Using Live Chat Effectively for Marketing in 2020

Live chat is a little-used option that can significantly improve your marketing in so many ways: customer acquisition and retention being the main two. But if it’s so powerful and has so much potential, why don’t more companies use it?

Simply put, it’s cumbersome to staff and having the right people with access to the right resources can make or break your success with it.

From the user’s perspective, they could be in a queue of dozens of people, only to be greeted by an automated message to “visit our website or check our FAQ” after waiting for so long.

With results like this, it’s easy for prospects to be skeptical and even hate live chat, and companies mistakenly think it’s not just worth the investment.

But that would be doing a true disservice to what this marketing channel is actually capable of, when you take the time to approach it like any other marketing initiative and learn how to really make it work.

With that being said, we’ve come up with several ways to help you use live chat effectively for marketing in 2020. So if you’ve got the staff, the technology and you’re ready to unleash live chat and make it the best it can be for your visitors and customers — read on:

Be Proactive

You don’t have to wait until a prospect reaches out to you for more information. You can be (gently) proactive with customers by asking if there’s anything you can help with, or if they have any questions that you can help answer for them.

In fact, a Harvard Business Review study showed that businesses that reached out proactively were seven times more likely to qualify their leads if they followed up within the first hour than if they waited. Don’t wait! Be proactive!

Don’t Blanket Every Page with Live Chat Functionality

This might seem counterintuitive — after all, you want to maximize conversion rates and live chat helps you do just that, so it would make sense, on the surface, to put a live chat icon everywhere.

But instead, put it on the pages with the greatest possibility of having someone reach out to you. For example, on a FAQ page, pricing page, or contact page. This greatly increases the chance that the customer or prospect will find an answer to their question, and it will also save you and your staff time and money since you’ll be proactive about reaching out on pages that are most likely to lead to questions from your users. A win-win for both parties!

You may also want to consider putting live chat functionality on your landing pages or individual product pages, so that customers can get clarification before they take the next steps, such as ordering or requesting a trial or demo.

Gauge the Context to Determine if There’s an Opportunity for an Upsell or Downsell

This is going to be a situation that you’ll need to evaluate from prospect to prospect or customer to customer, but depending on the context, there may be a prime opportunity to upsell or downsell. For example, if you sell laptops online, and the customer has a question about the specs of a certain brand, it may be possible to upsell them a warranty of 2 years, or downsell to 1 year. Likewise with accessories.

But again, don’t overdo it, since you’ll need to evaluate it on a case by case basis to determine if the possibility exists and how best to proceed.

Ask the Right Kinds of Questions

Last but certainly not least, don’t forget to ask the right kinds of questions with your live chat users. Simply saying “let us know if you have any questions” isn’t a question. If you’re able to see what pages they’re on when you proactively initiate a chat with them (or they with you), you can reference that product in your question — “I noticed you’re looking at our ACME widgets — can you tell me more about what you’re looking for in a widget?” And then let the user take the lead from there.

The right kinds of questions can also open up the opportunity for you to help guide their purchase. But the bottom line is that every live chat connection is going to be different, and having a one size fits all approach isn’t good for anyone — business, prospect or customer.

If you need help creating a strategy to leverage live chat for marketing to the fullest, we encourage you to reach out to our senior marketing professionals here at Workdom. Contact us today and let us know more about your plans and goals and we’ll work with you to create an unbeatable strategy that delivers a fantastic customer experience at every stage of your funnel.

Originally published at https://www.workdom.io on July 17, 2020.