Last Updated on May 30, 2019 by Numinix Developer
Imagine you own a brick and mortar store and you are selling office equipment. Your store is well-equipped with salespeople ready to answer your customers’ questions. One day you are required by the city to construct a solid brick wall in front of your store. On this brick wall, all you can showcase is an image of your products and a phone number. Do you think anyone would buy from you?
The internet is similar to that brick wall. There is an imaginary brick wall in front of consumers preventing them from seeing, touching and experiencing your products and real interaction with knowledgeable salespeople.
Most of your success in eCommerce will lie in your ability to give your customers as close of an experience to a brick and mortar store as possible.
Live chat represents a vehicle to bring more of a REAL experience to your customers.
Coremetrics initiated live chat a few years ago when it was just starting to make an entrance and their conversion rates increased by a factor of 10! If you were browsing in Best Buy and you had a question, what would you do? You would immediately look for a salesperson. Imagine you were in Best Buy and not a soul was around, only someone to take your money and facilitate a checkout process. Would you want to leave? Of course! Well, so will your website visitors if you don’t provide them with a quick and easy way to get their questions answered.
Can’t they just pick up the phone if they have a question? Yes, they could, but…
- If your competitor is selling the same product and they have live chat, you may have just lost a sale. Internet users are extremely impatient and the quicker they can get an answer the better.
- Some of your customers are shy and they do not want to talk on the phone. They would rather speak online. You must have an option for every type of person to communicate with you.
- People by nature are lazy. If they are on your website and they have a question, once they can see your live chat icon they will automatically click it. Most likely, they will not even want to walk over to the phone to pick it up, dial and wait for the nice recording to finish so they can actually talk to someone.
Besides increasing conversions, how can Live Chat help eCommerce business owners?
Reduced Order Errors – You can reduce your returns and order errors by giving people access to a customer service representative at all stages of the checkout process. Eliminate confusion and questions about what items a customer really wants so you can avoid dealing with returns. As you continue to field checkout questions, you can also gain a better understanding of what is not working on your site and what works best and make appropriate adjustments to give your users a more streamlined experience.
Upselling – Grant your customers the ability to ask questions which increases the chance of upselling during the checkout process.
Eliminate the Brick Wall
Don’t give your customers any chance to wander away from your eCommerce website. Give them every opportunity to reach you, whether by phone, email or chat. Live chat will get you one step closer to mimicking a real, live experience for your website visitors which will bring you one step closer to increased success.