5 Advantages of Using Live Chat Support for Customer Support

Almost everyone has talked to a customer service representative over the phone. It is an experience that is familiar to us (if not always pleasant). While live chat support is similar to customer service over the phone, it is different in key ways. The two approaches work best when used side by side because they each offer unique benefits.

The benefits brought by live online support are irreplaceable and difficult to replicate with other forms of customer contact. Here are five of the most important benefits to be gained from incorporating live chat support into your customer service system.

1. More Customer Contact

For many people, picking up the phone to make a call represents a significant barrier. It is an uncomfortable step with many unknowns. They don’t know if the customer service representative will be able to help them and they also don’t know how long they will be put on hold, or how long the call itself will take.

For this reason, many people opt out of making a call. Issues go unresolved and sales remain uncompleted, simply because a customer, or potential customer, would rather not pick up the phone. Live chat support lowers this hurdle significantly.

Instead of having to dial a number, the chat bar is ready and waiting as soon as they enter your website. A chat bar makes it much more likely that more customers will choose to engage with a customer service representative. This means happier customers and more sales.

2. Cost Efficiency

When a phone representative takes a call, they have to devote all of their attention to a single customer. When a live chat representative engages a customer, they can also help other customers at the same time. This creates significant cost efficiencies. In fact, research indicates that live chats could be up to 30% cheaper than phone call systems.

3. Better Tracking and Management

Listening through hours of phone calls in order to discover customer pain points and create data can be a slog. Even when done well, it is more of an art than a science. However, live chat management has an easily archivable record of all customer interactions. It is significantly easier to perform word analyses and identify common pain points. This improved tracking and management can lead to better customer care.

4. Improved Communication

With thousands of languages and even more dialects and accents, it can be difficult to create a customer service center where you can help all of your customers. However, live chat support for websites makes this significantly easier. Chat removes dialects and accents as potential barriers to communication. Representatives have time to read and reread messages to make sure they understand exactly what the customer is saying.

It also eliminates the problem of bad connections and dropped calls. In an era when more people than ever are using cell phones rather than landlines, dropped calls are a serious problem. You are able to avoid it entirely when you use live chat.

5. Improved Customer Satisfaction

Live chat support improves customer satisfaction in a number of ways. It reduces hold times, and it even makes holding more convenient since the customer doesn’t have to listen to a phone line. By making communication clear, online support improves understanding and effectively resolves customer issues, leading to better outcomes and improved customer satisfaction. Adding live chat support into your customer service mix significantly improves the customer experience.

If you would like to learn more about online support and live chat for websites, please contact ROI Call Center Solutions today!