Ecommerce success is dependent on your customer being at the center of your business. This means attracting leads to your business and providing excellent customer service once they become customers.

A great feature for any ecommerce site is live chat. It can help you reach both of these goals. What is live chat exactly? What is live chat? How can you get the best out of it? Let’s investigate.

What is Live Chat?

Technology can be extremely complex at times. Sometimes, however, things can be as simple as they seem (as was the case with the first computer bug). Live chat is exactly what it sounds like: A chat that takes place on your website in real-time.

Chat is a great way for customers to communicate. Visitors to your website have an easy and quick way to reach you and receive answers to their questions. Customers simply need to type in the chat box or chat window and wait for a response.

It is often faster than calling or emailing, and customers, particularly younger ones, prefer it. Phone calls for personal information sharing are now less secure due to scammers like vishing.

Live chat is also popular because it is easy to use. The live chat app can be hosted right on your website and customers don’t need to download any software.

A majority of live chat apps have a widget that displays in the corner of the browser. This widget indicates to visitors that live chat is available. To activate a chatbox and chat away, they can click on the widget.

Live chat is essential for Ecommerce.

When running an ecommerce shop, there are many things to think about. What should I advertise? What’s inventory accounting? This list could go on.

Live chat can be a great tool for your business. There are many benefits to live chat on an ecommerce website. Both for the customer as well as the retailer.

First, live chat saves you time. Live chat is available right from the product page, so customers don’t have to interrupt their shopping experience. Live chat can also be a time-saver for customer service agents as they can deal with multiple clients at once.

Customers are looking to purchase and it is crucial that you respond quickly to their questions. A customer’s hesitation can quickly cause them to abandon the site. Therefore, it is possible to reduce abandonment rates by responding quickly.

Chat adds a personal touch to your ecommerce shop. Chat is similar to calling a sales representative in a brick-and-mortar store for assistance. It can also be very comforting to customers.

Live chat, along with other real-time data analytics, can give valuable insight into customer behavior. To identify customer pain points, you can analyze when customers accessed live chat.

Live chat can be used to collect customer feedback and provide further insight into your shopping experience.

Ten Tips to Use Live Chat in Ecommerce.

Now you know what live chat is and how it can benefit your ecommerce store. It’s now time to go one step further. These are our top tips to help you make the most of live chat.

1. Respectfully approach your visitors

Waiting for customers to initiate a chat is a bad idea. This could result in missing out on valuable interactions that could lead you to sales. This can be avoided by inviting customers to join a chat.

Your live chat software can be set up to automatically invite website visitors for a chat if they meet certain criteria. If a customer switches between product pages for similar products frequently, you can send them a chat invitation asking if they need any help choosing between the two.

Respect is key when inviting customers to chat. Customers may just want to browse the site without interruptions, so sending them repeated invitations to chat could be a waste of time and cause them to leave.

2. You can make live chat available across your entire website

Ecommerce websites make the common mistake of only making live chat available on specific pages. Customers have just started browsing your website from the homepage, so they are unlikely to have many questions.

Customers are more likely to use live chat to inquire about product-specific issues or to complete the checkout process. Ensure that live chat is available on all your websites so customers can request assistance from anywhere in the sales funnel.

Your live chat widget should be visible on all pages, but not overpowering. This will ensure that customers aren’t distracted from their shopping experience. Your live chat app should be optimized for mobile browsing and desktop browsing. An increasing number of online shoppers now make purchases via mobile devices.

3. Do not leave your customers waiting

Live chat is a great option for customers who want quick answers to their questions. They may lose interest in your purchase if you wait too long for a reply.

It is important that you are able to respond quickly to chat requests. You need to have enough agents available to respond to customer requests, or a chatbot that can handle them.

Respondents were more likely to expect a response in less than a minute to questions about live chat. It could be time for a redesign of how your contact center structure is set up if your customer service representatives are unable to provide a satisfactory response time.

4. Chatbots: Make use of them

Chatbots are software programs that replicate human conversations. They respond to messages using natural language processing (NLP).

They are a valuable asset to any ecommerce store’s chat function. Because they are able to respond immediately to customer queries, they can dramatically reduce wait times.

Even basic chatbots are able to present visitors with a list predetermined questions. This allows them to narrow down their query or gather the information needed for a live agent to answer.

Smart chatbots can even go further by using artificial intelligence (AI), which allows them to understand customers’ needs and search relevant knowledge bases and data to give them a meaningful answer.

Chatbots can reduce wait times for customers and help reduce the workload of contact center agents. Agents can use chatbots to perform simple tasks like data collection and then focus their attention on more complex queries.

Chatbots are also available to provide 24/7 customer service. Chatbots can be used to provide live chat for customers even when agents are unavailable. The chatbot will gather information, and inform customers that agents will contact them when service hours resume.

5. Chat History

Chat histories should be made available to customer service agents. Customers don’t have the time to ask the same questions to multiple agents.

Agents can draw on chat history to quickly understand the customer’s problem and avoid suggesting solutions that have been tried before, which speeds up customer service.

Keep track of chat history information to help you coach your contact center agents. Agents can review interactions to find learning opportunities.

6. Visualize

Although “Live chat” may seem like a text-based medium with agents and website visitors only exchanging written communication (although that is not always the case), it can be a useful tool for interacting with customers.

Sometimes, a visual approach is required in some chats. It can be useful to show photos of the product being talked about in these cases to help highlight your message. A series of images showing the steps you took to resolve the problem can help speed up technical support.

You may also be able to share videos. These visual aids can be useful if there are frequent questions about particular products or features.

7. To collect information, you can use live chat

Chat can be a great way for customers to share their information, to both help them with customer service or to generate leads.

A form can be used to collect any information that the agent might need in a customer service environment. Automating this process allows the live agent to save time and help customers with their queries.

Live chat is a great way to collect customer information in order to convert them into leads. You can ask visitors to sign up for further communication and then target them with targeted communications based on the interaction they had over live chat.

This can be done after a live chat session has ended, when the visitor’s question has been resolved to a satisfactory standard. This information can be then added to your customer relationship management software (CRM).

8. Use Knowledge Bases

A strong knowledge base on your website can help your customers to find answers to their questions. This knowledge can be further enhanced by integrating it with your live chat.

Chatbots can point customers to an FAQ Section, where they might be able find the assistance they need. Chatbots with smart technology may be able to reduce response time by searching the knowledge base and giving the answer without the need for a live agent.

Visitors should be able to contact a live agent when necessary. There will be instances when a chatbot won’t suffice and customers might feel like they’re going around in circles.

9. Use carefully crafted templates

Chat templates increase efficiency and speed up response times. It’s crucial to find the right balance between customer service that is quick and customer service that is effective. If templates sound robotic, it can make it seem impersonal and lead to low response rates.

Agents should be able to search for templates and make changes before they are sent. This will ensure that the visitor receives relevant information and sound natural within the context of the conversation.

It is important to clearly label templates so that they are easy to find. Also, keep them up-to-date with the most commonly asked questions.

10. Get your insights from chat to make improvements

There are likely to be a dozen people who use your live chat to ask questions.

You can pinpoint the areas that are limiting your potential sales by paying attention to the most common questions you get via live chat.

If you notice an increase in questions about the comparisons between products, it might be worth spending time creating a comparison section for your website.

You could create a blog post explaining the function of your telecommunications providers if you get a lot of questions, such as about the purpose of a frame relay or VPC which stands for.

Live chat can be used in many other ways to gain insights. A post-chat survey could be used to gather feedback about your website, products or the live chat function.

Have a good time chatting

Once you have discovered the many benefits that live chat can bring to your ecommerce store’s success, it is time to start implementing it.

Make live chat available on your website and have it manned by knowledgeable and experienced customer service agents. It’s as important as telephone customer service.

Explore how chatbots could benefit your brand and gain insights from chat windows.