Are You Engaging with Your Customers Online?
Your website is your digital storefront, and your customers expect an online chat solution to interact with you.
Why Retailers Should Embrace
Live Chat or Text-to-Chat Services
To start, let’s review some stats!
Chat services are the fast, friendly, and preferred method of online customer service and sales support.
In the past, customers called in to connect with your retail brand, but that left your customer tied up on phone causing inconvenience and frustration – especially if they were left struggling through an automated attendant. Customers looking for a non-voice solution might have sent your business an email, waiting hours or even days for a reply. With speed being one of the most important elements of customer service driving customer satisfaction, your business needs to respond quickly.
Today, 65% of U.S. consumers prefer connecting with brands via digital channels to resolve issues.
Chat and Text-to-Chat services deliver digital interactions on your customer’s terms, with the speed and flexibility your customers value. Chat consistently delivers 80%+ customer satisfaction (Statista Research Department), and with chat, there is no more inconvenient waiting on the phone. Customers interact with your brand whenever and wherever it suits them directly from their preferred device.
Live Chat vs Text-to-Chat
What’s The Difference?
Live Chat
Live chat, sometimes called online chat, web chat or live support, is a means for your organization to have an instant interaction with a customer or a potential customer whenever they visit your website. In live chat, your customer engages in a real-time conversation with a contact center associate through a chat window embedded in your website.
To deliver the greatest efficiencies, Live Chat can be combined with Chatbot services. Users interact with a chatbot for common questions and repeatable tasks and are escalated to live chat if the chatbot can’t answer their question. In this way customers stay engaged, until a chat agent can provide personalized support. This approach deflects interactions from voice-based channels while also driving customer satisfaction.
Text-to-Chat
Text-to-Chat, meanwhile, is facilitated by sending text messages to a customer or a potential customer. Text-to-Chat allows you and your customer to carry on a conversation at a later time, connecting in a channel that is easy and always in front of the customer.
While chat is a real-time conversation with an engaged customer, text-to-chat is not. However, Text-to-Chat allows customers to reach out to your brand and carry on with their day, returning to the conversation when it’s convenient for them. With Text-to-Chat, customers can chat through their mobile device; for example, they begin the conversation from their laptop on your website and continue from their mobile phone while they have coffee with a friend, then complete the interaction later in the day while they relax at home in the evening.
Live Chat and Text-to-Chat offer related but differentiated solutions, both of which allow your customers to connect digitally with your sales & support agents.
Live Chat
Real-time engagement
Integrated into website with chat occurring directly on the website
Offers immediate responses via chat-bot or chat agent
Agents must be available for live interaction
Text-to-Chat
Not real-time engagement
Integrated into website with chat occurring in customer’s mobile phone
Offers responses can be sent immediately or at a later time via chat agent
Agents can respond at any time
See How The Most Popular Chat Solutions Used By AVB Brandsource Members Compare
Ask your AVB Marketing account manager
FREE
Ask your AVB Marketing account manager
$99/Mo
for 3 concurrent users
Sign Up Today and Get Started
Complete the form below and we will reach out! Need more info? Call 916.473.8308
