Are you looking for ways to decrease customer support costs? Using live chat software can be significantly less expensive to operate than phone support. It can even increase your revenues, too. Here’s how you can.
The Problems with Phone Support
The very nature of phone support puts your business at a disadvantage when dealing with customers.
For starters, phone support takes a lot of effort on the customer’s part. To contact your business, customers must drop what they’re doing, find your company’s phone number, enter it in their phone, and then navigate through your menu of options.
That extra effort can harm your business. The Customer Contact Council reports that customers who indicate more effort are 61% less likely to repurchase than the average customer. That’s a serious hit to your business’s long-term revenues.
There are many other problems that plague phone support. Call quality tends to be all over the board. Lengthy wait times feel unbearable since customers must actively pay attention to their phones.
Phone support can be expensive, too. Setting up a call center is a massive investment – one many businesses simply can’t afford.
Fortunately, there’s a much more cost-effective way of offering customer support.
Live Help Chats: Better Support, Better Cost
Implementing live help chat as your customer service solution is significantly less expensive than managing a call center. It’s also more effective in delivering helpful support materials to your customers and increasing customer satisfaction
Here are some of the ways live chat can decrease the operating cost of your business.
Live Help Prevents Issues with Call Quality
On the phone, call quality issues can destroy a customer service experience. Bad call quality – even if it’s the customer’s fault – harms the customer’s experience and makes them less likely to buy from your company again in the future.
When you use live help software, however, call quality isn’t an issue. Not only that, issues with understanding customers who have accents or trouble speaking your company’s language are negated as your chat agents are reading text instead of trying to listen. This expands your ability to provide helpful solutions and win lifelong customers.
Live Help Reduces Callbacks
Many call centers have seen customers who call repeatedly about the same issue. These few customers represent a very large drain on company resources.
However, live chat can reduce this drain to almost zero. Because every chat transcript is emailed at the end of each chat, the customer has an easily accessible record of how to fix his or her problem. Repeat calls are significantly decreased.
Because the entire live chat experience is text-based, it’s easy to share helpful documents or links. If you allow customers to access your solution database, you’ll allow customers to search for their own solutions, reducing customer service expenses even more.
Live Help Decreases the Amount of Time Required Per Call
Because operators can conduct multiple live chat sessions at once, the amount of time each chat takes is significantly lower when compared to phone chats. Here’s how that looks in the real world:
- Phone chat: An operator begins the call and hears the customer’s problem. After asking for a few more details, the operator spends some time pulling up a solution on the company database. The operator then waits while the customer attempts to implement the solution. If the solution is successful, the call ends. If not, the operator spends more time finding a different solution than waiting while the customer tries the solution out. This process repeats until the issue is resolved.
- Live help chat: An operator begins 4 simultaneous live help sessions. The customers ask their questions, and the chat agent finds answers to each. If the first customer needs additional help, the chat agent can provide further instructions while the second, third, and fourth customers test their solutions. When a solution is found, the chat ends and a transcript is emailed to the customer.
Overall, the time taken for both help sessions was the same. But the live help operator was able to help four times as many people as the phone operator. Imagine the cost savings your business would enjoy with customer service representatives who are four times as efficient!
Live Help Gives Your Agents a Chance to Upsell Customers
Having a live chat isn’t just a way to save money – it’s a way to increase revenue, too. Live chat has been proven to increase conversion rates and boost sales. Simply installing chat software on your website is enough to give your conversion rates an increase.
Try Live Help Software Today!
Using live help software solutions brings significant cost savings to your business. It can also increase your revenue, too. If you are considering switching from phone support to a live chat solution, try our software for free and see these benefits for yourself.
