Having instant support always on hand can make a huge difference when it comes to the performance of your eCommerce store.
Online shoppers are impatient and crave instant answers to any queries that they may have. Customer experience is their perception of the way a company treats and deals with them. In an online environment, where it is not as easy to build brand loyalty, live chat software can make all the difference.
When you go to a physical store, you often have access to a sales assistant. The ability to quickly ask ad hoc questions and get thoughtful answers dramatically increases the likelihood of a product being purchasingt. Building rapport and trust is also an essential part of the user experience, whether people are shopping online or in a traditional retail bricks & mortar store.
Live chat software for eCommerce is changing the way people shop online. You wouldn’t leave your store without an assistant, so why leave your website without live chat? It can give your store a competitive advantage and make customers feel valued and important. When it’s challenging to compete with the eCommerce giants on price and convenience, a superior customer service level may be the edge that your store needs. A study carried out by Walker Information found that customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
This blog post will discuss what you should look out for when choosing a live chat service provider and some of the key ways live chat can drive more eCommerce sales.
Customisable live chat
One of the first things to look for in an outsourced live chat provider is how much control you have to adapt the live chat window and settings to suit your business and website.
For example, with Moneypenny’s Live Chat service, you can customise the Live Chat window’s look to align with your brand. You can also customise greetings in many ways. The chat window can display different tailored greetings, depending on which web page a user is on.
Moneypenny’s Live Chat service also allows users to tag conversations quickly so that a sales query goes straight to a member of the sales team, or a support query goes to a relevant member of the support team.
With Moneypenny’s Live Chat service, you can also program the chat window to appear under specific situations, appearing when your customers need it most.
Being proactive will help you to grow your business, gain loyal customers and gain valuable feedback. For example, on a product page, if a user is scrolling up and down the page continually, or is clicking parts of the web page that are not actually clickable, then you could set up Live Chat to proactively appear.
Live chat with an overflow service
An overflow service can be valuable if you have seasonal products for sale. For instance, if you sell surfboards or summer shorts, your sales are likely to peak just before the summer.
Rather than recruit additional seasonal live chat agents to handle the peak times of the year, use a live chat provider with an overflow service to handle all of the incoming enquiries that your full-time team are unable to deal with.
If you are a solopreneur or a small business, an overflow service is ideal too. For example, as a business owner, you may want to handle chats yourself, but what happens when you need to log yourself out to deal with a customer or when your website receives lots of interested visitors thanks to a successful marketing campaign?
Live chat agents can spring into action with an overflow service, logging in as soon as you log yourself out or if all of your in-house agents are busy. With an overflow service, you can instantly scale the number of chats in line with the number of live chat enquiries you have.
Live chat with 24/7 cover
One of the great things about the internet is that you can access it 24/7. In an age of shift workers and night owls, providing customer assistance around the clock can make a huge difference to the number of customers your website generates.
With Moneypenny’s Live Chat service, we can handle chats around the clock. You can increase customer engagement, build rapport and provide an excellent level of customer service, regardless of the time.
24/7 customer support
Whilst it’s fantastic to have a 24/7 managed live chat service, it’s also good to know that should anything go wrong, your live chat provider has you covered at any time of the day or night. With Moneypenny, you have access to our 24-hour support team so that you are never offline.
Live chat agents integrated with AI
With Moneypenny’s Live Chat service, you have the option of using programmable chatbots to auto-respond to specific, frequently asked questions. Once you have built up a database of the common questions, using the Live Chat portal’s reports, you can usually handle a large percentage of online queries using this method. When the bot’s response does not satisfy or answer the question, a Moneypenny Live Chat agent will be on hand to further assist the user.
Dedicated live chat agents
Anyone who takes a free trial with Moneypenny’s Live Chat service has a Welcome Call with their dedicated Live Chat agent. During this call, tell us exactly how you and your team would like us to work. This call also gives us time to get to know the basics of your business, the industry, and your brand, so that they can handle chats appropriately.
Without the hassle of recruitment and legal paperwork, you get all the benefits of a full-time, in-house Live Chat agent for a fraction of the cost.
UK-based live chat agents
When choosing a live chat service for eCommerce, one thing to check is where the agents are located. It is much easier to build a rapport and a relationship with a customer based in the UK if your live chat agents are located in the same country.
Live chat & checkout dropout
One of the most critical roles for live chat eCommerce is to reduce the rate of shopping cart abandonment – the number of people who start the checkout process but never complete it.
Digital marketing website – Wordstream.com, describes shopping cart abandonment as “the single largest obstacle for eCommerce retailers to overcome.”
The data appears to support this statement – depending on the industry, the eCommerce checkout abandonment rate varies from 50% to 85%, according to this SaleCycle report. That’s a lot of potential customers to lose and a lot of revenue lost.
Drop-off happens most during the checkout process.
Before purchasing a product, people have questions and these might contribute to why they drop off. These could include:
There are any number of reasons why users drop out just before making a purchase – perhaps the site is too slow or not optimized for mobile phone users.
With this in mind, a great place to add your live chat widget is during the checkout process. Suppose a customer is on one particular checkout-page for 30 seconds or more – you can program live chat software to pop up proactively, with a specific message relevant to the particular checkout page.
You can program most live chat widgets and plugins to initiate a chat asking a question. For example, at the start of the checkout process, if someone is on the same page for over 30 seconds, you can program your live chat window to appear with a specific question, a particular offer, or a discount code to prompt the user to complete a transaction.
Use live chat transcripts to inform site design
To proactively reduce cart abandonment, you can create content that answers all the common and frequently asked questions.
For example, if users frequently ask live chat agents questions regarding shipping, then add shipping information somewhere prominent on your site. If shipping is free, make sure this information features on product pages and the initial checkout page so customers feel fully informed.
Commonly cited reasons given by users for abandoning the checkout process include:
If any of your users are concerned about site security regarding their credit card details, then you could display some security information and trust metrics. To reassure customers, the website could feature review scores, money-back guarantees, security credentials – for example, state the level of encryption.
If users frequently ask live chat agents where to find specific items or information, this could also help inform design. For example, if a customer struggles to find shipping information – you could test out the impact of placing this information prominently at the start of the checkout process or on product pages.
Use live chat with discount codes
Chats accompanied by discount codes can sometimes seal the deal. The presence of a discount code section during checkout can, however, be a double-edged sword.
Many users will leave the site to search for a discount code if they are prompted in any way to use one. With this in mind, the presence of a discount code box should be tested to see how it impacts cart completion rates.
Live chat, coupled with a discount code, can make customers feel valued and incentivise them to make a purchase. For example, if a user is on a checkout page or a product page for more than 30 seconds, a pro-active chat window could appear and automatically ask the customer if he or she is looking for something. The agent can offer a time-limited discount code during the conversation to make the customer feel appreciated and motivated to complete a purchase.
Why use Live Chat from Moneypenny?
There are many benefits to Moneypenny’s Live Chat service for your eCommerce site. Our service is hosted on a cloud SaaS platform, making it easy to add Live Chat to your website and simple to scale, should website traffic increase.
Established in 2000, we have over 20 years’ experience and knowledge regarding business communications and technology. Our fully customisable Live Chat service, with dedicated people you know and trust, is compliant with all UK data legislation and provides insightful reporting as part of our secure client portal.
With no long-term contracts and a free trial currently available, you have nothing to lose with Moneypenny’s outsourced Live Chat service.
12 Feb 2024
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