Live chat has become the leading digital contact method for most online consumers. According to various surveys, a staggering 46% of customers prefer live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media. But with the competition in the eCommerce domain increasing by the day, so are the expectations of consumers from live chats.
And come to think of it, as a consumer, when was the last time a brand responded to your questions right away?
Or as a business, when was the last time you were able to reply to a customer ‘just in time’ and strike a conversation to help them make a purchase before they walk away.
Live chat for most eCommerce stores is dead and it’s not just impacting your sales, but also your brand – negatively.
In this episode of Content Kettle, Eric Kades, the Founder of TextChat, an eCommerce expert with decades of experience in customer support, talks about how live chat needs to evolve with the times to help store owners manage it all on their own.
About TextChat
TextChat is a highly personalized live chat tool that brings the timelessness of human connection and the sophistication of AI technology together, in one simple solution.
Through this, quick turnaround times are possible and so is closing a sale on live chat.
After years of analyzing and identifying the problem with live chat as well as customer support, they have built a solution that leverages both SMS and live chat to enable online store owners, marketers, and support teams to finally get talking with their site visitors!
Here’s what Eric had to share.
Talking to customers is paramount
Customers will have questions. Being able to answer those questions is extremely important to boost your sales.
Eric mentions a recent article by Forbes which states that customer experience is the new flagship store.
Talking to your customers is an attempt to build a bond with them. This enforces the idea that they matter to you. It’s an even added advantage if this communication goes one-on-one.
Talking at the right time matters
“If you speak to a customer within a minute, you have a 391% better chance of closing that customer into a sale”, he says. Furthermore, “78% of buyers buy from the first person they talk to”.
Adding this channel of communication, while the person is on your website with an intention to make a purchase or at least in the buying mode, is really a game-changer. Speed and lead really go hand-in-hand when it comes to attending to your customer’s queries.
During this pandemic, people are in a way deprived of basic human communication more than ever. With TextChat we are making it easier to talk to your customers and also establish a connection, thus creating a bigger impact.
He says “Live chat was the number one converting resource of my customers yet wasn’t really accessible to all businesses”. “With TextChat, we made replying very easy in live chat even for smallest businesses”, he continues.
Your live chat needs a healthy ratio of automation, AI and an actual human
When asked about chatbots and automation, he says that in certain instances AI and automation are great solutions.
“(However) live chat to me is all about sales”, Eric stresses.
So while it makes the most sense to rely on automation for queries related to let’s say, delivery date details, in most others it simply does not. This means you need to also tie in backend systems to be able to pull it up in automation.
Nevertheless, when it comes to a specific sales question, automated replies frustrate customers. Most of these replies are going to be vague.
This means just using a chatbot is not the solution. You need to have a safety valve to redirect these conversations to an actual human when needed. Chatbots without human interaction is always a bad solution. You would rather go without one!
No chatbot is going to have the same enthusiasm as that of a human
When it is a sales-related query – get a human there. Always.
No chatbot is going to be able to pitch your products/services with the same conviction as an actual person. Yes, you can train your bot and AI over time but the technology required to build a chatbot that could possibly be as intelligent as a human is at least two decades away!
Miss no opportunity of sales because you had no means of answering a simple customer query. TextChat makes this process so much simpler through text messages directly sent to your phones.
If you’re interested in implementing the strategies that Eric shares during the podcast, get the TextChat live chat app here.
Listen more about Eric’s take on converting traffic to sales, the importance of content marketing, his two cents worth to budding companies and so much more in this episode here.
Content Kettle is our E-Commerce Special podcast. Starting an eCommerce business may have gotten easier. But taking your products to buyers is getting tougher by the day. In the age of rising competition and a digital-first take on consumer-brand relationships, what eCommerce marketing strategies really work? In this podcast, we talk to brand owners, marketers and eCommerce experts to help you reach ‘what works’, faster.
