We want to talk to you about what webchat can do for retail and how it can be used to craft an amazing shopping experience.
Sound good?
But first, some stats.
According to the National Retail Federation’s 2017 Omnichannel Retail Index, customer demand for live chat has grown to such an extent that 54% of retailers identified in the index now offer live online chat as a communication channel on their websites.
In fact, most of the companies interviewed for CCW’s Live Chat Benchmarking Report 2018 saw an excess of 5000 online chat queries a month. The report identified the ecommerce sector as the most proactive webchat adopter.
Why? Because their customers can’t get enough of it.
Is webchat the new sales assistant?
Well, yes actually.
When you’re browsing in a brick and mortar store there is usually a nametagged sales assistant nearby to help find that bright-green combat boot in the right size or check up on a price.
Webchat fulfils this role online. Not only can you help your customer along their shopping journey, you have the opportunity to upsell them along the way.
Research company Forrester recently published a case study, Wells Fargo Proves The Business Case For Online Chat, which claims that 44% of online shoppers believe having questions answered by a customer support live agent in the middle of their online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer.
The tribe has spoken, really.
How to do webchat right
Having a timed pop-up on your front page is a great way of showing off your live chat functionality, but you can do better.
Here’s an example from a recent Forbes article entitled Inside Retail’s Live Chat Revolution. Retail brand Poppin did some digging around its ecommerce site, and used Google Analytics and its user flow to identify pages with the highest dropout and bounce rates. The company then pinpointed the times of its pop-up messages around the average user session on those pages. Since adopting this strategy, the company’s monthly online webchats have increased fivefold.
Fivefold.
It’s time to go mobile
According to the CCW report, 43.78% of online live chat queries received in 2017 were from mobile devices. In the ecommerce sector, 30% of webchat queries were mobile. This sector also reported an overall satisfaction rate of 85.43% for webchat.
You don’t need to crunch the numbers to see what this means. Customers are shopping on their phones and looking for the same customer service they would normally receive from ecommerce sites.
Desktop shopping is so last year, darling.
Who doesn’t love shopping? It’s fast, convenient, and with very few exceptions available 24/7. Now, thanks to webchat, the online shopping experience is better than ever. For retailers, it provides an opportunity to grab a customer’s attention during a sale and nip any potential objections in the bud. It even helps to decrease post purchase queries and returns. We can’t think of any cons really.
Want to know more about webchat? Read our previous blog to find out what makes webchat so great for customer success teams.