eCommerce Live Chat: Chat more To Earn More

⏱ Reading Time: 8 minutes

Did you know that only 54% of retailers have offered live chat to increase customer satisfaction? Despite the fact that most customers prefer getting help from a live person. It is time for that to change and for companies to adopt live chat into their eCommerce site.

🚀 Read Omnichannel Guide for Digitally Advanced Brands 🚀

Nowadays eCommerce is changing the way people shop, and because of the constant shift, it is crucial that brands follow the innovation to make the customer experience better. That’s why eCommerce live chat is here. By implementing live chat into your eCommerce website you will offer immediate help to your customers, plus they will feel more welcome on your website. Not to mention it will increase sales and boost your brand’s credibility.

So, let’s dive into it more.

What is Live Chat?

Paldesk defined it well:

„Live Chat is an online application for customer service. It’s integrated into websites in purpose to provide support to the customers. They can have real-time communication with their provider to get the answers to their requests. Traditionally, for that purpose was used mobile phone or e-mail, but this is also some part of digitalization.“

So, it is currently one of the biggest things on the internet. And when installed on websites, it’s the ultimate tool when it comes to improving customer experience and offering help.

Picture 1. Live Chat

To continue reading more about live chat, check our other article: What is Live Chat?

How Can Live Chat Help Your Ecommerce Website?

Your products may excel, your web design may stand out. But chances are, people are opting out of your site just because your instant support is nowhere to be found. In the brick and mortar world, you’d accomplish that in large part through personal touches that make every visitor feel like a VIP.

Like any brick-and-mortar store, an online shop can deliver similar personal touches online by using real-time communication – eCommerce live chat. In recent years, live chat has gained a lot of popularity.

A Forrester customer survey shows that 44% of online customers consider live chat as one of the most important features of any e-commerce site. If you think that this is good news for you, then this will get even better. According to MarTech, 51% of customers are more likely to purchase from a site that offers live chat. 

If those statistics aren’t enough proof, we will show you a few more statistics to see how important it is to implement live chat into your eCommerce website:

• Live chat has the highest customer satisfaction level among all the customer service channels. The phone is reported to have 44%, email has 61%, and live chat has 73%.
• 79% of consumers prefer to live chat over other channels as it provides them with immediate support 
• American Marketing Association study says that customers that use live chat are three times more likely to make a purchase compared to those who don’t.
• According to Forrester Research, 44 percent of customers say that having questions answered by a live person boost their satisfaction level and they feel more confident to do business with the companies. 
• In another survey by Roost, 63% of consumers said that they will return to an eCommerce store that offers live chat, and 57% reported that they will abandon a purchase if their queries weren’t answered quickly.

So, the adoption of live chat services is becoming a way that e-commerce retailers are adjusting their strategies to reach customers in new and innovative ways. Online and mobile shopping has given consumers more choice and flexibility to shop. So, retailers are approaching in a different way to keep the pace.

6 Reasons Why Ecommerce Live Chat Is Important for Your Business

1. Engaged followers build relationships and improve customer satisfaction

How your live chat agent interacts with a visitor places a significant impact on his/her buying decision. Tip for securing the deal is to choose the right approach and leave the best impression.

Online shoppers are often looking for instant gratification. If your shop can’t provide them with the product they need, they will look elsewhere. Live chat can be a way to ‘save’ these potential customers from leaving your site. By answering their questions promptly, you can keep them engaged and edge them closer and closer towards making a purchase. And all that leads to customer satisfaction and increases sales. 

Read our article on customer engagement and learn how to reduce customer churn! 

Using live chat technology, you can proactively reach out to your site’s visitors, facilitating engagement with them in the process. By this, you make clear that you’re ready to help them. 

Also, when speaking about customer satisfaction, if you want to read about it more, check our other article: How to Improve Customer Service and Ensure Customer Satisfaction.

2. New opportunity to sell the product: Upselling and cross-selling

Upselling and cross-selling are well-known tactics on how to increase your sales. If you are not familiar with them, then let’s explain them. Upselling is a tactic used to present a more valuable product or service to a customer who is interested in a product of lesser value. On the other hand, cross-selling is a tactic of presenting additional or complimentary items or services along with a product or service that a customer is interested in.

While there are many ways to automate upselling and cross-selling offers on your site, live chat allows you to personalize these offers for each of your customers proactively. Suggestions generated via algorithms can produce not as valid idea like a real person via live chat can. As a result of implementing live chat on your e-commerce site, you can end up making additional purchases from your customers.

Read more on upselling and cross-selling in our behavior marketing strategy article! 

3. Optimized mobile chat encourages sales

Since nowadays everything is on mobile, it is crucial for companies to optimize their eCommerce live chat for mobile devices as it increases sales. Statistics says that 67% of traffic generated from mobile devices. And that number is only increasing. So if you haven’t already optimized it, now would be the best that. 

It offers users a positive UX that leaves a customer with a good impression. Plus it encourages them to engage with your brand more and to purchase your products and services. 

Picture 2. Optimize mobile SEO

4. Proactive chat reduces shopping cart abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is what happens to a lot of companies. To avoid that, start using the proactive chat. Proactive chat is a type of live chat where a customer service agent engages users directly, based on their behavior on the website. It can be automated using visitor segmentation and auto chat rules. 

Customers may be struggling to get to check out because they can’t find the right product, or they have questions. If you’re not helping customers while they’re on your site, considering a purchase, or trying to complete a transaction, then you’re throwing money in the air.

Read Omnichannel Retailing: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

So, if you see the customer is checking your page for quite a while, it means a customer is looking for some information, and a simple automated message can help them and prevent cart abandonment. 

5. Millennials prefer live chat over phone & email

The picture shows that chat has killed the phone call, by over 60% of millennials preferred to use live chat when wanting to ask a question. They found that when surveying millennials, live chat was their preferred channel because of two main reasons: no hold times and convenience.

Picture 3. Preferences for Live Chat vs. Phone by age

6. More personalized messaging over eCommerce live chat

Live chat always made it possible for your business to communicate with your customers on an authentic, human-to-human interaction. But, not many businesses turn that in their favor. Essentially, e-commerce live chat enables you to adapt to each individual customer. This all ties back into building trust and forging a long-term relationship with your customers.

Improve Ecommerce Website with Paldesk – Live Chat Software

Paldesk is a powerful live chat and helpdesk software that helps businesses offer superior customer service to visitors through multiple channels. 

Most popular channels include Webchat, Mobile Applications (SDK), Email, Facebook, Twitter, Viber. Since it is built on top of a robust customer helpdesk and ticketing software, Paldesk integrates with your most popular customer communication channels.

Paldesk top features include live chat, multilanguage live chat, live translation, ticketing system, chatbot, visitor tracking, and knowledge base.

Paldesk top features include live chat, multilanguage live chat, live translation, ticketing system, chatbot, visitor tracking, and knowledge base.

With Paldesk live chat for eCommerce, you can turn your online webshop visitors into buyers, support and boost business growth. Benefits of implementing Paldesk into your eCommerce website:

1. Don’t let customers shop alone
2. Reduce cart abandonment
3. Improve your eCommerce website sales by tracking your visitors
4. Assist to several visitors at the same time 

Picture 4. Paldesk eCommerce live chat benefits

Paldesk review:

„Switching to Paldesk has helped us better manage hundreds of customer messages we get daily. We’re now responding much faster to email and Facebook messages from one central point. The team consistently updates the product with great new features each month. Paldesk is a really powerful helpdesk software from a company that cares.“ – Tugomil, CTO, Supersport

Wrap Up

Many eCommerce sites are not aware of the importance of implementing live chat feature in their online businesses. And so far it is clear that customer will rather return to a company that provides live chat. Because eCommerce live chat increases the potential of your business, increases customer satisfaction and sales.

One of the challenges with eCommerce is that your visitors can’t connect with someone who can answer their questions at the same moment. Therefore, live chat is an essential concept that every e-commerce companies should try.