Are you wondering how to make more sales with the options you already have? Want to know if adding a chatbot or website live chat will bring you more sales or stick with live chat on your website?
Or better yet, maybe you can find a solution that combines the two? To make an accurate decision, you need to understand how important communication with customers is for your business. By responding to the client on time, you instill more confidence in your business and have the chance to gain more regular customers.
However, even the most innovative solutions, such as live chat, are not perfect. By all means, the live chat feature is an astonishing technology and arguably the first of its kind for collecting data and of course customer’s engagement. With the adequate approach, you can bring in more sales much quicker.
Conversations are the new lead
If you want to transform your website into a customer or lead generation machine, carry on reading to decide what is the most suitable solution for your business. In this article we will go over the key benefits of having a live chat vs a chatbot feature on your website.
First of all, why even have a chatbot? Well, 80-90% of the people coming to your site, are really only in research mode, and they likely have questions. While you can try to get all these questions answered in various places around your website like the FAQ page, you know there’s always going to be a certain amount of questions that you never anticipate coming.
It’s important to know that, of the people who are just in research mode and aren’t actually ready to make a decision, almost none are going to be willing to pick up the phone or send off an email. Nonetheless, according to a recent Mindshare study, 63% of people are willing to use a chat feature even when they’re not ready to buy yet. The reason is that chatting simply feels a lot less intimidating and a lot less of a commitment to communicate over chat.
The chat options basically come in two main choices: you’ve got the automated version which is a chatbot that relies on a lot of pre-programming vs a more manual version — a live chat which involves you actually interacting with your customers in real time. Both solutions are equally useful when it comes to effective communication with clients. The key is to determine attentively which way is the most suitable for your business.
Live chat adds personality
With a live chat, a human connection is much closer which is a huge opportunity because some people are unhappy and annoyed by talking to bots. For example, when you call customer service with a specific question, you most likely want to talk to a person instead of getting an automated response. It’s hard for a chatbot alone to duplicate that experience — at least with where the technology is today.
Besides, you can get a simple, attractive live chat up and running on your site in minutes with a free online chat service. This service will notify you directly on your device as soon as you get a new or returning customer in the chat, allowing you to interact with them in real time. This is important because when you can provide a quick fix to their question in real time, they are much more likely to stick around.
For instance, you can set it up so that your live chat launches and then greets the visitor with a message like: “Welcome, we’re glad to have you on our site. I’m sure you’ve got questions. What can I do for you?” and then allows the visitor to type in a question and the conversation continues. This scenario has a lot of visual appeal and a little bit of personality to get more people into your sales funnel.
Chatbots — work smarter not harder
A chatbot is a special program that works specifically in messenger applications, like Facebook Messenger. Chatbots help solve repetitive tasks, automate questions and answers, look for information, carry out the simplest assignments, etc. This is in contrast to more practical options like live chat. Chatbots are actively used in business to answer frequently asked questions, send marketing campaigns, select a product according to certain criteria, and to collect contacts.
One of the advantages of chatbots over a live chat is that mass messenger campaigns are suitable for small businesses that have a loyal audience and a unique, niche product. As well as, for companies with a high percentage of repeat purchases. However, there are mailing rules to follow: you must notify visitors about their subscription, not send spam, and give everyone an opportunity to unsubscribe.
Chatbots are excellent for mass campaign messages and important notices, for example, upcoming events, price reductions, discounts, promotions. Information support — used in cases where users regularly have the same questions that can be answered unambiguously. For example, a chatbot recognizes a keyword in a request and displays a selection of articles on the desired topic.
The best of both worlds
Nowadays, it is better to use a multi-channel approach to communicate with customers to get the most out of it. Hence, my suggestion is to invest into both options to potentially increase income and expand your business. Live chat is an excellent choice, if you have enough resources to properly benefit from it. And all the signs show that users have high expectations for customer service from businesses these days. Setting side by side these solutions, chatbots are more relevant to modern issues and will be relevant for a long time in the future. Although they definitely will never replace a physical approach to customer service, chatbots will save you a lot of time and resources to divert into other profitable deals. Play the market when you have the opportunity to access both live chat and chatbots that can carry out any monetization strategies and so much more at the same time.