Over the past five years, live web chat — also known as live chat — has been increasingly becoming a mainstream and essential communication tool throughout the United States and Europe by which global consumers get in contact with eCommerce sellers (i.e. Amazon Sellers, Shopify Sellers, eBay Sellers, Lazada Sellers, Shopee Sellers, Online Stores, etcetera) for remote customer service and tech support solutions; live chat provides many key benefits to startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations and should be implemented as it provides high-quality customer experiences that increase customer retention rates and also create strong brand loyalty, bringing steady short-term growth and long-term success to businesses and corporations on a global level.
Live Web Chat – An Emerging Customer Service Asset
Sales consumers for the past 5-to-10 years have been steadily evolving in the way that they connect with e-Commerce sellers for pre-sales / post-sales customer care and tech support solutions; due to the advancement of the Internet and mobile technology and the standardization of the Worldwide Web (WWW), new communication and telecom channels have been strengthening the sales connection between startups, small, medium, and large businesses and corporations and their consumers, solidifying their sales relationships with their eCommerce customers and providing unlimited access to prospective consumers on a global level. For outsourcing businesses and corporations such as cross-border e-Commerce sellers, international large Belt and Road (B&R) enterprises, etcetera — and especially for self-built offshore e-Commerce businesses and corporations, live web chat — also known simply as live chat — is silently becoming an extremely powerful pre-sales and after-sales customer service communication tool amongst other communication and telecom channels such as SMS messaging, phone calls, e-mail, or social media; though many cross-border eCommerce businesses and corporations that have evolved from traditional foreign trade companies still use e-mail as their main customer care communication method, the new generation of e-Commerce sellers have been rapidly discovering the high sales efficiency brought by high-quality customer service and have begun to adopt tollfree 1–800 customer service calling in countries around the world in addition to live chat as a means of serving global consumers 24/7 in real-time.
Live web chat — a platform that is usually embedded into official brand websites through a string of software code that brings up small pop-up customer service communication windows on brands’ websites in the form of conversational AI chat bots, human services, or a mixture of both — is not just another communication platform in addition to the rest; live chat is becoming a viable standard in and of itself for global consumers and provides a plethora of benefits that other communication platforms simply cannot afford — especially in the United States and in Europe alone. Even though the traditional toll-free 1–800 telephone service is still essential, about 20% of consumers in Europe and in the United States said that they hardly use telephone communication to contact brands — whether it be pre-sales consultation or post-sales service — and are more accustomed to direct online communication, SMS texting, or e-mail according to a survey by our very own Callnovo Contact Center’s American and European Marketing Department; at the end of this year, European and U.S. consumers who insist that brand companies must have telephone contact options available will still account for 31% of all consumers; however, the proportion of consumers who prefer to use live chat to communicate with brands has already reached as high as 38% and is rapidly growing.
Live Chat – An Exemplary Customer Care Option
To meet this highly-incrementing trend of consumers preferring live chat over other platforms in multi-channel communication, it is imperative that brands incorporate into their sales plans all-channel communication modes as soon as possible that include live web chat as a communication option; because live chat combines the advantages of both telephone and email communication, this communication platform — along with the incorporation of chatbot artificial intelligence (AI) — can significantly reduce human resource costs. In addition to operational cost savings, the customer satisfaction experience percentage that is found via the usage of live web chat is significantly higher than the customer satisfaction percentage found via telephone and e-mail communication from a customer service standpoint; amongst the three communication channels, there is a 73% chance that consumers who find customer care solutions through live chat will enjoy a nice customer satisfaction experience — while this percentage reaches around 61% for solutions found through phone communication and around 44% for solutions found through email — marking a significant difference. According to survey data that has been collected:
- Approximately 45% of all worldwide consumers don’t give much importance to whether or not they are communicating with a conversational AI chatbot or with a real customer service representative as long as customer services can achieve the desired result.
- When customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores are at 90% or higher, the average wait time for the first response via live chat provided by a brand enterprise’s customer service center is 46 seconds; that wait time can be reduced by companies that provide excellent customer service to around 25 seconds per consumer via the utilization of live chat.
- A website that adds live chat functionality can increase sales conversion rates by approximately 20%; current statistics show that sales conversion rates amongst B2B websites that utilize live webchat are around 66% — while conversion rates for B2C websites are approximately 67%.
In addition to what can be seen above, software costs for opening and using live Chat are the same — regardless of whether it is implemented in Europe or in United States — the main offshore e-commerce market — or if it is implemented in new markets such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, South America, or in other countries; compared with telephone voice services, live chat will not incur communication costs — which can offer great communication cost savings for overseas businesses / corporations in locations such as Africa, Northern Europe, and South America.
Furthermore, live web chat provides a huge added advantage for companies in terms of human resource cost savings; the automatic translation function of live chat software can provide English CSRs for example translation abilities up to 35 languages around the world to an extent. This strategy is equitable for global brands that want to decrease human resource expenditure. Now, if costs are not an issue, it is necessary for customer care personnel to have service experience and to give high priority to the brand to provide the best global customer service experience to the 5 billion and more consumers around the world. The brand must have translation abilities available at the very least for the major languages — such as English, Spanish, Mandarin / Cantonese, French, Portuguese, German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, and African Swahili — to deploy a team of professional customer service talents localized in various countries and languages.
Live Chat – Customer Service Advice in its Practice
According to our very own Callnovo Contact Center’s globally-outsourced customer service team, there are five key points in the practice of live chat for outsourcing e-Commerce businesses and corporations:
- Rapid Responses
Efficiency in live chat responses should be highly considered when it comes to the provision of superb customer care and tech support; global consumers desire customer service support in seconds — and, according to a third-party research organization’s published data, the average wait time in practice for customer care responses in live chat through global websites is roughly 2 minutes and 40 seconds — while the average communication and processing time is around 6 minutes and 50 seconds — meaning that, if a company can provide outsourced live chat customer service responses within 40 seconds and can complete the communication and processing time within 5 minutes, then that company’s customer care efficiency will be far above the global average — and the service-level agreement (SLA) will be outstanding. - Canned responses
Preset templates are a very high-value live chat function; they can quickly give consumers superb answers, as well as collect information from customers. As a reminder, a balance should be maintained; excessive use of canned replies by customer service representatives may cause consumers to consider customer service as dull and less friendly. Callnovo Contact Center can provide well-trained representatives with rich customer service experience in world-class brand companies and can easily and skillfully grasp a delicate balance between work efficiency and the provision of personality amongst consumers. - Personalized Customer Service and Technical Support
Like phone communication and the provision of services over the same platform, a brand’s customer service representatives — whether in outsourced or self-built contact centers — must always be prepared to show service awareness and enthusiasm when it comes to providing exceptional service; to achieve this effect, it is necessary to have excellent service personnel that clearly understands local languages, as well as the culture of each country that it serves (for example, more than 3 years of local customer service experience in the United States or Germany) — addition to this, excellent training and management (soft skills, industry and product knowledge, and experience in handling complex issues) and a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform for service support (for example, a CRM platform that can automatically show consumers’ recent purchase records and service or complaint records). - Functioning Picture and Small Video
When it comes to efficient live web chat communication, customer service professionals should try to avoid any errors when it comes to writing or miscommunication; accurate and time-saving communication can ensure that consumers receive a wonderful customer care experience. In consideration of this, live chat must support both parties when it comes to the sending of pictures and videos — which can ensure that both the sending and receiving parties can contribute to more rapid resolutions that accurately meet consumer needs, contributing to greatly-improved customer satisfaction experiences; examples of such instances are: how to clean vacuum cleaners, how to debug cameras, how to connect smoke sensors, etcetera). - Open CSAT Evaluation
Customer service representatives (CSRs) should make it their responsibility to ensure high-quality customer care and technical support experiences and should focus on keeping one-time problem resolution rates high; live chat provides consumers the option to quickly leave comments at the end of each conversation so that they can give a star rating for the service on many different aspects — such as CSR knowledge and professionalism, CSR service attitude, CSR response speed, and each CSR’s performance when it comes to problem-solving. CSAT ratings effectively and proactively supervise the work quality of customer care professionals to ensure that each brand continues to provide high-quality customer service.