Why every SaaS company should reevaluate their live chat strategy in 2019

What would you say, if I tell you that you leave over 70% off your potential customers on the table, because you do not have a live chat on your website? FurstPerson discovered exactly that: 77% of your customers are very unlikely to make a purchase if we do not offer a live chat. Wow! That huge number should be enough to convince everyone to directly search for a live chat solution that gets that customers back.

The technical setup of a website live chat is the easy part. There are other points you have to think about and I hope that this article helps you to reevaluate your live chat strategy.

Customers demand live chat support

But email support worked now for a decade, why are customers becoming so demanding for a live chat support channel?

We are living in a time where we can get everything we want in no time. Do you sometimes find yourself being annoyed that you have to wait for the next day until your amazon delivery is at your door? Or when your spouse does not reply within minutes? Customers are as impatient as you are yourself!

When your (potential) customers have a question, they want to have it answered in a few minutes instead of waiting for a day until their email tickets are finally read. In 2019 customers do not excuse a slow support channel anymore!

So if competitors are able to answer the customers questions faster than you are, they will outperform you in sales and overall customer satisfaction.

We as entrepreneurs have to adapt to this new customer requirement to stay in the game! Every site should have a live chat possibility

A bad experience is worse than no live chat at all

Only one thing that is hurting a business more than no live chat is a bad live chat experience. You are not done with just putting a widget on your page and then configuring it to send you an email. I hate it if I open the live chat window, type in my question and then after 1 minute a bot tells me that the team is away and that I please should use some weird email form. Why the hell is there a live chat window at all if no one is answering in less than 2 minutes? If you use your chat that way, please send you customers directly to the email form and tell them how long they will have to wait on average for a response. You are than not 100% in line with the modern live chat situation, but it is still way better than after all having an email form that looks like a live chat window!

If your live chat is just another design for your email form, please do not use that live chat at all

Live chat support needs (wo-)manpower

Bots, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are very nice for live chat company in their sales pitch but after all you always need a human being on the other side of your customer live chat. Technology will help you to a certain point, but the biggest value you create is your customer feeling appreciated. You show, that you and your company do care so much for them that there is always a human being happy to help with all their issues.

Did you ever have the situation a friend of yours told you about a company that helped super fast with an issue? I'm 100% sure that friend still is a customer at that company. We humans want to feel valued and if someone does that, we will stick to that person/company.

Value your customers with human support agents instead of heartless bots. This investment will definitely pay back!

Your live chat is your most honest feedback channel

Compared to dedicated customer services and feedback forms your live chat can and will be your most honest feedback channel. You will experience the problems your customer have with the product in the second they stumble upon it. And yes...sometimes just reading an FAQ or so would have helped your customer to circumvent that problem, but that is not how customers function. They want your product to make their life easier, and they will not work trough extensive manuals to understand how to use your product.

If you get the same questions over and over again, you definitely should think about changing your product at that particular point. And the best of all: You can just ask your customer during the live chat session what would help them to circumvent that problem in the future. They will feel valued and you get a customer survey for free ;)

Live chat helps you to understand just in time what problems your customer stumble upon. Use that feedback for improving your product

With great power comes great responsibility

One thing at the end. There are awesome features for pull marketing within some extensive live chat solutions, but please try to use them wisely. A lot of your potential customer will run away from your website screaming if you bombard them with popups and windows: “Here is our newsletter”, “Get 20% off”, “Start a live chat with us”

You can use certain triggers if you experience your customer stuck somewhere. Maybe they are hovering for 20 seconds over the pricing page or are extensively scrolling up and down on your page. Then it is a good point to offer them live chat support by automatically opening the live chat window. Just that they are on your site for 2 seconds is no valid reason!

Try to only automatically open the chat window if your customer seems stuck. Please do not annoy them with useless popups. They will find the live chat in the bottom right corner when they need it

Live chat solution for solopreneurs

Full disclosure: I am the co-founder of gramchat

With gramchat we tried to solve the bespoken issues and create a live chat solution that helps you to serve your customers best. Gramchat directly send the customer messages to your Telegram Messenger and from there you can answer them directly – no extra app required. Gym, beer with friends or during your day-job, help your customers where ever you are.

With the Telegram integration we try to solve the “live chat is just an email form”-problem. With gramchat you are able to answer your customer within the important first 90 seconds.

But enough advertisement! There are different great live chat solutions out there and you should pick the one that suits you the best. For a small team or as solopreneur, gramchat may be your perfect fit :D

I would love if you give it a try => gramchat.me

Wish you all an awesome time! Simon