How to Stay Cost Effective with Live Chat Implementation

Today, every business should think globally since everything and everyone is online. Reaching out to every potential customer is necessary in a competitive market like the one nowadays. It means communicating with people from every part of the planet. With traditional customer support, this won’t be possible considering the costs it would include.

Besides that, there are more than a few ways in which live chat helps business to stay cost effective.

Live Chat Has Lower Costs Then Phone

According to many of those who implemented live chat to their website, phone costs went down by more than 50%. No matter how big or small a business is, such a dramatic drop in costs matters. Other ways in which live chat overcomes the problems with traditional phone support are numerous. Basically, customer support with live chat is able to achieve more in less time apart from being easier to approach customers.

From the beginning of second half of the 20th century, companies relied on toll-free numbers. That meant for customers that there is always a number they can dial to get instant support. And indeed it was like that. But, for companies, those calls weren’t free, it impacted the cost.

Today, the Internet has taken over the place of a most frequent medium of communication. That means customer support must follow the trends. Besides the fact that live chat is more economical than the phone, live chat is cost effective in other ways as well.

With traditional calls, customers had to drop everything and focus on the call. With live chat, they can multitask. It attracts more customers to use support and with live chat more customers means more potential sales and information. All of that with fewer employees assigned.

More Time and Quicker Resolutions

Live chat offers the unique approach to the customers offering them subtle but close and simple channel to address their problems regarding user experience. This is the defining characteristic of live chat. A customer gets advice and his/her issue is taken care of at the same time. Also, support agent can send manuals and instructions or other useful documents through live chat directly to the customers.

At the same time, support agents can resolve more issues at once. With live chat, agents are able to manage approximately five customers at the same time. There are no call-backs like it was the case with traditional customer support since live chat is always reachable. Support for a client stops once the problem is resolved and there is no need for more calls.

In other words, it means that by using live chat more work is done without spending extra time. It has a dramatic impact on the cost efficacy since agents can do more work for the same pay. Besides that, there is a chance for including fewer employees in customer support, leaving a space for an upgrade in other divisions.

Opportunity for Outsourcing

Traditional customer support required long and expensive training of employees. The Internet today offers many possibilities for finding capable people with good knowledge of English or any other language needed to do part of the job from their current locations.

Live chat offers that opportunity for companies since there is no need for agents to be present at the company because there are no landlines. Live chat agents can operate from a location of their choice ( be it home, cafe etc) with a stable Internet connection. With live chat, this a great business opportunity for companies to cut costs of customer support and make it more effective.

This way, the company can find people capable of doing all the work from their homes, which costs much less and due to time zones, they can be available for work any time of the day. Also, many services offer mobile apps so there is a chance for remote customer support in any time, even when agents aren’t at office or home.

This characteristic of live chat allows a company to stay cost effective. Remote freelance agents mean there are no costs of health and social insurance, no permanent engagement and fewer taxes to the state.

Live Chat Makes Other Sections Cost Efficient

Live chat is very useful for many types of websites, but when it comes to retail businesses it is more than handy. How does live chat affect other parts of the business? With live chat, there is a constant contact with potential customers which are the foundation for any online venture. The experienced agents get a chance to upsell. In fact, the customer support agents get a chance to offer clients upgrade of some features they might find useful. Also, an experienced agent gets a chance to recognize potential future buyer. That influence on the sales to rise and sales department gets more effective.

Besides that, live chat gets very useful when it comes to gathering data about the customers. There are numerous websites that used the information gathered through the live chat to develop profiles of customers and a useful feedback on the way they operate. This is one of the other ways to stay cost effective with live chat software implementation. Marketing and research get more efficient using the potential that live chat offers.

Conclusion

There are various ways in which a business, especially the startups and newly launched ventures, can become cost-efficient by offering customer support using live chat. This support service will let you create business opportunities and build good relations with customers without spending big.