When was the last time you texted someone on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger? I bet you keep at least three WhatsApp conversations going right now. While reading this article. And doing a bunch of other things.
These days, we can’t imagine our lives without messengers. It allows us to have real-time conversations with friends and family and multitask, all at the same time. Which brings us to messengers as business tools.
It’s been said a lot about live chat and its advantages over the years – how people prefer it over all the other customer service channels, how it increases loyalty, conversions and how it can pretty much bring us all world peace. But what are the actual facts? Is live chat really that awesome?
We’ve collected 5 main advantages that a business can get from live chat and present them to you in the following infographic. Every word in it is backed by data and common sense.
1. The highest customer satisfaction rate
Live chat shows the highest customer satisfaction rate of 73% if compared to other customer service channels.
For instance, only 61% of email support users and 45% of social media support users were satisfied with the customer service they received via corresponding channels.
Call centers scored the lowest satisfaction rate of 44%.
2. Higher conversions
It’s generally agreed that live chat can increase conversions. But different sources give different numbers on exactly how much those conversions can increase.
According to the generally admitted and widely quoted research by the American Marketing Association, B2B companies that use live chat experience a 20% increase in conversions.
Moreover, 40% of customers claimed that they’re more likely to buy from the same website repeatedly if they had a live chat conversation there. To be more precise, 12% are ready to buy once or twice per week and 28% buy more than 1-2 times per week.
3. The shortest first response time
Live chat customer support shows the fastest first response time with the overwhelming result of 2 minutes and 40 seconds. This is almost as fast as phone calls.
Compare this to 10 hours for social media and 17 hours for email.
4. Cheaper and way easier to scale
Maintaining and scaling live chat support is much cheaper than any other channel. The cost per contact for live chat support is only $5, while call centers’ contacts cost $12 each.
All in all, live chat is up to 33% cheaper than a call center.
5. Increased retention
63% of customers are more likely to return to a website if they previously used live chat there.
And 62% of customers are more likely to buy from it.
Bottom line:
Not for nothing, live chat is just a great way for communicating with your customers. They don’t want to wait on hold no more (if they ever even did), they want to get their issues resolved fast and efficiently. The new era of customer communications is upon us.
As a matter of fact, getting a live chat for your website or app is easier than ever. You just need to choose a live chat tool, copy and paste a few lines of code and you’ll see a live chat button on your website right away.
Disclaimer! This post was originally published on the HelpCrunch blog by Anastasiia Khlystova