Live Chat on Website

UK Business Directory

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Nov 16, 2016
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Hi

For those who use live chat on website, does it help in generating sales?

Considering installing Live Chat on one of my websites
 
we put on talk.to recently as it was a free wordpress plug-in and works really well. We've had one customer convert after using it, but difficult to say whether they would have just emailed us if the option wasn't there. It does also cut out some of the chaff.
 
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I know of (and have worked on) a number of websites where live chat has made a considerable difference to conversion rates.

Absolutely give it a try.
 
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We've been finding some good success from our livechat. You can get a 30 day trial with Zopim (it's recently be renamed Zendesk chat).
 
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Its different for different sites/companies. We put chat on and got 1 conversion almost instantly. Like said above though, he still probably would have contacted us via different methods.
 
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As a consumer, I always take advantage of live chat as I can get my questions answered a lot quicker so as a result, can speed up my purchase. If you look at it from this POV, it is a good tool to have.
 
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I've not used it much myself but I've heard that it can depend heavily on how you use it. I know someone who was just using it to answer people questions. This removed the need for them to call which in turn meant they did not convert as well for him. Once he realised his mistake, he started using it to encourage phone calls which worked really well
 
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I absolutely love Live Chat.. it's a little more demanding but rewarding.

The absolute best software we have used is Intercom - we got so many compliments when using this. Our customers loved it. However it is very expensive.

We are currently using Drift as it has a similar flow to Intercom and is much cheaper.
 
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We have live chat- it is only sales chat- all technical questions are redirected to customers service ticketing system or hot lines- this way all support cases can be easily managed and tracked.
Sales chat works just perfect for us.
 
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ZenDesk chat has a 'lite' version that is free. Takes seconds to set up so easy to give it a go.
 
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I have had Live Chat on the site for about a month, and no one has asked for a chat yet... but then the site does need an overhaul, so it may be that that is putting people off.

But it's there if people do want to use it, but then I have had quote requests or questions through several other mediums as well, include Twitter and both Linkedin and Facebook messaging.
 
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I have had Live Chat on the site for about a month, and no one has asked for a chat yet... but then the site does need an overhaul, so it may be that that is putting people off.

But it's there if people do want to use it, but then I have had quote requests or questions through several other mediums as well, include Twitter and both Linkedin and Facebook messaging.

Do you have it set up so a chat box automatically pops up in front of the visitor with a prewritten message?

That's the main way to get it working well. Have it appear with a "Hello. How can I help you today?" type of message, as if you were reaching out to them. A lot more people will type a reply where you can start chatting to them.
 
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At the very least it makes you look more responsive and open to support and gives you an edge over your competitors. People really value support and the easier the better!
 
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At the very least it makes you look more responsive and open to support and gives you an edge over your competitors. People really value support and the easier the better!
From the other side, it is also better in case you have one tool to manage all the inputs from leads/customers. There are several tools on the market which are prepared for effective inputs handling- search well and you will find them.
 
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I use Zopim Live chat and its great for us. Customers contact through the live chat more than the actual contact page which is a plus side. Definitely, should have it . Depends on what sort of industry you're in. I'm a website designer so clients want to get hold of me there and then i
 
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I second using Tawk.to
I used it in my previous role and although it didn't quite match to their needs the use of the programme was very good
 
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I must be the only one who hasn't had any success from Live Chat.

Live on our Promo Product website for 6 months which gains 4 to 5 new customer quote requests a day.

We only had 2 people on Live Chat...
 
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Although I have live chat on my website, I have only every had one contact through it and that was 1) an existing customer 2) chat was offline at the time ( so messaged )

So for me an experiment / failed
 
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We have many clients that say a lot of conversions are now off the back of a chat with someone within their company.

Altho, we also have clients that dont even sell things and use it more as a "client relations" system and couldn't be happier with the feedback.

Its one of those things you just have to try and see if its suitable for your business and clients (Most of not all provide free trials anyway)
 
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It does work. I have done some split testing on this and had a 10% increase in conversion. However, in order for live chat to work you really need to use it! I say this because I tell my clients this than after few weeks I will do a test by pretending to be a customer. I will find many will have the live chat on but when you click to connect with someone you get no answer. Or the live chat is off when it should be on! So, internal training is very important and having the resources. If you can achieve this than you will see benefits especially if you have high volume of traffic.
 
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In my business plan was always to look to support customers in any way and as customer myself I find that chatting to someone a lot more easier than talking on the phone. Give your customers different ways of contacting is the best solution in my beleive and chat is one of them.
 
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In my business plan was always to look to support customers in any way and as customer myself I find that chatting to someone a lot more easier than talking on the phone. Give your customers different ways of contacting is the best solution in my beleive and chat is one of them.
80-85% of answers can be standard copy-paste, using chat you can provide feedback to several customers at the same time. You are more effective and your customers do not feel the difference.
Another important thing is that you can provide discussion summary to your customers- this build up your position as a reliable business.
 
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80-85% of answers can be standard copy-paste, using chat you can provide feedback to several customers at the same time. You are more effective and your customers do not feel the difference.
Another important thing is that you can provide discussion summary to your customers- this build up your position as a reliable business.
Yes I agree with that, and I have been dissapointed with some chat experiences mostly by big companies who aim only to get your money and not help customers. I think that's the difference with big and small business. Small business will aim to provide best support because this is only way to progress.
 
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Yes I agree with that, and I have been dissapointed with some chat experiences mostly by big companies who aim only to get your money and not help customers. I think that's the difference with big and small business. Small business will aim to provide best support because this is only way to progress.
Only when you create additional value you can win with bigger players- this is what we call personal touch. This requires a high level of service automation- auto-triggered customer notification saves your time and delivers all necessary information to your customers. Live chat is a cherry on top of automation.
 
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It can work in my opinion (and what I know from working with web developers) but ONLY if the reply is in fact instant and always available (or the function is turned off when no one is there). Otherwise, you may as well use email.
 
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It can work in my opinion (and what I know from working with web developers) but ONLY if the reply is in fact instant and always available (or the function is turned off when no one is there). Otherwise, you may as well use email.
You can redirect chat to mobile phone application- this way you can provide instant response even on the move. I agree that sometimes chat comes in the unexpected moments but in a worst case, you can provide the available schedule to the customer.
 
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Hi all!
I have found that to succeed with live chat one has to have set a clear goal (for example generating leads or increasing customer service efficiency) and commitment to go online with chat regularly. Just implementing chat on the website rarely generates excellent results.

Depending on your goals, I can point you to some hopefully interesting and useful content.
 
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From my experience, 10-30% increase in conversion rate can be expected on transactional websites. But I think in order to ensure/increase ROI/conversions with chat, you need to have the right agent available on chat. A badly trained chat on your live chat tool will likely to decrease conversions.
 
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Live Chat is great and integrates with most content management systems. You could test the effectiveness of it with an A/B test to see if website visitors take a desired action more often with live chat installed.
Whenever you give a trial to new web features it is worth to A/B testing- from payments to COP, chat, new layout etc...
 
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Depends on what your offering via the website.

We have it on ours, more a gimmick, only really getting silly questions as opposed to inquiries.

But for 6 quid a month we keep it on the off chance it does result in some business.
 
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