Live Chat As A Tool For Marketing & Customer Acquisition

This is a guest post submitted by Sara Johnson from Firepush.

Still thinking your customers would prefer to get in touch with you by phone? Well, you are not alone in this conviction. 42% of businesses would agree with you. However, the real situation is a bit different.

As much as 41% of consumers chose live chat as their preferred support channel.

And live chat is not merely the means of customer support. It improves consumer experience and enhances business results. It is noteworthy that live chat provides the highest satisfaction levels of all customer service methods.

So if your company doesn’t offer a live chat option on your website or doesn’t use all advantages of the existing live chat, read on to figure out how you can leverage the tool to drive your business.

1. Proactively chat with visitors

You may be wondering why you should use proactive chat if reactive service has been efficient for years. Why not just let the customers approach you with any questions they may have? There can be several reasons for that.

Some shoppers feel reluctant to start a conversation unless they are given a nudge.

Besides, not all visitors will acknowledge that they have a problem. Many will just skip to another website in search of a solution.

On the contrary, if you approach them with relevant and targeted information, they will be more likely to stay.

By anticipating your customers’ needs, you can win. The proper message delivered at the right time will boost your customer experience. According to one study, proactive chat demonstrated impressive chat-to-lead conversion rates of 77%.

Engage your visitors with various incentives and special offers. However, your proactive messages need careful development to avoid turning into irritating pop-ups.

Please your clients with the properly introduced information and they will please you with their loyalty and growing purchases. After all, about 48% of customers favor brands with proactive chat support.

2. Write a compelling welcome message

As actor Will Rogers once said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”.

Welcome messages are powerful marketing tools that, if used competently, help you create the right impression of your brand.

You may ask, what if certain visitors don’t want to communicate, but just to look around?

However, every person coming into a store has an underlying buying intent. By revealing and properly addressing this intent, you can turn visitors into customers.

Live chat apps usually offer the opportunity to create a welcome message. It’s a sort of invitation that shows up to every new visitor.

You should compose the greeting text, which may include news and promotional offers, create an eye-catching design, and determine the time for the message to display.

Chat widget including promotions and omnichannel support. Source: ShopPop demo store

To make your text engaging, primarily, use a friendly tone of voice. Then, guide your visitor, so that they know how to contact you or where to go next.

Finally, you may add some juice to your communication by making an exclusive offer, i.e. a first-time discount.

A properly targeted and personalized welcome message will help you to:

• Get more chats
• Turn more visitors into buyers
• Improve customer experience
• Increase customer loyalty
• Drive sales

Use your welcome message wisely and include options for support as well as sales

3. Slash support response times

What do you think frustrates your customers most of all? According to the study, it’s slow response time.

This is exactly the reason why many website visitors love live chat – because it provides instant responses.

If your customers can have all their queries quickly addressed, your business can benefit in multiple ways:

• Saving clients’ time and efforts, which ultimately urges them to come back
• Getting a competitive advantage over other organizations
• Identifying opportunities for innovations and improvements when interacting with customers
• Improving the productivity of your agents
• Enhancing customer experience and satisfaction
• Driving customer loyalty
• Receiving more opportunities to elevate profitability during a live chat

Source: McKinsey

4. Analyze customer data to personalize marketing communication

There are numerous options of live chat software that allow you to collect customer website behavior data and apply analytic tools to your website visitors. By using this information, you can improve the targeting of your live chat messages and score leads.

To get even more customer data and insights, you can create an engaging survey a visitor would want to participate in.

The specific ways in which the accumulated data can benefit your communication with clients include the following;

• Finding out what products a customer has purchased before
• Identifying what problems they used to have
• Determining the style of conversation the customer is most likely to respond to

For example, knowing a visitor’s browsing history, can help you send welcome emails with special offers for specific products or product categories.

More personalized offers means higher customer trust and satisfaction, which goes a long way to generate customer loyalty.

Advanced live chat apps can provide insights based on the previous live chat campaigns.

For example, by using these tools, you can get answers to important questions such as:

• How many people downloaded the article or ebook you advertised via chat?
• Which kinds of conversations led to conversions most often?
• Do the reduced support response times enhance conversions?

As a result, you can achieve better personalization of your marketing efforts. Thus, you’ll be empowered to develop tailored offers your customers will be most likely to accept.

5. Offer upsell and cross-sell options

Apart from cutting your customer service costs, live chat can also help you lift your average order value. Studies have shown that a customer who has engaged with a live chat is likely to spend 60% more on their shopping.

Source: Bold 360

Therefore, you can leverage this feature for upselling and cross-selling.

However, this should be done wisely. If the customers realize they are offered something that’s far removed from their needs and wants, they would hardly be satisfied.

On the other hand, if the additional product you recommend will really serve them better, you can educate the customers on why and how.

You can also offer certain extra value in the form of tips, inspiration, or everything else that reinforces emotional bonds with your brand. Thus, you’ll be able to obtain loyal customers that will come back for more products or services.

What will work for you in this case is the concept of a perceived value. Even if your clients pay a higher price than they initially intended, but they are sure they are getting greater value, they will stay happy.

6. Enhance offline lead generation

Live chat allows answering sales-related FAQs promptly and generating leads. By asking your visitors questions about their preferences and goals, you can identify their intent and determine what information should be presented.

During communication, you can also offer discounts, email list signups, and share news about loyalty programs. It would be appropriate to give discounts in exchange for emails so you can build an email list.

What is also particularly appealing is the opportunity to automate the whole sales funnel.

Live chat apps provide in-depth business information to predetermined leads by asking certain questions developed by marketing teams. Then, the qualified leads are handed over to the sales team for closing deals instantly or taking the other required steps.

7. Answer FAQs automatically

Your customers want instant information; you want efficient operations. Provide your clients with the answers they seek promptly while reducing the burden on your service team.

Your website visitors may have varying preferences regarding the ways to search for information. But if you have the list of FAQs, arrange the content appropriately and add it to your live chat.

A smooth and enjoyable Q&A chatbot experience will prevent your potential clients from leaving your website. Moreover, it can raise customer satisfaction levels and drive conversion rates.

By leveraging live chat apps, you can set up a window with FAQs and answers that will be available 24x7. Such Q&A automation, powered by AI, can create a very conversational and interactive format for your users while providing amazing speed and functionality.

To arrange an adequate and efficient service, you’ll need to carefully line up all potential answers beforehand.

Live chat for marketing & customer acquisition: summary

Live chat is an invaluable tool to streamline your marketing.

With comparatively little cost and effort, it helps you with the following aspects:

• Reaching your target audience with the right message at the right time
• Highly personalizing your communication
• Enhancing customer experience by reducing response times
• Improving your brand image through thoughtful and informative messages
• Getting valuable insights from the collected consumer data
• Increasing average order value thanks to upselling and cross-selling opportunities
• Generating more leads
• Improving the quality and speed of your services by implementing automatic answers to FAQs
• Finally, your customers will love a live chat!

Overall, live chat empowers you to enjoy the effect of several marketing tools combined. Therefore, you should not overlook this option in your endeavor to optimize your marketing and sales efforts.

About the author:
Sara Johnson is a B2B digital marketing expert with a mission to help Shopify store owners to take their businesses to the next level. Her articles educate entrepreneurs on topics of eCommerce technology and marketing strategies. Her expertise comes from eight years of working with many e-commerce businesses.