Chat is increasingly mentioned in the same breath as customer service. Consumers want quicker assistance. Perhaps you're considering implementing a proactive live chat on your website. What are the benefits? How do you ensure your online store uses chat automation without losing personal contact with customers? In this article, we help the online entrepreneur make choices in the realm of digital customer service.
What's the difference between chat and a chatbot?
While chat is a digital communication channel with a personal touch, a chatbot is a form of software. This 'bot' enables conversations to be simulated based on certain settings. It is expected that these settings will eventually be replaced by artificial intelligence, where the chatbot stores information, becomes increasingly intelligent, and can better respond (intelligent routing) to a wide variety of customer inquiries.
Large-scale budget operators prefer their employees to work mechanically: instructions in a script are executed exactly and efficiently during a customer conversation. This leads to routine actions that in these standard call centres can increasingly be taken over by a chatbot. However, as a customer service organisation, we know that customer contact requires a personal approach: human conversations that cannot be replicated by an automated process. Through a chatbot, a customer quickly receives an answer to their question, but personal contact is lacking. Customer service representatives are empathetic, understanding, and capable of expressing emotions in a chat conversation. Chatbots are quick and accurate. Additionally, the responses from a bot are often too generic to resolve a customer's question. We prefer to explain this with the example that two customers with the same question often aren't helped by the same answer. How is that possible? The answer is dependent on the personal customer situation.
Favourite channels
61% Phone
60% Chat
60% E-mail
How does your target audience want to communicate?
Phone contact with customer service departments is still the most popular. In addition, the preference for chat is growing among the generation that prefers online communication. The digital generation finds chat convenient and enjoys being able to pause an online session and resume a chat in a new session. As a customer service organisation, we notice that live chat is an essential addition to our phone and e-mail services. Customers of our clients experience the combination and linking of channels as ideal. Simple questions with high priority can be easily asked through chat, while more in-depth and personal questions are addressed by phone or e-mail. Increasingly, integrations can facilitate a multichannel process with rich customer data and an increasingly personal approach.
Can chat boost your conversion rate?
Research shows that live chat contributes to higher online conversion rates. With chat, customers are less likely to seek out a competitor since they receive quick responses to their inquiries. Sometimes, requesting a quote is no longer necessary because the customer service representative in the chat provides the consumer with what to expect. The research also indicates that after a chat session, a consumer tends to spend more money. This is due to the personal communication aspect of chat, which makes them feel assisted and heard. Satisfaction increases, and the consumer ends their online session with at least a feeling of satisfaction with the company and, perhaps, an intention to make a purchase.
Thus, chat, in combination with other channels, contributes to customer trust and loyalty. Loyalty and customer trust directly contribute to conversion. All in all, we can conclude that customer service via chat is indispensable for the entrepreneur who:
wants to position themselves as active;
values accessibility;
is interested in the consumer.
