The Advantages of Using a Live Chat To Gather Customer Feedback

What are the advantages of using a live chat to gather customer feedback?

1. Speed
2. Efficiency
3. Differentiation
4. Personalization and lead-building

 

Among the multitude of ways to gather customer feedback, there are some that are more effective than others.

Now, this isn’t a black and white statement. The effectiveness of some feedback methods relies on certain elements such as purpose, placing, timing, and more. For example, using a WordPress survey plugin to make a customer feedback survey is a method that relies on good timing and presentation. This is in order to get a satisfactory amount of responses. When executed properly, this can do wonders for your data gathering endeavor.

However, there is a less widely used method that can give your website viewers a unique experience. It can also give you an edge over other popular methods. This is called a live chat. To help you understand why it is effective, here are some of its advantages.

Speed

In this digital age, one thing people cannot dispute is that speed is king. From instant access to same-day or overnight shipping, people on the internet want things instantly. Those that cannot provide fast services and exchanges eventually lose their customers to the faster counterparts available on the market.

When it comes to data collection, the faster someone sends and receives data, the faster he or she can get things done. This principle also applies to customer feedback gathering. Live chats are advantageous in this regard because you (or your designated chat operator) are getting information in real-time!

When compared to other methods, the only other one that can compare to live chats in terms of speed would be direct outreach. Specifically, by way of face-to-face or phone call interviews. That, however, might be too inefficient since you can’t really interview more than one person without sacrificing attention and quality. This leads to the next advantage of live chats.

Efficiency

Live chats are efficient in almost every sense of the word. Cost-wise, they require less monetary funds to operate. Compared to telephone operators, you would need to hire fewer people to engage with live message threads. The resources saved by hiring less customer feedback operators can be diverted to other important matters. This includes wholesale improvement or research and development for your product and/or service itself.

Aside from that, it is also time and effort-efficient. You can communicate with many people at the same time without incurring the aforementioned sacrifices of attention and quality of exchange.

Differentiation

The kind of differentiation being discussed here is the user experience. According to a recent study by Telus International, many businesses are still not implementing and benefitting from a live chat. Another study done by Super Office shows that out of a thousand websites, only 9% are using a live chat.

By using a live chat as a way to gather customer feedback, you are already differentiating your user experience from most websites and gaining a competitive advantage. This form of differentiation can not only lead to a better response rate but also a better online conversion rate with some customer loyalty to boot. Use it before they (your competitors) do.

Personalization and Lead-building

Going further with the user experience aspect, live chats have the potential to create a more personalized customer experience for your viewers. Customers, viewers, and respondents are always sensitive to personalized experiences mainly because they leave an impression.

You can do this by asking for some basic information like their name, age, and e-mail address before the live chat session even begins. You can then tailor your responses to build a better rapport with the customer and discern if your product or service is right for their demographic.

Gathering said information also helps you stay in contact with your potential customers, which could help turn them into leads. Leads are pretty useful when you are looking to make sales. Remember that if your online customer doesn’t buy or avail of your services now, he or she can give you feedback as to why. They could also choose to buy it at a later date after you start implementing the feedback. Having information about them helps make that potentiality a reality by being able to keep in touch.

Key Takeaway

As you have now probably realized, there are many different ways of gathering customer feedback for every situation. Live chats aren’t the only way of doing it, and you shouldn’t limit yourself to using just that.

Mixing and matching different methods like using a live chat with your favorite WordPress survey plugin can be an even more effective way to gather data. Constantly switching it up can make things interesting for your viewers and respondents alike. It will do wonders for your research and customer feedback endeavors.