Live Chat: What It Is and Why Use It? [The Ultimate Guide 2023]

Update date : 24 Apr 2023 | 8 Min Read

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Gone are the days when people used to wait for letters for days; we live in an instant era now. In the digital space, everything is at your fingertips; no one would prefer waiting long hours for any service provider/business to revert. Live chat support is the best way to offer value to your customers while prioritizing their inquiries and questions.

Businesses follow a more personalized approach to engage with their customer base through live chat. Now the question arises what is live chat, and how it works?

"The global live chat market was valued at $794 in 2021 and is expected to grow exponentially to reach $1666 Million by 2030 with a CAGR of 8.59%," according to verified market research.

This article will take you through every know-how of the live chat integration and how it helps businesses upscale their game.

Let's dig deeper to understand the concept of live chat support

What is Live Chat?

Chat is the best option for businesses to offer their customers quick & personal responses to queries. Instant help or revert on the visitor inquiry adds value to your brand. Chat is the best option for businesses to offer their customers quick & personal responses to queries. Here is an explanation of what does live chat mean:

What is Livechat?

"Live chat is a service tool that allows businesses to connect with their visitors and customers quickly and efficiently with a real-time chat feature."

It has been mainly used as customer assistance or virtual company representative. However, it now finds more use cases in the marketing niche to engage with website visitors in real-time and convert them into leads.

Live chat helps to deliver an exceptional customer experience. Even as a customer, I prefer interacting with a brand that quickly responds to my issue rather than waiting for hours. Moreover, even after integrating a well-versed live chatbot, businesses can experiment with other strategies and innovative ideas to advance their live chat support.

Use-case of Live Chat

Many industries use the live chat tool to stay ahead in the game and deliver an unmatchable experience to their customers.

I belong to a marketing niche, so I have installed live chat on my website and trained it with the courses & package details that I offer. So, the visitors can drop their questions or inquiries in the live chat widget and get instant responses.

I have noticed that the 50% of the visitors who inquire on the website are more likely to buy my services. So, the live chat tools will boost your lead-generation process effectively.

If you are wondering how you can leverage the Live-chat tool for your business, here are some primary use cases of the live-chat tool:

1. Customer Support

The foremost & widespread use of the live chat feature is providing instant customer support. It is very convenient for customers to drop their queries/questions into the live widget without sparing their time and get an instant relevant response. The questions can vary from basic ones like product availability; service inquiries to technical queries.

2. For Assitance in Sale

Live chat is a dynamic and responsive sales tool. If a person is scrolling through the services/product on the website, the live chat agent can ask if they need any help or want to know about it. At any instant, when the customer decides to go ahead with the buying process and requires an immediate response or assistance, live chat appears as a savior.

3. Marketing Tool

We know that every visitor on the website will not turn into a customer immediately. But we can at least get potential leads by tracking their user journeys using marketing tools like riyo.ai. With the live chat option, customers get the required information, and that's good for any company's marketing strategy. Moreover, while starting the conversation, you can ask for the visitor's basic details while dropping their query.

4. Collect Customer Data

The live chat widget can be customized to collect the user data while the user interact on the website. For example: when initiating the conversation, the live chat agent can ask for the user name, email, or contact details and how they need help. This will filter out the customers for the specific services they need. There is also an option for integrating pre-chat & post-chat forms; pre-chat will help you understand the customer's requirement so that the concerned person in the team takes the conversation forward smoothly. Post-chat form collects user data as a part of the Lead-generation strategy.

Benefits of Using Live Chat for Businesses

Live chat has become integral to developing a practical website experience for visitors. Integrating the live chat option into the website has multiple benefits, ranging from sales to improving brand value.

Here are some of the primary benefits of live chat that businesses can leverage to grow in the market and why use live chat:

1. Easier Communication

Respond to customer queries instantly to maintain your customer base. We have already discussed that most customers prefer to wait for the responses for hours. It's almost like standing in a queue, which is no doubt irritating & exhausting. Live chat makes communication with visitors and customers very smooth and easy. Three core values are crucial for any website to create a great customer experience: Optimization, performance, and automation: live chat falls under the automation category. It helps you reach out to every visitor on the site to turn them into the lead with hassle-free and instant communication.

2. Personalized Approach Toward Customers

Using the live chat tools on the website will work as a single effort for your marketing and sales strategy. No other text-based client communications are as personalized as live chat. Businesses can feed their data into the live chat model to give customized responses to customers.

3. Increases Conversions

Live chat allows businesses to generate more conversions and increases brand loyalty. Customers who get instant responses to their queries or complaint are more likely to stay connected with the business. It makes them understand that their service provider is available for them 24/7. While people seek guidance or assistance and get it instantly, as expected, there are more chances that they will connect with the brand for the long term.

4. Marketing Data Source

The live chat tool makes it easy to identify customer behavior and modify your strategy accordingly. It can be an excellent resource for collecting user data, analyzing it, and improving the marketing KPIs accordingly.

How to Use Live Chat?

Okay, so I have already talked about the core benefits of using live chat; now, let's talk about how live chat can improve KPIs. Even after knowing what live chat can do, the question is how to do it. With my years of experience in marketing, I have mentioned some proven ways to use the live chat tool for your marketing and sales strategies:

1. User Engagement

Live chat is an excellent tool for grabbing user attention by popping up on their screen and asking them to start a conversation innovatively. From my experience, out of 100, only 30-40 visitors will interact or inquire on the website. But we can improve the engagement numbers with the live chat tool. Also, from a marketing perspective, you can use user engagement to collect user data like their email and phone number for further discussion. Also, you can redirect them to your social media handles to learn more about the company.

2. Generate Convincing Pitches

The best sales strategy is a well-versed agent working behind the live chat tool. The person will act as a bridge between the company and the customer via live chat and must be capable enough to pitch the visitor convincingly. This will resolve the last-minute doubts of the buyers instantly. Depending on the user interaction via the chat widget, it is easy to identify the potential leads and where you should put extra effort to get the conversion results.

3. Exceptional Customer Support

I know we have talked enough about customer support with live chat, but do you know how to optimize your live chat tool following the customer's view? Probably we all want the same thing when we seek help from customer support; an instant address to our problem (even if it can't be solved instantly). Live chat gives customers easier access to support Windows, creating a massive business selling point. You can quickly identify and resolve customer issues by leveraging the right tool and correct data.

Setting Up an Effective Live Chat Process

A well-planned marketing strategy will include live chat support as an integral element. Live chat ensures the user makes the most of their experience on your site.

Here are some tips for establishing a quick and smooth live chat process:

1. A Thorough Discussion on Use Cases

Live chat tool encompasses various use cases, including sales, marketing, and customer support. It is essential to consider what process suits your brand the most concerning your business goals. Whether live chat support will assist users with technical issues, collect user data for lead generation, or act as a marketing tool to analyze user behavior. Set out your use case precisely for an effective process.

2. Automated Support

Automation will help to make the live chat interaction more customized. Observing the user journey, live chat can pop up with the intent to start a conversation with the visitor. Automated messages will give a more personalized experience to visitors.

For example, you can ask someone scrolling through the service page for their requirements or what they are looking for.

3. AI Integration with Live Chat

AI is entering almost every arena of the digital world for advancement. Integration of the AI with live chat will create automation simplified as well more personalized. The AI chatbot can resolve most issues based on the trained data and pass the complex ones to the live chat agent. Integrating live chat with meeting scheduling tools and video chat options will enhance the user experience.

4. Assess Chat Requests Properly

Though replying to a request within a few seconds may increase customer satisfaction, it does not at the cost of quality customer support. Take a few seconds to understand the user's request and respond accordingly.

Ending Note

A business can quickly identify and resolve any issue with the right tools. Investing in an organized and streamlined customer support system is worth it to build the brand repo. Clients often observe how a particular business deals with their inquiries and how quickly they respond to their requests. An all-in-one marketing tool riyo.ai includes all the tools required for following the result-driven marketing strategy. Businesses that directly connect with the customers have an advantage in dealing with the barrier-adverse audience.

FAQs About Live Chat

What are the benefits of using live chat for businesses?

In the fast-paced, visitors are more likely to interact with the service provider who responds to their queries first. Live chat allows businesses to deliver an instant issue resolution to user queries increasing the chances of conversions. This also adds value to the brand with customer satisfaction. Live chat tool can be easily integrated into the website.

What are some primary use cases for a live chat on a website?

Live chat is an integral part of any effective website. The live chat widget encompasses multiple use cases for the business, including:

  • As the customer support chat window
  • Lead generation tool; to collect user data strategically
  • Assist the new website visitors
  • Creating user-engagement

Can live chat be used for marketing purposes?

Yes, definitely. Live chat is an amazing marketing tool for creating user engagement on the website and instantly providing answers for any user inquiry enabling a quick conversion process.

What are some common challenges that businesses face when implementing live chat support?

We know how important it is for a good website to include a live chat widget, though if companies are not opting for a trusted source for the live chat tool, it can negatively impact the website's quality score.

  • Complex integration process
  • Delayed responses
  • No customization available

Does riyo.ai provide any Live chat solution?

Yes, riyo.ai is an all-in-one marketing tool with various features like a website heatmap tool, B2B lead generation, Live chat tool, and many more. riyo.ai live chat can be integrated with ChatGPT to create a custom AI chatbot for the website.




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Tapan Patel
Article by
Tapan Patel
BDM

As the head of sales & marketing, Tapan has expertise in the execution and planning of business growth strategies aligning with marketing trends. Tapan has over 10+ years of experience in IT marketing for creating growth strategies and managing sales.

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