Transcript:
Hiya guys, it’s Rob here from Gnatta, talking today about webchat. Now, I know this isn’t new technology (in fact it’s been around since about the early 90’s), however, adoption rates amongst many industries is still lower than one might expect.
Of course, webchat is technology that allows a user, or a visitor, or a client who visits your website to communicate with an operator, an advisor, an agent all via a chat function.
There are many, many uses for it; there are many, many suppliers of it. However, one thing is for sure and that’s that organisations really can’ t let it go any longer. So, today, we’re going to talk about 5 reasons why webchat is a crucial part of technology, and, if you haven’t yet adopted it, you really need to get on the bandwagon.
So, unsurprisingly, the first reason for using webchat is, of course, cost. Recent Forrester research has shown that webchat is, on average, between 17 to 30 percent cheaper than a phone call, which is a very pertinent example when you think that both are live communication challenges, by which I mean a customer has come to your website and wants to be in a one–to–one conversation in real–time which is different from a social media post, it’s different from an email, etc.
Now, there’s a couple of reasons for this efficiency. Firstly, operators can handle multiple chats at once. Secondly, they can integrate much easier and use more automation than you can on the phone. And thirdly, there are no cost–per–minute charges. Now thinking about that: every minute that you’re on a phone call, of course, you are accruing costs, whether it’s a VOIP charge, whether it’s a landline charge. Whereas, with webchat, once you’ve managed your implementation and set up, you’ve got your on–going management fee, however, there’s no volume charges related. So, it’s often a much more efficient live channel to be promoted on your website over the traditional telephony.
Of course, it’s not just cost impact; it’s revenue impact as well. Now studies have repeatedly shown that webchat has a positive impact on revenue generation. In fact, a recent Comm100 study, showed that live chat can drive 3 to 5 times more conversions and can actually achieve an ROI of up to 6000%. The same study showed that customers are 3 times more likely to purchase when they enter into webchat during the conversion funnel. This is something that just simply cannot be avoided. Webchat is massive when it comes to generating leads and making sales. So, as well as the efficiencies as a post-sale service solution, never forget the benefit that it can have to your sales and marketing funnels.
The third reason is customer loyalty. A recent EDigital benchmark survey of 2,000 consumers found a customer satisfaction score for webchat which was 73%, compared to 61% for email and 44% for phones. This makes it the most popular channel amongst consumers, often for the ability to give quick answers, but also the ability to solve problems faster due to integrations, due to the automations available that allow operators to be much more efficient via the channel. This makes it a simple and yet very effective recipe for improving your customer service (but also as an after effect: the customer loyalty) amongst your consumer base.
Reason number 4, is actually about finding customer pain points. Now, obviously whenever you speak to customers, be it consumers, be it users, be it clients you’re always able to ask them what the pain was that drove them to contact you today. However, with webchat you get an incredible insight into where these customers have contacted you from. So, by allowing chat across various pages (maybe in your conversion funnel, maybe in your support pages), you get data–driven evidence that says people are contacting you because they cannot find the answer to this issue, or this question, or they need help converting in this manner. This is incredibly powerful for you to change your processes and update your website to actually reduce your overall number of contacts and improve customer experience.
Also, with live chat and unlike a phone call, you can easily scroll back through the entire chat history, whether it’s a new operator, whether it’s a supervisor, whether it’s a manager, to see all the information that you need to find what the issues are and put in MI and BI results to improve them and improve your overall service.
So, finally we come to the fifth reason for using webchat which is, quite simply, automation. Now we’ve discussed how you can improve your cost efficiency, how you can improve your revenue generation, how your loyalty can be increased, and how you can identify pain points. But the crux of all these is the underlying automation and integrations that webchat allows that other channels simply don’t.
In a live environment, you can integrations set up for automated replies based on reason for contact. You can gather information from external systems (be they first–, second–, or third–party) using APIs. For example, a customer comes online, inputs an order number, wants to know where their delivery is. The agent can have all the information there on a screen in front of them (without having to ask the customer any questions because you’ve gathered that information in the pre–chat survey) to answer it and provide that level of human interaction, empathy, but also first–time resolution, which is difficult across any other channel. You’ve also got the added benefits of using things like attachments, like pictures, like memes, like emojis. This is increasingly a text–driven environment that we operate in. And, whilst having telephony (which, actually, webchat can promote call–backs) as an alternative is important to keep that human–to–human contact for the customers that require it, for others, webchat allows you to have that live communication underpinned by levels of automation which can massively increase your efficiency, that drive the benefits of the first four reasons spoken about.
That’s the five reasons why you should think about using webchat today if you’re not already. And if you are already, why not make it a more central part of your offering? Why not look to replace phone calls using webchat? Why not gather your IVR and point people in that direction? Why not put it on more pages of your website? Why not use proactive webchat? There are all these opportunities there in this key, driving channel to improving efficiency, effectiveness, and most importantly of all: the customer experience.
Now here at Gnatta, obviously we’re free to talk to you at any point, whether it’s for advice, whether it’s for information, whether it’s for case studies, to show you why webchat can really have a massive impact on your business.
The information and the way of contacting us is simple; it’s on the website, it’s below this video. You can reach out to us at any time at hello@gnatta.com. We’d love to hear from you.
I hope this has been helpful, please let us know in the comments what you think and any information that you have or examples from your own business, and we hope to hear from you soon. Thank you very much.
