On the face of it a live chat function on your website may seem like a good idea, but is it?
The standard method of live chat is a pop-up box that allows a website visitor to speak via text in real time with a representative of your business.
In this article I’ll look at the pros and cons of using live chat to speak to your customers when they’re on your website.
Live chat pros
- The opportunity to answer any questions customers may have in real time while they’re on your website
- Up-sell or cross-sell your products or services
- The chance to portray a helpful and professional image as well as an online personality
Live chat cons
- Your live chat may have to be offline during working hours if you’re busy
- Some potential customers won’t welcome the interruption or have time to chat
- Staffing the live chat will use time that could be spent on other things – will the live chat deliver a good return on investment?
Live chat can work better for some industries rather than others. In my own experience I’ve never found it that useful. For example I recently chatted live to someone from my bank who was only able to tell me to send an email to have my enquiry dealt with.
What do you think about live chat? Have you used it yourself? If so, did you find it a positive or negative addition to your website? Please share your comments below.
Totally agree with what you have said, it works really well for us but i can see how it might not well for other businesses,
Hi Ricky, thanks for taking the time to comment. I had a look at your site and can see how it would be useful, but like you say for other industries it may not work well at all.
Hi,
I run a live chat business s ( IMsupporting.com )
And I can tell you that yes your summary is pretty much spot on!
We have clients who don’t get many chats per day and we get others who simply get too many!
I think that any business looking to use it first needs to think “Do my customers REALLY have questions that need answering now?” and “Do we have the answers to give them now?”
As you mentioned, Its pointless having live chat if your support staff simply cant answer the same questions someone on the phone could.
Blog owner:
Id love to hear your thoughts on our live chat software as you seem interested in the subject?
Hi Graham, thanks for taking the time to comment. I’ve seen a few sites lately where a live chat box pops up so quickly I’ve barely had chance to have a look around the site.
Your software seems to be very comprehensive – I think all the monitoring options are great and would be useful to companies with large live chat volumes.
Cheers
Jamie