How Does Chat Help in Conversational Marketing?

Trends in the online industry show that 79% of the customers prefer to use live chat during their online purchases compared to email or phone calls. Amid these statistics, there are also some companies that haven’t yet integrated chat into their website. 

In this article, we are going to know about the inside out of the growing trend of chat integration and reveal whether implementing it into your website is worth it or futile. 

Some Interesting Stats About Chat Integration & Its Results 

Before going deeper into the article, let’s reflect on what the statistics say about it. 

• About 86% of the customers don’t prefer to shop with a brand that has poor customer experience.
• Brands that have integrated live chat into their websites have witnessed a noticeable 20% of growth.
• 62% of the online shoppers have accepted that they are more likely to finish the purchase if there is a live chat option available. 
• Shoppers who chat on the websites are 3X more likely to convert to a buyer. 

Well, if we go with the statistics, we can say that the integration of the live chat on the website attracts more customers and enhances customer experience and conversion rate. Let’s go further and know why chat in marketing plays a significant role and how it aids in your business. 

Customers favor Chat 

Consumers really love chat compared to the Email ( It is and always will be an effective tool in marketing )and phone support. When asked why customers said, they prefer to chat because they get everything they want immediately within seconds. They don’t have to browse through the whole website to find any important information. As per the report, 79% of the customers preferred chat due to its convenience and effectiveness. 

Chat helps customers ask important questions on the go. Unlike email, it takes little time to know any answers to the query. People know that in a phone call they have to wait for a few minutes or sometimes more. 

Shoppers, when they are shopping, have tons of product-related questions not to mention the price. If your store has live chat options, your customer service agents can handle the customers effectively and help you convert the potential customers into buyers. 

Reduce Operational Cost

With live chat, it is possible to tackle multiple consumers at a time. Even, only one customer support person is enough for it. Now, just think of handling multiple customers by a single customer service agent on a phone? Seems impossible right? 

The point is, by integrating Chat into your brand, you not only guarantee good customer experience but also save money and time for your business. You get enhanced output with less staff. You save the operational cost of new resources which could be better utilized in other important stuff of your business.  

There is no need for hiring more staff. All you have to pay for is the monthly subscription charges to the chat company which is much lower than hiring, training, and managing new resources. 

Better Understanding of Customer Psychology

Through chat, you know more about your customers because you are interacting with them naturally and in a more casual way. Therefore, you can extract their behavior, their likes, dislikes, their age, and other important components that help you understand your customers. 

Also, through chat, you can guide your customers for purchasing the right product or service. If a customer wants to purchase something, and you think there is a better choice available that is cheaper, then by suggesting that to your customer, you introduce trust into them. They would think you as a brand that actually helps customers to find the ideal product without caring too much about the money. So, chat allows you to downsell your products by gaining the customer’s trust. 

Not only downsell, but if you think your customers should buy another product that is better for their preference although its price is higher than their budget, then you can suggest them.  They may think of purchasing that quality product irrespective of their budget. So, chat allows you to upsell your products or service. 

Helps Reduce Product Returns

There are high chances of conversion rate if a customer that comes to your website understands your product better. Often, business owners confess that due to their poor website design and lack of proper navigation, users leave the website.

In this situation, the live chat comes as a silver bullet solution for your business. A customer support representative can ask a casual question to customers about product preference. E.g I see you are searching for this product and its price. How can I help you? Or seems like you are not finding what you are looking for, let me help you. This kind of casual tone makes customers believe that there is actually a live customer support team that is interested in helping them find the best product. 

One thing you must remember that your chat should not be forceful and aggressive and disturb the customers during the purchase. Your customers should be able to minimize the chat box when they want. Also, let your customers know that the small chat button on the bottom right corner would be there when they have any queries.  So the more a customer knows about your product, the less is the possibility of returning. 

Expand Global Reach

If you are thinking of your service or product to reach an international market, then having a multilingual chat could be a good step. 

There are many countries that prefer to read and talk about their native languages. By providing customer support in their language, you connect more with them. It allows companies to break the language barrier and sell more products with the help of live chat. Customers should be able to select their preferred language and start asking what they want to know. 

Get Advantage Over Competitors

As I have told you earlier that it is surprising that today many companies still haven’t integrated live chat into their business. By doing so they are missing out on a massive opportunity to gain more buyers for their products or services. 

However, it does not mean you should shut down your phone support as phone support is also imperative in case of a clear conversation. 

However live chat should be considered as another supporting channel for conversion besides phone support. 

Check out this image to understand 

Now, if you offer live chat support and your competitors don’t, then you definitely have an edge over them and it will reflect in your lead conversions. Customers will know the difference between your competitors' and your website. 

So these are the few of many advantages of live chat in your customer support strategy. Let’s know how to maximize the benefits of live chat for your brand. 

How to Get Maximum Benefits Out of Your Chat Support

Here we have listed some points you should follow while you are using chat for customer support. 

• Initiate the Chat when you find a customer is struggling to find something. 
• Respond as fast as possible. What good is your chat integration if you don’t answer quickly to your customer’s query.
• Use previous chat history in your favour. 
• Have a more casual tone than robotic.
• Try asking open ended questions. I.e What can I do for you? Also, try avoiding questions which can  be answered in Yes or No.
•  Do not try to be funny or sarcastic with conversation.
• Keep the answers short and to the point. 

Now  you might ask which live chat service or company I should choose to integrate in  my website. So, I have carried out research and come up with these popular and effective chat services that many small businesses and large businesses use.

1. Drift

Drift is a leading conversational marketing tool that allows you to generate more qualified leads without forms. Apart from the Chatbots and live chat, the one thing I love about this service is their schedule meeting option.  Through using a scheduled meeting option a customer can arrange a brief talk session regarding their business with the company's sales rep. 

If your goal  is to incorporate only one to one chat with customers, there is a free plan available in Drift chat. Other plans have more features for sales & marketing teams that are charged annually. The pais plans Essential and premium plan respectively charges $400 and $1500 per month. There is also a custom plan which lets you choose only needed features and tools. 

2. Crisp

Crisp is yet another freemium live chat platform service that provides its ingenious live chat services to small businesses. The chatbot provider company provides its services to startups, marketing teams, sales teams and customer support teams to generate more quality leads and convert them through it. 

By integrating Crisp chat, you can not only provide customers with personalized chat support with live chat but there are also crisp chat bots that provide automation in the customer support. You can also build personal and modern conversational experiences with videos and GIFs. Moreover, Crisp chat allows you to send file image documents through the chat and connect to social media platforms like facebook & twitter. Your customers can play an offline game named Crispy Bird in case of internet problems. 

Price: Basic- Free
Pro- $25 per month per website
Unlimited- $95 per month per website

3. FreshChat

Fresh chat is a live chat service of the company named Freshworks which also provides a suite of other marketing and sales solutions.  The chat app allows you to chat with the customers using customer support agents or AI powered bots. It also provides customers timeline view, in-app campaigns, customizable bots, and more to get more users. 

The service helps your team by allowing us to use smart plugs, labels, private notes and desktop notification to be more productive. Freshchat comes with many pricing models with the free version. 

4. Livechat

Live chat is considered as the industry leader in the chat domain. You can simply integrate with your WordPress site using its plugIn. 

Livechat provides live chat support apps you and your customer support agent can use on your desktops, laptops, mobiles and tablets. That means you can chat with your potential customers on the go. You don’t need to log in to your WordPress dashboard. 

Also, the app has the facility of adding surveys from before and after the chat session.  So you can know how your support team is doing. It integrated dozens of other services like CRM software, Zen desk, Google analytics, and other email marketing services. The speed of Livechat is considered to be the best compared to other Chat services. It opens and closes instantly. 

Its basic plan comes with $16 per month per agent billed annually but if you prefer paying monthly then it will be $19. Also all plans have a 14 days free trial period so you can understand the platform. 

5. Chaport

If you are searching for the free live chat support service for getting more customers then Chaport is the  best alternative to Crisp. They have a free forever plan with unlimited chat, history, notification, unlimited registered operations. It allows 5 operators online at the same time. 

Chaport includes all the basic requirements, live chat support for mobile devices, report & analytics, and third party integration with tools like zapier. Paid plans have even more features. 

The company also offers a free plan and a premium plan starting from $9.80 per agent / month.

You Can Build Your Own Live Chat App?

Yes, you can develop your live chat app as per your requirements, designs, and features. 

It is not necessary that you can only purchase the subscription-based chat service for your business. You can add any features you want to convert more website visitors to buyers. The benefit of creating a custom live chat app is that you don’t need to pay a monthly charge for it and have access to unlimited customer support agents. In the subscription plan as your business increases, you need a bigger support team and hence a costly plan. 

The cost of an app for live chat is worth it because it increases your conversion rate as high as 40%. You can approach any popular mobile or web app development company who can build you a chat app as per your requirement. 

Conclusion

Implementing live chat in your business is imperative for your business, especially in this competitive market. As we have seen in this article there are innumerable reasons you should integrate chat in your business as soon as possible. 

Live chat has a great effect on the quality of the service you offer to your customers which will ultimately result in better business. 

Do you use live chat for your brand? What are the results you have got with chat integration? Comment your opinion about it. 

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash