Increasing Engagement With Live Chat On Your Website

Consumers in the digital economy expect real-time interactions and rapid response – and with a live chat facility on your website, you can deliver all of this.

Organizations are successfully deploying live chat to deliver customer service, technical support, and information outreach. They are also using it to increase visitor and customer engagement on their websites and other points of online presence. Here’s why.

What Is Live Chat?

Live chat provides an immediate line of communication with visitors to your website or portal. It typically takes the form of a floating text box, where visitors can key in their questions or comments, and receive an instantaneous response from one of your representatives. This enables visitors to get their questions answered without having to leave the web page or pick up another device. More sophisticated forms of live chat can incorporate voice and video.

Why Is Live Chat Necessary?

According to statistics from HubSpot Research, 82% of consumers rate an immediate response as important or very important when they have sales queries, and 90% when they have customer service questions. And for every second that it takes a business to respond to those concerns, the likelihood increases of customers refusing to make a purchase, or going elsewhere for better service.

As a real-time communications medium, live chat reduces or even eliminates this risk – so long as problem resolution is equally as fast. And for sales professionals, live chat provides a virtual meeting place where they can get to interact directly with their prospects and existing customers.

How Is It Being Used?

There are numerous examples of how successful companies are using live chat to increase engagement with their customers, and improve sales or service delivery. Some notable ideas include:

• Financial institutions using live chat forums to meet and greet their top investors.
• Using live chat as an instantaneous search tool for website visitors.
• Putting a live chat panel on the company Facebook page, so that social media users can engage with the enterprise without leaving the platform.
• Issuing proactive chat invitations specific to visitors’ needs on particular pages of your website.

And Not Just For Your Website

Live chat applications may also be deployed through other channels – particularly through the use of open source or universal software development kits and application programming interfaces. This allows live chat functionality to be built into mobile apps, eCommerce platforms, and other forms of contact.

For example, with net2phone, it’s possible to offer consumers an SMS-to-chat option, where a live chat discussion may be initiated by a customer sending a text message from their mobile phone. Such an approach can be promoted by including a “Text-to-Chat” phone number on the company website.

The new net2phone business communications platform is fully integrated with Web Real-Time Communications or WebRTC. This is a powerful technology standard which allows the cross-platform development of applications, web resources, and user interfaces that support instantaneous peer-to-peer (P2P) contact. This can be used as the basis for audio, video, Live Chat, and various text messaging formats.

Using net2phone, email support, Live Chat, voicemail, text, and instant messages can be brought together over multiple devices and multiple channels – and all easily administered from a single dashboard.

To find out more, contact a net2phone representative.