Exploring What is Live Chat: A Comprehensive Guide

For businesses to flourish, an impeccable customer support system is everything. They must be able to communicate with their customer body efficiently and effectively. Live chat has come across as the best way to achieve this. It allows businesses, big and small, to communicate with their consumers in real time. This naturally resolves customer issues and queries as quickly as possible. This is the essence of today’s seamless business success, making live chat an essential tool for every business today.

Go through this article to find out What is live chat, delve deep into the exploration of live chat and how it can revolutionize customer communication and support.

What is Live Chat?

As the significance of efficient customer service becomes more evident, more and more companies today are turning to live chat to provide the best customer service. Let’s answer the million-dollar question first. What is live chat exactly?

Live chat is a real-time, text-based communication tool that enables businesses to communicate with their customers in the most human and natural way. Unlike conservative customer service tools such as email or phone, live chat allows for a two-way communication channel where both parties can interact and respond to each other. It transforms the entire experience into a more interactive and personal one.

Besides being personal, live chat is also faster than other customer service channels, as the customers get an immediate response without waiting or holding on. Moreover, as opposed to emails and phone-based customer support, which are often only available during office hours, live chat is usually available around the clock. This is an amazing opportunity for businesses that are dealing with international customers who live in distinct time zones. Overall, live chat has proved to be a fairly powerful customer service provider.

How Does Live Chat Work?

Among a large collection of different communication tools, live chat has a special place because of its immediacy, convenience, and options for personalization.

Now that we know what is live chat online, how does a live chat work?

Let us look at it from a technical viewpoint. What are the technologies that support this communication channel? The simplest way of defining live chat is that it is a messaging app that lets customers communicate with different businesses in real time.

We all know that. What most of us don’t understand is that a chat snippet is basically a chat widget, which is a small piece of JavaScript code that needs to be added to your website. To do that, you must access the website’s source files, a tool for editing them, and then upload them back to the hosting. One necessary step is needed before all this can be done, which includes choosing a live chat software vendor. It is a tool that allows the installation of live chat on the app or website and talking to the clients in real time.

From a support team’s perspective, all of the chat lands in a queue where it is then further assigned, prioritized, and managed. There are various advanced features available that can allow businesses to leverage the entire process. They can also be marked using custom tags for easy identification by the agents later on.

What are the Benefits of Live Chat?

Customers are always looking for efficient, fast, and convenient business engagement. Providing this kind of business engagement is only possible when a business becomes aware of which channels customers prefer the most.

Let’s delve into some of the top benefits of live chat that businesses cannot ignore.

Enhanced Customer Engagement

Brands deploy live chat to engage with their customer body 24/7, providing immediate answers to common support-related questions or sales. Automating live chat conversations has proved to be an excellent way to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs, leading to enhanced customer engagement. Live chat can also help answer millions of queries put in by customers across several channels instantly.

Improved Customer Satisfaction

Live chat is also an amazing assistance for businesses in quickly addressing and solving customer concerns before they become actual concerns. Using the benefits and advanced features of the live chat software tends to help ensure the provision of proactive support to the customers. Moreover, instant connectivity with the consumer body also becomes possible, which immediately determines their requirements and provides services that best meet their interests. Agents can also leverage live chat features to understand issues to their best, offering timely solutions. All of this leads to improved customer satisfaction.

Faster Response Times

Response times refer to the time between the start of the chat and it being responded to. Live chat naturally improves the support team’s efficiency by decreasing response times. Expectations of receiving a response through live chat are three times higher than text.

Increases Sales and Conversions

It is important to engage with the customers at the right time as it can help them in making a quick sales decision. With the help of live chat, agents are able to trigger more personalized messages, shortening the cycle and increasing sales as well as conversions. Quick support and active engagement are essential to maximize the possibility of making online purchases, which can be achieved through live chat.

Builds Customer Loyalty

The development of relationships with the same customers over ongoing chat conversations builds customer loyalty by increasing positive chat experiences, thereby increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases by the customers.

Best Practices for Implementing Live Chat

Provision of great customer service through live chat will only be possible when it is appropriately implemented. It will allow the building of a good rapport with the consumer body. Here are a few practices that need to be followed to provide a remarkable customer service experience.

Be Adequately Responsive – Customers tend to appreciate immediate responses to their questions and inquiries. Your live chat should be able to respond to every customer within a few minutes.

Be Professional and Courteous – The live chat’s tone should always be professional and courteous while interacting with customers. This helps build confidence and trust with the customer.

Be Very Helpful – Be sure to provide accurate and helpful information to the customer. Get back to customers as soon as possible by trying to learn what they want.

Follow Up Properly – Following up is as crucial as being helpful and providing adequate responses. After every chat session, following up with the customer is essential to ensure the issue is resolved. This also shows the customers that they are being provided with the best customer service.

Choosing the Right Live Chat Solution

If you own a business, you know that selecting the right live chat solution is paramount. The correct live chat software assists in reducing operational costs, improving customer satisfaction, and increasing sales. Here are a few factors to be considered when deciding to choose a live chat solution.

Company Size

When deciding on which live chat software to use, it is important to consider the company size. The reason why company size is significant is because every company has different requirements and goals. For instance, startups wouldn’t have the exact requirements of large enterprises. Therefore, live chat software for one company may not necessarily work for the other.

If the company is smaller, a simple software solution can be utilized as the employees can handle the chats with the customers. With the software implemented, they can focus on the customers who need the most assistance.

For larger companies, the case would be different. A complex live chat software will be required for larger companies that can be customized in multiple ways according to the company’s requirements.

Use Case

The use case for the live chat software is the most important factor. Live chat can be largely employed for customer support and sales, with each use case having its own distinct set of features.

Live chat for customer support is used for answering customers’ queries, taking orders, helping troubleshoot problems, and more. Sales live chat, on the other hand, can also be utilized for customer support but also focuses on potential lead generation.

Integration Capabilities

It is good to have the live chat software integrated with third-party systems for performing specific business functions, as it makes the general experience smooth for both businesses and users.

For instance, if the live chat software is integrated with the CRM, each customer’s contact details can be saved to the CRM without manually entering the information again. The chat system also needs to be integrated with a messaging app such as Skype or Slack so that as soon as a new message arrives, you can be notified immediately.

Security Features

The provision of security features is one of the most important factors to consider when selecting a live chat solution. This is particularly significant because the growth in technology has also invited hackers to barge into weak online systems. These hackers access people’s private data and misuse it.

The best live chat solution should be able to provide security features to help protect customers’ information from hackers’ hands.

Chatbot vs Live Chat

Live chat offers communication from human to human, adding empathy for supporting conversations. Chatbots, on the other hand, elevate the entire support experience by providing quick answers to support queries as well as automating responses. One is a digital communication platform, while the other is a conversational platform that mimics human interactions with consumers.

They can engage with consumers, nurture leads, and collect consumer data. The best part about chatbots is that they can be integrated with third-party apps comfortably, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and ABC. In nearly all their features, chatbots are more efficient than live chat.

Integrate AI Chatbot to Strengthen Live Chat Experience

As we have seen in the article, both chatbots and live chat can function independently without the other. Both of these possess their own advantages and, therefore, must be chosen by businesses according to their preferences and requirements.

As chatbots and live chat go hand in hand, it is best to integrate an AI chatbot with the help of ChatInsight AI to strengthen your live chat game. With the help of a chatbot, live chat can become far more efficient than when utilized without it. This excellent platform provides the best possible solutions to automate routine tasks and provide round-the-clock support.

It also offers the following features to accommodate live chat for businesses and content creators:

• Integrates with the live chat software, providing support even beyond business hours. It collects the required information from the customer and passes it on to the agent as soon as possible.
• Converse with website visitors, engaging them with proactive messages. This information can then be passed on to agents for further action.
• It also reduces client wait time by easily solving common product, pricing, and service queries.
• The service also offers multilingual support. It breaks down all the language barriers, helping you answer questions from consumers in their preferred language.

Summary

The importance of live chat in providing impeccable customer service cannot be undermined. It not only helps customers find the right product but also answers any queries that they might have instantly. There are several benefits attached to live chat, such as streamlining operations and improving communication between customers and businesses, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction.

However, acquiring the advantages of live chat largely depends on your choice of live chat software. An efficient software along with a powerful chatbot such as ChatInsight AI can bring accolades to your company sooner than ever before.