Why you need to consider online chat?
What is online chat?
Online chat enables customers to interact with you directly in real time. The benefits include the ability to offer personalized service, create a unique relationship and ultimately increase your sales.
Why do You need Online Chat?
After all, everything you need to say is written on your website and you have installed Online Booking functionality.
Quite simply, it’s all about customer service and reassurance. By engaging with your customers online via chat, you can:
- Direct them quickly to the information they require
- Answer questions and explain things in more ways
- Upsell your product using your personal product knowledge
- Provide additional information by providing links to external sites
- Build meaningful relationships
It’s just another way of communicating with your potential customers and as it’s reciprocal and more powerful.
What are the benefits for my business?
Once you start using the chat you start to develop your own business intelligence. For example, you can choose to initiate the conversation after a certain period. From experience, if you serve them too quickly they disappear, around 3 minutes seems to be about right.
You can also tell where they are from, where they came from and what operating system they are using. Repeat visitation is a sign they are interested but not quite ready to commit. So, you can approach them, using a different tactics. You can reread previous conversations and pick up where you left off.
I don’t have the time or the staff to monitor a chat
Most Chat software has apps, so you can switch to your mobile phone, which gives you the flexibility to carry on your business and still manage the chat line. It also has sounds alerts to alert you when you get a question. When you switch off the chat, it switches to take a message and delivers the message to your inbox. In a nutshell, it looks much more professional than a “contact us” form.
What are the Business benefits of having Online chat?
Increased customer satisfaction
The main benefit is increased consumer satisfaction; a live conversation is a more efficient use of your time and more likely to end in a conversion. The immediacy of your response tells your customer you’re serious about your business and their needs. It enables customers to ask specific questions and source additional information that may or may not be on your website.
Development of trust
When establishing a relationship with a potential customer, especially if you are requiring payment online, the development of trust is essential. Your business is no longer faceless; it has personality, a person behind the technology.
Removal of barriers
Every time you ask a potential customer to “do something” like picking up the phone you are adding a barrier, especially if they have to leave a message. The same applies to contact us form and email. The removal of barriers and steering them towards a purchase is important in improving conversion.
More efficient use of your time
For small businesses, the reduction in effort required to make a sale may not be evident, but if you consider the time spent to respond to several emails required to engage a customer over the year it adds up.
Upselling
By using chat and developing rapport with your potential customer you will have the opportunity to up-sell. Find out more, if it’s for a special occasion for instance, and offer an additional service, just like you would on the phone.
Instant feedback and customer intelligence
When managing the chat, you’ll quickly learn what customers are looking at on your site and where you can improve your content. If you see them searching you can offer to assist and provide exceptional customer service.
What should I look for in my Online Chat?
Like all tools you use in business, start with a list of requirements.
What do you need the system to do? Is it important for it to be flexible and work on your mobile? Are you looking for something that is easy to install? Is cost an issue for you? Do you require more than one agent on at any one time? Are you interested in analytics? Can you email the conversation to the customer?
Use reviews to narrow your list
A simple Google search will return recent reviews of Online Chat products with independent reviews that will help you narrow your list. Once you have narrowed it down to 2 or 3, find a website using this product and gather a consumer perspective.
Measure the success
Once you’ve made a decision, I would suggest a trial period of 4 weeks and then review whether it is working for you or not.
You could:
- Record the amount of chats
- Check if there is a reduction in emails
- Examine the number of bookings against the same period last year, to see if you are converting more visits to guests
Ask your customers for feedback (via the chat line)
Some other tips
It is important to set customer expectations. Make sure they know who they are speaking with and what time and days you are available. Remember to respond promptly to offline messages by checking your emails twice daily at a minimum.
