Live chat was first developed in 2002 and has slowly gained popularity amongst many online businesses. This is due to the customer support challenge that is presented by online businesses. Compared to brick and mortar businesses, online businesses lack the human face which so many customers long for. Human interaction is still very important, even with the current growth of the number of online businesses. Live chat thus offers this opportunity of adding human interaction to online businesses. But just what are the benefits of doing this?

Real Time Convenience to Customers

Unlike emails where the customer has to leave the page to get help, and perhaps wait for 24 hours for an answer, live cat ensures that the visitor stays on the site and gets his or her questions answered in no time. This is highly convenient in helping the customer make a decision about buying a certain product or service, and most online visitors love live chat anyway. This also increases the customer satisfaction.

Increased Sales

Recent studies have shown that 77% of people who visit online stores would like to make some contact with a human before making purchases. Thus with this knowledge in mind, online businesses can increase sales just by adding this feature on their website and making sure that someone is there to cater for the needs of the would be clients.

Reduced Costs

The costs of hiring call center staff, as well as that of maintaining the infrastructure is greatly reduced when you install live chat software. What’s more, with live chat one agent can simultaneously chat with multiple visitors, thus saving the cost of having to hire many agents to cater for the client base. The cost of using live chat is also greatly reduced as compared to using emails and phone calls, which will call for separate billings.

Increases Competitive Advantage

There are many online businesses sprouting every day from all parts of the world. Using live chat to actively engage your clients as well as visitors to your site will definitely get you ahead in the stiff competition that your business will face. Even large corporations are moving to live chat to be at least one step ahead of their competition; so should your business.

Build Long Term Relationships

Customers who are satisfied with your service will definitely come back again and again. These customers normally do not fuss on price increase, as studies have shown that satisfied customers are less concerned on the amount of money they are paying. They are thus less expensive to maintain and the good thing with them is that they will spread the word of the good services they get from their favorite store, thus increasing the chances of having more customers.

Your online business can reap all these benefits only if the live chat software is properly implemented. Training your team on how to use the software as well as how best to chat with the visitors are important, as well as clearly stating your working hours on the website.

If you want to know more beneficial advice, please click at http://www.spokelivechat.com

Spoke Live Chat Inc.
www.spokelivechat.com