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A live chat is a small conversation pop-up that you can find on some web pages. They allow businesses to manage live, written conversations with all their visitors who feel the need. A good example is our own live chat, at the bottom right of the webpage you are reading. At Welivechat, our agents are available 7 days a week from 9 am to 10 pm to welcome our clients and those of our clients, on their respective sites.
To provide real-time assistance to your customers, collect live feedback, or simply to create an online community and generate more leads, a live chat can be a great addition to your site. If set up correctly, it will also allow you to convert visitors into quality leads. Its mere presence can already have an impact on the return rate of internet visitors.
At Welivechat, we have years of experience in live chat. This experience applies to various sectors and different types of businesses, so we quickly began to share our expertise to encourage companies to provide what we believe to be the best possible customer support today.
We know the steps to follow and how to best reach a website visitor by offering them an unexpected service; a salesperson available on the screen of their smartphone, tablet, or computer! And this, without obstacles or commitments.
Here are the steps we recommend following to set up your live chat.
You shouldn't expect to put your new communication channel online and have everything run smoothly from the start. And without a clear goal, it will be difficult to judge the impact of an agent present on your website.
The first step is to define what you want to achieve with your new instant messaging. You can generate leads, try to increase the return or conversion rate, focus on customer support, just "pretend" to have someone constantly available but redirecting to the site's forms or registration and purchase processes, ... (we do not recommend this last one). In short, everything is possible, but your goals fully define the rest of the process and the tools you will need to adopt.
Here's an example of clear goals a business could set for its live chat:
"Increase lead conversion rate by 10%"
"Generate 15 positive Google reviews per month"
"Reduce calls to the telephone center by 150 per month"
"Decrease shopping cart abandonment rate by 15%"
...
The figures given in the examples are indicative, and you will obviously need to adapt them to your current results and other business goals. From experience, these goals are achievable with a live chat.
You will understand that the goals to be achieved can strongly depend on your business, and it is up to you to define them well in advance.
Tip: Consider quantifying your goals to measure results!
Summary: Before undertaking anything, ask yourself why you want to do it and what goals would be achievable.
This step encompasses several phases or points to check. Start by deciding on the availability hours for the live chat and who will handle it internally. To avoid this question, outsourcing can be an excellent alternative.
Depending on the number of requests to expect, the number of employees, their current workload, their availability hours, and many other factors, you can define the availability hours. We advise you to stick to these hours and announce them in your marketing communications. Learn more here.
Next, you will need to equip the chat "agents" with the right tools. Welivechat invites you to set up two things; scripts and FAQs.
For scripts, think about possible customer requests. The goal will be to have "pre-made" conversations, where your employee will only have to follow or even copy/paste predefined sentences. But be careful to keep the conversation "human". The main goal is to remind agents of the conversation's direction, such as lead generation or direct problem-solving.
Tip: Your employees should always try to end their message submissions with closed questions, if possible. Otherwise, an open question, but always a question. This allows you to continue guiding the conversation towards the intended goal.
The second tool is questions/answers or "FAQs". Anticipate possible questions from your visitors and add a detailed and structured response. You will be surprised by the number of recurring requests; your agents will thank you for not having to rewrite everything manually each time! But, above all, they will have an 'answer to everything' and feel more comfortable when responding to visitors' messages. With these tools in hand, adapted to your goals, your agents have what they need to start showcasing your company's expertise.
Summary: List and quantify the goals to be achieved on the live chat, then generate tailored scripts and FAQs while keeping the objectives in mind.
If you are looking for simplicity, you can add the Facebook Messenger plugin or the Whatsapp plugin to your website.
This has some advantages such as ease of installation, the free plugin, and the fact that everyone knows how to use Facebook Messenger easily. However, it also has several significant disadvantages; a weakened engagement rate because visitors are no longer anonymous at the beginning of the conversation (they chat with their Facebook profile), or a Facebook Messenger that does not offer tools to facilitate conversations for the agent managing them. Moreover, the chat widget is not customizable.
These plugins can be useful in some structures, but we recommend specialized software that allows you to add work tools, manage multiple channels at once, or even customize the chat widget on the website.
There are numerous live chat softwares, such as the one we use at Welivechat. Some offer many more features than others or even completely different features.
To name just a small fraction and without any particular chronology, there are Zendesk Chat, LiveChat, Crisp, iAdvize, Trengo, or Freshchat. Take the time to compare the different options and choose the one that best suits your needs and budget.
"At Welivechat, we are official partners of LiveChat.com. A pioneer in this type of software, they have a comprehensive program that offers us the customization we need to chat on behalf of different companies. And their customer support is available 24/7."
However, LiveChat is not the cheapest tool on the market. If you don't need all these features, you can analyze other programs like Crisp or Trengo. They offer a free plan that allows smaller structures to start chatting with their visitors. Beware, free does not mean perfect. It's up to you to see what's right for your business and users!
Tip: Some software offer a direct connection with other communication channels like Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram, etc. These are among the most popular, so it may be easier to manage these conversations from the same place. If you want this type of connection, check that the chosen software includes this feature.
One thing all these programs have in common is that they offer very simple implementation on your website. With an HTML code to add to your site's source code, it generally takes no more than a few minutes to display the small chat popup on your website. Most software even makes it easy for you by offering tutorials to help you quickly install the popup on your website.
Kean to read more? Find out about 10 chats softwares we tested for you at Welivechat!
Summary: There are many chat software options available, and it's important to choose the one that best fits your company. Our attached article can teach you much more.
Once your teams are informed about the objectives and the tools to achieve them, all that's left is to launch your live chat strategy. Put the chat popup online, make the necessary connections, give access to the right people, and you're good to go.
Over time and with users, we encourage you to keep as many statistics as possible on the results obtained. At the same time, ask your agents who handle the messages for feedback, what situations they often encounter, what they lack for their communication with users, etc. Then, implement these tools.
As you may have guessed, it's about adapting the methodology to the needs of your users; the visitors who come to your page, AND your agents. These agents are often overlooked, but a good live chat strategy starts with them.
Tip: Ideally, a live chat is also available in the evening and on weekends. This is when many of your visitors will visit your website and start a conversation. To expand your opening hours at a lower cost, you can outsource your live chat. Find out how it works here. You'll be amazed by the results!
Once your live chat is well set up, make sure to promote it on your website and social media so that your visitors know it's available. But there are other ways to promote it directly or indirectly:
Not all these tips are applicable to every business, but it's up to you, once again, to define what you'll need to motivate your prospects even more. And especially to find your way of doing it. But in short; encourage them to send you a message!
You can read more about it in this article
The chat strategy will be different for each company. It's a service that is still underused, even though it's growing rapidly. Yet, live chat is highly appreciated by consumers, and its impact can be huge for any size of business. The main thing is to think carefully about the necessary points to respect your marketing strategy and be able to measure or amplify the impact of your new chat plugin.
By following the steps mentioned above, you should be able to set up a live chat on your website in no time and with a well-defined business strategy. One last piece of advice; never rest on your laurels. By analyzing the details, it's always possible to improve your live chat strategy even more! Don't forget to continue monitoring and maintaining it to ensure a quality experience for your visitors.
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