changing Gears with Saphyte’s Digital Ecosystem