How Chat Tools Can Help Drive Conversions on Your E-Commerce Site

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Live chat tools address customer concerns quickly, as the tools offer users fast, easy answers, easing the burden on both company and customer and decreasing your customer service costs significantly, while increasing sales and generating conversions.
Chatbots are AI computer programs that help with customer service by simulating human conversation through voice commands, text chats, or a combination of both.
Programs like Drift, LiveChat, and Intercom are specifically designed around their chat features, while HubSpot Live Chat and ZenDesk Chat easily integrate with your other applications to manage all in one convenient location.
Interactive voice response (IVR) systems can also be effective, and convenient self-help AI-driven technology allows customers to make inquiries and get immediate, relevant responses.

Having good customer service will encourage brand loyalty and help drive more conversions. This is the area of your business where you can most show you care about your e-commerce visitors, by taking care of their questions, concerns, issues, and challenges. And even minor changes to customer service can yield significant results.

A chat study released by ApexChat revealed that “live chat can increase online leads by an average of 40 percent.”

And that’s just an average.

Setting yourself up with the right customer service tools will set your brand apart from the rest and help to generate more leads and sales. Without effective tools, you can lose visitors, leads, and ultimately, profit. In fact, 78% of consumers report abandoning a transaction due to a poor customer service experience.

There are many wonderful tools and software available to help improve your customer service program. And a better customer service program means a better relationship with your customers, faster answers to user questions, fewer headaches for your staff, and a better site overall.

Having conversations with your website visitors really does pay off.

According to Intercom data, website visitors are 82% more likely to convert to customers if they’ve chatted with you first. What’s more, their accounts are worth 13% more than those where the business didn’t have a conversation before sign up.

It also improves your brand validation, building loyal customers, and improving the likelihood of referrals and return visits to your e-commerce site.

Americans tell an average of 15 people about poor customer service, and 11 people about a good one.

Answering customer issues quickly, live chats are critical, in that they responsively answer people’s questions in a convenient, easy-to-follow manner. When a visitor logs onto a site and sees a chat feature, it helps to know that they can easily locate any information they need, setting them at ease and speeding up the conversion.

Live Chat

Live chat tools are an effective way to address customer concerns quickly, as the tools offer users fast, easy answers, easing the burden on both company and customer. While they used to be much slower, Live chat tools no longer take 10 minutes only to lead you to a phone number. Fast, effective service now directs you to the right people with the appropriate responsive software. With modern delivery of information faster than every before, good chat tools can speed up response times and conversions.

According to Neil Patel, using Live chat can generate 4-8x more leads for your business. With little to no wait times, customers can get the feedback and information they need quickly and efficiently.

A good live chat system comes with various features, such as proactive chat invitations, the ability to see what the customers are typing in real time (before they send the chat), the ability to animate the chat button (for better visibility) and so on, as per Crazy Egg.

Most consumers – 48%, in fact – would rather connect with a company via live chat than any other mean of contact. And if you think this is a feature only useful for B2C companies, you should know that 11 out of 50 high-growth B2B companies offer live chat on their website.

When it comes to live chat content, it does not need to be lengthy to make an impact on potential leads. If consumers feel their needs are being taken care of in a timely manner, responsive chat tools can truly make a big impact on your conversion rate.

A common misperception about live chat is that effective conversations need to be long and time-consuming. On the contrary, a quick, real-time connection makes a big difference... Just one reply in the messenger can increase the likelihood of conversion by 50%; one more reply makes that visitor 100% more likely to convert. A simple conversation with 6 exchanged messages makes a visitor 250% more likely to become a customer.

Additionally, live chat content can be used to support other targets. Virgin Airlines, for example, doesn’t use live chat for selling airline tickets, but instead uses it to upsell customers. If a user is already in a stage of the purchase process, it is far easier to sell them an upgrade, as they are already in the decision-making phase and don't need convincing. By upselling them with live chat as they complete their order, Virgin has created some enviable conversion rates.

Additional order value from live chat users is around 15% higher than those who don’t. Beyond that, users who participate in live chat tend to convert 3.5 times as often as those who don’t. Virgin Airlines also says live chat is cheaper than emails and phone calls as one live chat agent can typically do the work of about 15 customer specialists who are handling emails and calls.

Salesforce serves as a great example of what a powerful combination of chat tools looks like. A warm face welcomes you with clear, convenient options to use a chat, call a phone number, or exit the option.

These live chat support tools allow users to locate answers quickly, providing a much more positive experience, ensuring that every issue is handled efficiently with quick, convenient support.

79% of businesses believed that adding live chat to their website had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and loyalty.

It also decreases your customer service costs significantly, while increasing sales and generating conversions. This cuts time in half by speeding up the process, gathering information, and directing users to the appropriate staff member who can best address their concerns.

Effective live chat tools can increase your engagement and encourage repeat purchases. In fact, 68% of website visitors will engage in a live chat and 63% will return to a website offering live chat in order to complete a repeat purchase.

Having a chat is great but if you have a bot on your chat, it improves it even that much more.

Chatbots

Chatbots are AI computer programs that simulate human conversation through voice commands, text chats, or a combination of both. These can be integrated through any major messaging applications.

35% of consumers want to see more companies using chatbots. (Source: Ubisend)

With modern advanced technology, adding chatbots can truly help your sales development response (SDR) team by handling the simple, redundant tasks (so they don't have to) that will help with speed and effective lead generation.

The best chatbots are like an SDR’s secret personal assistant. They streamline their jobs by taking on repetitive tasks, i.e. booking meetings, collecting lead information and suggesting help articles, so the SDR can focus on higher cognitive tasks. Data shows that conversations with bots convert 36% better, likely because a bot can respond faster than humans for most repetitive tasks.

Choose a program for your chatbot or have your staff add a strong library of content and information from which to pull when conducting chats with your customers. Your library of content will vary depending on the content related to your products, services, or offerings.

For a website like CBD Mall, chatbots can easily field and direct questions about products, purchases, shipping, and more.

Since your audience will be looking for fast answers, or quick navigation to more in-depth content, your chatbot tool needs to be able to easily locate requested content. It can even be used to help generate sales.

Around 50% of people say they’d purchase something from a website’s chatbot using conversational marketing.

For legal websites like Nation Lawyers, these chat tools can offer a quick and convenient way to get in touch with legal counsel.

Popular Tools

Some of the most common Chat tools are LiveChat, HubSpot, and Intercom. Drift, LiveChat, and Intercom are programs specifically designed around their chat features, while HubSpot Live Chat and ZenDesk Chat integrate with your other applications to manage all in one convenient location.

Drift

This conversational marketing platform helps your team generate more qualified leads through chatbots and conversation. Drift has more of a specialized focus than the other chat platforms, as it is designed around helping you sell and on using advanced automations.

As far as tools go, Drift is more sales oriented, whereas a tool like Intercom is more directly chat related. They are very similar.

Intercom

Intercom consists of a customer communication platform of products that include a live chat system for support, sales, and marketing teams. With a fully dedicated chat, this platform can be used for anything you need: customer service, answering questions, and sales. While Drift focuses primarily on driving inbound leads, Intercom can be used for creating FAQs, answering product questions, providing customer service, and more.

Note: The chatbot features will be better on Intercom and Drift because that is their specific focus. They are crafted specifically for these features, while other tools serve broader purposes and work better for overall integration with your other applications.

LiveChat

This online customer service software (SaaS) features online chat, help desk software, and web analytics capabilities. It helps generate sales and leads with customer forms and AI chatbot automations, uses elegant product cards, and automatically tracks sales and goals to analyze how chats boost revenue.

ZenDesk Chat

ZenDesk features a live chat and communication widget with convenient customer assistance via chat, phone call, email, social media, and more. If you are looking for a program connected to your customer service, then this might work well for you.

HubSpot Live Chat

Easily connect with customers with HubSpot’s Live Chat, team email, Facebook Messenger integration, and easy-to-use chatbot for free. Looking for a software that connects to your CRM to make things easier? HubSpot’s Live Chat might be for you.

Effective self-service tools create a more enhanced customer experience when visiting your e-commerce site. When shoppers can figure out information themselves, they are much more likely to return to your website. According to American Express, 6 out of 10 American shoppers use self-service tools for addressing their concerns including the use of websites (24%), mobile apps (14%), voice response systems and VoIP (13%), or online live chat (12%).

Interactive Voice Response Systems

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems can be effective tools in making instant customer connections, reducing costs, and increasing engagement. With convenient self-help AI-driven technology, customers can make inquiries and get immediate, relevant responses.

Over 50% of customers think it’s important to solve product issues themselves rather than rely on customer service. Using IVR systems allows them to get the help they need any time, facilitating sales, and collecting customer feedback. It also helps reduce staff time in answering simple questions.

IVR systems offer the ability to skip cumbersome steps, saving time for everyone. When customers call in to an IVR system, it efficiently captures customer information, shortening the input process and ensuring that the time is spent on the customer and not on basic data entry tasks.

With proper programming, you can even set parameters for IVRs to route customers to the right staff members capable of helping with unique issues filtered by keyword – for example, sending credit card issues or product issues to the appropriate person. This speeds up the process.

For inbound leads, very similar to questions on webforms, IVR technology listens to a customer’s response and if the lead scores well enough, the IVR can then direct the call to a sales rep. It also allows you to broadcast promotions, providing a physical number where customers can call to enter contests, redeem special offers, or take surveys.

With the global interactive voice response market expected to grow at approximately $3.7 Billion by 2023, it might be a good investment for your company too.

Summary

Improving your customer service might not seem like a priority, but it is connected to every other part of your business operations. By choosing great tools and making minor updates to your e-commerce site, you can see significant impacts in driving conversions. Live chat tools, chatbots, and IVR systems can be used and/or combined to support your site and business operations.

Live chat tools are an effective way to address customer concerns quickly, as the tools offer users fast, easy answers, easing the burden on both company and customer and decreasing your customer service costs significantly, while increasing sales and generating conversions.

Chatbots are AI computer programs that simulate human conversation through voice commands, text chats, or a combination of both. Your audience will be looking for fast answers, or quick navigation to more in-depth content, so your chatbot tool needs to be able to easily locate requested content.

To learn more about improving your average order value, check out one of our latest articles here.