Ep 59: How Live Chat Increases Conversion Rates with Derric Haynie

Problem: How to use live chat to increase conversion rates

Derric Haynie, from eCommerce Tech, notes that the most successful businesses (that he works with) have realized that live chat increases their conversion rates. Even more with SaaS businesses than with eCommerce businesses.

Everyone says that their customer service is amazing until they realize that their customer service is (at best) average. Like, amazing is really just average these days.

The Steps to Having Great Customer Service and Live Chat Which Can Increase Conversion Rates

Know when it won’t work

It doesn’t work if you don’t have a working business. If your cost of acquisition is greater than your lifetime value, work on your key metrics first, before focusing on conversion via live chat. This also won’t work if you’re at a point in your business where you can’t outsource your live chat. You can do it yourself, in-house, but you should focus on other parts of your business instead. As a business-owner, you’re always spinning plates and putting out fires.

You could say that adding live chat to your site, you’re kind of adding a fire. BUT, I like to think it’s like adding an opportunity. As long as you handle it well, you’re not adding a fire, you’re going to be adding revenue.

Usually live chat will increase your conversion rate by more than it will cost to manage.

Step 1: 24/7 real-time customer service

With live chat, your goal should always be to get to a point where your business is able to have 24/7 real-time customer service. However, if you aren’t responding via live chat and, instead, you’re asking for an email address so you can respond later, that decreases conversion rates. So if you can’t do 24/7 live chat, you should turn off the widget from your site, when you’re not online.

If your business is open, you should be responding to live chats.

Step 2: Sales representatives should be manning the chat

Customer service and sales representatives have two different skills sets. Overlapping those skill sets would allow for your conversion rates to skyrocket when it comes to live chats. The representatives on the phone should have the motivation of selling product rather than just closing tickets.

Your customer service agents can absolutely learn how to be sales agents.

Do live chats really work?

While some people might complain about live chats, all of the data show that (similar to those pop-up notifications), they increase conversion rates when done well. If you’ve done proper research in your target market and you’ve tested it out, live chats can increase revenue, lifetime value, and all of the metrics that entrepreneurs and business owners keep an eye on.

1. You don’t need live chats on every page of your site
2. If you can, the check-out page is often where it is most valuable
3. Don’t interfere with the check-out experience, you want to complement the check-out experience.
4. How you execute a live chat is important
5. Make sure it is timely
6. Engage with customers instead of talking at them.

When done right, people will like when there’s an opportunity for a live chat.

Human personalized text recovery

The newest trend in the eCommerce world is the growth of tools that do human personalized text recovery. Abandoned carts, the reordering process, etc. There are a wide range of actions that can benefit from this sort of tool. One such example of a tool is Txtfi. Txtfi is a fully automated tool which will allow your customers to easily order products via mobile texting.

AI, automated response, and other more mechanical and robotic tools and aids are taking over some of the more mundane and repetitive aspects of customer service. 

The future is filled with “my machine learning algorithm is better than yours” and “my data set is larger.” That’s what the future is filled with. It’s not going to be “my chat agents can out-perform your AI.”

While some people see this as taking over jobs, others see it as a way to free time for customer service representatives so they can focus their efforts on more complicated tasks. The human element is one of the most important parts of customer service and sales. When people work alongside a well-developed AI, the whole process becomes more streamlined and less stressful for everyone involved.

Derric’s Mission Statement: The first thing that came to mind was, “There is no spoon,” which is from the Matrix and just my general philosophy that there are no limitations in life.

Resources on customer experience which Derric suggests:

• Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, by Jay Baer
• Intercom’s resources for conversational marketing