6 Benefits of eCommerce Live Chat

Ecommerce live chat is typically a pop-up or small window on your ecommerce website that allows your business to be there when customers have even the smallest of questions.

Your customer support team monitors your live chat software to ensure they don’t miss a single question, concern, or even complaint from customers. It can be a great way to completely turn a shopping experience around.

Looking for a few more benefits of live chat for your ecommerce website? We’ve got six.

Saves time for both your customers and your company

Some 73% of customers say that a company valuing their time is the most important part of good customer service. That’s right: It’s not about free shipping, easy returns, or even being nice — good customer service is about not wasting customers’ time.

Offering live chat support is the most effective way to respect your customers’ time. People don’t have to abandon their shopping experiences in search of answers or get on the phone or wait for someone to respond to an email.

Live chat saves your company time, too. It helps customer service representatives serve more than one customer at a time, making their work more efficient.

Answers customer questions before they become hesitations

When a customer has a question and can’t find the answer right away, those questions can quickly turn into doubts, and they’re likely to hesitate before making a purchase.

Say a customer has a question about shipping costs, but there’s no place to get an answer on your website. The shopper might not feel confident that the shipping cost will be reasonable and may start to doubt if buying the product is worth it.

Some of the common questions through online stores (and answer via live chat) are things like:

• If I order an item today, when will it be delivered?

• Can I get a special deal if I buy more than one item at a time?

• Do you offer free samples?

Even if a team member answers an email query within a few hours, the customer has already lost momentum within the purchasing journey. It’ll take a lot more effort to get that shopper to return to your store than it would have if those questions could’ve been answered in real time.

Live chat gives customers an opportunity to get answers right away so they can keep shopping confidently.

Keeps customer communications on brand

Embedding live chat right into your ecommerce website means the support experience is seamless for customers.

Other forms of service require customers to make a phone call or email your business from a separate “contact us” page, which takes them out of the careful customer experience you’ve designed through your website.

Because live chat is written communication, it continues the conversation your website started without any mindset adjustment required for customers. Live chat representatives can be instructed to respond in the same tone of voice as the rest of your website.

Gives you valuable insights into your customers’ behaviors

With live chat, you can ask the customer for feedback right after you’ve solved their problem within the chat — which is easier for them than a follow-up phone call or email survey.

Plus, because it happens in real time, you’re capitalizing on the momentum of a solid interaction that just took place.

Additionally, live chat gives you access to analytics you wouldn’t have with phone or email support. You can track customer behaviors as they happen on your website. This includes insights about when visitors opt for chat, which reveals common points of friction within your site’s customer experience and user interface.  

Humanizes your ecommerce store

A friendly chat box offers instant support from a real person, which feels more like a traditional shopping experience than just having a phone number customers can call or an email address to contact.

Plus, live chat can be programmed to pop up with a friendly “How can I help?” query, mimicking the experience in traditional stores. 

(Bonus tip: Take advantage of the opportunity to be human by instructing representatives to have genuine conversations. In other words, don’t sound like a robot.)

Allows you to see customer cart details during chat

You can turn on the tracking that allows you to see your customers’ cart details during a chat. Product details, product count, or last order details are there for you. Send time-based invitations for undecided shoppers, and nurture customers who reached a particular cart value to motivate them to make a purchase.