In the good old days, phone conversations with a salesperson used to be the preferred method of communication between a customer and a business. Simple times, simple ways, right? For better or worse, things are not that simple anymore. In our fast paced digital age, there is now a plethora of alternatives for the customer to choose from and the customer almost always tends to choose the fastest one.

With customers demanding ridiculously short response times, businesses are faced with the challenge of creating instantaneous responses to maintain a respectable conversion rate. Where the internet has imposed higher demands, it has also opened new engagement channels for businesses to improve efficiency and quality of interaction with their customers. A shining example of this shift comes in the form of Live Chat services.

So, let's take a deep dive into the world of live chat to answer the pressing question: How can live chat boost your conversion rate and ultimately your overall revenue?

Why Live Chat Can Work as a Conversion Booster

A recent study shows that among all currently available engagement channels including phone and email, Live Chat has the highest customer satisfaction levels. A whopping 73%! To answer how live chat boosts conversions, one must first understand the appeal of Live Chat to the average customer. Here are some key factors that drive customers to increasingly opt for Live Chat over any other channel of communication and converts their motivation into positive results.

Instantaneous Responses

In today's fast-paced world, everyone is pressed for time and your business needs to be quick on its feet to cater to thousands of customers. Most of the appeal of a live chat option is stemmed in the fact that it’s a quick feedback system. Instead of wasting time on writing an email or making a call, customers are more willing to have a swift and to-the-point interaction that addresses their queries and concerns in real-time.

Support Multitasking

With the help of Live Chat option, customers no longer have to stall their life in order to communicate with your business. Through Live Chat, it is possible for the customer to explore website and ask necessary questions whenever they have one. This eliminates the hassle of long, drawn-out phone conversations and exhausting email threads.

Personalized Approach

Having a chat online feels like a more personal and lighthearted way to create lasting relationships with a potential customer. With a representative to address issues in real-time and through a painless process, the customer feels much more comfortable and cared for. This added human touch is what ultimately converts a potential customer into a loyal one.

A Live Chat Strategy for Optimal Conversions

While Live Chat is not a new tool, it was largely considered optional for many years. Today, more than 62% online shoppers expect websites to have Live Chat, especially if accessed through a phone. But here's the catch: despite its huge success as a communication tool for an increased conversion rate, Live Chat is not magic. In order to reap its many benefits, your business needs a strategy to effectively use Live Chat as a catalyst for growth. Here are some ways of building an effective Live Chat mechanism to not only draw out potential customers but to convert these leads into buyers.

Two birds, one stone

The main goal of any business is to provide value to the customer but the real challenge lies in presenting this value in a way which grabs everyone's attention. Live Chat is not only useful to maintain customer satisfaction through efficient interaction, but it can also be used to convey value to the customer.

With the right message, you can not only tell the customer that you are always available to answer their queries but also tempt them with a promise of new deals and exciting offers that they can know more about. So not only are you using Live Chat to provide customer support, but you are also directly increasing conversions by presenting the value of your business in the best way possible.

Training for chat support

Just like any sales team, your chat support team needs to be trained in order to generate maximum conversions. The appeal of Live Chat lies in the comfortable and casual environment created through an online interaction. The ideal chat support representative is trained to adapt to the customer's tone and level of formality. Usually customers are more laidback online and a casual, lighthearted tone works best to make them feel comfortable. However, if a customer communicates in a formal way, the representative should be able to adjust their tone accordingly in order to act professional as well. In the end the success of Live Chat boils down to individual interactions with the customers. Taking too long to respond, using industry jargons or assuming too much can lead to failed conversions. For increased conversions, your chat support team needs to be trained to interact with all kinds of people and intuitively provide helpful time-saving solutions.

The right protocol

Despite the casual nature of Live Chat, there is a still a need for a well-constructed and flexible protocol to achieve better efficiency. While you can add an engaging greeting to capture the attention of all customers through an automatic pop up, the interaction itself needs to have some degree of personalization. It is useful to create a list of FAQs and use them as a template to answer questions quickly, however, customers can easily notice when a response is not specifically tailored to their needs.

Customers like knowing that they are talking to a human and not a Chatbot so it is essential to expend some effort in customizing responses to fit the requirements of your customer. Once a customer takes interest in your offerings, you need a way to collect their contact information to stay in touch, but this should also follow a protocol. Being too pushy can repel customers and lead to discomfort, the best way is to implicitly ask for contact details to email information about your services following a customer query. Such protocols are necessary to set a standard and maintain the quality of your chat for a maximized conversion rate.

Top Live Chat Apps for Shopify

For e-commerce websites, Live Chat can be an indispensable asset. Shopify is a revolutionary platform specifically made for your e-commerce business to stand out and make a mark. Among the many apps and customizations that it provides, Shopify also has a wealth of Live Chat applications that are easy to use and integrate with your existing website.

Now that you have some idea of how live chat can boost conversions, here are some top rated Live Chat apps that have generated favorable results for Shopify users and can help you amp up your own e-commerce business.

Facebook Chat by Beeketing

Price: Free

Pros: Facebook Chat by Beeketing has an overall 4.9 rating and thousands of reviews from satisfied customers. The app targets Facebook Messenger as a Live Chat platform which creates a sense of familiarity for the user. Since everyone uses Facebook Messenger to communicate, this is an easy and effective way to use an existing platform to boost your business.

Cons: A chat request is directed to Facebook Messenger instead of opening on the page itself. This can be troublesome for some customers, especially if they are not active users of Messenger.

Tidio Live Chat

Price: Free basic plan or $15/month

Pros: Tidio has a 4.8 rating on the Shopify app store and boasts its own web app and mobile app for communication. Among its many notable features, the most useful ones are its automatic greeting messages, real-time viewing of the message being typed, multi-language capabilities, offline support and many more.

Cons: The free basic plan is limited in its capabilities and for the full set of features, you need to pay $15/month which might not be feasible for new businesses. Reviews also complain of the absence of spell-check mechanism and frequent glitches in service.

Chatra Live Chat

Price: Free forever plan or $19/month pro plan

Pros: Chatra has a 4.9 rating with over 300 reviews on Shopify. The app itself is much like Tidio and uses its own desktop and mobile applications with added Messenger integration. Some new useful features include contacting customers stuck at the cart to reduce cart abandonment, real-time visitor list, spell-check abilities etc. User reviews applaud the usefulness of the app and the good customer service.

Cons: Useful services like visitor insights and intelligent form bots are only available for the pro plan which is $19/month.

Conclusion

The dependence of conversion rate on Live Chat is an important aspect of digital marketing that cannot be neglected in this day and age. A well thought out Live Chat feature can help you achieve your goals of meeting customer demands with real-time interaction and creating valuable leads so your business can grow.

By combining your knowledge regarding Live Chat with the right strategy and the best application, your business can achieve astounding conversion rates and a boosted revenue. The secret lies in expertly leveraging this powerful tool to convert leads into customers and set new standards of customer satisfaction.