Today's great customer service is about reaching customers wherever they are. And now, there's one forum where more future clients are than everywhere else: live chat. Think of the way you speak to people every day. You're probably using iMessage and WhatsApp for family and friends, and you're probably spending more time talking to coworkers on Slack than in person (especially nowadays). And when we're talking to people every day via texting, customers want to be able to speak to the company as well.

Unfortunately, conventional live chat software is still rooted in old-school customer service methods. Customers are forced to adopt a queue attitude in conditions like these, where they are treated like a ticket number rather than a human being. Not only that, but the team's time is taken up with answering easy, routine questions as quickly as possible, while more complex or urgent requests – despite having a higher priority – are left waiting.

But, live chat can actually be used to boost your company. There are a lot of ways you can use it to your advantage.

There are 3 use cases for a live chat on your websites:

1. Marketing

You're missing out if you think live chat is just for customer service. The lead generation machine will benefit from live chat marketing. Live chat is being used by forward-thinking businesses to incorporate conversational marketing on their websites.

The issue is that a considerable portion of your website visitors who may purchase your product do not find their way to a feedback form or a demo request. In fact, the vast majority of them would depart without taking any action. The standard marketing stack's average conversion rate isn't pretty.

With live chat, the focus shifts from passively collecting contact information of a potential customer to proactively engaging people in conversation using targeted outbound messages. Instead of forcing people to complete static form submissions, go through the tedious marketing qualification process, and wait for follow-ups (that may never come), live chat helps companies engage with potential prospects in real time, be it with humans. Targeted conversation between people or via chat bot chat machine to spark their interest. Without messaging tools to engage them, these possibilities would simply disappear and be lost forever.

The lead generations to apply this method are Google and Facebook Ads with Call To Action or CTA. CTA will direct your customer to WhatsApp chat, and you can automatically send template messages. With OneTalk by TapTalk.io, a trusted omnichannel messaging platform, messages are received in your chosen platform and immediately greeted by template messages. Other than that, OneTalk has a Disposition feature that can track customer’s behavior analytics. 

2. Sales

Live chat for sales! Today, customers have more choices than before. This means that they are in control of the sales process, and it is the company that provides an instant, profitable on-demand sales experience.

For a company that embraces this and creates rewarding, original and impactful sales experiences, the results speak for themselves. According to intercom, website visitors are 82% more likely to become customers if they speak up first. In addition, it is 13% more valuable than an account where the business did not have a conversation before signing up.

Not only that, but this is also another area where using bots to supplement your live chat makes sense: our research shows that bot-assisted conversations convert 36 percent better, owing to the fact that bots can respond faster than humans for most repetitive tasks.

3. Customer Support

Traditionally, most companies have viewed customer support as a cost center rather than a true value driver. As a result, they have done everything they can to reduce those costs, relying on an outdated support ticket system where the help center management, not the customer experience, takes priority.

This kind of support is no longer good enough. Conversely, customer support can be a factor that makes or breaks a customer's decision to work with you: According to Microsoft's Global Customer Service Status Report, 90% of respondents said customer service was an important factor in their choice and loyalty. To brands, and 58% will cut ties with the business due to poor customer service.

Live chat is the future of customer service, and it provides the type of chat support experience that is tailored to the needs of today's users. The customer doesn't want to be treated like a ticket, nor does he want to call the call center. They want quick and easy help in a way that makes them feel like humans.

But here's the good news: Live chat is not only better for customers, it's also better for business.

Best practices for live chatting

Adopting new guidelines for face-to-face chats is not without its challenges. Live Chat includes almost instant response, and many companies are afraid to manage the volume of messages that might come from adding live chat to their website.

For a business that may attract thousands or millions of people who visit their website each year, a 1: 1 conversation with every customer and prospect quickly becomes a daunting (not to mention extremely costly) task. But the good news is that you don't have to do this to be successful. Instead, it's about using live chat - as well as robots and automation - to help your team work more efficiently with the resources you have available.

Here are some simple live chat best practices to help you get the most out of your team.

Use the conversation support line

Many companies worry that installing a live chat program could "open the door wide" and cause their team to handle low-level customer inquiries ("How do I change my password?") Rather than problems or impactful questions.

This is where the conversation support line comes in. The Conversation Support Line is our framework for delivering fast, personalized customer support at scale, using a combination of proactive support, self-service and human support. By anticipating customer problems, using robots and automation to answer frequently asked questions automatically, and saving your team time and energy on high-cost items that require a human touch, you can optimize your resources and get the most out of live chat.

Set expectations

Just because you have live chat posted on your website doesn't mean you need to respond immediately. This will not only burn your troops, it is not true! Contrary to popular belief, conversation doesn't have to be direct, as long as clear expectations are set. Sure, in an ideal world, users might prefer direct responses, but in most cases they understand that more complex queries take a little longer to complete correctly.

The most important thing is to be direct and transparent. Above all, you need to tell them exactly when they will get a response. Live chat software like Intercom has a simple message answering tool to do this. This is only part of your customer's attention - don't leave them hanging at the end of the conversation. (And if you're trying to speed things up, remember that using custom troubleshooting and tuning robots can help you increase the resolution time by up to 50%.)

Extend the reach of your conversations with automation

One report shows that 89% of consumers want to be able to send messages to companies in real time, but only 48% have the tools to actually do so, which is why in past years live chat was an unpleasant experience. In fact, this so-called "live chat" is more like email than real time chat. Simply, it is not life at all.

Thanks to bot chat software and customer service, most live chat tools give you the ability to have a live and dynamic conversation, even when there is no one at the sender end of the message. For example, if you have a messaging program like Intercom, the launcher bot will automatically ask your visitors for their contact details so you can proceed.

Engage and Interact “More” with your customer

When your customer opens your live chat option on your website, your customer can immediately get a response and select their topics and send a message. They will be directed to their chosen messenger platform and therefore, their message can land on anywhere on your messaging platform. By using an omnichannel-based messaging platform, your messages can be received by your agent. They can immediately reply and resolve their messages by using a lot of features that was offered by OneTalk as a trusted omnichannel brand. Disposition by OneTalk Customer opens chat widget on website. Disposition will keep track of your customer’s topic and analytics.  The disposition features ensures that an organization continues to listen to consumers and transforms all concerns and issues into a meaningful concept. OneTalk can assist you in keeping track of the statistics for each customer service case. This conclusion will assist you in gaining new market knowledge so that cases and issues do not recur in the future.

Other than Disposition, OneTalk can help you integrate omnichannel customer service with the WhatsApp Business API.  Without the complicated process of answering with one WhatsApp user, you can have the benefits of integrating omnichannel customer service with the WhatsApp Official Business API. No need to wonder how to use multiple users for WhatsApp business. You can simply use only one WhatsApp number to increase credibility and customer confidence in your business. With OneTalk, you can log in to your WhatsApp business account with multiple users on multiple devices all at once. Now you can use your WhatsApp Web on multiple devices and answer your customers all at once. OneTalk can Boost agent efficiency with all the integrated messaging platforms. Using an omnichannel service such as OneTalk will give WhatsApp Web access to more devices.

Conclusion

We can now offer this experience at scale thanks to live chat. Live chat is the de facto way to communicate with customers and prospects when they're at their most interested – in real-time, as soon as they land on your website. Whether it's through 1:1 human conversations or automated with the aid of a chatbot, live chat is now the de facto way to engage with customers and prospects when they're at their most interested – in real-time, as soon as they land on your website. Using OneTalk could also work for your business to improve sales, marketing, and support. 

To delve more into this, contact us and chat with our agent by WhatsApp or email.