Welcome to the 21st century where communicating with businesses online is instant. Gone are the dejected days when a client would click on the live chat option and receive a message hours later redirecting you to the FAQ page or their contact information! No longer are online users subjected to days of waiting for an email response over an issue raised concerning a product. You simply move on to the next big name providing the product you’re looking for with the kind of service delivery that appeals to you.
But wait, some companies are still lagging behind in providing such services. They find themselves either optimizing the landing pages option where they lead clients to their website or an email form for assistance. Certain things these businesses don’t understand about the digital customer:
- She/he is very impatient; the notion is that there are hundreds if not thousands of other businesses out there providing the same kind of products as you.
- They are direct and get pissed off whenever you give irrelevant responses.
- They are also very accommodating if you match up to their expectations.
Living up to the customer’s dream works only to your advantage, as this all converts to sales – after all, that’s the reason why you’re in business, isn’t it? So, exactly why are we putting such strong emphasis on employing instant live chats for B2B?
Build Relationships as well as Maintain Old Ones
Having a good rapport with other businesses and clients solidifies a business operation more than any other factor. What’s better, the clients who get helped through your fast services are likely to remain loyal to you for a long time and even lead more traffic to your site. They may do this through positive reviews or simply directing others to your site through your affiliate link.
Live chats are also appealing as they prove you have nothing to hide; especially if you are quick in response and stick to the questions asked. A satisfied customer definitely means a positive balance sheet – logic dictates so.
The live chat option for B2B is especially useful due to the long consideration stage, taken by customers during the buyer’s journey. Educating probable clients on all issues that might not be found in the FAQs, brings much clarity and makes a smoother process for the buyer.
Takes Burden off the Phone Lines and Email Inboxes
You need to think like a buyer when setting up and updating your website: a good number of these users will access your services on their desktops. When all you have offered are contact lines and email on which to reach you, then not only do you appear archaic, you also inconvenience your client greatly! It kind of beats the point to come up with a great design for the website, and then flank miserably by failing to provide a direct chat service that should stand for you when you’re absent. It’s like building a gigantic apartment with all the present furnishings and then fail to set up the windows for individual rooms!
Live chats will minimize your hassle of dealing with customers – that’s a lesser budget on expenses used for customer support. Less traffic to your phone lines isn’t a bad thing love! Not when that is compensated through enormous leads from direct support of clients. The live chat option could also be what eventually leads your customers to subscribe for your emails leading to an email blast that’s sure to benefit your business.
Stands For You When Not Around
Just because you’ve taken a vacation to the Himalayas doesn’t mean your online business needs to stop. The live chat feature makes use of a technologized bot that’s programmed to reply to general questions as logically as a human would. It serves as your image when you are not physically there for the client. Some of these bots are so perfect and actually given human profiles making it hard for a number of clients to differentiate between the bots and actual customer care support. When technology has progressed to that level, you just can’t be found barbarically lagging behind; unless you don’t mind creating an unfair competitive platform for yourself amongst your competitors.
Help More People Faster
As much as you should be focusing on your exact market other than the whole market in general, it doesn’t hurt a business to once in a while reach out for the rest. The results might, after all, be promising. Since the live chat feature can be programmed to respond in different languages, it eliminates the challenges brought about by barriers in communication. They are also manipulated to provide a client useful analytics which eases their experience through the website. Moreover, it’s nice to have a feature that can communicate with a hundred clients at the same time and solve their issues separately and accordingly.
Tips to Keep in Mind
There are some general factors to be considered even before setting up a live chat option for B2B. These include the price of setting up the program, the kind of automation it offers, how easy it is to use and operate the interface, the available options for customizing the appearance as well as price involved in case you want to scale up and offer more seats.
Fast Response
There are also some deeper factors to consider even before operating the feature. The golden rule here is that the live chat tool requires a fast response if it is to work for you. But while you’re at you need to know that the live chat option isn’t for every Tom, Dick, and Mary. You would be better placed to have a form of vetting process before inviting customers over for a live chat. The qualifying process could involve reaching out to clients who have reached your site on multiple occasions or those who are visiting pages, hinting out on the probability to make a purchase.
Make Your Live Chat Personal
The biggest trick to make your live chats for B2B converts into amazing leads is to personalize the function; try to sound as human as possible. Your client would rather think they are talking and conversing with an actual person than a machine that doesn’t have feelings. Hence, as you set up your live chat for B2B, consider how you would converse with the bot if you were the customer, to see how well it has been designed.
Bassem Saber is one of the managing partners and head of performance marketing at Igloo, a leading digital marketing agency based in Dubai.
