Benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce Websites
What is eCommerce Live Chat Support?
Live chat support is a form of online messaging that makes it possible for customers to communicate with a business’s customer service team. Its main goal is to quickly and sufficiently answer customers’ questions in order to boost conversions and increase customer satisfaction or to essentially act as a virtual sales associate for when customers need help while browsing online. The live chat option is usually found on each page of a business’s website and is typically displayed as a chat icon in the corner of the user’s screen.
Why is Live Chat Important for eCommerce Businesses?
Live chat support is an essential part of any eCommerce business strategy. It’s important to ensure that customers have a great live chat experience in order to avoid losing sales and the creation of a negative brand image. The benefits of live chat for eCommerce businesses include:
Increase Conversions & Decrease Cart Abandonment
By having live chat support readily available on your website, you’ll easily be able to capture more leads by quickly answering any questions that your customers may have, which in turn can increase conversions. Prior to having live chat support on your website, these potential leads would have been lost, as there would have been limited/no channels available for customers’ questions to be answered.
Offer a New Sales Channel
Live chat support can also be an excellent channel to place orders through. If a customer reaches out to a member of your customer service team with a question, you can also offer to check them out via the live chat software. However, depending on the live chat software you choose, you may need to configure another extension to enable ordering.
Improve Customer Experience & Customer Loyalty
By providing another customer service channel to customers, you’ll be able to further improve your customers’ overall experience on your website and with your brand. This in turn will lead to greater customer satisfaction and loyalty, and may improve customer lifetime value.
How to Add Live Chat to Your eCommerce Website
Your customers’ live chat experience can be the difference between making or losing a sale, which is why it is exceedingly important for you to pick the live chat platform that’s right for your eCommerce business. Thankfully, there are many different types of live chat support to choose from, which allows businesses to select the option that best suits their needs.
For example, businesses have the option to use an AI supported live chat, in which artificial intelligence will be holding the conversation with the customer, or to stay true to the traditional alternative of human-based interaction. If the latter option is chosen, businesses will also have to decide on who in the company will respond to live chat inquiries, or if they’d prefer to outsource live chat customer service to a third-party agency. If you have a smaller business, it may be more beneficial to delegate live chat customer service to one of your employees for a more personal touch, while outsourcing or AI may be a more suitable option for a larger organization.
However, perhaps the most important decision is which live chat platform to use. Ideally, you should pick a platform that integrates easily with your business’s content management system (CMS). Ultimately, the process of integrating live chat support on your eCommerce website will vary depending upon your chosen live chat platform, as well as your content management system– Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.
Not sure where to start with your live chat support integration? Contact Bytes.co for help! Our team of developers are experts when it comes to live chat integration and all things eCommerce. Feel free to set up a free website consultation with us at a time that’s most convenient for you.
