Prepare Your Site for the Holidays (With Video Tutorial)

Posted on by snapengagestaff

Prepare Your Site for the Holidays (With Video Tutorial)

The 2019 holiday shopping season is in full swing — is your business meeting the needs of online holiday shoppers? USA consumers alone are expected to spend $135.35 billion this holiday season (that’s a 13.2% increase from last year according to an eMarketer report) and another 2018 study found that 77% of consumers plan to do at least some of their holiday shopping online this season. It’s imperative that businesses catering to holiday shoppers do everything in their power to provide quality consumer experiences during this festive time (and all year long). Don’t forget about the international market, where 58% of global consumers would make international purchases online if they were more familiar with the brand.

One way to prepare your website for the holidays is to add visual interest with holiday themes and seasonal styling on key website elements. Your live chat software is the perfect place to start because it’s one of the first places holiday shoppers will click to further engage with your brand. With a flexible tool at your fingertips, it’s easier than ever to dress up your chatbox elements for the holidays (while adhering to marketing guidelines and remaining on-brand, too!). The tutorial video below will help you get started.

How to make a custom-themed chatbox for your business

It’s easy to make your own winter holiday chatbox theme using the intuitive Design Studio tool in SnapEngage. Watch the video below for a step-by-step tutorial by designer Jackson Carson. We’ll teach you how to quickly customize your chatbox theme using a custom background image, animated GIF background, and matching colors for the holidays!

Additional tips to prepare for the holiday season

 

  • Make sure that your website can successfully handle an influx of holiday site traffic. The last thing you want consumers to experience is any period of site downtime because your server couldn’t keep up.
  • Connect with international shoppers using Auto-Translate chat. Offer a real-time, seamless translation between site visitors and your chat team, allowing you to connect with more clients than ever.
  • The holiday season is the perfect time to roll out special limited-time-only marketing promotions to entice holiday shoppers. Ensure that your web, marketing, sales, and customer support teams are all aligned on various aspects of current and upcoming promotions (including holiday offers/discounts, messaging, internal processes, and more). This will make the holiday season go more smoothly internally, which also has a positive effect on the external customer experience.
  • With increased online traffic during the holiday season, it’s imperative that businesses provide fast, easy ways for website visitors to engage directly with sales and customer support teams. If you’re not already using chat software, you’re missing out on key opportunities during the holiday season and throughout the year. Live chat software helps businesses drive online sales conversions and increase customer satisfaction.
  • Double-check that your online purchase/checkout pages and “shopping cart” technology are working well and provide an intuitive shopping experience for website visitors. If an online consumer reaches the point of sale just to encounter unexpected “technical issues”, they will become frustrated and are less likely to complete the purchase. Even if all of your systems are in tip-top shape, make sure that your team has a 24/7 action plan ready to go in case any site issues and bugs arise.
Learn more about the Design Studio tool

How Live Chat Helps Businesses Engage with B2B Buyers

Posted on by marketing

Business-to-business and business-to-consumer clients are different in many ways. With B2B, you are dealing with a well-informed and busy audience. These are professionals on a tight schedule who must justify all of their purchases based on demonstrated value and ROI. Finding effective ways to engage with B2B buyers can be challenging. One of the best tools for this purpose is live chat. Let’s look at how this technology can help you generate sales and improve your image with these unique clients.

How B2B clients are different

B2B clients are unique in a number of ways.

  • They are always concerned about the bottom line. Business owners and managers need to calculate the best ROI for every purchase. You can be sure they’ll be comparing your offer with others and analyze which is the better business decision.
  • They want details and specifics. Consumers often buy based on emotional decisions and on what’s trending. While B2B buyers aren’t immune to trends and emotions, they focus more on specs and details before they make decisions. You need to provide them with practical information that relates to their needs.
  • They are busy and time-challenged. B2B clients don’t want to waste time searching for information or sorting through fluff and filler. They want easy access to relevant information as quickly as possible. They also appreciate an omnichannel approach which lets them receive responses on whatever device or platform they’re using. As it stands, they don’t often receive the kind of support they desire. According to a survey by TimeTrade, a whopping 84% of B2B buyers frequently do not receive answers to their questions regarding a purchase.
  • They are more knowledgeable than the average consumer. With B2C marketing, it’s usually best to use everyday language and avoid industry jargon. With B2B clients, however, you can assume your audience is well-versed in the type of products or services you’re peddling. You can (and should) get more technical. In fact, you need to show that you respect their knowledge.
  • You may need to convince multiple decision-makers. With B2C, you’re typically selling to one person or, in some cases, a couple. With B2B, however, there are often several layers to penetrate. That’s why it’s so important to present a strong case with plenty of evidence.

Why live chat is the ideal way to reach B2B buyers

Engaging with B2B buyers requires a complete strategy that includes tactics such as content marketing, hiring knowledgeable sales and customer service reps, and maintaining a strong presence on social media, especially LinkedIn. One factor that can make a big difference is introducing live chat on your website. This single feature actually goes a long way in addressing many of the unique needs of B2B clients.

Provides efficient answers

As we noted, B2B buyers are busy and seek relevant information and answers to their questions. Live chat makes it possible for someone to get a prompt reply to any question. The chat agent can either answer questions directly, refer the visitor to the appropriate page, or forward the inquiry to someone who can answer it. This can save the prospect lots of time he or she might have otherwise spend searching your site (or, as the case may be, simply giving up and checking out your competitors).

Generates leads and sales

Every investment you make in your business must ultimately be justified by a positive ROI. There’s evidence that live chat helps you improve B2B sales. According to the American Marketing Association, live chat increases conversions by 20%. Just as impressively, adding this feature improves overall ROI by a whopping 305%. 

Helps you understand your customers

One of the most valuable aspects of live chat is that it provides you with a format that’s easy to study. By looking at chat histories, you can identify your customers’ needs and most pressing problems. You can also get a good sense of how effectively chat agents are addressing these concerns. It’s much harder to go back and listen to phone conversations. With chat logs, you can scan sessions and gather information you can use to improve all aspects of your business. The best chat providers also provide you with custom reports that let you perform analytics to help you track your results.

A powerful branding tool

One of the best reasons to implement live chat on your website is that it helps to strengthen your brand. This is valuable even if you don’t make an immediate sale. Potential clients who are able to interact with you via chat leave knowing more about your company and products than they did before. Browsing a website is a fairly impersonal process. When visitors actually talk to someone, they’re more likely to remember you as well as have a more positive view of your company. This is a feature that lets you differentiate yourself from the competition right away, the moment someone lands on your website.

Getting the most out of your chat software

Once you recognize how much chat can do to upgrade your engagement with B2B buyers, it’s a question of finding the right solution and learning how to use it to your advantage.

  • Find the right chat provider for your needs. You need to do your research to find the best chat provider. Consider features, customer service, cost, convenience, security requirements, and more.
  • Chat must be easy to use. The whole point of live chat is to allow visitors to get fast answers and solutions. For this to work, the chat window must be visible on every page and it must be easy for website visitors initiate conversations.
  • Make sure your chat agents are helpful and knowledgeable. While getting a quick response is a start, it’s also important that visitors get real value from live chat. In one survey, 94% of respondents said they are more likely to buy from a company when they have live interactions with knowledgeable employees.
  • Emphasize speed. Studies indicate that 60% of customers don’t want to wait more than a minute for a response. You can speed up interactions by providing agents with canned responses, including helpful links, for common questions. Another way to make interactions more efficient is to start by having visitors answer a pre-chat survey.

If you want to engage more effectively with your B2B clients, live chat is one of your best options. It gives you a way to offer fast and personalized service to busy professionals who don’t have time to waste. Quality chat software also lets you track valuable analytics so you can upgrade your customer service and provide even better solutions to your clients.

Consult with a live chat expert to learn more

Release Notes Nov. 28: A new UI to configure Shortcuts, List Online Agents in Hub, Proactive Chat API updates

Posted on by Niki Finegan

 

Hello SnapEngagers,

here is what our team has released in the last weeks:

A new UI to configure Shortcuts

  • We have updated the Shortcuts UI to make it easier to manage shortcuts, especially for a larger list of canned messages. The new user interface now features a search filter, pagination, bulk delete and an improved editor to configure the messages.
  • In the CSV import section can now select to either append or replace when uploading a list of shortcuts

Known limitations: Currently saving or deleting more than 200 shortcuts at once may time out. A fix is in the works.

Hub Updates

We have added a new Online Agents List option to view or search available agents, see their availability status and to start a 1:1 chat (or jump to an existing 1:1 chat):

Coming soon: The number of ongoing chats of each agent.

Hub Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with some icons being mis-aligned on Windows browsers.
  • Fixed some errors resulting in a ‘Something went wrong‘ message in Hub. We are still tracking down edge cases that can lead to this bug, if you still see this issue please contact us on [email protected]
  • Fixed an issue where the live monitoring dashboard window size appeared too small.
  • Team Chat: The scroll position will now always jump to the last received message when switching between chats.

 

Other Updates

  • Fixed an issue with ‘Agent Tags’ in Proactive Chat mode, where the routing did not respect priority tiers when selecting an agent.
  • Fixed an issue with the openProactiveChat API that caused the chat to not open up when clicked multiple times on the same page
  • Fixed a scrolling issue on mobile browsers which caused the position of the visitor to jump to the top of the page when opening the chat box.

Announcing Approval Checker for GDPR Compliance and Chat Routing

Posted on by marketing

We’re thrilled to announce a new addition to our international security offering! The new Approval Checker is a customizable option that helps businesses (especially businesses that adhere to GDPR-compliant practices) ask website visitors for data processing acceptance/consent before a chat session is initiated. The Approval Checker is also useful for automated chat routing and chat segmentation.

How does the GDPR affect businesses?

When the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) went into effect on May 25, 2018, many sweeping new data protection regulations were put into place for businesses that handle the personal data of EU citizens. This regulation signified the largest change in data privacy regulation history in over 20 years, and is comprised of a set of laws that aim to provide increased protection of EU citizens’ personal data.

The GDPR applies to all organizations that handle, control, or process the data of EU citizens, regardless of where in the world those organizations are located.

Key changes to prior data protection regulations include increased territorial scope and applicability, changes to breach notification and penalties, and increased conditions for consent. Under the GDPR, EU citizens possess rights related to the following: data breach, right to access data, right to be forgotten, data portability, privacy by design, and more. You can read more about the GDPR here.

 

Using the Approval Checker to fulfill GDPR requirements

One of the key components of the GDPR centers upon increased conditions for data transfer/processing consent and increased transparency regarding situations where personal data will be transferred. A live chat conversation is a prime example of a situation in which this type of personal data transfer could occur (for example, a chat agent may request a visitor’s email address, name, phone number, etc for both sales and customer support scenarios).

The Approval Checker makes it easy for businesses using SnapEngage to ask website visitors for consent/acceptance prior to starting a chat conversation (even when proactive chat is used). When a website visitor first initiates a chat conversation or responds to a proactive invitation, the Approval Checker greets the visitor and displays a data processing consent clause.

All language used by the Approval Checker is completely customizable, (including the initial legal text/statement, accept/decline instructions, specific accept and decline word(s), post-decline text, and ‘response not recognized’ text). 

Here’s an example of the data consent terminology used currently on the SnapEngage website:

 

Please note: This is an example of the data consent terminology used by SnapEngage specifically. The data consent terminology for your business will be based on your unique business model and how your business handles personal data.

We strongly advise and recommend that you work closely with your organization’s legal department and Information Security Officer to craft a legally appropriate message for your business.

 

 

 

 

 

Once the Approval Checker is enabled via the Admin Dashboard, a website visitor will not be able to initiate a chat conversation with an agent until they clearly (in this case by typing ‘Yes’) acknowledge that they read and understand the statement and also provide consent for data transfer during the subsequent chat conversation.

If the visitor declines and does not give their consent (in this case by typing ‘No’), then the chat session will automatically disconnect and all data from the chat will be automatically deleted.

The Approval Checker is further enhanced by location-based settings because SnapEngage automatically detects the website visitor’s location. Therefore, businesses have the ability to automatically launch the Approval Checker for website visitors from the following geographic locations: European Union (EU) only, EU and unknown locations, or for all geographic locations.

SnapEngage uses the Approval Checker to adhere to the GDPR specifically, so we’ve set up our Approval Checker to launch only when visitors from EU countries initiate a chat.

Additional routing applications for the Approval Checker

Even though the Approval Checker’s primary application is for data consent purposes, the customizable nature makes it useful for additional scenarios that require automated chat routing and filtering/segmentation. For example, depending on your business model and industry vertical there may be two segments of customers or prospects that your team typically interacts with.

Is there one segment that your business would like to offer live chat services to, and a second segment that your business would prefer to direct to a website form or other non-chat methods of assistance? This is a perfect example of a secondary use case for the Approval Checker!

Perhaps your company offers real estate services and you’d like home buyers and sellers to start live chat conversations with your team, but you’d prefer your second audience segment (real estate agents) to call your team directly.

Using the fully-customizable Approval Checker, you can set up the initial automated greeting text to ask the website visitor to type in whether they are a Buyer, Seller, or Agent. You can then set up the Approval Checker settings so that ‘Buyer’ and ‘Seller’ text responses are routed to the ‘accept’ track, and ‘Agent’ responses are routed to the ‘decline’ track with appropriate messaging for each.

Any type of scenario where your organization would like to offer chat services to a particular segment(s) but not to other segment(s) makes a great secondary use case for the Approval Checker. Think of universities and colleges catering chat services to prospective students vs. current students, services for job-seekers vs. hiring companies, businesses differentiating between sales leads vs. support inquiries, or healthcare websites offering live chat services to patients vs. doctors/providers – the opportunities are endless.

While this routing does depend on whatever text the visitor types in (meaning there is a chance the visitor could self-identify incorrectly), the Approval Checker still provides helpful automation to route inquiries more appropriately for businesses.

Schedule a complimentary strategy session to discuss GDPR and security requirements

7 Tips for Generating Positive Client Testimonials

Posted on by marketing

7 Tips for Generating Positive Client Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials are extremely important for promoting your business. As the internet and social media become even more saturated and competitive, prospective buyers are seeking social proof before they choose a product or service. Testimonials tell readers and viewers what other customers think, which is much more powerful than hearing this from the business alone. One survey found that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as their own friends. How can you motivate your customers to leave reviews? Here are some tips to help you generate more positive customer testimonials.

 

Ask For Testimonials

The first strategy for getting more testimonials is very simple – ask for them! Ask in as many ways as you can think of. Place buttons linking to review sites on your website and social media pages. Request reviews on any printed literature you hand out. If you have a store or office, place signs near the counter or register. Yelp, for example, makes signs for businesses to display.

It’s also perfectly acceptable to ask clients for reviews in person or on the phone. You or your customer representatives just have to do this in a polite manner and at the right time. It’s always best to ask for testimonials when the client is particularly satisfied and/or excited about your product/service. Make it clear you’re asking for a favor rather than making a demand, and make sure to highlight the benefits your client could experience as a result of giving the testimonial (such as possible increased brand awareness/marketing benefit).

 

Set Up Profiles on Several Review Sites

Not all of your customers necessarily use the same review sites. The more sites on which you’re listed, the easier it is to get reviews. If you’re only listed on Yelp, for example, then you’re missing out on people who prefer to leave reviews on Google, Yellow Pages, or another site. Some people aren’t registered with any review sites but might be glad to send you testimonials to post on your website. However, the goal is to make it as easy as possible to get reviews. For this, it’s best to claim your listing with any site that your customers are likely to use.

Also, don’t overlook sites that are specific to your industry. When you take time to set up profiles on review sites in your niche (such as software review sites for SaaS companies like SnapEngage), it’s more likely that visitors to those sites will be a better fit for your product.

 

Automate Requests For Feedback

Many people won’t take the time to provide testimonials without being prompted to do so. It’s not always possible to contact each customer individually to ask for feedback. It’s more efficient to automate the process. You can, for example, send out automated messages via email to all your customers requesting a review. Another great option is to ensure that your live chat software includes a Post-Chat Survey feature, which automatically surveys clients about their experience directly after a chat conversation. Admins will be able to view survey results and comments in real-time, and can use this data to follow-up with satisfied clients right away to identify additional opportunities to collaborate with the client on a testimonial quote, case study, and more.

There are also software programs with advanced features to automate feedback requests. With some of these, you can do more than just send out requests to every customer. You can set up parameters to increase the likelihood of getting positive reviews. For example, you can program the software to only send out requests for your most highly rated products. Or you can program it not to send out requests to people who had to contact customer service after their purpose as customers who’ve had problems are less likely to leave positive reviews.

Ask For Video Testimonials

Written reviews, whether on Yelp, Google, Facebook, or your own website, are great for building social proof. Video reviews, however, are better still. This gives your viewers a chance to see customers explain in their own words what they like about your products. Video testimonials are ideal for showcasing on your website. When making testimonial videos, keep these tips in mind.

  • Videos should be professional but don’t need to be Hollywood quality. If you’re a small or midsize business, your objective is to get across why your customers appreciate your products. You want to make sure they look professional and, even more importantly, that sound quality is good. But you don’t have to spend a fortune investing in technology or expensive production company services.
  • Keep videos short and focused. Anything longer than a couple of minutes is going to challenge your viewers’ attention spans. You can always make a longer video and edit it later.
  • Make sure customers appearing in videos identify themselves. Providing their names, location, and profession helps to establish them as real people.
  • Remember most customers aren’t professional actors. They need a little guidance on what to say. At the same time, don’t ask them to read a script as the whole point is to get someone’s authentic opinion. You can, however, guide them on what topics to cover (e.g. key features about your product).

Use Survey Data to Get More Positive Reviews

Surveys are useful for learning more about your customers. They help you identify what you’re doing well and areas that need attention. Net promoter score surveys are especially useful for helping you gauge customers’ overall satisfaction. These surveys ask how likely it is that someone will buy something from this company again. You can pair NPS surveys with your strategy for getting more online reviews. Target satisfied customers and invite them to write a product review. This strategy has helped SnapEngage increase user reviews on online software review sites.

Send Customers Samples

One way to get reviews for a new product is to send out free samples. The key to doing this successfully is to target the right audience. Sending samples to existing customers who have bought similar products is always a solid strategy. Another option is to target your offers to the appropriate demographic using Facebook ads or another advertising platform.

When sending out free products, you have to be careful about issues such as disclosure, laws, and TOS, especially if reviews appear on websites other than your own. Amazon, for example, specifically prohibits incentivized reviews. You have a lot more leeway when you’re selling from your own website. Even then, however, always ask for honest testimonials. Another thing to keep in mind is that FTC guidelines require that anyone who receives a free product discloses this when leaving a testimonial.

Caveats For Testimonials

In their eagerness to receive testimonials, some business owners make mistakes and engage in practices that do more harm than good. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

  • Don’t argue with reviewers. It’s frustrating to receive negative feedback, especially when you feel it’s unjustified. However, there’s nothing to be gained by getting into public arguments on review sites (or on your own blog). Respond to all reviews politely, even if the reviewer is being rude or abusive. If you have reason to believe the review is fake or attacking you unfairly, contact the site.
  • Never ask for positive reviews. Obviously, you hope your customers will write favorable comments that you’ll be proud to display on your website. However, you never want to say (or even imply) that you expect your clients to write positive reviews.
  • Be careful about incentivized reviews. Until recently, the prevailing notion was that as long as you didn’t demand that customers write positive reviews there was nothing wrong with rewarding them with coupons, free items, or contest entries. However, with growing concerns about fake reviews, many companies, as well as the FTC, are cracking down on incentivized reviews. Google also penalizes businesses that incentivize reviews. As noted above, though, if you’re publishing testimonials on your own website, make sure reviewers disclose any rewards or incentives you’ve provided.

Reviews and testimonials make a big difference for growing your business and acquiring new customers. The number one tip for generating positive testimonials, of course, is to offer quality products and exceptional customer service. However, it’s also necessary to prime the pump and encourage users to tout the virtues of your products. Keep the above tips in mind and you’ll be able to attract more testimonials for your business.

Schedule a call to learn about our live chat solutions

Download Now  

Recent Posts

Blog Categories

Sign up to receive our latest research, updates and success stories.
Live Chat Newsletter

Release Notes Nov. 8: A Dark Theme for Hub, Minimize and SwitchWidget JavaScript Events, Transcript Email copy sent to Agents fix

Posted on by Niki Finegan

 

Hello SnapEngagers,

today we have some exciting updates to share with you.

A Dark Theme for Hub

Chat agents can now select a dark theme in the Hub preferences. This setting can be found by clicking on the agent avatar in the top right corner of the Hub -> Agent Preferences -> Other Settings. Give it a try and come over to the dark side!

Assorted Hub Updates and fixes:

  • We have changed the font and font weight in Hub based on your feedback to improve readability.
  • Improved compatibility with IE11 (we still highly recommend to use a modern browser when using Hub!)
  • Fixed an error showing ‘please refresh page to continue’ in Hub
  • Fixed an issue making text invisible when copy&pasting in Hub
  • Fixed an issue where the inline chat history was linking to the wrong visitor when switching between multiple concurrent visitor chats.

 

Other Updates:

We have added a few new JavaScript Callback Events to better track visitor engagement with the chat box on your website. Please find the documentation here.

  • Minimize Event: The Minimize event is triggered when the visitor clicks the minimize icon in the chat box, or during live and active chats when they click on the minimized ‘button’ to maximize the chat box.
  • SwitchWidget Event: You must have the widget selector enabled in your Design Studio prechat &/or offline form to utilize this event callback functionality. The switchWidget event is triggered when the visitor has selected a value from the available dropdown list options. It will return the value of the newWidgetId.

Other:

  • Email Integration: Fixed an issue where the copy of the chat transcript sent to the chat agents was not sent from no-reply@snapengage when configured this way.
  • Facebook Channel: Fixed an issue where the page could not display more than 25 Facebook pages.

 

5 Things to Consider Before Selecting a Chat Provider (From a Former Chat Agent)

Posted on by marketing

Written by guest author Jordan Wahl (G2 Crowd).

In recent years, the use of live chat software has become commonplace in many industries – not just the customer service space. Historically, companies started using live chat to offer the company’s end-users a portal to get their questions answered quickly. But as live chat providers continue to add more capabilities to their tools, businesses have started using chat as an integral part of marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.

Consider lead generation. You can use live chat as a lead generation tool to fuel your inbound marketing strategy! How? Every website visitor has the opportunity to interact with your live chat agents. So, why not take advantage of that? With live chat, you can connect to your visitors, understand their needs, provide them with information, and guide them through the site to help them fulfill their needs.

Think of live chat as a bridge connecting your inbound marketing work with your sales team. In the end, it can help your business convert more and sell more. Pretty neat. It doesn’t stop there, though. Businesses are learning to work smarter, not harder by using live chat to benefit their businesses.

I’m here to share five things you should consider before selecting a live chat provider for your business. As a former live chat agent, I’ve experienced both client-facing chat and the vendor decision-making process firsthand.

1. What are you trying to accomplish?

Are you an e-commerce business looking to increase conversions and improve customer experience? Looking for a new way to decrease the customer support request emails flooding your inbox? Trying to generate new marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) for your inbound sales team?

All of the above are practical ways to integrate live chat into your business. But in order to choose the right tool with the features you need, you’ll need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish in the first place. Once you understand which problem(s) you’re trying to solve with the tool, you’ll be able to narrow down providers based on your company’s needs in a product.

Speaking of product needs, it’s a good idea to gather critical business requirements right off the bat before you begin the search. Are there any non-negotiable requirements you’re aware of? For example, if your organization handles sensitive patient information, your search will automatically be restricted to HIPAA-compliant chat vendors only.

 

2. Quality customer support and client success

When it comes to onboarding a new tool, there’s a big chance you will need support along the way. New tools can be complex and it may take some time for your staff to be fully comfortable and explore all of the tool’s capabilities. That being said, it’s important to consider the quality of customer service you’ll receive along the way.

For starters, understand the hours that the live chat provider’s customer support will be available. Is it based in a different country? If so, does its business hours align with your business hours? Is there a language barrier? (I’d advise steering clear of any providers whose hours and language don’t overlap with yours).

Secondly, is the company easy to get ahold of if needed? Does the provider offer any additional support in the initial onboarding phase of the product? Does the provider offer training services for admins and chat agents? What about ongoing success reviews?

These are all important questions to investigate before deciding on a chat provider. The better a chat vendor can demonstrate their commitment to quality customer support, onboarding and training services, and overall client education – the more successful your chat program will be.

 

3. The product pricing model

This may seem like a no-brainer, but be sure to understand all of the fees associated with each product you’re considering. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) generally has two pricing models: a concurrent user license or a per-seat license.

When it comes to deciding which is best for you and your business, one major piece that should be taken into consideration is the size of the team that will be using the product. For example, a per-seat license model might work well for smaller and midsize companies. But if you’re an enterprise company with hundreds of employees that will need access to the product, you might be better off budget-wise with a concurrent user license.

It’s not only important to understand the pricing model of the product as a whole but to also be aware of any extra fees that are associated with the product at the time of purchase and during your contract phase with the provider. For example, are there specific features you need that are considered add-ons to the base price? Be sure to clarify this question while you research pricing to avoid surprises later on.

 

 

4. Simple user interface

In the digital world we live in, it’s incredibly easy to become overwhelmed by the complexity of some products. If something is complicated or hard to use (even if it just seems difficult to use at first glance) the experience can be stressful.

To avoid a less-than-stellar experience for anyone involved, choose a provider whose product is not only easy to use for the end-user (website visitors), but also for your chat agents that will be operating the chat on the backend.

This starts with choosing a simple, intuitive user interface. Is the chat box appealing to the end-user and easy to customize to match your unique branding? Is the backend easy to navigate for your agents? If the chat box is inviting, the consumer will be more compelled to engage. And if the product is easy to use, the faster your team will be able to become fully trained in the product (resulting in more efficient agents and happier customers).

 

5. Useful reporting and analytics

This goes hand-in-hand with #1. Depending on what you’re using the product for and what you’re looking to measure, you might require different types of reporting and analytics.

For example, if you’re using the live chat tool mainly for customer support, you might want to generate a report on agent response times and customer wait times. Let’s face it, we live in a world where people hate waiting. In order to keep visitors happy, you’ll want to keep response times quick and wait times low, so being able to analyze these will allow you to improve your team’s performance.

Or say you’re using the tool for lead generation. You might want to look at chat conversion rates to better optimize your agents’ responses, which keeps prospects moving through the inbound marketing and sales funnel.

No matter what it may be, consider what reporting and analytics you want in an ideal live chat tool to make sure you will have access to the analytics you need to improve your ongoing chat strategies and make data-driven decisions.

 

Bonus tip: Read product reviews

I said I’d give you five, but here’s a little bonus tip: don’t forget to read product reviews! Finding the right live chat solution for your business can be a challenge, but reading real, unbiased reviews about products to see what other professionals liked and didn’t like about a product is very helpful. Spend time researching your options and understanding what will be the best investment for you in the long run.

The use of live chat is on the rise for good reason. It’s a great opportunity to answer questions quickly and give the end-user a positive experience, all while providing countless other sales and support benefits to your business. Researching these initial questions will provide you with a great start to your vendor search. 

Happy searching!

About the Author

Jordan Wahl is a content marketing specialist for G2 Crowd’s Learn hub, a B2B software review site with over 450,000 user-verified reviews. You can find Jordan on Twitter (@jordwahl).

Start your search with the help of a live chat expert

Release Notes Oct. 15: HIPAA Security updates, Permissions, Hub improvements, Bug Fixes

Posted on by Niki Finegan

 

Hello SnapEngagers,

here is some of what our dev team has been working on in the last weeks:

Updates:

  • We have added the Hub tab (including the Labels feature) to the Permissions settings, so this page can now be excluded/included with custom permission roles.
  • We improved the UI for adding new administrators in the Permissions tab.
  • We made several backend improvements for the Hub to improve the performance, speed and reliability.
  • We added a setting to restrict file upload for individually restricting the file upload for visitors and agents. Restricting file upload for agents will be the default for HIPAA accounts

Resolved Issues:

  • Fixed an issue with the Hubspot integration where cases were temporarily not sent through to Hubspot.
  • Fixed an issue with the Zendesk integration where the agent mapping option in the Chat Agents configuration was not visible for newly connected widgets.
  • Fixed an issue with the Proactive Chat where the ‘re-engagement delay’ timer was not working as expected.
  • Fixed an issue with the StartLink() API call which caused the button to be displayed on top of the chat box.
  • Fixed an issue on the visitor chat box with the auto-responder: When the visitor clicks the auto-responder link after the agent sent a reply it will now no longer close the chat.
  • Hub:
    • Fixed an issue with the chat transfer, where the chat was not disappearing for unassigned agents.
    • Fixed an issue where an agent was redirected from an ongoing chat to the home screen and loosing what they typed in the chat input field, if a second broadcasted chat was picked up by another agent.
    • Fixed an issue where the sneak peek disappeared if the visitor stopped typing.

10 Reasons to Implement a Sales Chat Strategy

Posted on by marketing

For most sales directors, sales success hinges in part on your SDR team’s ability to respond promptly and professionally to incoming inquiries during the buying process. In addition to being many website visitors’ and consumers’ preferred mode of communicating with a company today, live chat can be used throughout the sales cycle to increase sales conversions. Most importantly, live chat is the preferred mode of communication for consumers, exceeding voice, email, and social messaging in popularity. Below are ten ways to use live chat to enhance your sales strategy (and most importantly, your sales results).

1) Bring authenticity to your business

“Authenticity is crucial to continued loyalty from fickle audiences. This poses a challenge for marketers: They must navigate the latest and greatest means of meeting the customer where they are and ensure the messages they put out are both genuine and in alignment with their brand principles.”

– Ashley Diebert, Vice President of Marketing at iQ Media

Interacting with a company representative via chat helps to establish your business as a legitimate force within your industry. Introducing chat shows your target audience the following:

  • You understand their desire for a fast response
  • You have the tools and resources to address their concerns quickly
  • You are serious about wanting to do business with them

2) Gather valuable customer data

 

Chat transcripts provide valuable Voice of Customer (VOC) data that can be instrumental in helping you shape your sales and marketing plans. For instance, you can review questions, words, and key phrases that prospects use when inquiring about your products. The data you retrieve can help you identify the following:

  • Which of your products or services are in the highest demand
  • The keywords that your customers use to discuss products and services they need
  • Customer opinions and suggestions related to your products, website, and content

3) Add a human element to the sales process

“Most savvy merchants understand the importance of human interaction, no matter how strong the investment in multichannel selling and digital customer service. In fact, a recent global study of more than 24,000 consumers and 1,000 businesses confirms the fact in no uncertain terms: consumers everywhere highly value the human element in their interactions with businesses.”

– Anne Patton, Vice President of Marketing for Verint Systems

As automation gains popularity across the globe, a growing number of consumers are craving the personalized approach that accompanies interaction with a human. Offering customers the option to chat about your products and services provides this necessary personalization and humanizes your business.

4) Keep your customers engaged

The typical website visitor will leave your website after only 10 to 20 seconds, highlighting the need to keep visitors engaged. Customers who interact with chat agents are more likely to stay on your website longer, which will ultimately increase the likelihood of conversions.

 

5) Reinforce your brand to customers

“Agents should draw on corporate identity, sales chat purpose and audience expectations to shape the voice and tone of their chat sessions… Agents should be trained on, and expected to convey, the official voice and tone of the company they’re representing (e.g. informative, professional and innovative).”

 

– TELUS International

As a business professional, you already know that many of your customers make choices based on company branding. Chat sessions provide a prime opportunity for sales agents to promote your brand and allow customers to connect with your brand and learn more about your products and services. Furthermore, it’s easy to make your chat solution act as a seamless extension of your company branding by incorporating custom fonts, brand colors, and backgrounds into your chat boxes and buttons.

6) Upsell and cross-sell

Once a chat is initiated and the lead is fully engaged, you have the exciting opportunity to educate the buyer and provide product recommendations using a consultative sales approach. In some cases, this means introducing the customer to a new or superior product that better meets his or her needs. The end result is often a higher rate of customer satisfaction — and a healthier bottom line for your business.

7) Shorten the sales cycle

“People are making decisions faster than ever before, and they expect to be able to act on those decisions instantly. People want help in these decision-making moments. For marketers, this means shifting their strategies to keep pace with these impatient consumers.”

 

– Think with Google

Customers who use live chat to inquire about products typically receive responses to their questions in a matter of seconds. By receiving key product details more quickly, customers are able to expedite their purchasing decisions, thereby shortening the overall sales cycle and delighting sales professionals.

8) Set yourself apart from your competitors

“True story that relates to sales. Someone was visiting our site and asked me to tell him what we did better than our competitors. I asked in return, ‘Were you able to chat with any of them today online?’ He said, ‘no :)’, signed up, and paid for our service that day.”

– Josh Ledgard, Founder of KickoffLabs

In spite of the fact that consumer demand for live chat grew 8.3% in 2017, there are still many businesses that are not offering chat to their customers. Live chat enables your business to be competitive and effectively stand out in a sea of similar offerings.

9) Post-sale customer support

Post-sale support is vital to a successful customer journey. Customers can use the chat feature to quickly reach out to manufacturers and service providers to ask product-related questions and relay the following:

  • Inquiries regarding product assembly, setup, etc
  • General technical support questions about a product or service
  • Requests for operators manuals, service manuals, additional training, etc

10) Resolve questions and problems quickly

“Live chat isn’t just good for communication, it’s good for saving time. In fact, statistics show that most problems get resolved in 42 seconds – meaning you can help more customers, while your customers get the answers they need in the fashion they want.”

– Daniel James, Business2Community

Speed is King for a growing number of busy consumers. Questions and problems seem to crop up at the most unpredictable times, sometimes arising on the weekends or in the middle of the night. Companies that feature 24/7 chat (supplemented with the assistance of chatbot technology) are able to offer an unparalleled level of responsiveness by providing customers with a fast, convenient way to access support.

 

Download Now  

Recent Posts

Blog Categories

Sign up to receive our latest research, updates and success stories.
Live Chat Newsletter
Generate more revenue with a dedicated chat platform

Where Does Chat Fit Into Your Sales Funnel?

Posted on by marketing

Your company’s website is, in almost all circumstances, your most important online asset. It is the universal landing page for successful SEO, it is what your customers are familiar with and what guides leads to conversion. No doubt you and your web developer have done a lot of thinking about what features to include and how the website is arranged.

Implementing a chat solution on your business website provides a clear competitive advantage. Chat is great for quickly dealing with customer service issues, increasing customer satisfaction, and reducing cost-per-interaction. However, what about your sales funnel? If used correctly, website chat can maximize inbound leads and increase conversion rates.

Clarify shopper questions

The first and most direct interaction that website chat has with the sales funnel is the ability for customers to simply ask a question (as they might in a real store), and receive an answer from a live customer service agent. Anyone who has ever worked in retail can understand the value of quickly and easily answering customer questions, especially when chat agents are able to handle two to five conversations concurrently on average.

This allows website visitors to continue their research of your products and services with the help of a sales or support rep. Prospective buyers can start a chat conversation to ask if you carry shoes in their size or offer service in their zip code and one of your helpful customer service agents can give them the answer in seconds — rather than waiting hours or days as they might after sending an email. The buying process accelerates as picky and cautious customers can make up their minds faster with immediate online help.

Concierge personal shopping

Of course, you don’t have to treat your website chat solution like a completely passive service. Just as many high-end shops have concierge service in which a single host will show buyers around and help them choose items, businesses can offer a personal shopping experience to all or select customers through the convenience of integrated website chat. Agents can politely introduce themselves and offer assistance when a visitor or lead first lands on your website and then they can choose whether or not to shop with the help of a personal chat concierge service.

Needless to say, for certain target audiences and for those who simply enjoy the attention and personalized interaction of shopping with a knowledgeable guide, this kind of service could earn you loyal customers (and perhaps even a delighted social media share) for a unique online experience.

Pre-scheduling consultations

For many businesses, it’s important that the client know exactly what they want before they make an order. From doctor’s offices to custom construction services, it may be helpful for you to have every customer talk to an agent for a few minutes before they schedule an appointment or service. If you have been relying on phone calls, you may have been losing business from people who don’t care to or can’t talk over the phone. Even if you have a fairly functional survey system, a live chat agent is better equipped to handle unusual situations that online forms simply can’t, and may earn you a few extra sales from people who would have struggled to manage the survey.

In many ways, having an integrated website chat feature is like having a helpful, personal greeter for your website that every customer can interact with.

Lead qualification

Not all leads are good leads. This is one of the first lessons of almost any marketing or sales training. Just because someone has clicked on your ad or looked at your website doesn’t mean they are automatically ready to purchase your product or services (or are even looking for them in the first place). What signifies a qualified lead is often a complex combination of factors and often, human interactions are required to fully qualify a website visitor’s current position along the sales funnel.

A live chat feature in your website can proactively reach out to leads based on specific triggers like time on page, page URL, location, language, and more. Putting a custom chat button on your business website also makes it easy for website visitors to start a chat with a sales development representative, who can qualify the lead during the conversation.

Catch-all customer service

The customer journey is not always a straightforward path for every prospective customer or even for current customers. Some people need help finding what they want, others know exactly what they want and need it specially ordered. Some have account trouble, others order packages and then change locations. The better your team can handle every single one of these potential obstacles, the easier it will be to build a loyal customer base. Providing chat solutions on your website ensures that leads and customers who come looking for answers online will have an easy way to speak with a human and get their issue or questions sorted out.

Generate more revenue with a dedicated chat platform

Download Now  

Recent Posts

Blog Categories

Sign up to receive our latest research, updates and success stories.
Live Chat Newsletter