Live chat can be a very valuable tool on your site. It is useful tool to help reduce cart abandonment. This increase in conversion is because customers can easily reach out to someone to ask questions when they are unsure of their purchase. Furthermore, it can be a way to upsell and cross sell items.
Customer service can also benefit from live chat. Not only can representatives handle a few chats at once, where by phone they can only handle one call at a time, but chat transcripts can be beneficial for future training. It’s a lot easier reading through chat transcripts than listening to recorded phone calls.
Now, for a few best practices…
Always list when your live chat is available. Don’t have your users going to an error page or sit there thinking a rep will be with them when nobody is there.
Don’t open up the live chat client immediately upon coming to the site. Do it if the shopper is idle for a while.
Personalize the invitation to join a live chat. For instance, if a customer is browsing a lot in the shoes department, prompt them asking if they need help picking out shoes.
However, do not be creepy about your personalization. If you see the customer is coming from a certain location, don’t mention it. It will make many customers feel uneasy.
Lastly, run some tests. See how conversion rates are affected. Tweak your settings on when and where live chat is displayed to get the most benefit from the feature as possible.
