How to Improve Live Chat Sales Funnel?

⏱ Reading Time: 5 minutes

Getting customers to buy something is a lot of work. You might spend a ton of cash to get people on your website, but if you can’t convert interest to a purchasing decision, then you have a problem with your live chat sales funnel. But, you think ahead and keep up with trends so what could be the problem?

 🚀Read Customer Service: A Guide for Successful Business Growth  🚀

Introducing the Sales Funnel

Generating sales online is a complicated process, and you need to nurture it. Consumers make online purchases only after doing extensive research on a product or a service. Price, features, and specs are readily available online. So, they have a lot of time to spend seeking answers before making a buying decision. To convert customers, you need to implement a full spectrum of marketing, omnichannel and sales strategies.

Read more on live chat strategy and how to create one in Paldesk Live-Chat guide. 

If your customer service is on point, it can drive the sales process and move potential buyers through your sales funnel much more efficiently. Live chat gives you the ability to change the traditional sales process into a more enjoyable customer experience. It also gives you the ability to provide specific information in real-time.

Creating a sales funnel is necessary for businesses that want better sales performance. With the right approach, companies can create very effective sales funnels, which is one of the crucial importance of every digital marketing strategy. It serves buyers to attract them towards your product. During the whole process, a big chunk of data is collected, enabling businesses to achieve more optimization on the customer journey. The sales funnel made up of four steps.

Picture 1. Sales funnel process

Four Steps of Sales Funnel

Awareness

Awareness is the first step that a business takes to draw in customers through their sales funnel. The primary step is to identify a possible problem your customers has and offer them a solution.

Here, the goal is to build up your mailing list. This is where SEO can be quite handy, as people who find you organically will consider your company-worthy. By having better awareness, you will have the higher the number of customers.

Interest

This phase begins when a person provides their email address to you. Also known as getting a lead. This is a starting point of drawing people down the funnel, where they are regularly updated via onboarding emails. Those emails contain various types of useful information. The point is just to make people click on your email links.

However, don’t go too far by sending too many emails. This can lead to compelling people, and then they unsubscribe from your email list. Therefore, be moderate with the emails and offer valuable information in it. This must increase the number of clicks.

Decision

The peak point of every sale funnel is the decision. During this phase, your goal should be to motivate people towards favorable decision using numerous tactics.

The decision is the hardest part of the sales funnel. In this channel, your goal is to motivate people to make the purchasing decision. This is where you need to try numerous types of tactics to find the right one that will drive it to the sale. This stage depends on the previous two. It is necessary to think about the first steps of the last stages carefully and establish a funnel where people will be able to trust your brand.

Action

The finale phase reveals how effective your sales funnel is actually showing you the number of conversions.  Your leads will either step away or buy the product.

Read more about sales funnel and its stages in MailMunch Beginner’s Guide to a Sales Funnel.

Live Chat Sales Funnel

Your customer experience journey starts by creating awareness among customers about your product, service, and brand overall. Guiding interested customer from awareness to successful action is the communication mix of your digital presence, key communication points, and communication hotspots. The gap between the interest and decision is overcome using live chat!

Picture 2. Preferences for Live Chat vs Phone by age

There is more to live chat, than technical advancement of your cutting-edge website. Adding a live-chat feature such as Paldesk encourages and empowers the overall customer experience of your brand.

For example, a customer that has an interest in your product is scrolling up and down your website. That customer is already aware of your brand presence and is just a question or two away from making a final decision.

“Does this T-shirt come in black?”, “Can I get this before the holidays”, “Will this ring me fit?” must be answered quickly in order for the customers to make a positive decision.

Related: Customer Service: A Guide for Successful Business Growth

Picture 3. Traditional vs. Live Chat funnel

Implementing Live Chat into Sales Funnel

Optimizing the sales funnel is a hard task. But it’s a must. If just one step is lagging, the funnel will leak. One of the things you can include to fix up the hole of your pipe is live chat in the whole process. If we look at the traditional sales funnel, live chat sits at the intersection of Interest and Decision.

Someone who is scrolling on your site, and it’s interested in what you have to offer, might have few questions in his sleeve. Therefore, they want them to be answered before they are ready to make a purchasing decision. Your sales team should be prepared to answer all pre-sale questions a customer has.

Steps for Optimizing Sales Funnel with Live Chat

1. Live chat is more productive

You can handle 25% more conversation with live chat than without him.

2.Higher Conversation rates

Customers are more likely to convert if they are chatting in real-time with agents. Also, they will spend more too.

3. You have an overview of the flow

You can place your live chat widget in areas other than your homepage if those pages have more traffic. You can optimize your chat on product page or FAQ page so your agents will talk with a specific group of visitors.

Live Chat Sales Funnel: Conclusion

The results are in, adding live chat opportunities to your website can benefit your online presence. Most consumers now expect your business to be available 24/7. Success in adding live chat support, as in any other part of marketing, depends directly on the strategy you use during the implementation of it.

While live chat doesn’t replace email, phone, or in-person communication, it complements these ways of communication well. So, it can help to enhance your sales pipeline management. Its usefulness for your sales funnel will profoundly impact your customers since agents can guide customers through all funnel phases.