How live chat enhances customer experience and fuels business growth

What began as just another customer service tool has today evolved into a powerful business-generation tool. Yes, it's the live chat feature that has become commonplace in business websites today.

As businesses go digital, the number of live chats they are handling is also on the rise. It is estimated that a typical business handles over a thousand chats per month. The global live chat software market size is projected to reach $839.2 million by 2026, from $591.6 million in 2020, at a CAGR of 6.0% during the forecast period 2021 to 2026.

The rising popularity of live chat is driven by a number of benefits it brings to businesses. Some of these include:

• Customer Satisfaction: It has been found that over 90% of the customers, who use live chat, reported greater satisfaction when compared with other tools—phone calls, emails, or web forms. The Real Estate industry reported a customer satisfaction rate of 98.56% with the use of live chats. It was followed closely by Transportation and Technology at 90.86% and 90.13%, respectively. Customer satisfaction levels increase with live chat as it allows businesses to provide their customers with an omnichannel experience when used with the virtual call center software. A greater customer satisfaction is a positive brand builder and promotes business growth.
• Connection: When customers are able to chat live with a real human, they feel connected due to the personalized responses—unlike a chatbot that provides a standard set of answers that become repetitive after a certain number of questions. This personalized attention makes the customers feel valued and they are more likely to make a transaction, which helps business growth. to talk to real humans, which gives them a personalized experience.
• More sales: Often, customers lose interest and abandon their carts at checkout. A proactive and timely intervention through live chat can help recover these leads by addressing the reason for abandonment. This can be gauged by the amount of time a customer spends on the payment page—a longer duration indicates that the customer may need help. Further, when customers feel lost or get confused, live chat can provide the required assistance and help customers complete the payment process, thus helping reduce the abandonment rates.
• Repeat business: A happy customer is more likely to bring repeat business. Therefore, it is essential to provide customers with excellent customer service, omnichannel support, and cart assistance to make them come back with repeat business.
• Customer recommendations: Customer satisfaction plays an enormous role in creating brand equity. Happy customers are more likely to recommend a product or service in their network, which can act as a catalyst for business growth. Further, regular feedback surveys or polls can be used to gauge customer sentiment and preferences so the offerings can be improvised.
• Remediate mistakes: Live chat provides businesses with an efficient tool to track customer activity. This includes the number of times the customer visits, the time she spends on each page, the products she browsed and found interesting, and so forth. Analysis of these live chat logs and intelligence can provide meaningful insights that can be actioned upon to remediate the mistakes and fuel business growth.

Live chat provides businesses with an efficient method that not only allows them to grow the business but also take appropriate actions to enhance customer satisfaction.

The article has been written by Neetu Katyal, Content and Marketing Consultant

She can be reached on LinkedIn.