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Is Live Chat Better than Form Filling?

Forms have ruled the online space since the beginning. And they’ve served us well. But are they going extinct?

Here’s the better question: Should they go extinct?

Live chat (often referred to as web chat) has penetrated the online world, with businesses in both the B2B and B2C online space embracing it. While it’s been used to supplement businesses’ main info-gathering method (forms), now live chat is taking over.

Businesses are replacing contact forms with live chat, using a combination of live agents and chatbots to deliver the best experience.

Let’s compare live chat and form filling.

Why form filling isn’t ideal.

Form filling has been the standard for years, but that also means customers are wise to them. They know sharing their email, and phone number potentially means fending off follow-ups they’re not ready for.

With the mad dash to move sales and service online in the past few years, contact forms just aren’t cutting it.

5 ways forms fall short

  1. Conversion rates are low. The average form conversion rate is 3–5%, according to WebFX. There are many outliers to that average depending on the industry and other business factors like marketing. Yet, customers have to be pretty sure of your product or service to fill out your contact form—without additional incentives like discounts or lead magnets. This means that even if you’re getting people to your forms, few are turning into sales.
  2. They take a lot of your team’s time. Do you have an easy way of sorting form entries before they get to your team? If you don’t, your generic forms are siphoning your sales and customer service teams’ time. Sorting through inquiries (are they just asking a customer service question, or are they looking to buy?), vetting leads, following up when you don’t have enough information… It all adds time before you even get to the sales process.
  3. Poor customer service. People have high expectations for customer service. Over 80% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company, according to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report. Try as you might, customers don’t get instant answers through contact forms. And if their issue requires multiple back-and-forth emails, you’re adding unnecessary friction.
  4. You’re probably losing sales. How many customers reach your contact form only to bounce? You’re probably very familiar with that number, but what about all the customers who bounce on your website without even making it to the contact form? Even when customers have questions, they might not poke around your website to find your form and ask it.
  5. You might be alienating customers. Some people are introverts! The thought of filling out a contact form and possibly receiving a phone call can be daunting. Even if they’re interested, the fear of talking to a person can keep them moving forward.

Forms vs. live chat: Why is live chat better?

More and more businesses are embracing live chat as an easy way to engage their website visitors and convert them into paying customers.

Here are a few ways live web chat outperforms contact forms.

Instant gratification.

Live chat connects customers with your team members (or a chatbot) instantly. No matter how quickly you respond to contact forms, you don’t get the same satisfaction of a quick conversation using chat.

Even knowing that live chat is an option will make your customers more likely to engage. It’s like having a salesperson at a traditional brick-and-mortar store. You may not want to have them walk you through the displays, but it’s nice knowing they’re there if you need them.

Human connection.

Customers don’t engage with a contact form—they fill it out. There’s no back-and-forth conversation and no way to make a connection until after they’ve taken that step. Live chat with your agents (or even a well-trained chatbot) gives them a human connection, and maybe even gives them more affinity for your brand.

Always accessible.

Forms can go on every page, but there’s almost always scrolling/searching involved to find it. The benefit of live chat is not only its accessibility on your website, but that it can engage your web visitors in conversation even before they think they need it.

And when you swap forms for chatbots, customers can engage with your brand any time, 24/7. When they have a question on Friday night, they don’t need to wait until Monday morning to get a response.

Familiarity over formality.

Forms are only the beginning of a conversation that will inevitably lead to an email, and then a phone call. Then your customers think they’ll be dealing with unwanted phone calls. It feels like much more of a commitment they’re not ready to make. It’s much simpler for customers to ask a few questions in live chat and leave the conversation when they need to.

Customers prefer it.

Compared to other forms of customer service, live chat frequently performs better, with faster response times, higher CSAT scores, and quicker resolutions. According to Salesforce, 42% of customers prefer live chat over other communication methods. Plus, your customers are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat, according to 63% of respondents, reports SaaSworthy.

What can you do with chatbots?

While live chat can run sufficiently when staffed by your own team, chatbots take it to the next level.

According to Databox’s informal survey, 50% of respondents said chatbots convert better than forms, while only 39% said forms convert better. (The other 11% said they convert the same.)

Here are some things chatbots can do to save you time and improve your customer service:

  • Answer customer questions.
  • Troubleshoot common problems.
  • Gather customer information.
  • Determine the department to route customers to.
  • Move customers into an agent’s queue across channels.

Forms vs. live chat: Who wins?

Hands down, live chat.

Live chat gives customers the one-to-one experience they prefer when choosing an online business. And with personalization becoming an even bigger part of the customer experience, having conversations is vital.

Comparing Live Chat and Chatbots

How often do you interact with brands online? In-person?

Brand interactions now happen online more often than they do in-person. Salesforce projected that in 2022, 61% of company interactions would be online, and only 39% would be in person. That number has been steadily increasing since 2020.

With more people spending more time in front of their screens (whether mobile or desktop), customers need a convenient place to connect with your business.

And your website is a good place to start.

Live chat (also known as web chat) is the simplest way to connect with your customers online. It usually involves a chat feature that lives on your website where customers can instantly start a real-time conversation.

So, where do chatbots come into play? We get it—with all the jargon thrown around, it can get confusing. (What happened to the days of customer service by phone or email, right?) While live chat is the method of communication, chatbots are the ones doing the communication.

Let us explain.

Say you need to contact an e-commerce company to return an ill-fitting shirt. (Too long, too tight, too orange…whatever the case may be.) Even though it’s a simple transaction, you still need to request a return label. So you go to their website, open the live chat box and type in your request.

You’ll likely get a chatbot responding to your inquiry and helping you through the process.

Chatbots, like the AI-powered ones we implement for our customers, often stand in for live agents when interacting with customers.

But it’s not as simple as implementing live chat, finding a low-fidelity bot, and putting it to work. It takes careful planning and, above all, a fierce customer-first approach to successfully implement a chatbot strategy.

Continue reading as we compare live chat to chatbots, when to use each of them (or both), and how to navigate the customer service experience.

Why live chat is a must.

Where phones used to be the easiest and fastest way for customers to reach you, live chat is quickly replacing it. Live chat is a communication channel where customers can get immediate answers to their questions.

Now, 42% of customers prefer online chat (another name for live chat in this instance) over other communication methods, according to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customers Report.

Compared to other forms of customer service, live chat frequently performs better, with faster response times, higher CSAT scores, and quicker resolutions.

Plus, your customers are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat, according to 63% of respondents, reports SaaSworthy.

Why should you use chatbots for customer service?

Customer expectations are increasing. While at the same time, your customer service team is asked to do more with less. Something has to give. Or does it?

Chatbots build a bridge between your stellar customer service team and your customers. When comparing live chat and chatbots, don’t think of them as adversaries. Chatbots aren’t replacement tools for human interaction but merely extensions of your customer service team.

  • Here are just a few things chatbots can do:
  • Answer customer questions.
  • Troubleshoot common problems.
  • Gather customer information.
  • Determine the department to route customers to.
  • Move customers into an agent’s queue across channels.

In fact, 48% of U.S. customers believe AI should make life easier, according to Zendesk’s CX Trends Report. For people ages 25–39, that number jumps up to 80%.

How to make your chatbot stand out using live chat.

The biggest problems you’ll face when implementing a chatbot strategy for customer service are perceptions and expectations.

On one side of the spectrum, many people have high expectations for AI. Pop culture has skewed public perception, making them think AI can do nearly anything seamlessly without much work on their part.

On the other side, some people simply hear (or see) the word “bot” and dismiss it as stupid and useless. (Probably from previous bad experiences with low-end, faulty bots.)

There’s currently a long way to go before AI-powered chatbots meet customer expectations. Here are a few ways AI chatbots are failing customers—and how you can use this information to make your customer service stand out.

Accuracy is everything.

The stat: 47% of consumers report not getting accurate answers, according to Zendesk.

As an extension of your customer service team, customers need to be able to trust the information they get from your chatbot. Customers who don’t trust your chatbot quickly lose faith in your business.

While we like to think that AI is infinitely intelligent, chatbots are only as good as the information you feed them. Just like you have to spend time straining your customer service agents, you need to spend time inputting information, writing scripts, and QA-ing your chatbot.

How to fix it: Ensure your chatbots have access to all the information your customer service agents do, including product databases and customer data.

Speed still matters—even if your agents’ time isn’t at stake.

The stat: 56% of customers say it takes too long for the bot to recognize it can’t help solve their issues.

It’s like listening to the five-minute interactive voice response (IVR) menu before realizing you need to talk to a representative. Forcing customers to answer too many questions or go through too many routing menus is an easy way to frustrate them. Especially when 48% of surveyed consumers in the U.S. believe chatbots should save time when contacting a company.

How to fix it: While it’s a good practice to use chatbots to collect information before connecting with a live agent, keep them as few as possible.

Also, consider measuring chatbot performance, much like you would a live agent. Are they resolving issues quickly? Are they able to solve problems with just one interaction? That way, you can identify weak spots and continue improving.

Don’t make customers repeat themselves, ever.

The stat: 44% of customers say the most frustrating thing about working with a chatbot is when they have to start all over again with a human agent.

We know customers hate to repeat themselves. It’s one of the things they hope AI-enabled bots can prevent. According to Zendesk, 49% of surveyed consumers believe AI should keep people from having to repeat themselves.

How to fix it: When combining live chat and chatbots, make the handoff from bot to agent seamless. Use the information collected by the bots to auto-populate your conversational platform and give agents access to the conversation so they don’t miss anything.

Be transparent and give them a choice.

The stat: 44% get frustrated that they don’t have a choice between speaking with a human or a bot at the beginning of a conversation.

Think about IVR systems. They (almost) always give you an option to connect directly with a live representative, and it’s easy to tell when you’re talking to a live agent.

But it’s not as easy to identify over live chat, and customers can feel deceived when they think they’re reaching out to a person. And when they’re having a hard time explaining their issue, walking through it with a bot can just add to their frustrations.

How to fix it: Name your bot, and have them introduce itself as a robotic assistant. Include an option to connect directly with a live agent (when available) in that welcome message. While you want to encourage customers to interact with your bot in order to reduce the burden on your live agents, you don’t want to force them. Give them a choice.

Infuse bots with brand personality.

The stat: 47% of surveyed consumers believe AI should improve customer service quality.

Admittedly, you’re battling a perception when introducing chatbots into your customer experience. When customers hear “chatbot,” they immediately think of robotic, monotone voices. For web conversations, that translates to personality-less text or poor attempts to sound “human” that end up sounding… fake.

The easiest fix is to create a chatbot experience that matches your brand’s personality, whether that’s enthusiastic, fun, empathetic, or straightforward.

Our client Daily Harvest, a popular meal kit delivery service, knew they needed to create a chatbot to help alleviate their overburdened customer service team. But they wanted to ensure customers got the same excellent customer experience the brand has become known for. They partnered with Quiq to build a custom AI chatbot that not only solved common customer issues but could also interpret customers’ language and syntax, their food preferences, and more.

They ended up with Sage, Daily Harvest’s digital care guide. Besides reducing call volume by 60% (a huge win in its own right), they optimized the customer experience and improved their already extraordinarily high CSAT rate.

Read more about Sage and Daily Harvest here >

Make live agents and chatbots part of the same team.

With the right planning (and the right partner), chatbots and live agents can work seamlessly together to serve your customers.

According to Zendesk, only 38% of businesses use both bots and human agents for live chat. That means there’s a big opportunity for improvement.

Since 83% of customers expect to connect with someone immediately when contacting a company, according to Salesforce, you need to pool your resources to meet (or exceed) customer expectations.

Start crafting your chatbot and live chat strategy by taking these preliminary steps:

  1. Collect customer issues by volume. What questions do you get the most?
  2. Organize them by complexity. Are they simple “where’s my order” questions, or do they take several steps and individual problem-solving?
  3. Identify which can be solved with bots or which needs a live agent.
  4. Figure out how bots and humans can work together to solve problems.

Don’t think of live agents and bots as working in silos. The best tactic is to use them both together at various times in the interaction.

Use a bot to collect information and troubleshoot problems upfront. Then, tap in a live agent when the problem gets complex. You can also pull in a bot at the end of the conversation to close out transactions, ask for feedback, or talk about the next steps.

Empower your customer service team to embrace chatbot interactions, and work in tandem to deliver the best customer experience.

Leverage live chat and chatbots with Quiq.

Quiq’s AI-powered chatbots work just like your live agents. With our Conversational Platform, you can combine native Quiq customer service chatbots, bots developed in third-party frameworks, and human agents any way you like.

The question is no longer if you should choose between live chat or chatbots, but how you can use both to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

4 Tips for Communicating Effectively With Customers Over Live Chat

Consumers want answers, and they want them right away. Slow customer service can result in lost opportunities for businesses across all industries. That’s why live chat is more popular among businesses and corporations than ever before. This fast, efficient communication method is a great way to address the questions and concerns of both new and long-standing customers. With the help of a few customer service live chat tips, it’s easy to improve consumer relationships and stay competitive in the industry.

Tips for Effective Live Chat Customer Service Messages

For consumers who have questions while deciding whether to buy a product or service, live chat is a quick and simple solution. With live chat customer service messages, consumers have their questions answered and decide on a course of action within minutes. Like any other part of a customer support strategy, it takes planning and precision to develop a successful live chat program. Here are a few live chat customer service tips that can help you communicate more quickly and effectively.

1. Keep a Conversational Tone

While the tone of a conversation may vary depending on the situation or customer, it’s important to be friendly and conversational. Excessive formal language can translate as boring, while a message filled with errors and too much slang may read as unprofessional. Although the occasional slang or emoji is acceptable in the right context, it’s best to communicate professionally during live messaging.

2. Write Short Messages

Consumers like quick, easy answers. They prefer replies that are short, sweet, and to the point. It’s easy to lose potential leads by offering answers that are too long and complex. Short messages are more digestible and easier to read, which makes them ideal for consumers who are in a hurry to find solutions.

3. Point to Relevant Materials

Additional resources and materials play an important role in allowing businesses to communicate with new customers. These materials can help answer questions, point consumers to other offerings, and even encourage them to buy more products. During live chat, it’s important to find ways to keep the conversation going so the consumer receives the support they need and walks away satisfied with their service. Pointing to relevant materials is a smart way to keep people engaged and asking questions.

4. Focus on Speed

Live chat is different from other types of messaging and communication because it all happens in one sitting. If a representative is too slow to respond, they could lose a lead within minutes. That’s why focusing on speed without sacrificing accuracy and quality is so important. Live chat features such as Quiq Replies offer standardized messages the agent can use with a simple keystroke to respond both quickly and consistently.

Greater speed during live chat can result in more leads, happier customers, and better profits. In some cases, chat bots also keep the conversation going by helping potential leads while representatives are unavailable.

Contact Quiq for More Live Chat Customer Service Tips

Live chat is a powerful strategy that can help any business attract more customers and build better customer loyalty. The key is to keep replies quick, short, and to the point while maintaining a positive tone. For more information about customer service live chat, contact us online today.