Is live chat prevalent during checkout?
Comments(3)
Live chat has the potential to bridge the customer service gap that exists between online shoppers and retailers. It can be the extra little push a shopper needs to get over any conversion hurdles that may exist such as purchase uncertainty, product questions, or technical and policy assistance. We expected live chat to have a positive effect on conversion rates and the balance between additional staffing and ROI was to be the only gating factor to deployment, but the data doesn’t support it. Overall, conversions were nearly a point higher on sites without live chat. On a category by category basis, the sample size of sites with live chat was not high enough to draw solid conclusions.
Because this is counter-intuitive, there are a few things to test when considering live chat. Do average order values increase? Does initiating a chat session actually turn customers off – after all a benefit of shopping online is a sales person does not pester you? Does live chat just add to page clutter and become distracting?
Just 22% of Top 100 retailers offer live chat to site browsers in the checkout process.
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That’s right. While having a live chat during checkout process, it is important to consider factors like increase in average order size apart from conversion rates.
Your survey reveals a lot of things, including how live chat affects the conversion rates for high ticket items as opposed to low ticket ones.
While most retailers these days are adding live chat, I feel it must be used in the right manner to get the max ROI.
Great post and survey though!
Live chat software brings additional comfort to site visitors looking to obtain more information on a product. However, as your survey indicates there are definitely do’s and dont’s when implementing such service.
From personal experience, most visitors prefer to be left alone and do not appreciate an initiated chat request. However, seeing that live chat is available brings comfort to buyers. It is the feeling of knowing assistance is right there if needed. No need to pick up a phone, or deal with language barriers… just subtle help.