Running Your Small Business is Hard, but Live Chat Can Eliminate These Customer Pain Points

Save your customers time and prevent confusion when they’re browsing your website

As many entrepreneurs would know, running your small business is hard and comes with its own, unique set of challenges. Be it fine-tuning your product or service offering, hiring enough of the right people, or using your limited budget wisely, there’s a long list of areas that you need to stay on top of.

What should never be compromised, however, is the customer experience offered by your small business. While many of your everyday challenges may simply be causing frustration during your day, a single negative customer experience could directly affect your bottom line — and this is a big problem. According to these customer experience surveys, 67% of consumers say that a bad experience is reason enough for them to abandon using the services of a business. Even more tellingly, consider this:

It is 6–7 times more expensive for your company to attract new customers than to retain your existing customers.

What does all of this mean? Essentially, you need to constantly be identifying and anticipating the pain points of your customers and looking for ways to improve them. Thankfully, with the introduction of live chat as a commonplace channel for customer query resolution, you can resolve some of the most notable customer issues, such as:

• No after hours support
• Too much time wasted on the phone or waiting for an email response
• Difficulty locating desired information on your website
• Difficulty in communicating complex service or product issues

Let’s delve into how incorporating live chat as part of your CRM strategy can alleviate these customer pain points.

Extend your customer support hours beyond 9–5

Just because your business closes at 5pm, doesn’t mean that a customer won’t need your help at 7pm. Customers expect at least some level of support whenever they need it, and by using a tool like Clickatell Touch live chat, you can set up automated away messages when your business is closed. Not only can live chat and chatbots benefit your small business branding, but they can also be set up to provide customers with a possible list of resources which could help them resolve their problem.

We know that running your small business is hard and keeping your customers happy takes dedication, but there’s no denying that live chat makes the job easier and can increase efficiency, which brings us to our next point.

Your time is precious and the same goes for your customers

By providing the option of live chat support, you will save your customers a lot of time that they would otherwise have spent on the phone.

Increasingly, people opt for customer support channels that allow them to multitask and continue with whatever else they’re busy doing.

No more being put on hold or transferred on calls. No more automated voice messages. No more constantly checking emails for a follow up.

51% of customers prefer live chat for multitasking purposes

Running your small business is hard, but don’t make it hard for people to find the information they need

Just because someone has landed on your website, it doesn’t mean you’ve found a solid lead. Often, if people can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and without clicking on multiple pages in frustration, they’ll leave. Proactive live chat, whereby you send a simple message to people browsing your website before they’ve elected to chat with you, is an opportunity to guide this potential customer to exactly what they were looking for.

“Unless you have 100% customer satisfaction, you must improve.” Horst Schulze, The Ritz-Carlton co-founder

Resolve complex customer issues easily

Sometimes, customers battle to explain what their issue is telephonically. Perhaps someone has ordered a faulty or broken product; live chat means they can attach an image to clarify the exact issue. Or, maybe the support agent has the perfect how-to link for the customer. All the agent would need to do is copy and paste this link into the chat box. Whatever the case, live chat allows for specific, visual clarification which means that the support agent is that much better equipped to assist the customer.

Live chat is more than just chit-chat

It’s natural that running your small business is hard and will come with a few kinks along the way, but the customer experience should never be underestimated. Live chat works, and far from being an intrusive means for customers to reach you, you’re providing a channel which is fast becoming the most preferred way for consumers and businesses to interact. By taking advantage of live chat tools for your small business, you can ensure that your customers are getting the level of support that they expect.

Thanks for reading! You might be interested in Clickatell Touch live chat, which can dramatically enhance your small business’s customer support levels. You can sign up for a free account here to get started.