How Web Chat Can Boost Your Business: 3 Steps for a Successful Implementation

Offering web chat to customers is not an if but a when for most businesses. Most customers that need support will come to your website and start looking around for the easiest way to get their questions answered and their eyes are searching for that familiar chat icon. 

In fact, when customers are presented with the options to reach out to a business via chat, phone, email or social media, 41% say they prefer chat over any other method.

When it comes to web chat, there are two approaches you can take as a business, you can implement instant/live chat or text-based web chat. With instant/live chat your business is generally expected to answer the customer instantly as the name implies. This is generally achieved by filtering the first few questions through a bot before they wait in a queue to speak to a team member. 

With text-based web chat, you collect basic customer information, and follow up via text message. This removes the instantaneous expectation to get back to the customer in seconds, allows the customer to go on with their day rather than sit and wait, and allows you to take advantage of the benefits of texting. 

Text-based web chat gives you the ability to do things a little differently, you keep the interaction human, and use web chat not only as a support tool but as a lead generator. Let’s explore its benefits and how to successfully introduce this new tool in your business. 

Never Leave Your Store Empty

Having a web chat on your website serves as a digital greeter, welcoming visitors and giving them a way to quickly ask any questions they might have. 

Having that chat icon at the bottom right of your website mimics the experience of walking into a physical store and being greeted by one of your team members.

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That digital greeter is actually a lead generator, data shows that customers that chat with your business are 513% more likely to make a purchase. This means that showing you are available to answer their questions as they are browsing multiple websites can be the decisive factor in securing their purchase.  

A Different Way to Multitask

One of the remarkable advantages of integrating text-based web chat into your business operations is the ability for everyone on your team to multitask chats with their day-to-day tasks.

While some businesses might require a dedicated staff member for web chats depending on volume, with a lower sense or urgency and compared to traditional phone-based customer support where you can only handle one customer at a time, web chat is a game changer and significantly reduces customer support cost.

The best part is that your team is engaging with multiple customers simultaneously, without compromising the personal touch. For example, your sales team can address product questions coming from the website, all while tackling their to-do list around the store. 

And on the other side of the store, your service team is handling multiple repairs and support requests, checking out a video of a bike that is making an odd sound that a customer might have just sent over, while waiting for another customer to approve a new quote.

Given that all these interactions are happening in a text thread, you are actually avoiding the #1 reason businesses fail at implementing web chat.  

Around 55% of businesses do not offer transcripts once a chat has ended, which creates frustration for the customer and leads to them potentially having to re-explain their situation in case it doesn’t get resolved.

Experience the Best of Both Worlds: Text Messaging + Web Chat

Why do customers prefer to reach out to businesses via chat instead of phone or email? 

A survey shows that the primary reason for this is because they can get an answer faster and they can multitask instead of staying on the phone waiting for an answer. 

Combining their preferred method of reaching out to you with text messaging means that you are not only taking advantage of text messaging’s high open rates, ease of use, and familiarity, but you have also opened a new communication channel with your customers that you wouldn’t have been able to with instant chat. 

Opening this new communication channel is not only beneficial from a sales standpoint, but it also allows you to avoid the second reason 45% of businesses fail at implementing web chat, which is not following up with customers after the chat has ended. 

Asking customers about their web chat experience via text message is one of the most personal ways to get honest feedback and make sure that the customer feels heard. Compared to an email survey, how personal does it feel to allow customers to text you back their thoughts on how the interaction went?

⬆️ all of this is solved with text-based web chat!

By combining these two communication channels, you create a dynamic and versatile customer engagement strategy that caters to various preferences and scenarios. This integrated approach will help your business build  stronger relationships with customers, and ultimately drive business growth.

3 Steps for a Successful Implementation

#1 Create a Game Plan

Your Team

A successful game plan starts with ensuring your team members are ready to tackle the nuances of text-based web chats. Ultimately it boils down to finding the right formula for your business, a good place to start is to focus on active listening, concise and clear communication, and product knowledge.

💡Pro tip: A very common mistake with web chat interactions is that even though your staff is working hard on solving the customer’s issue or looking for an answer to their inquiry, if they don’t let them know, then it looks just like they are being ignored. 

Here’s an easy way to set the right expectations: 

Your Speed

During business hours, make sure you have at least one team member keeping an eye on web chats, while the expectation is not to answer within seconds, 21% of web chat messages go unanswered. That means one out of every five live chat messages goes without an answer, and this can negatively impact your business at the end of the day. 

During off hours, you can set the right expectations with your customers via an automated response that they will hear back from you the next time you open. Learn more about this process here. 

#2 Build a Seamless Experience

Message Templates

Keeping the human touch might be one of the most important benefits of text-based web chat, but at the end of the day, customers often ask the same questions and it’s not always efficient to type the same answer.

That’s where message templates come in, you can create message templates to answer most common questions and even use smart fields such as inserting the customer’s first name to keep that personal touch. 

You get to keep the integrity of the human interaction without resorting to bots, and keep your workflows efficient at the same time. 

Follow-Ups

As we discussed earlier, asking for feedback is important and the second reason businesses fail at implementing web chat. Putting a process in place where you ask every person that interacts with your business a follow up question makes sure that there’s nothing left to the imagination and there are no perception issues. 

Even if your team has delivered great customer service, there’s a possibility that something was lost in translation. You can text them to see how the interaction was, and even capitalize on positive interactions by asking for a review or use the privacy of your interaction via text message to fix any issues. 

💡PRO TIP: THE BASICS OF BUSINESS TEXT MESSAGING

Whenever you begin a new conversation with a customer, always remember to introduce yourself by using your store’s name.

#3 Set Goals and Improve Workflows  

Implementing a new tool in your business always presents the opportunity to set new goals and improve workflows. This becomes much easier once you have familiarized yourself with the tool, giving you a real sense on how it fits within your unique business.

A new text-based web chat tool will give you the ability to take advantage of understanding your sales funnel in a new way.

Analytics tools like Ikeono’s customer acquisition report give you insight into the conversion rate of web chat customers. This report analyzes whether or not web chat customers eventually make a purchase within a 30-day timeframe.

This introduces your business to a whole new world of conversational commerce where you will be able to find the right workflows for your team to maximize the benefits of the web chat, improve productivity, enhance customer experiences, and ultimately, increase revenue.

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