Taking a page from its B2C counterparts, B2B marketers are now utilizing online tools to engage with their prospects, thus resulting in better customer satisfaction.
But we all know just how difficult user acquisition can be. In fact, according to HubSpot, over 50% of customers fail to find brands as reliable as they did before. Meanwhile, 65% don’t trust ads and 71% show no faith concerning sponsored social media posts.
This lack of trust in brands has made things much more challenging for marketing & sales teams to execute their job. Truth is, consumers naturally are skeptical about purchasing things from unknown vendors because it’s in our human nature to do so.
However, this changes with the use of live chat as it creates a direct conversation between the buyer and seller. This in turn builds trust and mends the bridge between offline & online purchases.
So, the big question is, can live chat genuinely help overcome the status from being a customer servicing tool to a machine that generates sales? Well, let’s have a look.
The Influence of Live Chat
A study made by ATG on Global Consumer Trends revealed how 90% of customers state live chat as something that assures confidence regarding any assistance whenever they may require it. Rest assured, without this neat tool, building trust with site visitors will be much harder.
So, following the above words of well-known Swedish mathematician AndrejsDunkels, let’s dive into some sweet statistics:
- From the American Marketing Association, B2B companies that utilize live chat observe a 20 percent increase in conversions –on an average!
- According to Telus International, research reveals customer service agents can engage in simultaneous chats (up to six) depending on how complex the issues are. While live chat is a lot cheaper (by about 50%) compared to handling phone calls.
- Another research from eDigital research paper reveals how live chat maintains the best satisfaction levels concerning any channel for customer service, with 73%, compared to email (61%)and phone (44%).
There’s no denying the fact that live chat software is beneficial for businesses. Hence, the question isn’t ‘if’ you’ll implement it but rather ‘when’ and perhaps even ‘how’.
5 Ways to Leverage Live Chat For Marketing & User Acquisition
Speed is key, particularly in our current digital age. From shipping products overnight to instant product/service access, customers want that instant, lightning-fast deal and for the most part, they do get it.
Unfortunately, in terms of customer service, this isn’t the case. Research reveals the average duration for any customer service requests put on social media to be about 10 hours while email response can span over 12 hours!
For any sane marketer, this shouldn’t be acceptable. Plus, dealing with such delays will result in losing customers. So, how can marketers respond quicker?
Well, this is where the ‘how’ of implementing live chat comes in handy. To further help you navigate, here’s a deeper look into some ways you can leverage live chat for better marketing & user acquisition.
1. Live Chat As a Pathway to Conversational Marketing
This (conversational marketing) essentially means, engaging with a customer more organically using Chabot’s & live chat tools by asking questions instead of leading them to a more generic contact.
Just how helpful can this be?
The introduction of conversational marketing has, in fact, observed about a 30% increase in leads. But this simply isn’t all about numbers. It also improves lead quality as it actually allows customers to ask much more impactful questions.
Think of conversational marketing as something that can figure out the potential pain points of customers while assisting them in identifying whatever information they require.
Are they going to seal the deal or are they simply carrying out research?
Could they have enough buying power, or should you contact someone with more authority?
What landed them on your site?
Now, weigh that against the information you’re able to gather through a contact form – the result would probably be nothing more than a name, a company, or an email address, and perhaps their phone number.
It’s pretty clear to spot which one yields the best result.
2. A Means to Reducing Product Returns
It knocks more sense that the more a product remains informative to the customer, the less likely they are to have it returned.
Now, this is something you can actually monetize through live chat. But how?
By actively urging customers on asking questions. In the digital world, this equates to how a shop assistant normally enquires customers on any sort of assistance or product direction, except this one is a lot less intrusive.
While live chats generally shouldn’t be forceful or aggressive in any way (live chats should of course be enabled for the customer to minimize or even removed and shouldn’t reappear unless activated by the customer).
In fact, it’s helpful to assure customers of the inclusion of an online assistant but only if they’re needed or required as per the customer’s will.
3. Upsell
Let us first clarify the above headline – by ‘upsell’, the suggestion isn’t to sell individuals products they don’t require through live chat.
For one, it’s immoral and probably won’t yield much if we’re staring at it from a long-term perspective.
You see, when a customer is looking for a purchase and you figure a cheaper alternative that may suit them better, let your revenue take a hit and speak up.
This might seem like your revenue is taking a dip but this can actually help build customer trust. After all, there wasn’t a need for your business to down-sell, hence all arrows point to you simply looking over the customer’s best interest.
Now, this is a technique that comes in extremely handy for increasing customer loyalty.
Additionally, live chat has shown instances of significantly increasing the average order value. According to Bold360, customers with live chat engagement remain likely to spend more on purchases (by as much as 60%).
But this isn’t only about the “cheaper alternative” – the alternative option may exceed their initial budget, however, if the customer sees the alternative (cheaper or not) as providing the best “value for money”, they’ll likely spend more but also remain satisfied with the purchase.
4. Extracting Data to Enable Better Informed Decisions
The majority of live chat platforms blend real-time data along with analytics tools that allow you to locate what works and what needs to be improved.
This can help observe the performance of your agent on a metric like the number of customers handled or the satisfaction of customers, thus, helping in identifying their strengths and weaknesses.
Additionally, this data can help determine the optimum customer-agent ratio. However, what’s even more exciting is the ability of live chat analytics to quickly identify those common trends that cause customers to utilize live chat.
You see, the entire purpose of live chat is the active engagement of informing customers in case something’s wrong (something that’s quite difficult and eerie to bring up over the phone).
Plus, live chat analytics can allow you to look through the page your visitor was it when the chat was initiated.
This is helpful as an unusual amount of chat garnered over a particular page could signal an issue that requires attention. Hence, you’ll get to have a better look to make all the necessary improvements.
The information that you’re gaining from both the customer and your analytics will forever be priceless. When employed correctly, it can enable you to make quick detection and tackle issues/problems that may have otherwise hindered your growth.
5. Saving Up on Your Resource
If there’s anything we’ve learned so far, it’s the fact that customer experience is pivotal for any business. However, managing your finance closely ties with this factor as well. How?
Live chat systems allow employees to tackle several customer queries simultaneously. This in turn enhances workforce productivity – meaning increased output but less staff.
This basically means, less staff power is required for providing the same, if not better support. This essentially leads to reduced operational costs, increased revenue & profit, meaning more investment in marketing &growth.
Yes, the cost of setup is a given, and you’ll pay for a provider fee monthly, but these are negligible when placed against the cost involved in finding, training, and then employing a full-time staff member.
Final Thoughts
There are no shortcuts for succeeding in business. If you want to be progressive, you can’t be ignorant over valuable tools like live chat software because the key in each business is the customer, and today, they want fast access along with instant support to ease their purchasing process.
By leveraging live chat, you’re able to engage with customers much quicker while also providing a comfortable user experience. Plus, let’s not forget how live chats can actually bring down those support costs and increase the average order value along with overall sales.
Now, that sounds like a killer of a tool!
The best part is, live chat can provide a competitive edge, especially in the B2B sector where online chat isn’t as common. It has great potential – something that can offer that extra and distinguishing feature every business works towards creating.
Author Bio:
My name is Lauren Williams, currently working as a SMM at MedicoReach. I have been working in the B2B healthcare industry for a decade now. Through my blogs, I keep the industry updated on latest trends, development, and advances across the various segments.