Why Live Chat Support Option is Helping Businesses Retain Customers

In a competitive market, every business is in the middle of a fight to poach each other’s customers. This is mostly true in markets where every company is offering some version of the same product or service. Also, this trend is seen mostly in sectors where hopes of creating new customers in the market are less as a majority of the potential customer base already uses a product or service or one or another company. So, all you can do is steal away your competitors’ customers by offering better service, better customer experience, and better customer support.

On the other hand, how do you go about keeping your customers loyal to your brand? This answer is similar. You offer a great service at a competitive price. You give excellent customer experience and you provide superior customer support than your competitors. With so many competitors in the market, how would you really differentiate your customer support and experience from them?

Well, one differentiating factor that has come to light in the past 5 to 10 years has been real-time customer support. That is right. Real-time customer service or customer support has made a huge difference to brands in retaining their customers as well as gaining new ones. One of the best ways to offer real-time support is through live chat support on the company website.

Why Live Chat Matters?

Customers today do not have time to stay on long phone calls with support agents or wait hours to get an email back from you. They want a quick resolution to their issues and live chat does just that. Live Chat is not only limited to your website either. You can offer live chat support options through your Android and IoS apps too. This is called in-app support and has become very popular these days.

Whether you are a food delivery company or an online dating site, live chat support helps your customers in real-time get answers to their questions. Below are some of the reasons that make live chat support useful for businesses and helps them retain customers.

• 24/7 Support Availability

Live chat support can be offered 24/7. This means you are there for your customers at all times no matter day or night. This type of availability makes customers trust your brand more because they know that your support team is there for them no matter what. Today’s generation of customers wants this sort of support because they themselves are online at all hours of the day.

• Multichannel Support

Multichannel support means that you have the ability to offer customer support on all possible platforms where your customers expect you to be. This includes your website, mobile app and social media channels. You can easily offer live chat support to your customers on all these channels and improve customer experience through better customer service.

• Real-time resolution to issues

Live chat support helps you resolve your customers’ issues faster in real-time. There is less chance of long-pending cases and a majority of customers’ issues and complaints are resolved on the first contact itself. When customers do not have to call again and again for the same issues and do not have to wait on hold for a long time for support, they are going to be staying with you.

• Improved Approachability for Customers

Through live chat, customers can get in touch with you from anywhere in the world at any time. No matter whether they are traveling in a bus on a crowded road or sitting at a restaurant having a meal, chat support is quick, easy and convenient. That is why more customers prefer to chat with support teams rather than call or email.

Types of Chat Support

Chat support that brands offer their customers can be divided into two categories.

1. 1. Virtual Chat Bots

2. 2. Live Agents

Virtual Chat Bots

These are AI-powered software that helps brands deal with some common customer issues by giving pre-programmed answers to some of the most frequently asked questions by the customers. Brands use these bots to reduce the cost of support agents as thee bots can take care of most of the common issues presented by customers.

Live Agents

Technology can only do so much without human intervention. For more complex customer issues, live chat agents are always going to be needed. If brands want to save on costs for their support team, they can always go for customer service outsourcing for the same.

Conclusion

Live chat support is proving to be one of the most important tools for retaining customers through better customer experience and customer support. With the adoption of this technology, brands across the globe can improve customer satisfaction and promote a new trend of faster and more effective customer support.

Sahib is an experienced writer who has worked in the call center services industry for many years and has gained a unique perspective on customer service.