It’s no secret real-time and conversational digital experiences massively influence customer satisfaction and ability to convert. Whether you’re running an eCommerce or lead oriented website, implementing a live chat solution and allowing customers to start a chat conversation with your sales / customer agent or a specially trained AI bot will boost your performances.
There are so many data out there. In a nutshell:
- Consumers are 2.8 times more likely to end up purchasing a product when they engage with a live chat agent (source),
- You may reduce your incoming calls by 59% (source),
- Live chat is a channel that consistently drive customer satisfaction (source).
Convinced?
So which live chat solution to implement?
Any quick wins?
If you are using Salesforce for your CRM (Salesforce Service Cloud), you may look at your license contract since their live chat feature may already be included into your current agreement.
Live agent by Salesforce is obviously perfectly integrated to the Salesforce Service Cloud. On customer call, support agent will see customer information poping in. The conversation can be routed to the available sales agent as per your routing configuration.
Another quick win to look at is Hubspot or Brevo live chat feature. They both offer this feature with their free plan, included into their CRM platform. Can be interesting if you’re a small brand willing to test first.
All-round mid-market solutions:
There are plenty of Live Chat solutions on the market, ranging from free plan to a few hundreds of $ per months.
They all offer the ability to:
- Implement a live chat window on your website,
- Configure automated flows based on basic rules (i.e.. Collect leads, push marketing campaigns),
- Activate AI chatbot,
- Integrate with most CMS and eCommerce platforms (Shopify, WordPress…),
- Engage with your consumers on social media channels (What’s App, Meta, Instagram…),
Among those solutions, we can list:
- Tidio : https://www.tidio.com/
- Gleap: https://www.gleap.io/
- Olark: https://www.olark.com/
- Help Scout: https://www.helpscout.com/
- Freshworks: https://www.freshworks.com/fr/live-chat-software/
- Live Agent: https://www.liveagent.fr/
- Trengo: https://trengo.com/
Advanced solutions with AI capabilities
Finally, you have the Ferrari of the market:
- Powerfront does not only provides live chat feature AI-based, but also Clienteling, virtual selling and omnichannel engagement across all social channels (What’s App, Meta, WeChat, etc). L’Oréal, GUCCI and Staples, among others, have deployed this platform.
- iAdvize has pivoted from a Live chat solution only to an AI-shopping assistant solution. It’s quite impressive to see how their AI Copilot solution helps consumers in their purchasing decision.
- If you’re concern is to provide customer support (ticketing, customer support etc.), then you may look at Intercom who provides an AI-based suite of features including Live Chat, omnichannel conversations, and help center to support consumers and answer to their questions. And their pricing is not that expensive!
What are the key strategies to consider when implementing a live chat solution?
Besides choosing a solution, implementing a live chat feature for your brand implies to answer to the following questions.
Consideration #1. Which stage of the consumer journey to address?
On which part of the buying journey do I want to provide real-time conversations?
- During the prepurchase phase (ie on the category pages and the product detail pages) to answer to any questions consumers may have prior to the purchase,
- During the checkout process to solve any blocking point, reassure and secure the conversion,
- After the sales, to support consumers in using my products or services.
Consideration #2. How to provide an omnichannel experience?
- Remember consumers may start a conversation on your website or on your social media channels (Instagram, Meta, What’s App, WeChat etc.). Whatever channel they’re using, they feel they interact with your brand so you shouldn’t provide any downgraded experience among those channels.
- How to ensure your agents have the ability chat with your consumers whatever the channel?
- There are different behavior and standards from one channel to the other, how to ensure you learn and adapt to it?
Consideration #3. What are the impacts on my human resources?
- Implementing a chat feature is resource heavy. How many agents do I need? (remember an experienced agent can take 2 to 3 chat conversations simultaneously),
- How to train my agents to be comfortable with the chat channel (which is very different from the phone channel)?
- How to organize my customer service as per the different channels?
- How to route incoming calls and chat requests among my team?
Consideration #4. What about CRM integration and consumer data collection ?
- Providing an outstanding customer experience implies to integrate perfectly with your CRM platform. Each conversation should be saved into your customer contact history.
- Does the chosen solution integrate seamlessly with my current CRM platform?
- Does my agent can switch from chat conversation to phone conversation?
To wrap this up, hopefully you’re convinced Live chat feature is a must to improve your customer experience and you feel more comfortable to shape your project.
Remember, it’s an always evolving process where you need to test, track, learn and continuously improve your processes and operations as you learn.
Any question, let me know.