Convert Prospects Into Leads & Sales With Live Chat From Ulistic.
Ulistic is proud to announce our brand new Online Appointment Setting solution utilizing leading live chat, lead generation, and online marketing automation solutions to engage with website visitors.
Ulistic's online appointment setting solution works with any MSP marketing solution and is a low cost and low barrier entry service to truly take your MSP website from an online billboard to a lead generation machine.
Want to learn more? Call Ulistic now at 716.799.1999 x102 or email info@ulistic.com.
What is Live Chat or Online Appointment Setting?
We hate the term live chat...we much prefer online appointment setting.
It’s a type of online chat that’s a simple and flexible tool you can use on to support visitors to your website. It shows up in your web browser as a small pop-up where viewers can chat with your representative in real time. It’s typically used to provide immediate customer support and information, but it can also help you increase sales by engaging your prospects at the right time.
Why Your Managed Services Business Needs A Managed Live Chat Service?
Today’s website visitors prefer text-based communication over voice. And, in the past few years there’s been a significant increase in consumer preference for live chat:
- 51 percent say businesses should be available 24/7.
- 42% say that they prefer live chat functions because they don't have to wait on hold.
- 92% feel satisfied when they use the live chat feature.
- 44% say that having questions answered by a live person during an online visit is one of the most important features a website can offer.
- 51% of customers prefer live chat for multitasking purposes.
Contacting your business through live chat is easier than making a phone call because visitors don’t have to leave their computers to start the conversation. The process is easy to follow and intuitive enough for those who never participate in live chat before.
Live chat on the desktop and mobile phones has become a key form of communication. Today, businesses are engaging more customers through live chat to fully support their online experience and provide them with quality and timely support.
How Ulistic's Online Appointment Setting Services Works.
People who visit your website simply click on your live chat widget to start a conversation with your representative. It’s similar in function to instant messaging except that it doesn’t require your visitors to install special software because the live-chat client resides on your website.
What’s so unique about live chat, and different from phone calls or emails, is the that you not only get to talk in real time with visitors to your website, but you can also see who they are.
When your visitor clicks on the chat invitation, a conversation with your representative begins. The representative can be an employee of your business or an agent supplied by a third party. When your representative engages with the visitor, they can qualify them by asking a few simple questions.
The Benefits of Ulistic's Online Appointment Setting Solution
With live chat, you can track how many people view your website, how many conversations you can have, who these visitors are, where they come from, and if you’ve done business with them before. It does more than just allowing your representative and visitors to chat in real time—The right live chat system includes chat history, read receipts, typing indicators, and integrates all this into software that collects and analyzes data for sales, support, and routing visitors to the appropriate representative.
A properly designed live chat can increase the engagement of your website. It can also reduce frustrations for visitors by allowing them to connect with you directly for information they’re looking for.
If done correctly, adding live chat to your website can increase online leads by an average of 40 percent. Because of this, 58 percent of companies today use live chat for both sales and support, and the numbers are growing.
Live Chat Saves Money. Live chat software can save on both employee task time and phone expenses. It:
- Reduces overall contact center costs by lowering interaction time.
- Increases efficiency by allowing live chat representatives to handle multiple chats simultaneously, and reduces the need to hire more representatives.
- Helps employees spend less time on the phone. They can multi-task during chat conversations and cut the waiting time to a fraction of its former size when compared to a call center. This increases the chances of overall sales.
As mentioned, you can see exactly who’s looking at your web pages. Plus, you can be notified when someone is taking a long time on a page. By starting a chat with them, you can increase your chances of selling to them.
- Live chat can be automated. You can start a chat with a specific kind of visitor based on your settings. For example, if most of your sales come from people who spend more than 5 minutes on your site, you can automatically start a chat with them.
- You can use live chat for lead generation. Selling isn’t just about converting potential customers who are ready to buy, but also about learning about leads who might buy in the future. Every time someone starts a chat, they must provide a set of personal details like their name and email address. You can use this information later for email marketing. By sending one or two targeted emails with a discount offer to someone who didn’t buy immediately after chat, you can turn them into a customer.
- Live chat can be used as an upselling tool so you can make the most of each sale. Whenever a customer who already wants to buy something asks a question, you can suggest other solutions that would meet their needs to maximize the value you get from the sale.
- Adding live chat to your website can also improve traffic. Paid advertising is now more costly and competitive than ever, increasing your cost per acquisition. A large percentage of website visitors will leave your site due to lack of engagement. It’s worth spending the money to not only drive traffic to your website, but also convert this traffic into leads and customers.
- Live chat improves conversion rates. Improving conversion means reducing the number of visitors who leave your website without doing anything. The average bounce rate for most websites is 48 percent. Reducing this number by even a few points will greatly improve your return on investment for your online advertising. You can expect that 4 to 10 percent of the visitors on your website will want to participate in a chat.
Live Chat Expedites the Sales Process.
- Having live chat on your website helps prospects who are ready to buy to connect instantly with you and make a transaction. Using live chat as a conversion tool guides prospects through the sales funnel through the first steps of a successful interaction and, eventually, a lead or sale.
- Website visitors who start a chat will spend more time on your site. This is important is the critical vendor comparison and selection phase. If your agent is there to answer questions and address their concerns, they can convince your prospects to stay on your website and choose your services vs. your competitions’.
- It provides instant gratification for information and solutions. The immediate response from live chat is the main driver for consumers. Seventy-nine percent of consumers favor live chat largely because they don’t have to wait.
- It also offers convenience. Through the natural engagement that a live chat conversation offers, anxiety is reduced and promotions can be introduced. Some visitors will be passively researching while others are ready to make a decision quickly.
- Live chat helps to turn “window shoppers” into leads or sales. With live chat, customers have someone who can immediately walk them through a sale. The live chat agent can help them if become confused or have a question that can make or break a sale. For visitors who aren’t ready, they’ll be more likely to return and buy if you offer live chat.
Should You Outsource Live Chat Services or Use Internal Staff?
Your live chat representative will need to continually monitor your site for incoming chats, and conduct those chats in real time. These agents can either be your employees or outside resources. This presents an operational challenge for most businesses, as conducting live chats from your website means training and dedicating staff.
Ideally, using one of your own staff members would be most beneficial because they really know your business. However, it doesn’t make sense to use them to monitor chats 24/7. It’s important that chats be answered immediately. So, using the services of contact centers that provide chat processing may be more reasonable.
Live chat agents typically handle between 2-4 concurrent chats at all times. Therefore, they must have the ability to process several tasks simultaneously. They must also be able to pay close attention to detail while handling multiple customer accounts, researching account issues, and responding to customers in a timely manner.
If you want to use your internal staff for 24/7 chat operations, you’ll need to designate eight to ten employees. These employees must have the ability to:
- Pay attention to detail.
- Type quickly and with accuracy.
- Manage multiple conversations simultaneously.
- Be timely and responsive.
- Provide excellent customer service.
- Create a meaningful connection and rapport with visitors to your site.
- Properly use scripted messages and professional grammar.
- Use professional grammar.
- Offer additional solutions or services when applicable
If you decide to outsource your live chat services, there are two types vendors to choose from:
- Companies that only provide a hosted live chat software that your employees can use to conduct chats from your website.
- Companies that provide the software and also the agents that conduct chats on behalf of your business. (This is what Ulistic offers.)
Another option is a hybrid model where your internal representatives handle chats during business hours, while chat agents handle chats after hours. Often, your internal team choices include sales representatives, customer service representatives, and social media managers.
Mobile chat optimization is crucial for success. Not only does your website need to be optimized for mobile, your live chat software provider should support a mobile-user option.
Some Interesting Statistics
- Your business should experience an average 40 percent increase in online leads with live chat.
- 42 percent of chat leads take place after business hours.
- Monday morning is the busiest day for chat volume.
- Saturday evening has the lowest chat volume.
- Chats last nine minutes on average.
Best Practices for Live Chat Success. To achieve higher conversion rates with live chat, you must:
- Provide 24/7 availability, including weekends.
- Have quick response times and follow-up from chat to the sale.
- Test chat invitation options (e.g., static chat buttons, floating chat bars, animated chat widgets, darkening screens, pop-ups, messaging, size, colors, images, placement and more).
- Integrate chat metrics with analytics to determine what traffic converts higher.
- Track conversions from chat to other tactics like phone and website form submissions, so you can determine where to invest.
In Summary
It’s past time to acknowledge that consumer communication preferences have changed. They want information and problems solved quickly. Live chat provides this. When prospects use your live chat, they can ensure that a solution will perform as advertised. Plus, your representatives can find out ways to improve your company’s products and services.
There are many ways for your customer support agents, marketing departments, and sales teams to use live chat to increase online sales and conversions, and reduce service costs. With all of these benefits, it’s definitely something you should consider for your website.
For more information or a complimentary demo, contact the experts at Ulistic 716.799.1999 or email info@ulistic.com.
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