Live chat for sales and lead generation is underutilized by many. However, companies who use live chat see a 20% increase in conversions on average, so it’s worth the effort. Let’s take a look at how you can generate leads with a chat tool and why it works so well for sales:
Adding a chat tool to your website will change the way you generate leads. Instead of waiting and hoping for potential customers to volunteer their contact details, you can reach out to them directly.
Chat helps you gather leads in two key ways: by increasing the likelihood a website visitor will start a conversation with you and by reaching out to them proactively. By initiating a chat with a potential customer or allowing them to contact you during their visit, you’ll be reaching them at just the right moment. They’re already there browsing. Before they leave your site, being able to answer questions, share details, and ease any concerns is essential to gaining them as a lead and customer. By combining the power of live chat with your customer data collection efforts, you’re able to identify a person’s needs, their current status with your business, and connect with them at the right time in the right way.
To generate leads, it can be as simple as adding live chat to your website and inviting customers to enter their basic contact information — name, email address, phone number — upon initiating a chat. Even if they leave the chat before deciding to go with your product or completing a purchase, you’ll have captured their details and can follow up. And because the person was already on your site checking things out, you know they’re at least somewhat interested and a pretty solid lead. These types of prospective customers have potential that far exceeds any random contacts you reach out to who haven’t yet shown any interest in what you offer. Getting back to them quickly, and specifically, will put you way ahead of any competitors they might be considering.
With live chat enabled, even if your team can’t staff it around the clock, visitors can reach out any time they want. Depending on your team’s response times and availability, be sure to include a message to your visitors that helps them understand when they should expect a reply if it won’t be instant. No matter if you’ve got agents standing by to dive into a chat immediately or not, adding a chat tool to your website and including a simple, welcoming greeting — like, “Hi! Need any help?” — on specific pages is a great way to invite potential customers to reach out, therefore capturing the lead. Test out several simple greetings and page placements over time and watch for the ones that gets you the most engagement.
One major difference between traditional lead generation and generating leads using live chat is how proactive chat is. Cold calling (whether on the phone or over email) can be invasive and you rarely know much about the customer you’re trying to connect with. Over live chat, you can generate leads by responding to incoming chats started by potential customers and through chats you initiate with them. You already know the visitor is looking at your company. A simple invitation to chat — asking if they need any help as they check things out — is a great way to start. If the customer accepts, enters the contact information, and starts chatting, fantastic! You’ve got a new lead. And if they don’t, you probably didn’t bug them so much it annoyed them, so no harm done.
Live chat is the simplest way to increase your real-time website conversions. And considering the average landing page conversion rate is under 3%, you — like most businesses — probably have lots of room to improve. According to the American Marketing Association, customers who chat with a business are three times more likely to complete a purchase than those who don’t participate in a chat.
If you’re converting less than 3% of the time, launch chat and see how much you can improve. Or if some pages on your website are doing much better than others, it’s worth taking a look at the areas you’re generating fewer leads or conversions are underwhelming and trying out a chat option there to give those particular pages a boost. According to Forrester, 44% of online consumers say having a real person answer their questions during a website purchase is one of the top features a business can offer.
Brick-and-mortar stores are all about customer service to close the deal and there’s no reason your website can’t approach selling to your customers in the same way. With live chat you open the doors of communication and invite potential customers to connect with your team. Don’t leave them wandering your digital store aisles — the pages on your website — without any way to connect.