[3-minute read]
We’ve all been there: lost on an online store, trying to figure out what to do with a question. With each passing second that isn’t resolving the problem, the likelihood of a purchase being made dwindles. That’s bad news for an ecommerce shop owner. You need to make it as easy and quick as possible to address your customers’ queries. Chat support is the number one service choice for shoppers between 18 and 49. That’s huge, don’t sleep on it.
OK, wide awake? Taking notes? Let’s go through the benefits of offering chat support.
It’s easy to do
Integrating live chat or a chatbot on your site is a simple win. Whichever service you choose, having the option available for leads (potential customers) on your site to make queries is a no-brainer. Instead of navigating to a Contact Us page, filling in a form with their email address, name, type of query, and message, they can just chat with somebody and work out the issue in real-time. Crucially, they’ll still be on your site, right where you want them.
It saves time
According to this Forrester study, a whopping 73% of customers say that companies valuing their time is the most important factor of customer service. By integrating chat support into your customer’s experience, you will undoubtedly save their time. Without needing to craft an email or make a phone call (who does that?), a question can still be answered.
Learn about your customers’ experience
Questions reveal a lot about a person or a situation. For an ecommerce store in a highly competitive environment, you need all the insight you can get. Take note of the questions that come through your chat support; are they often about a similar issue? Where in the customer journey do queries arise? The answers will lead you to wrinkles in your process that, if smoothed out, will make for an increasingly easy shopping experience.
Save questions from becoming abandoned carts
We all suspect how short our attention spans are these days. Although, perhaps it’s not attention span so much as patience. If web pages take a few seconds longer than expected to load, we’re out of there. So, to keep your customers motivated to buy, save your shopping carts from abandonment by promptly and efficiently answering questions.
Humanise your ecommerce store
In a world flooded with website templates and endless scrolling through suspiciously similar content, stand out by being human. Engage warmly with your customers via your chat service, tell them your name (or your bot’s name). This way, your shoppers will be subtly reminded that, at the end of it all, people’s livelihoods are tied to the purchases they make on your site.
There is a wealth of information available about chatbots and live chat. There are great benefits for both offerings, and sometimes it makes sense to mix automated assistance with human interaction. It all depends on your store and budget. Would you like us to explore some of these digital tools in more detail? Tell us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. We’ll dive deeper into this topic if you’d like more insight.
