All You Need to Know about Managed Live Chat
If you’re an online business, chances are that you’re always looking for ways to effectively (and efficiently!) engage customers and increase sales. And that’s where Managed Live Chat comes into play.
Managed Live Chat is an all-in-one customer support solution that uses live chat sotfware to answer inbound inquiries from customers visiting your website. It’s a proven way to convert leads into sales.
In fact, a recent study found that 79% of businesses say that offering live chat has had a positive effect on their sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
Managed Live Chat is also a way to satisfy the increasing demands of NOW Customers— consumers who seek instant, around-the-clock responses and empathetic solutions from the brands they frequent. These NOW Customers can’t help themselves from comparing your business’s customer experience to the best they’ve ever had.
Amazon and other top-tier brands have raised the customer satisfaction bar to an all-time high, and now it’s up to your company to meet—if not exceed—this golden standard.
So how do you do it? One good place to start is by offering a 24/7/365 live chat service on your website.
Read on to learn how Managed Live Chat works, its features and benefits, how it converts browsers into buyers, and more.
First things first, however. Let’s level-set by taking a look at what live chat in general entails.
What is a Live Chat Service?
Live chat service is a software technology that allows customers to communicate directly with customer service representatives in real-time online. Website users receive immediate support and information from customer care agents through one-on-one conversations.
Unlike chatbots, live chat features living and breathing humans, so you’re getting the real deal vs. canned, robotic responses.
Because of its real-time nature, live chat has fast become the most preferred method of communication by consumers. When it comes to the wide array of communication channels available, 42% of customers say that they prefer to communicate with customer care agents through a live chat support channel. (Comparatively, 23% of customers prefer email and 16% prefer social media instant messaging, such as Facebook Messenger.)
What is a Managed Live Chat Service?
A Managed Live Chat Service is an all-in-one customer service management solution that provides the software platform, customer service agents, and back office staff to handle your business’ online live chat queries. Customer support reps answer customer inquiries on your website via a live chat tool in a very short period of time, guaranteeing satisfied customers.
In addition to fielding inbound internet inquiries, Managed Live Chat Service providers often engage in proactive chat, where they preemptively contact certain website visitors, such as those who are existing customers or have browsed the website before.
Proactive chat messaging includes everything from a generalized “How can I help you?” pop-up message to a very specific “Were you satisfied with X product that you recently purchased?” pop-up message.
Having a Managed Live Chat Service contract is particularly helpful if your product or service is expensive or complicated. It’s perfect for building relationships and rapport with website visitors, too.
Does Managed Live Chat Involve Real Humans?
This is a common question that many people ask Google! Managed Live Chat is powered by a human who interacts with your visitors when prompted. Unlike chatbots, human live chat agents can have authentic and empathetic conversations with your customers and solve complicated problems, which helps your brand build meaningful relationships with its customer base.
Offering human-to-human service is a smart choice, as the majority of customers prefer humans over bots. In fact, 95% of shoppers interacting with chatbots said that their experience would have been better with human help. It turns out that automation isn’t always best.
Furthermore, “botversations,” no matter how “lifelike” they may claim to be, are not fooling your customers. 95.5% of shoppers could tell the difference between chatbots and human customer support agents.
The bottom line? Customers crave a human touch, and Managed Live Chat satisfies this craving. Artificial intelligence-driven chatbots are better left to answer frequently asked questions (FAQs), which don’t require human-to-human engagement.
How Does Managed Live Chat Service Increase Conversions?
Move over marketing and advertising. Managed Live Chat is a trusted, cost-effective way to increase conversions on your webpages!
You work hard using SEO, PPC, and Google Ads to build a solid lead generation pipeline and get more visitors to your site, so it’s imperative that you make the most of this web traffic and convert as much of it as possible. But how exactly do you do this?
The secret to converting more web traffic is making it easy to buy your product or service. The secret to making it easy to buy is reducing friction by responding to questions quickly and accurately…And the secret to responding quickly and accurately is Managed Live Chat!
Live chat combines concierge-style, human-to-human conversations with a low-effort experience for the user, resulting in positive revenue-related results. Live chat agents can act as personal shopping assistants on your website, providing guidance, suggestions, and recommendations to customers on what to buy and why during the online shopping experience.
Specifically, live chat agents can provide proactive upsell recommendations, give alternative options when a product is out of stock or too expensive, suggest complementary products, promote product bundles, and turn returns into exchanges. All of these capabilities help increase average order value, conversion rates, and of course, your company’s overall revenue.
Ultimately, the difference between getting your web traffic to click “buy” instead of say “bye” is speed. Only 40% of customers will wait 60 seconds for a chat response. Clearly, time is of the essence when answering customer questions, or else— click, they’re gone. Therefore, it’s helpful to outsource your live chat to a company that can deliver lightning fast responses and ensure you’re capturing every opportunity to convert new customers.
The employment of Managed Live Chat during the purchase decision-making process can strategically assuage a potential buyer’s concerns or stress, answer any lingering questions, or provide extra details (such as shipping, pricing, or return policies).
Many online consumers say they want customer service from a human while they are shopping online. In fact, 50% of consumers say that having a live person answer questions in the middle of a purchasing decision is one of the most important features a brand can offer. It’s a win-win situation for both consumers and businesses seeking more conversions.
Why is Managed Live Chat Necessary?
No matter what industry you’re in, Managed Live Chat can be a worthwhile investment. The ROI of Managed Live Chat can be astounding in the immediate and not-so-immediate terms. In addition to increasing website conversions immediately, Managed Live Chat can result in sky-high increases in repurchase intent.
Case in point: There is an 800% increase in repurchase intent when companies use human help versus no human help in their online chat experiences. (Yes, you read that correctly!) Clearly, a human touch can go a long way when it comes to cultivating happy and satisfied customers.
Generally speaking, Managed Live Chat helps boost customer satisfaction by helping your website visitors find what they need in a quick manner. We are in the era of the NOW Customer, after all, who is always “on” and doesn’t know the meaning of “try again later.” The NOW Customer operates on their own time and on their own turf. If a company wants to “win” a NOW Customer, it must meet them where they are…. Which oftentimes happens to be online on a mobile device at all hours of the day!
Managed Live Chat helps satisfy the increasing demands of the NOW Customer, plus assists them in achieving multiple things that can improve customer satisfaction, such as:
- Saving money
- Meeting their needs
- Comparing products
- Checking for deals or trials
- Resolving issues or queries
In today’s competitive marketplace, brands that don’t offer Managed Live Chat will quickly lose the attention and loyalty of NOW Customers.
In addition to ensuring happy customers and boosting your bottom line, Managed Live Chat is a golden opportunity for fashion brands and other online retailers to have one-on-one, real-time conversations with their #1 target market: potential customers.
Having open discussions with potential buyers offers tremendous benefits. Live chat gives you unique access to the mind of your customers and consumer behavior! Customer chats are a treasure trove of valuable information and quality feedback, so make sure data analysis is part of your business plan.
Make sure your team is trained to analyze chats to identify your customers’ subscription habits, queries, concerns, lead generation sources, payment preferences, and more. Chat content is an amazing feedback loop that allows you to constantly fine-tune and improve your customer service and user experience (UX) metrics.
For instance, you might receive feedback regarding your credit card payment processing system or web design (e.g. server loading errors, download errors, or mobile device display issues) that can be passed on to your web developer to create an improved UX for customers down the road… And help you maintain stellar customer reviews!
Best of all, Managed Live Chat can be used for quality control purposes. As customers willingly communicate with your company (no surveillance or market research required!) make sure you’re tracking this wealth of data and analyzing it to see how agents are responding and what specific kind of communication is most effective with buyers.
Certain language, promotional discounts, pricing structures, and the like that prove to be especially productive can be incorporated when programming macros and writing guidelines for your agents. That way, your most effective content can be served up time and time again to delight customers.
harness the power of Managed Live Chat?
Managed Live Chat technology is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways of turning website visitors into customers. Simplr’s highly-trained and US-based 24/7/365 customer support team, referred to as the Human Cloud Network, is on call and ready to respond to your customers’ live chats, emails, and more. The Human Cloud Network is a dispersed, fully remote and flexible workforce ready to tackle your service issues and offer quality resolutions at any time across all digital channels.
Our business model is far different from the traditional contact center or business process outsourcing (BPO) model that includes fixed costs! Our Human Cloud Network scales up or down based on your business’ unique needs, making forecasting a thing of the past. We combine people, technology, and data analytics to transform customer experience from a cost center into a revenue-driving advantage.
Our team not only uses machine learning to ensure and scale the service success of our entire network, but also to provide our customers with the insights and metrics needed to proactively update any experience gaps that are causing friction for your customers.
Entrust your customer experience to the very best and start outsourcing your CX today!