5 Tips for Optimizing Conversions through Live Chat
Although adding live chat has proven to increase website conversions for most, it’s not just the act of adding the application to your site that will lead to increased sales.
To really optimize the benefits of live chat technology, here are 5 things to consider which will have a direct impact on website conversion rates when chats are initiated:
1. Live Chat Agent Competency
The first and most important aspect of driving up conversions with a live chat tool is having the right person in the chatters seat. A well-trained chat agent is key to building relationships with customers over live chat and ultimately, driving sales.
Ideally, when getting started with live chat, the chats should be covered by the business owner or a customer service specialist who has been taking care of other communication channels (email, phone, tweets). Avoid putting inexperienced people in chat seats, although chats agent will have a little more time to response, as opposed to phone support, the answers will be highly scrutinized by customers.
Things to look at closely in the first days of chatting are the kinds of questions and requests that are coming in, when are peak times, which other tools need to be accessed while covering chats and integration needs with other support channels (CRM, Phone, Email). With this information, a structured Live Chat Response document can be created. Essentially, the document serves as a system which a new chat agent can be trained with.
2. Speed of Response
Answering your website visitors within seconds, not minutes, has the potential to increase conversions and customer satisfaction. Don’t make them wait. The expectation of live chat is different than phone or email. Email response times are known to be slower and phone support calls are also know to be slow to connect and start due to queues and call volumes.
Many people use live chat to ask specific questions that require quick answers, many times these questions are directly related to the purchase of products or services. If the visitor is on a checkout page and has a specifics question about shipping details, the slower the response, the less chance there is to convert. Although, I am still surprised at the number of extremely complex ecommerce sites that manage to generate sales. Exceptions I guess. . .
In sum, speed of response will increase with the live chat agents experience, but some things that can help early on are saved responses, minimizing the number of concurrent chats and quick access to customer information - therefore it is extremely helpful for the agent to have access to the company CRM and ideally for the chat tool and the CRM to be linked.
3. Coverage Times
If you have existing traffic data, try to examine optimal coverage times by looking at daily traffic patterns. Because a website is online an open 24/7, full coverage would be the ideal setup, but that’s not always feasible, especially from a cost standpoint, or a sleep standpoint for solopreneurs.
By looking at these traffic patterns you can focus coverage on peak traffic times and save the cost of covering when traffic volumes dip. At first, you can have the live chat running while you multi-task during the day, but preferably you should move to covering these peak times.
You should can a customer service agent to monitor chats as they answer emails and/or take phone calls. This will also increase service quality…and ultimately conversions.
4. Honest and Personalized Service (Psychology)
When chatting with visitors, try to keep in mind that this is the internet and people have different sets of beliefs, values, religions and traditions.. even holidays. Live chat agents needs to be tactful in their communication.
Most live chat tools come with visitor analytics data to empower the agents with enough information to offer personalized, effective and customized service leaving the visitor feeling satisfied and valued. One trick is to begin conversations by asking the visitors name and location, this builds a quick bond or connection before moving on to the issue, questions or topic.
5. Optimize the Live Chat process
Experience, Learn, Iterate. Like anything else in business, live chat support is a process that can be tweaked and optimized over time. Here are a few tips to optimize the process, which in turn will help optimize conversions.
a) If questions come back repeatedly, and it seems core to the offer, maybe this question should be addressed clearly on the home page to help minimize the flow of questions.
b) Minimize churn rates of agents. The time it takes to train a new agent to an independent, high performing level can be 15-30 days for basic, less technical businesses…so keep your agents happy!
c) Have an online self-help area, a live FAQ page on your website or a community and teach/direct your visitors and customers on where to find the answers to their future questions. The time spent will minimize unnecessary chat requests.
These 5 tips for optimizing conversions, needless to say, are quite exhaustive so you might want to refer here every once in a while every time you fee unsure of what to do with live chat on your website. Remember: The “making” in making the sale is an active verb!
- Jon