Proactive live Chat and agent-customer co-browsing has been identified by a leading research agency as a key strategy to help cut costs and generate more revenue.
It is widely known that the customer service experience can have a profound effect on company revenue it can either help to generate or diminish it. The research conducted evaluated how customers rated their online interaction experiences the higher the rating that was achieved the higher the volume of purchases and customer loyalty also increased.
A working example of poor customer service is highlighted below
Company A has 4 million Customers with each customer spending on average $100 per year the projected revenue over a year based would be $4 Billion.
On average 30% of online customers experience poor service in this example that would equate to 1,200,000 customers of these on average only 2% complain leaving 98% or 1,176,000 that are at risk to switch supplier.
$100 Spend per customer equals a staggering $117,600,000 loss in annual revenue.
Customers often don't voice their opinion to a company when they have received a poor service because their perception is that nothing will change. These customers however will inform friends and family of the poor service they have encountered this negativity spreads at double the rate compared to customers spreading good word of mouth. The Internet with its unlimited reach amplifies the consumers ability to broadcast the poor experience they have received this can ultimately lead to organisations loosing thousands of customers.
There is a hidden cost associated with poor customer service, contact or call centre call volumes increase, if the issues are not resolved on first contact service costs instantly double. Another such hidden cost is also the increased cost of marketing because it is far more expensive to promote products to dissatisfied customers and to those that have been exposed to negative word of mouth.
The report looked at industries such as banks, cell phone service providers, TV service providers, Internet service providers, insurance firms, credit card providers, retailers, investment firms and medical insurance providers and the findings were the same across the board in that there was a direct correlation between those customers that received good customer service and those that purchased more and were repeat buyers.
Companies today invest heavily on their online presence to attract customers to their site only to find that customers abandon shopping carts, click away from partially completed forms or become increasingly frustrated when they can't find the answers to their questions. Live chat offers a solution to these problems and provides a large return on investment and also receives positive feedback and positive word of mouth.
Recent developments in chat technology now enable website owners to send automatic chat invites based on set rules/targets such as number of page views or length of time on site can automatically initiate a chat session to instantly serve online customers in real time at the precise moment a visitor needs assistance or advice which in turn stops them from leaving, helping to reduce online shopping revenue loss. This functionality alone helps improve ROI and also negates the need for a visitor to call the contact centre so it also impacts on reducing operational costs.
Advancement in chat technology also enable the ability to screen push web pages instantly redirecting a visitor to another web page, the ability to insert files and attachments and send these directly to the visitor within the chat, live chat translation in real time and also the ability for full remote control so an agent can assist a visitor with a form completion for example. Chat is flexible with options for Hosted or installable solutions meaning deployment can be scaled to suit budgetary restraints.
Research has highlighted that a staggering 50% of web transactions are completed with the help of a customer service agent.
Live Chat Helps to:
- Shorten the sales process
- Resolving customer issues and objections immediately.
- Reduce call centre costs
- Reducing the average interaction cost.
- Showing customers where to find information and potentially avoiding future calls.
- Close sales
- Recovering customers before they abandon a transaction.
- Assisting in the order and form completion.
- Increase transaction size
- Creating upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
- Enabling persuasive selling.