Guest blog from Jonathan Kam, co-founder Botmind
In a short time, the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the daily life of everyone around the globe forcing consumers to transition from local shops to e-commerce to make their purchases above all safely, but also more efficiently. According to Statista, the worldwide number of visits generated by the e-commerce industry reached a record 22 billion in June 2020 (compared to 16 billion in June 2019).
As a result, consumer expectations and behaviours have fundamentally changed. What used to be considered an exceptional customer experience is no longer enough and almost all companies are being pushed to rethink their approach to customer acquisition and experience.
According to Invesp, acquiring a new prospect can cost five times more than keeping an existing customer. And thus, for companies, it has become crucial to focus their efforts on customer experience, retention, and repeat purchase.
Focusing your efforts on your customer experience will not only allow you to significantly increase your conversion rate but also your customer satisfaction. According to Temkin, customers who had a formidable experience are 3.5 times more likely to buy back and 5 times more likely to recommend your brand to their friends and family than a customer who had a bad customer experience. Zendesk’s most recent Customer Experience Maturity Study found similar results.
In the next few paragraphs, we will see how implementing a live chat channel will help you optimize your customer experience and thus increase your retention and repeat purchase rate.
Live chat: An indispensable tool for providing an exceptional customer experience
As of November 2020, there are 5 billion users of messaging applications worldwide with dominant media such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger for private use. Direct and instantaneous communication has therefore become a standard in the commercial relationship between buyers and sellers in e-commerce as well. Live chat is taking great importance for many businesses.
Live chat is one of the most efficient channels for interacting with customers. According to Livechatdirectory, 73% of UK customers find live chat support to be the most satisfying way of communicating with a business.
When conducting a survey on customer satisfaction indicators for enterprises in e-commerce in France, it transpires that the three main criteria quoted, “speed of response”, “quality of listening” and “friendliness”, are all related to intrinsic properties of using a chat channel.
Speed of response and active listening make live chat an effective solution to satisfy the demands of consumers who are often in a hurry. It enables customers to communicate with a brand instantaneously and be heard. In this sense, live chat helps to create a positive image and improves the customer experience thanks to the conversational approach.
Customer experience improves the repeat purchase effect
Repeat-purchase rates are obviously strongly associated with customer experience and satisfaction. Establishing a chat channel is crucial to encourage your customers to return to your site and purchase your products. As we have seen in the figures above, a satisfied consumer is more likely to buy back on your site and recommend your brand.
Notably, the chat implementation offers a variety of opportunities to engage with the visitors of a merchant site. Live conversations via this channel can also be relied upon to help your teams answer customer support questions and even “pre-sell” questions that your consumers are likely to have.
Live chat enables consumers to get the information they need in real-time, thereby improving their customer experience, which is critical to their purchase and repeat purchase decisions. According to a recent study from American Express, 74% of consumers claim to have already spent more due to the quality of the customer experience. This “user-friendly” support over chat allows visitors to feel listened to as an individual by having quick and personalised answers to their requests.
As a genuine repeat purchase factor, live chat allows you to modernise your brand image as you adapt to the communication in the conversational era.
Live Chat also enables us to respond to the consumer’s cart abandonment problem (the average cart abandonment rate being 79% according to SaleCycle). This tool allows you to respond rapidly to your visitors and guide them through the purchasing process, which in turn increases your conversion rate. According to Gartner 64% of people consider that during a purchase, the customer experience is far more important than the price, a clear indicator that companies must pay special attention to it.
“Customer retention is based on 3 important factors: customer experience, customer satisfaction, and ongoing interactions.”
Modernise your customer service
Nowadays there are numerous communication channels for getting in touch with a brand’s customer service department: telephone, e-mail, social networks, live chat… With the boom in “messaging”, these channels are being modernised, and it is digital channels in particular that are gaining in popularity among internet users. The brands that invest in the customer experience will be able to stand out from the competition and win the loyalty of their customers.