More and more online businesses have incorporated live chat into websites. It’s a great way to communicate with web visitors and offer real time assistance. Instead of re-actively waiting for the web visitors to request a chat, many online businesses have taken proactive chat for better customer engagement.
Proactive chat is a live chat feature that allows you to initiate live chats with your website visitors at points where you realize that they need assistance or encouragement. On top of manual invitation, advanced live support software usually allows proactive chat invitations to pop up automatically based on specific rules you pre-define, which can significantly increase your productivity.
Why Use Proactive Chat
You may have made a lot of efforts to attract visitors to your website. If the visitors are not treated well once they arrive at your site; chances are all your previous efforts turn to nothing.
Imagine, you walk in a brick-and-mortar store and you are not being attended by anyone even after some time. Probably you will leave the store without buying anything; this is no difference in e-commerce.
By employing proactive chat, you will have more opportunities to communicate with your website visitors so as to achieve multiple e-business goals including reducing cart abandonment, improving conversions, and driving customer satisfaction.
When to Use Proactive Chat
When used properly, proactive chat can be an extremely valuable service to improve your conversions rather than being an annoying pop-up to sell something. Here are some factors you can look at when employing proactive chat invitation.
- Time on Page. It is pretty obvious that if your website visitors are spending a good amount of time on one page, chances are they are really interested in the information on that page, or they need some assistance. This is a good timing for you to make a smart move to greet them, guide them through your website and turn them into your customers.
- Visitor Source. Thanks to the visitor tracking feature of live chat software, you can easily know where your visitors come from and which search keywords they have used, if any. For example, if a visitor comes from another website where you are advertising one of you products, apparently he or she is looking for such a product and there is a back-end story to work with when approaching the visitor proactively since you can easily tell what he or she needs.
- Current Page. Some pages on your website are so critical that each visitor to these pages should be taken good care of. The checkout page is a typical example. When shopping online, many customers may have issues when it comes to checking out. If there is no assistance available,probably he or she will abandon the cart. With proactive chat invitation, you can rescue your customers from their issues and have more chances to seal the deal.
- Visit Times. If a visitor has visited your site for a couple of times, clearly he or she has a strong interest in your brand or products and you should certainly be there to level up your relationship.
Apart from the above, other parameters such as chat times, time on website, countries and regions can also be taken into consideration when determining the right time to initiate a live chat. You can use multiple parameters at the same time to make sure your proactive chat implementation best echoes to your business scenario. Besides, some live chat software even enables you to add your own parameters based on your specific needs. No one knows your business better than yourself.
It is important to be aware that a successful proactive chat implementation doesn’t end with a check mark on a to-do list implying that it’s done. Continuous testing and optimization are necessary. In addition to choosing the best time to pop up your chat invitation, it’s also essential to make the invitation itself targeted and professional. Here are some tips for you.
How to Make the Most of It
- Customize the Appearance of Your Chat Invitation
Before popping up the invitation, you need to make sure it matches your websites design. You can incorporate your brand elements into your invitation, but keep in mind: don’t blend your invitation with your website background or make it look like a pop-up ad. - Personalize the Invitation Message to Maximize Acceptances
Instead of a typical “Can I help you?”, experimenting with various wordings based on the information of your website visitors can make your invitation more targeted and personal, which will give the visitors a feel that you really know them thus increasing the possibility of acceptance.For instance, when you notice a visitor is browsing skirts for some time, you can send out an invitation saying “Hi, this is Linda. There are many newly arrived skirts. Let me suggest one for you?”. The bottom line is different messages should be sent based on different visit scenarios.
- Route Your Invitation to the Best Person
A single person may not know all the answers, but he or she probably has his or her own expertise. Routing accepted invitations to a specified operator or department ensures your visitors get the best service, which directly translates to happier customers and higher website conversation.
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