February 2022

How to Elevate Your E-Commerce with Web Chat Software

Posted on February 23, 2022November 15, 2024 Mark Kowal

There are a lot of moving parts to your e-commerce strategy. Is web chat software one of them?

When customers visit your company’s e-commerce website, what happens? Your company has likely spent many hours thinking about the customer experience. No matter how good your UX designers and copywriters are, your site doesn’t replicate the one-to-one service you get from an in-person experience.

But web chat gets you pretty close.

Plus, customers love it. Customer satisfaction when interacting with agents over web chat is 73%, which is higher than both email and phone.

Dive into web chat software and explore how to integrate it into your e-commerce strategy.

How does web chat software work?

Web chat software, like Quiq, uses a widget to enable chat directly on your website. On the front end, customers see a chat icon they can click to reveal a chatbox to instantly connect with your customer service team. There, they can have a conversation with a live agent to get quick answers to their questions.

Alternatively, you can have chatbots automatically welcome guests to your website, ask if they have any questions, and or provide suggestions when customers have stalled.

What you see behind the scenes and on the backend will vary greatly depending on which platform you choose. Quiq’s robust features include visitor tracking, chat history, chat routing to live agents, sentiment analysis, chat continuation, and much more.

The benefits of web chat software.

Even though we’ve all gotten used to the online shopping experience, there’s still something missing: the human element. Web chat software can help your business connect with customers again, much like they do when they step into a brick-and-mortar store.

A human touch brings many benefits to the online shopping experience. Customers are more likely to make an emotional connection when they interact with a person over your website experience. Your live agent can help with sizing, suggest complementary products, and offer personalized advice that won’t make it into your web copy.

Plus, customers expect businesses to engage them in some way, even when they’re just browsing a website. According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customers Report, 59% of consumers expect a company to engage them proactively.

There are also a lot of business benefits on the backend to help your customer support agents and ultimately your bottom line.

With web chat, you can:

Connect with customers on their preferred channel
Build customer trust and loyalty
Answer customer questions 24/7
Lower call volumes by engaging proactively with customers
Collect relevant information with chat analytics
Increase conversions
Lower your cart abandonment rate
Improve customer satisfaction rates with quick resolutions

How to use web chat for e-commerce.

Your e-commerce strategy is thorough, but without web chat software to incorporate live customer conversations, it’s incomplete. Here are five ways to use web chat to meet your goals, along with tactics to help you get there.

1. Prep your team for live chat.

Don’t just convert your team from emails and phone calls to live chat and expect everything to go smoothly. Live chat is a different beast, so you should prepare your team accordingly.

Here are some tips to help get them ready for live text conversations:

Decide on a conversation style: Voice conversations don’t always translate well to text. Sometimes it takes a little extra to convey a friendly demeanor. Share with your team how you want them to write to customers. Will they use exclamation points? Emojis? Text-shorthand? Decide how you want to sound and then give your team examples to help them translate it to chat conversations.

Provide quick access to answers: Your support agents need to be able to access information quickly to be able to share it with the customer. Ensure they have access to a knowledge base within the web chat software or within easy reach.

Give them the right tools: Find web chat software with robust features. For example, Quiq provides features like sentiment analysis and AI-powered text prediction to get fast answers to your customers’ questions. Also ensure your team is comfortable with the conversational tools you’re implementing before opening them up to customers.

2. Initiate conversations, selectively.

Ever walked into a brick-and-mortar store only to be scared away by an overanxious store clerk? No one wants to be the pushy salesperson. It’s the same when customers land on your website. You want them to know there’s someone available to help should they need it, but you can’t be too eager with your messages that you annoy them.

Either welcome a visitor to your website or jump in to help at a key crossroad. It’s best not to send multiple messages when the site visitor hasn’t engaged (other than to minimize the window).

3. Trigger conversations before customers bounce.

It’s perfectly fine to have a welcome message greeting your customers when they first land on your site, but you can also introduce chat messages at key points in your buyer journey.

If there’s a specific page or point in the shopping experience that always has your site visitors jumping ship, automatically trigger a welcome note or a simple “How can we help?” message.

Here are some tactics to think about employing:

On a product page: If your site visitors are stalling out on a product page, it’s possible there’s a question they need answered. Maybe they’re looking for more product specs, or they aren’t sure how to determine their sizing. Program a chatbot to ask if they have any questions after 20 seconds of page idling. You can have your chatbot answer the easier, more common questions, or connect them to a live agent should any complex queries come up.

Part of your website web chat plan should include chatbots. To see how you enhance your customer service workflows with AI-powered bots, click here.

At checkout: Do customers fill up their shopping cart and then stall at checkout? Send in a discount code through your chatbot to encourage a sale. A well-timed coupon can trigger a decision and give your customers a gentle nudge to purchase.

An FAQ page: When customers find your FAQ or contact page, they generally already have a question that needs answering. Be available for customers to ask more specific questions, or get immediate help.

4. Provide personalized upsell opportunities.

Amazon is notorious for attempting to upsell with its algorithms and not doing a very good job. (You buy one country album and you’ll forever see Willie Nelson memorabilia in your product suggestions.)

Customers crave personalization and help from your live agents. And businesses are far from meeting customer expectations. According to Salesforce, 47% of customers say businesses don’t use their personal information for their benefit. Using web chat software to proactively provide product suggestions to your customers can go a long way.

Personalizing your messages is made easier with a service like Quiq. Your live agents get insights into your website visitors’ behaviors and interests. Here are a few ways you can use these features to provide personalized upsell opportunities:

Track page views: Use their search history to get a better idea of their interests and what they’re looking for. If you find your customer is searching for living room furniture and select an armchair, pull matching coffee table or sofa suggestions.

Pick up where you left off: The buyer journey is peppered with interruptions—especially online. If your customer gets called away and returns later, you have their activity history to help them continue the conversation and pick up where they left off.

Provide specialized insights: Do you have several product categories that require different expertise? Pair specialized customer service agents to certain areas of your site. Chat routing ensures conversations are directed to the right agent or bot. That way, you can provide expert help for your customers depending on where they land on your site—and improve conversions as a result.

5. Collect customer feedback.

Collecting customer feedback at multiple points in the customer journey is crucial for business success. You can use chat in many different ways to ask customers for their candid feedback.

Here are a few of the ways you can introduce surveys to your customers through web chat.

Assess agent interactions: Probably the most natural way to ask for feedback is right after a customer has interacted with a live agent. The customer has already established they’re comfortable using the web chat feature, and it’s a great way to evaluate the web chat/live agent experience.

Collect emails for follow-up surveys: Ask customers who are communicating in the web chats to share their email for follow-up surveys. Then you can follow up with more general surveys, like Net Promoter Score® surveys.

Ask about the web experience: Use your web chat to capture a customer’s attention without being as intrusive as a pop-up. Ask about the web experience, offer a CES survey, or ask about general pain points in the buyer process.

What makes web chat with a conversational AI platform especially useful is your ability to ask survey questions and get responses directly within the chatbox. There’s no need to send your customers elsewhere, which would drastically reduce response rates.

Start more conversations with web chat software.

Adding web chat to your e-commerce strategy is a great way to start building customer relationships. Introduce web chat software to your business and bring the human connection.

Using Business Text Messaging? Here’s Why You Should Be!

Posted on February 17, 2022November 15, 2024 Max Fortis

Emails get buried, hidden in other tabs, lost in spam folders. Facebook can go unchecked. Voicemails ignored. But there’s one channel your customers are sure to notice: Their text messages.

While many businesses rely on email to communicate with their customers, business text messaging is growing in popularity. According to Zendesk’s 2021 CX Trends report, the number of customers who say they prefer text messaging to resolve customer service issues grew 75% in the last year.

And it’s easy to see why. People are connected to their phones nearly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. While there are plenty of opportunities for other messages to get lost in the shuffle, text messages always hit the mark.

Are you using business text messaging to communicate with your customers? Here are the top 7 reasons why you should be.

1. Text messaging crushes other service platforms.

Sending messages through SMS/text messaging is way more effective than other customer communication methods. It has a nearly 100% read rate, compared to an average of around 20% for emails. And 90% of people open text messages within three minutes of receiving them.

Why are text messages so effective? People use text messaging to communicate with those they love most. Because of this, there’s a higher level of inherent trust that comes with a text. Consumers are also typically more protective of their phone numbers than their emails.

There’s also an element of novelty to business text messaging. Since it hasn’t been overrun with spam and marketing messages, like email, people don’t automatically dismiss them.

2. Customers are easily accessible.

Remember a time when everyone just made phone calls because it was easier? That’s text messaging. There’s no going online, no downloading apps, no searching for your brand on social media. It’s nearly foolproof.

Plus, unlike many other messaging platforms, text messaging doesn’t require an internet connection. As long as your customer has a phone plan, they can receive text messages virtually anywhere in the world. This makes it a more easily accessible option for your customers—no matter where they are.

3. Text message conversations are asynchronous.

Texting is a great medium to have two-way conversations that your customers can respond to in their own time. Even though people tend to read and respond to text messages faster than other mediums, it doesn’t require them to sit and wait for a response.

Unlike phone and live chat, text messaging gives your customers a chance to respond in their own time.

Want to know more about the benefits of asynchronous messaging? See how to use it to deliver an exceptional customer experience in this blog post

This facet also benefits your team. Since text messaging doesn’t require the immediate response that live chat does, agents can handle multiple conversations at once.

4. Texting customers increases agent efficiency.

Business text messaging isn’t just good for your customers. Your customer support agents benefit, too.

Live communication channels like voice and live chat can bog down your agents’ time. They have to give their full attention to whomever they’re speaking with, which could be an easy answer or a long-drawn-out conversation. It’s an efficiency killer.

Since text messaging is asynchronous, agents can handle multiple conversations at once. In the time it would have taken to complete one phone call, a customer service representative can handle 6–8 conversations. That’s increasing their efficiency seven-fold.

5. Simply put: It’s what your customers prefer.

Most of your customers use text messaging to communicate with their favorite people every day. But they also want to chat with businesses, too.

Not only is it tapping into a medium they already know and love, but it’s also more casual than other channels. Younger generations especially prefer having more casual conversations with brands. Email can feel overly formal and phone conversations even more so. Text messaging, however, strikes the right balance.

6. It has multimedia, or “rich”, capabilities.

These days, there’s so much more to text messaging than just text. SMS/text messaging gives you the ability to give customers engaging and unique interactions.

Are they having a hard time implementing your product? Share a how-to video. Are they loving your service and want to connect with other customers? Send a link to your online community. You can even have them send images or videos to explain their needs so you can provide customized product suggestions. The opportunities are endless.

Want to enrich your text messaging but not sure how or where to start? First, learn more about rich messaging here >

7. Your competitors are using it.

We know what your parents would say… “If Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you?”

Snarky responses aside, there are definite drawbacks to being a late-adopter of a messaging medium. While offering text messaging to your customers now is still considered a differentiator, it won’t be that way for long.

Offering text messaging as a customer support option and enabling customers to opt-in to marketing offers now will give your business an advantage—or at least allow you to keep up with your competitors.

How to begin using business text messaging

So how should you use text messaging for your business? Focus your efforts on three main areas: Marketing, customer service, and customer loyalty.

Marketing

More and more businesses are offering discounts with text messaging opt-ins. And they’re extremely effective.

To market your business through text messaging, follow these important tips:

Increase engagement with compelling content: Use all of text messaging’s rich features to spark interest in your audience.
Personalize messages: Cultivate the 1:1 experience your customers crave. Instead of relying on mass messaging, experiment with tags and segmentations—group customers based on interests, past purchases, or even locations.

The right conversational platform can even help you turn texting into a powerful revenue generator. See how you can process secure transactions with Quiq

Customer support

Utilizing two-way texting for customer service is a great way to meet customer needs (for many of the reasons listed above). Your customers want to hear from you via SMS/text.

Leverage these tips for amazing customer service over text messaging:

Be personable: Customers use text messaging because it’s a familiar and conversational platform. Tap into those feelings with personable communications. Have agents introduce themselves, use appropriate texting shorthand, and even throw out an emoji or two.
Convert calls to text: Increase efficiency and customer satisfaction by converting phone calls to text messages. Customers can opt-out of long wait times and get their problems solved faster.
Integrate chatbots: Part of the appeal of texting is that it’s a 24/7 channel. When your customer service agents aren’t available, ensure there’s a friendly chatbot on the other end that can provide helpful answers or respond with a timeframe for connecting with a live agent.

Customer loyalty

Think beyond customer support and go the extra mile to encourage customer loyalty. Use business text messaging to have conversations with your customers about their purchases, send appointment reminders, notify them of upcoming sales or expiring warranties… There are tons of opportunities to engage with your customers to generate loyalty.

Here are a few strategies to keep in mind:

Pick points throughout the customer journey: Sending a coupon is just one step in the process. Reach out to customers at various points throughout their purchase journey. Send them appointment reminders, notify them of re-stocks, ask for feedback, or even offer loyalty perks.
Don’t abuse the privilege: Just like other forms of customer communication, too many marketing messages can have the opposite effect.

Remember: Bad interactions weigh heavier on customers’ minds than ones that go above and beyond.

Tap into business messaging with Quiq

No matter how you choose to use business text messaging, Quiq is here to help.

Message one or millions with Quiq’s messaging platform, whether you’re a package tracking link, sharing the latest sale details, or notifying customers of a service outage. Reach your customers wherever they are on the channel they prefer.

7 Ways Chatbots Help Teams Move Faster

Posted on February 9, 2022December 20, 2024 The Quiq Team

For many years, it seemed like “chatbot” was a bad word.

People likened them to automated voice attendants. Many businesses would put chatbots on their websites without much strategy or thought—using them to effectively act as a search engine.

But that mentality has changed. Technology has caught up with the implementation, and using chatbots as part of your customer service strategy is essential.

In fact, Zendesk reports that high-performing customer service teams are 2.9x more likely to use AI-powered chatbots to help with agent workflow.

Now, you can weave chatbots into every part of your customer service to help your support team work faster.

Keep reading to see how bots streamline workflows and maximize agent efficiency.

1. Answer common questions

Chatbots do not replace human agents. They can, however, alleviate the volume of inquiries by answering simple, repetitive questions.

Questions like:

Where’s my order?
Does this come in other sizes/colors
What’s the return policy?
What are your hours?
How do I reset my password?

This list isn’t comprehensive, as you can customize your chatbot to answer common questions your agents receive.

Don’t underestimate chatbots’ ability to answer customer questions. Daily Harvest, a meal kit delivery service and Quiq client, reduced the demand on their agents’ time with a custom chatbot.

Sage, their digital care guide, now assists with common inquiries and contains 60% of conversations.

This means only 40% of conversations were elevated to a live agent—a far cry from what they managed before Sage came along.

See how Daily Harvest and Quiq worked together to get such excellent results >

2. Collect information upfront

How much time do agents spend collecting and entering customer information? Customers message your support team and are peppered with twenty questions before they can even get to the reason for their call.

Instead, use a chatbot as your welcome wagon.

They can help customers instantly and succinctly gather all the information needed to serve them. Just like your agents would, the chatbot can enter it into your conversational platform so that the data is readily available should they need to be transferred to a live agent.

Now that agents don’t have to collect information, they can jump right in to answer questions and solve problems.

3. Improve response times

Whether acting as a welcome wagon or answering questions, chatbots are faster. They have access to all the same databases that your agents do, and they can predict what customers will say as they’re typing.

This means they’re already gathering information for possible responses before the customer even sends the message.

And response times matter to customers.

Over 60% say the most important aspect of good customer service is getting their issues resolved quickly, according to Zendesk.

4. Chatbots are available 24/7

Your customer service team needs to sleep! But chatbots… Well, they don’t.

They can work through the night and deliver the 24/7 on-demand customer service that your customers crave.

Not only does this please your customers, but it also reduces the backlog your employees walk into every morning.

If your friendly bot answered the easy questions throughout the night, there would be fewer customer inquiries come morning.

5. Troubleshoot problems

Did you ever wait on hold for tech support only to be told to turn your computer off and on again? How frustrated did that make you?

Chatbots help keep that from happening to your customers.

Chatbots can walk customers through troubleshooting the moment they reach out without making them wait for a live agent.

If it’s a simple solution, the customers can solve the problem without ever elevating the ticket to a live agent. Customers get a quick resolution, and your team can spend time on more complex issues.

When customers do reach your support staff, they’ve already attempted the quick fixes, saving your team members from having to walk them through simple solutions.

Customers already know they have a significant problem, and agents can get right to work identifying and solving the issue.

6. Customer routing

According to Zendesk’s CX Trends report, 52% of company leaders plan on boosting agents’ flexibility to solve specialized problems in the next year. It will empower agents to dive deeper into customer issues and become better problem solvers.

However, certain agents specializing in specific problems will increase the need for customer routing.

Instead of making a customer wait for a live agent, then figuring out it needs to go to a specialist in another department, a chatbot can handle that in the initial conversation.

Customers don’t have to wait multiple times to reach the right person, and agents don’t spend time routing the tickets themselves.

By the way, this works especially well for companies with a central customer service team and many departments. Handing this task off to chatbots will take one more thing off the shoulders of your agents.

7. Improve agent morale

Morale is a tough subject in customer service. Helping customers (who may be less than courteous) with their problems can take its toll on your team.

Only 15% of agents are extremely satisfied with their workload, reports Zendesk.

One thing chatbots can do is alleviate the monotony.

Answering the same handful of questions all day is bound to dampen spirits and slow down your team. Handling these types of inquiries with a chatbot before they ever get to a live agent will lighten the load.

Yes, questions may be more challenging, but your team will feel like they’re making a difference—instead of answering “Where’s my package” 15 times a day.

Find out what Quiq chatbots can do for your customer service team >

Bonus: 2 more ways chatbots can help outside customer service

Speeding up customer service is a great way to use bots, but there are other opportunities to work it into your company’s workflow.

1. Qualify leads

Chatbots can even assist other teams beyond customer service. Whether people reach out through your same customer service channels or connect through a different channel with your sales team, chatbots can make a difference.

Let’s face it. Not everyone who inquires about your product or service is the right match for your company.

And while the sales team is well-equipped to identify qualified leads, it takes time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere.

Chatbots can assist your sales and marketing efforts by qualifying leads before sending them to your sales team or CRM. That way, your team isn’t spinning their wheels talking to leads that aren’t going to end up in a sale.

2. Process payments

With e-commerce sales booming, businesses have been asking customer service teams to spend more time assisting customers before the sale—and even completing the purchase within your messaging platform.

Instead of sending customers back to their carts (which increases the likelihood of abandonment), bring in a chatbot to complete the sale.

Customers get an easy way to make a purchase and your agents can move on to the next ticket.

Welcome a chatbot to your team

Chatbots don’t replace your customer service team—they work with your team to deliver faster, more efficient customer service.

When you integrate bots into your support workflows, the possibilities are endless: response times shrink, customer satisfaction rises, and agents’ morales improve.

Not a bad word anymore, right?

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