With just a few tips and tricks you can turn up your live chat efforts and turn the trickle of conversations into a flood. And once those conversations start, there are simple ways to maximize lead conversion.
We’ve talked to thousands of small business owners and entrepreneurs who use live chat and gotten to the best practices.
Remove Friction
A chat box form is just like a website sign up form: the fewer required fields the more likely a visitor is to complete the form. Best practice is to eliminate any required fields on your chat box. It’s far more natural to get a name and email address during a live chat conversation. Think of it as if the conversation were happening face-to-face. You would never ask from an email address before starting an in-person conversation.
Automate Triggers + Follow-Ups
You can’t always wait for customers to initiate the engagement. Triggers are a great live chat feature to initiate conversations with qualified website visitors. Most live chat software platforms will allow you to add triggers to specific pages or set triggers to fire after a visitor has been on your website for a certain amount of time. This is a great way to gently increase engagement and approach your website.
Connect your live chat software with a marketing automation tool to ensure you continue the relationship beyond the website visit. Leads you acquire through a live chat conversation may not be ready to buy immediately. So follow up! Or risk missing out on a lot of new deals and potential customers.
Respond Instantly
Visitors want instant responses. Faster service ensures a better experience and gives them fewer reasons to skip over to a competitor. Responding instantly is made much easier by setting up desktop notifications – and, ideally, mobile notifications. If you have a mobile app installed on your phone for your live chat software, the easiest thing is to respond from your phone.
Train Your Live Chat Agents
If the person assigned to live chat is not knowledgeable about your products or service they might deliver a sub-par service experience. Visitors want instant answers to questions that would lead to a sale or online purchase.
Add Chat To Your Shopping Cart
Abandoned shopping carts haunt every online business. Don’t let your future customers leave your site without crossing the finish line. Adding live chat on shopping carts or on checkout pages will give shoppers an opportunity to get any final questions answered. You might find that shoppers have questions about pricing, returns or shipping. Answering those simple questions just may improve your overall sales numbers.
Maximize Your Availability
The more time you’re available and accessible to answer questions for your visitors and customers, the most you’ll be able to help them.
At some point, you have to sleep. For most businesses, however, you have website visitors with questions at all hours of the day. Ensure that you are capturing each question no matter what by converting your live chat box into an email capture form. By enabling the form, you’re not only helping potential customers you’re also improving conversion on your website.
Interested in learning more? Download our ebook, all about the rise of live chat and how to make it work for your business.
