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10 Benefits of Live Chat Software for Your Website

Providing exceptional customer service is crucial in today’s competitive marketplace.

Unfortunately, many small businesses struggle to respond promptly to inquiries and concerns, resulting in a poor customer experience and increasing the likelihood of losing valuable customers forever.

There are many ways to improve your customer service efforts, including hiring a support team to answer calls and emails and using software to allow you to connect with clients in real time. When customers have questions or concerns, they want responses immediately, especially if they’re experiencing issues that may affect your sales. Therefore, you need a customer service solution that can help you save time while ensuring exceptional service.

Live chat tools allow you to instantly connect with website visitors via direct messages or video chat to address questions and concerns in real time. With this software, businesses can improve the overall customer experience and show their audience how much they care by offering fast responses.

What is live chat software?

Website chat software is installed on your website and allows customers to communicate with your business in real time. As a result, they can have back-and-forth conversions with customer service teams instead of waiting for email replies or sitting on hold for hours. In addition, using live chat software lets customers send their immediate questions to someone who can quickly reply to them, ultimately helping to convert website visitors into customers.

For example, suppose you sell clothing online, and a patron has questions about a product before they add it to their cart. In that case, the client can message a customer service representative for fast answers, which may give them the exact information they need to make a purchase. Live chat features include connecting with multiple customers at once through unlimited chats, support monitoring, chat notifications, and detailed analytics and customer data to give you insight into your customer service strategies.

While the primary purpose of a live chat tool is to facilitate communication between companies and their clients, it offers several other benefits, including boosting sales and enhancing the entire shopping experience, which can increase brand loyalty.

Live chat software vs. AI chatbots

AI (artificial intelligence) chatbots are similar to website chat software. They can both be used in your website strategy to enhance customer service. However, instead of connecting with a real human, customers will get automated messages from AI bots to answer their questions and solve common issues. Chatbots can nurture leads and improve the online shopping experience, but you must ensure you have all the necessary answers added into the system to help your customers effectively.

Chatbots allow your website visitors to have 24/7 access to your company. Still, they’re less effective than human-to-human interaction, and if you don’t program them correctly, they might not benefit your customers. Live chat allows your company to accomplish things AI chatbots can’t, including giving customers access to someone who can answer questions without programming responses. These individuals are also able to understand and empathize with customers to improve their experience. In addition, live chat conversations make customers feel like you care about them because you’ve taken the time to answer their queries.

Unfortunately, there are limitations to live chat software when improving your customer service strategy. For example, you’ll need more staff to answer questions in real time, and human agents may be unable to work 24/7 to offer support.

Benefits of using live chat software for your website

The best live chat software can improve your customer service processes, making it easier for agents to handle questions and concerns in real time instead of making phone calls and responding to confusing email threads. In addition, live chat solutions offer the following benefits for your business:

Increase customer satisfaction

Customer service is essential to your business. Companies with poor customer service lose clients and have bad reputations, ultimately impacting their overall growth and profitability.

41% of consumers prefer real-time support via live chat.

41% of consumers prefer real-time support via live chat because they favor connecting with a human who can answer any of their questions instead of talking to a robot that may only be able to answer a few inquiries.

Boost customer engagement

You may think your website product and service pages answer many of the questions consumers have. However, your website can’t do everything, and you can’t anticipate every question your prospective clients will come up with. Therefore, enabling online chat software can help boost engagement with your brand by delivering helpful content and information to customers while they’re immersed in the buying journey.

If your customer is interested in a product but has a question, you don’t want them to call or email you to get the answers they need because it takes them out of the journey. When a customer is almost ready to make a purchase, they should get answers to their questions as soon as possible while they’re still engaged to increase sales.

Provide 24/7 support

With the best live chat software, businesses have the option to provide 24/7 support to customers. However, this ability will depend on your resources. Many small businesses don’t have enough staff to cover the full 24 hours in a day. However, if you provide answers at any time, you can improve customer satisfaction and boost engagement.

Immediate communication

Website chat software offers immediate communication. Your customers no longer have to grab their mobile devices to make a phone call or leave your website to send an email to customer support, hoping someone will answer their questions quickly. When customers have a serious concern about a product or service, they want an immediate response.

The best chat software allows your agents to respond immediately to concerns. Good and fast customer service can remedy any issues that may affect your reputation.

Acquire more customers

The goal of every business is to increase sales, and to do that, you must acquire more customers. While the main goal of online chat software isn’t to boost your sales, providing better customer service can help you reach this objective.

38% of shoppers are more likely to buy from companies that offer live chat support.

38% of shoppers are more likely to buy from companies that offer live chat support because they value personal and fast interactions. If your potential customer has a question about a product before making a purchase, you’ll want to answer that question as fast as possible without making them wait for a response.

Enhance user experience (UX)

User experience describes the interaction between the end user (your customer) and your brand from the moment they first discover your business until they’re no longer customers. It includes elements like the quality of the products and services, customer assistance, and modern website design. For example, using online chat software on your website will enhance the user experience of your website and the company as a whole because it offers consumers an easy way to chat with a real human and answers to their pressing questions.

Save money

While online chat software requires customer care agents who can answer questions, it can save you money in the long run because it’s more efficient than email and phone calls. Since agents can handle multiple customers simultaneously, you won’t need to hire more employees. Additionally, an agent can simultaneously service numerous customers via phone, email, and online chat.

Improve productivity

We just touched on efficiency when discussing how chat support software can save you time. However, it improves productivity by allowing your customer service representatives to solve multiple issues at once instead of responding to them one at a time.

When customer service representatives talk to customers on the phone, they can only handle one person at a time. However, online chat software allows them to open multiple chats at once to instantly message individuals back and solve problems faster. With this software, your customer care specialists can handle more inquiries in a day by reducing the time it takes for someone to wait for assistance.

Resolve issues quickly

Resolving customer issues quickly is crucial to the success of your business. For example, depending on your policies, if a customer’s product breaks during the shipping process, it’s your responsibility to either refund, exchange, or send a new product. Customers who have already spent money with your business expect their concerns to be taken care of immediately. Waiting too long to resolve issues can result in negative online reviews and a poor reputation, which can impact your entire business.

Access to analytics tools

With online chat software, you’ll have analytics to help you measure the effectiveness of your customer service strategy. For example, you can determine how many support tickets are resolved daily, monitor your agents’ activity to identify top performers, and view chat history. In addition, you can track your customer inquiries to find the most common complaints and address them on your website to reduce the number of questions you receive.

Limitations of live chat software

While online chat software can improve every aspect of your customer service strategy, it has a few limitations, including:

  • Poor user experience: Even though website chat software can improve the user experience, it may result in a poor experience when used incorrectly. For example, 29% of consumers are frustrated by scripted and impersonal responses. Many companies try to save time by pre-writing answers and using other automation tools for common questions. However, customers can tell when you’re brushing them off, making them feel like you don’t care.
29% of consumers are frustrated by scripted and impersonal responses during live chat.
  • Wait times: One of the advantages of chat support software is that it can help reduce wait times for customers. However, if you don’t have enough resources, consumers will wait long periods for a response. To customers, website chat software means you can answer them in real time, so they don’t want to wait for a reply.

Exceed customer expectations with live chat software

Live chat software can help you improve customer service. Unfortunately, many small businesses fail to provide good customer service that meets or exceeds the demanding expectations of consumers. If you want to strengthen client relationships while reducing wait times and ensuring your company has a good reputation, consider online chat software.

Of course, to use a live chat widget, you need a website that converts and welcomes customers. Mailchimp makes it easy for you to build a great website for your business to begin using live chat and improve your customer service efforts.

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