How to use customer data to improve live chat experience

Live chat is one of the best means of communicating with your customer. After all, if there is a user surfing on your website, odds are that he is at least thinking of buying your product or service. Live chat is a way of nudging him from his current state of indecisiveness to becoming a customer.
Sending the right message to the right customer at the right time is the foundation of good communication with current and potential customers. Live chat is a powerful tool with which you can target them at the exact moment they want assistance by using user data to display a live chat window.
The best time to reach out to a customer is when he is demonstrating buying signals. Face to face it is easy to gauge whether a potential buyer is truly interested in making a purchase. Online, the challenge is to analyze the available customer data. Here are some ways that you can provide good support to your potential customer by using live chat data:

Ticket submissions

One way to analyze buying signals is to check ticket submissions. Yes, in themselves ticket submissions are a bad thing. But users are who send tickets are the most engaged and thus more likely to buy. By resolving the user’s issue to his satisfaction, you can build a positive relationship and increase the likelihood of the customer buying again.

Support

A whopping 83% of online shoppers need support to complete a purchase, as per a stat by LivePerson’s Connecting. This was based on a survey of more than 5,700 online consumers in USA, Italy, Germany, Australia, France and the UK. Online shoppers who do not receive assistance within 5 minutes are likely to abandon the purchase or head elsewhere.
You can use customer data to gauge whether the user is having trouble. Signs are when a user receives an error message or exhibits bizarre behavior such as repeatedly clicking the same purchase button. Reaching out immediately with live chat is essential in this case.
For example, a person tries to purchase a product but receives an error message. They go back and try again with the same results. In the absence of a live chat window, they are likely to abandon the purchase but if your representative can interact with them in time, you can save the sale and build a positive relationship with them.

Sell more

You must be using email follow-ups, suggestions in the shopping cart and cross-sell and up-sell techniques on the product pages. However, many users have become “ad blind” due to the barrage of banners and advertising promoting products. However, a representative from a live chat window may be able to nudge the shopper into buying more.
For example, consider a clothing website. A customer is chatting about buying a sweater and your live chat operator is aware of a matching skirt that goes with it. Your rep could provide a link to the skirt while subtly suggesting that other customers have bought the set together and that they have received positive reviews for the outfit.

History

Once satisfied, a customer is likely to keep coming back, especially if he perceives the company showing an interest in him. For example, how often do you go to your favorite bars or restaurants because a waitress or bartender remembers your name and your preferred drink or dish? It is no different for e-commerce websites.
Asking a simple “How it is going?” can start a conversation that could result in a bond. By using the user history of customers, you can get to know them as people, not as buyers. By not keeping selling as the ultimate goal, a series of contacts can turn into a relationship as you get to know your customers. This results in returning customers who keep coming back and end up not only buying more, but also be more open to cross-selling and up-selling options.

Repeat business

Live chat is a simple and effective way to ensure that prospective customers have a way to get in touch with you instantly. Not only can you guide them by interacting with them online, you can also extract additional information from them that could allow you to follow up on these leads. Having their data on hand, you can continue to offer them products related to their interests.
You need to have a CRM pipeline management to be able to input the data you have from your live chats to be able to organize and track your contacts, activities, sales pipelines, closed deals, and other related information. A CRM helps you save time while being able to access your data from anywhere and create reports that can be analyzed to generate further sales.

Trends

Your live chat program can provide you with an unlimited number of chat transcripts which can be used to identify trends and customer pain points, the speed at which care is delivered to your users, and areas where your staff excels and areas where they may need more training. Similarly, live chat is a database of customers voicing an opinion about your business.
Using live chat, you can track and monitor data points such as the speed at which problems are resolved by your representatives. Questions, concerns, and issues that come up often can be analyzed. Your team can offer a prewritten response to questions that are frequently asked and then direct customers to pages that have the requested information. This makes your team more agile in responding to customers and providing them with the care and insights they need.
An online chat system is an important tool that provides immediate support to customers. Wait times on live chat windows are often less than a call center and customers can multi-task while waiting rather than hold the mobile and pace around or twirl the phone cord.
Forrester Research conducted a study called “Making Proactive Chat Work” that found that 44% of online consumers say that having their queries answered by a live person while they are in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features of an e-commerce website. Using customer data, live chat can be used to increase sales and build lasting brand loyalty making it one of the most crucial tools of e-commerce websites.