We can all recall a time when we spent half an hour on the phone, on hold, waiting patiently in a queue whilst listening to what felt like the entire works of J.S. Bach, to speak to a customer advisor to query something, only to be disconnected and have to start the whole process again.
Hardly a great customer experience, was it?
In today’s digital world, customers expect to be able to do things when they want, without waiting. Whether that be watching movies or the latest boxset on demand or streaming the new release of their favourite band. The same can be said with their shopping habits and one of the most effective ways to build rapport with your prospects and customers is to communicate with them in the engagement channel they most prefer.
One of the most popular customer engagement tools has been live chat.
Live Chat is the preferred communication channel of your customers.
Web-Chat continues to grow in popularity, as more and more businesses understand the benefits that it can provide both the organisation and the consumer. Live chat has become the leading digital contact method for online customers, especially Millennial and Gen Z consumers, with a staggering 46% of customers preferring to communicate through live chat compared to just 29% for email, and 16% for social media.
Why do customers prefer to use live chat?
Consumers love web chat because of the immediacy it offers compared to other channels. Customers are no longer willing to wait hours or even days, for a response to their query which was submitted by email or social media. They’ll go elsewhere to purchase the goods or services or air their disgruntled options across social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, causing reputational harm and risking a public ‘pile on’ from others with similar experiences.
With the average response time to an email at 12 hours and around 10 hours for a reply on social media, it is easy to see why a near instant response on live chat is so attractive to customers, leading busy lives.
Live chat is also free for the consumer to use; No expensive premium rate numbers to call, to simply get your query on concerned addressed.
What are the benefits of live chat for a business?
Quick Responses to provide faster customer support.
Customers don’t want to have to phone or email customer services or go in-store to get a query answered or a problem resolved. Customers want the business to be ready to jump into action, and get a problem solved within minutes, especially if they are already on your website. Whether it is checking order status, stock availability or answering FAQs, live chat gives you the ability to do that, enhancing the customer experience and making them feel valued.
Gain Insights and customer feedback:
Organisations can spend lots of money on trying to understand what their customers like and dislike. What could they do better? How can they close that sale?
Live chat offers the business the ability to listen to their customers in real-time, understand their frustration and empathise whilst finding a solution. It can also highlight operational issues such as a discount code that Is not working on the website or repeated problems with the courier service.
Increasing sales and revenue:
Many organisations feel that web chat is a tool for customer support and to handle queries and questions but used correctly it can be a powerful sales tool. By offering quick, responsive, and helpful support, live chat can generate more qualified leads and help to drive sales.
By using Pay By Link technology, such as the multi-award winning SOTpay solution, the business can close the sale in real-time.
How do payments in live chat work?
Company representatives can simply generate and send a secure and PCI DSS compliant payment link within the chat environment, or if preferred, send a text message to the cardholder which can them to make an immediate payment in a few simple clicks.
The customer and the agent can remain in constant contact throughout the entire payment process, and the agent has real-time visibility of when the customer has received the link and a status update of their progression to payment completed.
Using this technique, the customer remains in control of their sensitive card data – the agent does not get to see or hear it, nor does it enter the business environment, which significantly reduces the scope for PCI DSS compliance. Gala Technology’s SOTpay solution will also conduct additional fraud checks to ensure that the transaction and cardholder are genuine, in line with the European mandate of PSD2 and Strong-Customer-Authentication (SCA), which protects the business from fraud and related chargebacks.
SOTpay can even support the latest Open Banking payment solutions, enabling customers to make a digital account2account (bank) transfer in a few simple clicks to further add customer choice and satisfaction.
What are the benefits of using Pay By Link in live chat?
- Close the business in the customers preferred channel of engagement
- No need to channel hop – giving the customer to chance to change their mind
- Constant communication between customer and agent throughout the payment
- Quick, easy and extremely cost effective to deploy
- Secure, authenticated payments – negating the risk of fraudulent payments and related chargebacks
- Process PCI DSS compliant payments, as contractual obligated with your merchant acquirer
- Cloud based application. No expensive hardware or amendments to your existing infrastructure are required
- Acquirer and Payment Gateway agnostic – can usually connect to your existing solutions
- SOTpay offers unlimited agent access, at no additional expense. Perfect for businesses of all shapes and sizes and contact centres
