Customer Engagement Strategies to Boost Businesses

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You have heard how important customer engagement is for so many times now. But what does having an effective customer engagement strategy really mean? Is it all about giving your prospects and customers a seamless experience with your products and services? Or is it all about keeping up to date with your latest offerings? 

Today, we will talk about taking your business to a whole new level by understanding in depth what customer engagement is and employing effective strategies that will make them advocates of the brand you are building this 2021.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is a facet of Marketing where external customers or companies interact with a brand through various channels – offline and online. Simply put, it is when a prospect or a customer “connects” emotionally with your brand. 

One of the goals of every marketer is to keep the customers engaged even after they have successfully closed the sale.

Besides growing your revenue and boosting your brand awareness, customer engagement is all about treating your customers like a gift that keeps on giving because according to a study, 84% of customers say that being treated like a human being and having their needs met by a business is crucial in their buying decision because 70% of buying decisions come from how customers feel at the time of their purchase.

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There are many factors to consider when we think about the statistics but if we provide a platform that will help our prospects feel that they are prioritized, then all the more that we can expect sales closures of your brand.

Customer Engagement Strategies

1. Give the best Customer Experience (CX) to your prospects

Putting your customers’ needs first will always bring good business. Once you get this part covered, it will deliver benefits to your business, like increased customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, and more positive reviews when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing.

Before implementing any automation for your business, try walking into your customers’ shoes and see if it answers their needs and if it leads them to your ultimate goal of making a sale.

2. Implement automation to increase productivity

As part of optimizing the customer experience, it is very important to implement features in your business that will make your customers feel prioritized with less amount of hassle on your part.

Using Arena’s features and technology like Live Chat and Live Blog where you can customize your brand’s responses to customer’s possible queries, publishing content real-time in a blog format are some automation examples that not only will it improve customer engagement but will give your customers a better walkthrough of your brand but will save you a lot of time and manpower requirements.

3. Collate data on points of interaction and customer behavior across your platform

The implementation of this strategy starts by asking the question, “At what point do my customers start inquiring and at what point do my prospects abandon the usage of my platform?”

There are tons of ways to gather these types of data and with the help of analytics, you will be able to pinpoint the instances on where you are going to focus interaction and where you are lagging for you to act. 

4. Offer personalized service

There is nothing better when customers feel that the products or services they use are meant for them.

As we have discussed earlier, customer engagement is enabling an “emotional connection” between the customer and the business with the intent of them not just continually purchasing but for them to become advocates of your product or service.

In observation of this strategy, companies like Arena help businesses ease out their operations by providing customers with Live Chat features that are easily customizable and will fit the needs of your target audience.

5. Take feedback seriously

In this day and age, we are able to deliver products and services to our customers even without seeing their faces. But that does not mean that we can slack off on resolving customer feedback, whether it is positive or otherwise. Because of this phenomenon, you must consider feedback as your friend.

There must be a reason behind customers not pushing through with the purchase. And it is our duty as marketers to identify what went wrong, in which part did we lack support, and how to further meet customer expectations. Just sending out short surveys will do.

Remember, feedback is a gift. Customers are not required to respond to our surveys but once they do, it is their message to us that there may be areas for improvement and they need to see changes. That is one characteristic of customer-centric service.

The Five Stages of Customer Engagement

Marketing practices today have changed a lot of decades before. And with similarity to a business entity, Customer Engagement also has a life cycle.

The intent of identifying the five stages of customer engagement will help businesses simplify which action plan to take and make it more manageable because not all business models are alike and customer engagement data can come from an infinite number of sources.

1. Discover

Before you get sales closures and make a lot of money, your product or service must first be heard by your potential customers. The initiatives of this stage include sending weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly newsletter of your latest offering, publishing current updates from the company, and so on.

This is basically the point where you cast your net to see which fishes will take interest in your offering.

Conceptualizing and formulating content for this stage proves to be both time-consuming and demanding of manpower, it is noteworthy though that companies like Arena offer services like Live Blog, among others, to further improve your level of customer engagement.

This stage also, is where you use analytics to track customer behavior and how they respond to every point of interaction you employ.

2. Shop

This stage will be realized once marketing efforts from the Discovery stage are effective. It indicates that your prospects are interested in your product or service and they find value in what you provide.

It is nice to know that customers visit your shop online and offline, but for us, marketers, identifying the source of that traffic is crucial to proceed to the next stage.

Once sources of traffic are identified, it is a must to push further the strategy to keep prospects coming. Afterward, evaluate both online and offline data together to further illuminate your actions as to how the customers are attracted to your platforms.

3. Buy

In this stage, marketers must be able to answer the question as to which part of the sale happens and as to which part of the sale is abandoned. Are there features to the sales process that are lacking in the platform? Are there common payment gateways that are unavailable when customers try to check out which leads to the fallout of sales?

With Arena’s Live Blog solutions, there are several ways to follow through with customers and improve customer engagement.

Using the Live Blog structure, Arena provides businesses with added tools that serve as points of interaction, retain customer attention on your page, and further allow user participation with real-time content.

Marketers must as well be ready with follow-through solutions to customers that abandon their basket and robust outbound support to address customer concerns that will eventually lead to conversion.

4. Own

In other words, retain. Perhaps this stage is one of the most misunderstood and misinformed stages on the part of the marketer. Even sophisticated marketers do not really understand the depth of importance this stage gives.

At this stage, the marketer has to identify the level of attrition – usually from first-time or first-year buyers. In this way, we will be able to fully understand the triggers that discourage first-time buyers from becoming repeat customers.

Remember, a customer’s successful purchase is also an investment on their part. If there are concerns or issues that these customers encounter in the first-year purchase, surely, they will expect the same issues to arise on their second-year purchase unless these issues are resolved immediately by the business.

5. Advocate

Proficient marketers understand that customer engagement does not end when the prospect successfully checks out their purchase. Rather, it is an ongoing cycle of continuous information to the point where customers become loyal to your brand based on the metrics of loyalty that you will set.

In time, these loyal customers shall serve as your advocates and shall be the ones to help you out in your marketing efforts because who knows the customer experience better than those actually bought?

After all the exhaustive discussion on customer engagement and the effective strategies that need to be implemented in order to level up your business this 2021, it is undoubtedly a vital aspect of your marketing practices.

But knowing that there are platforms like Arena which offers technologies like Live Chat and Live Blog, among others, is assuring how the ease of implementation from this platform presents a huge and positive impact on the growth of your business this 2021.; Try Arena for FREE now!

Customizing Your Live Chat: A Complete Guide

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There are several reasons why most companies are focusing on improving Live Chats in recent times. In addition to improving user experience, Live Chat has become one of the most exciting conversion tools in marketing. It is also considered a transformative customer care tool when it is properly used. 

There is a need to customize your Live Chat Service if you want to get all the benefits it can offer. The goal should be to transform it in a manner that can sustain the relationship between the business and your customers and also optimize it for conversion.

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How Do You Customize Your Live Chat Service? 

Customizing a Live Chat service is more challenging than programming a chatbot. It is more about creating a template that can be followed by your agents than creating instant responses (for chatbots) that don’t really add a human touch to the conversation. 

But how exactly do you create a Live Chat template? You can make use of the most commonly asked questions to create templates that will make communication with customers easier, faster, and more efficient. You will have to create ready-to-use Arena technology scripts (canned responses). 

What Are The Major Benefits Of Live Chat Templates? 

Live Chat templates help in many ways to make the platform more engaging and more productive. Canned responses make it easy for your agents to engage with customers easily and provide the right information. This way, communication is optimized. 

Chat templates also make tool communication faster. A good template will guide your agents to understand customers’ needs faster, communicate better with them, and offer the needed help as soon as possible. It also makes it easy for agents to help customers make purchases or perform any function they intend to perform on your website faster. 

Why It Is Important To Follow a Protocol 

With Live Chat templates, your agents will follow protocol while dealing with customers. Why is this important? Well, it helps to make sure that there is a predictable way to communicate through the Arena technology. This predictability helps to make communication easier, faster, and result-oriented. 

When there is a protocol to follow, Live Chat agents work better. They will be more purpose-oriented, treating each session with a customer with the utmost regard. This, in turn, improves the chances of conversion and makes the experience more pleasant for customers. At the same time, it makes the works of the agents easier and more fulfilling.

Examples of Quick Response Answers and How They Help 

Bellow, we will demonstrate how to customize your platform with examples for different scenarios: 

Greetings and Introduction: 

Customers appreciate a warm welcome to your website and will be more engaged when the agent initiates conversation in a friendly manner; 

“Hello there! My name is Mike. How can I help you today?” 

Asking for More Details 

Sometimes, the agent will need more details from customers to understand their challenges better and provide the perfect solution; 

“Of course, I can help you with that. However, I will need a few more details from you first. What is your…?”

Verifying Your Understanding 

Sometimes, agents will want to be sure of what customers want. It is easier when they ask in a polite and professional way; 

“Let me see if I have this correct: you would like to…” 

Admitting You Do Not Know 

This can be a tricky situation. However, it is important that Live Chat agents politely admit that they ‘don’t know’ when that is the case. This is how best to respond; 

“Sorry, I’m not really sure about it myself. I can talk to someone about it and relay the information to you. Could you please leave me your email or phone number?” 

Transferring to another Live Chat Operator 

Some customers hate being transferred to another operator. When there is a need for that, it is important that the agent handle it in a nice and professional manner like;

“I really need to connect you with my colleague who is more familiar with this situation. I am confident he/she will offer the perfect solution at this point.” 

Putting On Hold 

Sometimes, putting customers on hold is inevitable. It is important, however, that it is done in the most respectable manner. 

“Would you mind holding on for a few moments? I really need to check this with (person or department name)”

Getting Customers to Leave Their Contact Details 

Some customers are reluctant to leave their contact details for any reason. If there is really a need for that, there are nice and professional ways to ask and get the right, positive response:

“I may need to get back to you with something better really soon. Can you please leave your email or phone number right here?” 

Missing a Chat Request 

If your Live Chat agent happens to miss a chat request, it is important that they respond the right way to pacify and engage the customer afresh. This is how it can be done: 

“Hello! I’m really sorry that we missed your chat. How can we help now?” 

Sending Links to External Resources 

Sometimes, your agents may need to direct customers to some resources they really need. This is an example of how to do it politely:

“Please take a look at this webpage:(link), you’ll find it really helpful”.

Handling Complaints 

When a customer makes a complaint through the tool, it is important that your team responds as soon as possible and offers some form of solution. Here is an example of how to do it;

“I’m really, really sorry to hear about that. I understand that it caused you a lot of trouble. Let me see what I can do now to make things right.” 

Wrapping up The Chat 

When the chat is getting to an end, it is important that the operator checks with the customer to see if he/she needs help with anything else: 

“(Customer Name), is there anything else I can assist you with today?” 

Ending the Chat 

When it is time to end the chat, make sure your agents do it in the most professional manner; 

“I am glad I could help today. I wish you a great day!” 

Dealing With Trolls and Confused Customers 

Sometimes, consume customers initiate a session mistaking your company for another. Some other times, online trolls may end up in your platform. Here is a respectful way to reply; 

“I’m sorry you reached the wrong company. We currently have no business or affiliation with the company you have mentioned.” 

Training your Agents to Use the Live Chat Template 

After creating your Live Chat template, it is important that you teach your agents how to use them the right way. They should also learn how to make it personalized and suitable for different customers. You also need to teach them to be disciplined about following protocols. Proper training and monitoring will help you reap all the important benefits of a customized Live Chat service. 

Do you want the best Live Chat service for your company? Try the Arena Live Chat for free now.

How to boost user engagement with Live Chat

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Beloved brands like Apple and Playstation have used Live Chat to inform and engage customers. Read on to learn how this tool can transform the relationship with your audience.

If you are looking to harness real-time interactions between your brand and its customers, you have probably heard of live chats before. Often seen as a tool for customer support, Live Chat is a popular alternative to email and phone support channels, as it allows instant discussions to resolve simple queries.

Most customers already prefer Live Chat to other support channels. Around 46% of consumers prefer live chat over email and social media, for example.

Besides, Live Chat applications allow brands to communicate with website visitors automatically via chatbots, or through live customer service teams, helping to drive conversions and build longer-lasting relationships.

That is vital in the age of omnichannel experiences. Customers expect every touchpoint with companies to provide them with a consistent experience, otherwise, they won’t come back for more.

Live Chat materializes the cliché that brands should “send customers the right messages at the right time.” In your website, users are just a few clicks away from becoming actual customers, so why not use Live Chat to guide them through the browsing experience?

With Live Chat, you can engage customers in the best time to reach your business goals.

In this post, we will explore:

  • Reasons to use Live Chat
  • Live Chat triggers that can boost engagement in your website
  • Live Chat examples from global brands
  • Basic steps to creating engagement with Live Chat

Reasons to incorporate Live Chat into your strategy

Boost your brand awareness

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to attract new customers. If you offer great customer support through Live Chat and delight users with it, you can bet they will tell their peers about it.

A study from Kayako found out that 29% of consumers have told friends or colleagues about a positive live chat experience. Live Chat allows your brand to create a loyal customer base and build awareness.

However, make sure your Live Chat is well implemented and that you have well-trained agents behind it since a bad Live Chat experience can work against your brand. According to the same study,  20% of consumers have spread negative impressions after poor live chat experiences.

It’s the same old story: it takes years to build a company’s image, but just a single customer’s bad experience to take it down.

Understand customers’ behavior and have real-time feedback

Great companies are always trying to find new ways to spot customers’ pain points and improve their customer experience.

With Live Chat, you can have access to real-time customer feedback and spot gaps in the customer experience, which can make customer service, product, and marketing improvement cycles much quicker. Instead of running long surveys, you can get relevant insights just by asking questions to customers.

Besides, many Live Chat platforms offer analytics tools to help you analyze customer service both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Strengthen relationship with your customers

Social media and messaging apps have made customers get used to instant gratification in every aspect of life. In that context, Live Chat gives them reactivity and personalization in a way no other support channel could.

By sending targeted and real-time messages with Live Chat, you can make your customer service more personal and show customers their specific requests matter. No more standard emails that take days to solve simple queries.

Having Live Chat portrays your brand as more approachable, helpful, and customer-centric than the ones that don’t offer it.

Increase conversion rates

Even before a customer buys from you, the support channels available can have a big impact on the likelihood of conversion. According to CrazyEgg, 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company if they offer Live Chat Support.  

Plus, Live Chat is a great way to bring visitors back to your website. An Emarketer study shows that 63% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers Live Chat.

Boosting customer loyalty

Think of the brands you’ve bought from more than once. They probably offer more than great products, right? More often than not, customers are loyal to companies that once provided them with great customer service.

According to Kayako, 51% of consumers are more likely to stay with or buy again from a company if they offer live chat support.

Using Live Chat triggers to drive user engagement

You can use Live Chat reactively or proactively. In the reactive approach, your company will talk to customers via chat only if requested. In the proactive approach, you can send automated messages throughout the customer navigation journey.

The proactive approach represents a significant way to engage visitors. Many brands have used Live Chat triggers on their websites to send the right message at the right time to the right users.

Here are a few examples of Live Chat triggers you can use:

  • Welcome messages: you can use Live Chat to send specific welcome messages to users, present the company, or offer welcome discounts
  • Content subscription: if your company offers proprietary content, such as a newsletter or blog, you can remind the user of these content channels or make suggestions of content they could enjoy
  • Repeat buyer: Since Live Chat can be integrated into CRM and other data management platforms, you can use it to identify repeat customers and offer them discounts
  • Targeted discount: you can also dig into customer data to offer discounts based on demographic criteria (localization, gender, etc)
  • Category: a great way of using proactive Live Chat is by suggesting new products within the category the user is browsing
  • Inactive user: send a message to users that have been inactive on your website after a few minutes
  • Checkout: let’s say your customers frequently get lost in the checkout process. You can set up your greeting in Live Chat and offer help before they give up on their purchase. Or, you can offer an upsell proposition based on users’ choice, for example.

How brands are using live chat to improve engagement and generate more revenue

Live Chat is one of the best tools to respond to customers’ urge for real-time interactions. No wonder some of the most beloved brands in the digital landscape have used Live Chat to enhance their websites.

Having trouble visualizing Live Chat? Let’s see how successful digital platforms and retailers are using it.

Playstation Live Chat

The famous Sony brand PlayStation has different Live Chat rooms where gamers can talk to its support agents. The chat rooms are linked to PlayStation’s webpage where customers can make requests and queries about account access, game purchases, and charge refunds.

Apple Live Chat

Apple, which is known for its great customer experience, also placed a real-time customer support team on Live Chat. Through the chat, customers talk to an Apple expert who specializes in their exact question. Everything happens within Apple’s website, so the customer doesn’t have to worry about sending messages to other support channels and waiting for emails and phone calls.

Groupon Live Chat

Groupon also allows customers to reach out for support through Live Chat. Customers can be routed to specific departments and support agents according to frequent topics:

  • Change My Order
  • Order Never Arrived
  • Refund My Order
  • Update Account Info
  • Voucher Code Won’t Work

If the request is not related to any of those topics, then the customer can talk to a general agent. According to Groupon, more than 1.7 million users have used Live Chat to contact customer support in the last 18 months.

Walmart Live Chat

The world’s major retailer, Walmart, offers a Live Chat window along with an FAQ page. If the customer can’t solve their problem after browsing frequently asked questions, then they can contact Walmart’s Help Center through an automated support assistant.

Other Live Chat formats

Live Video and Voice Chat

As great as Live Chat might be, brands are aware that modern communication goes way beyond texting. Customers have become used to interacting with pictures, videos, and voice messages, so why couldn’t Live Chat incorporate other messaging formats?

Some companies are adding Vídeo and Voice Chat to their Live Chat experience. Such formats make resolutions quicker and make interactions more dynamic since customers’ requests sometimes can be complex or take too long to explain by text.

With voice and video chat, customers can easily solve queries related to physical products and services, for instance.

One of the brands testing video chat is IKEA, who are using it in Sweden as part of the customer support, sales, and shopper consulting services. According to Rickard Mansson, a Customer Experience Business Developer at IKEA Sweden, the company decided to test video to streamline customer support.

4 basic steps to create a proactive engagement strategy with Live Chat

  1. Know your audience

There is no use having a good Live Chat tool if you don’t know the specifics about the audience you would like to engage within your website. It’s important to set up audience criteria to give you more control over the type of language you’ll use in the Live Chat, your priority customers, etc.

  1. Consider timing

When shaping your Live Chat strategy, make sure to consider time-based targeting options if your idea is to have proactive Live Chat.  You should be able to send messages in real-time or delay messages until visitors are more engaged with your page or website – just so they are more likely to interact.

If you are more prone to adopting reactive Live Chat, your concern should be about availability. Does your Live Chat support team work 24/7? If it doesn’t, can you send automated messages outside business hours? These are some things to consider before implementing Live Chat to prevent bad customer experience.

  1. Craft your message

You also have to be very careful when crafting your live chat engagement messages. Make sure your brand is personal and specific, as Live Chat is a one-to-one communication tool. If you have a human team behind the chat, make sure they answer quickly and ask only the necessary questions. Now, if you have automated Live Chat, make sure your messages contain calls-to-action (CTAs) to guide users through the buying journey.

  1. Measure results and optimize your Live Chat

Make sure you monitor your company’s Live Chat periodically to understand how it’s performing, if there are new frequent queries related to specific events and how you can use Live Chat information in favor of different departments – Customer Service, Product, Marketing, etc.

You should measure Live Chat quality and performance and analyze key Customer Service metrics through it. From here, you can adjust the tone of messages, timing, and overall agent training.

Ready to add Live Chat to your website?

Live Chat can optimize many aspects of digital business, and executives are increasingly aware of its importance. A 2018 survey from Bold 360 found out that 71% of respondents believe Live Chat will surpass traditional customer service communication channels by 2021.

Hasn’t your organization incorporated Live Chat yet? It’s time to change that.

Arena has one of the most complete Live Chat solutions on the market. You can try it for free and start engaging your customers in real-time right now.

How Can Live Chat improve the User Experience?

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Do you need to boost the user experience on your website? Live Chat might be the solution you’ve been looking for.

Make your customer service more personal and become a reference in your field. Read on to find out unique ways Live Chat can increase your website’s experience.

What is Live Chat?

For its power of handling the immediacy of customer services and fulfilling quality buying opportunities, Live Chat became one of the best –– and most wanted –– tools for marketing and sales.

Live Chat is an opportunity generator. The chance of building real connections with the customers can transform a cold purchase moment into a memorable experience. As we know, customer service can be a tremendous competitive advantage for your business.

But to reach an exceptional level, you must know what your audience wants, why they want it, and how they want to get it. Having a Live Chat will help you tailor the most effective approaches and deliver them at the right time.

Added by pasting a simple line code on your website, the Arena Live Chat allows two types of communications:

  1. Passive, when the customer reaches out to the company;
  2. and Active, when the company itself strategically steps in to increase the value of a visited page, of a product, a decisive moment, or even during the purchase.

But Live Chat is not only about interventions or communications. It can also be used to collect important data about the customer’s preferences and behaviors.

As simple as it might look, having proper knowledge on how to correctly use Live Chat can give you guidance –– or even maybe precise answers –– to your audience’s needs before they even realize them.

Thus, your marketing and sales teams can provide a one of a kind service. As a result, you’ll make bigger and better sales. Let’s dive into some of the possibilities to increase user experience on your website through Live Chat.

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The real magnitude of Live Chat

Before we start listing how you can increase user experience on your website using Live Chat, you must understand its real potential for the success of your company. One of the top benefits of Live Chat is its versatility.

This tool has a whole spectrum of possibilities, fitting different needs, segments, platforms, events, and more. All you should keep in mind is how can you better use this new, simple, and clear path of communication with your visitor.

Shape everything you’re about to read to the reality of your own business!

Everything customers need in a single place

Customer service always had a crucial role in all kinds of buying processes, whether in a physical or digital store. To provide great service you must understand what your audience truly wants!

Most websites are overstuffed with things irrelevant to users’ experience, forcing them to leave and search for what they need in the competition without looking back.

No need to shuffle between the website and social media

A simple, yet very frequent, example is when a visitor needs more information about something on your website, doesn’t find any, and goes to social media to look for it.

Regardless of whether this visitor is browsing on your company’s social media page, they are already out of your website. One simple pop up notification and you’re forgotten!

Having Live Chat on your website cuts off visitor’s urge to shift pages searching for further details about something or engagement they need.

Also because your prospect may find not only the answer they need, but other stores, pages, and services as well. Do you realize how damaging this is for your business?

Providing better offers

Customers hate being treated as just another person in line. They’d rather close your tab and look for someone else. Through Live Chat, every touchpoint of your company has the possibility to establish personal conversations on a level that customers realize they are a priority for your brand.

There are countless missed opportunities on automatic responses, lack of personalization, or standardized approaches. But when it comes to Live Chat, the customer service team knows precisely who they are talking to and how to better serve that person.

Designing infallible strategy plans

Now your customers don’t need to leave your website to solve their doubts, you can understand the new length and stages of their individual buyer’s journey. Those two types of approaches mentioned earlier, passive and active, create one of a kind opportunities to aim precisely at your customer’s pain point.

During a Live Chat talk, your teams can gather rich information about the audience to produce meaningful and stronger interactions during their browsing time. Besides creating a much more relevant experience on your website, you also increase the chances of conversion.

Adding more value to live events

Digital events have never been as on popular as today. The importance of creating engagement spaces for the audience through live events promotes not only a moment about generating relevant connections, but also opportunities to increase the value of your website, brand your company as an authority, and close more deals.

All you need to do is set the goals to reach what you want.

Boosting interactions

Regardless of your business segment, using Live Chat on a well-planned event can stimulate the audience to spend more time browsing through the pages of your website.

To create a sort of customer journey, think about the best ways to trigger your visitor to follow your trail of contents, allow them to fortify their perception about you and your product or service.

Whether in a single user room or a Live Group Chat, your strategy team can build up the ideal experience.

Opening group discussion rooms

Speaking of Live Group Chat, the event hosted by you can put together multiple visitors in a single room to discuss, share experiences and opinions about the main subject. Creating a sense of community on your website establishes your place as a point of reference for the audience.

Setting users’ experience this high may permanently increase traffic, bringing more visibility to your brand, as well as producing great referrals out there.

The power of always being available

Business hours are something really incoherent to the digital market. When a customer wants to make a purchase, there is no such thing as a 9-5 period. Services must not be a one size fits all. You have to build your own way to be there for your client whenever they want you.

So, to generate a continuous service through day and night, you can create schedules on-demand or sales calls.

For example, during business hours when the website traffic might be more intense, you can have 4 to 5 attendants. Each one of these customer service agents can engage around 6 or 7 simultaneous chat rooms. At night shift, when traffic might not be high, you can work with 2 attendants.

Knocking down buying objections

It is very common during decision making to pop up a situation that interferes in the buying process. A doubt, a request, a need, or even something more simple: if there is no one to assist or help, do you really think the visitor will stay until they fix the problem by themselves?

Making yourself present while the audience browses through your website reduces the chances of missing opportunities, whether because the visitor needed you or because you spotted a possibility of approaching.

Help the audience get everything they need from your page. Keep in mind that if the answer is not on you, then they will look up somewhere else. And using Live Chat, you have the chance not only to solve situations, but to tailor the response to that specific visitor.

For example, having a Frequent Questions section is great. But does that information really touch the point to make your maybe-customer give you their money? Probably not. But in a Live Chat room, you can literally embrace the opportunity to create the perfect momentum.

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Forms are dying and Live Chat is taking over

If you can give full personalization, why would you step back and deliver only half of it? That’s the feeling about using forms these days. Is it inefficient? No. But it’s not enough anymore. The worst part is that forms are always the same everywhere. Same fields, same information, same shape, same everything.

Collecting data through Live Chat gives you endless opportunities to pick up details like pieces of a puzzle. You build a bigger picture of the person you are talking to. What product or service are they interested in, what are their preferences, what problem are they trying to solve, what are their expectations…

Those are just a few examples of the level of information you can get using Live Chat. There is no way you reach that by only asking for the name, email, and phone number in a form box.

The mighty power of real-time data analysis

What if you could read your client’s minds? Predict their moves and understand what they want before they realize it for themselves. What kind of experience would you deliver?

Reading such things might sound bananas, but it is not! Having real-time data analysis takes you to a level of assertiveness that only big players in the business have.

The visitor’s browsing time can be monitored step by step. What pages are they navigating? What items are they most interested in? Are they recurrent visitors to that same spot? How much time are they spending on you? At what buying stage are they bouncing off?

Answers like those can give insight to marketing and sales teams precisely, like a script. When you track those kinds of moves, you can clearly understand what is really going on in that sale opportunity.  

Combining that with Live Chat, you’ll have the power to take your visitor’s hand and lead them through your funnel all the way to the end. That walk will be constructed according to all data you already have, making it possible to shorten the process to a faster and better sell.

Customer Data Platform and Live Chat

There is no way to mention real-time data analysis without talking about the Customer Data Platform (CDP): a single place to gather information from multiple sources and touchpoints, organizes them into similar matches and creates clusters of customers as precise as a photograph.

The only way to truly know your audience is through data. Everything else is just speculation. Customer Data Platform helps you with the right segmentation, personalizing communication, humanizing your brand’s services and, as a result, increasing revenue. This is the right way to serve the best user experience on your website!

You can use the information provided by CDP to guide the conversation on Live Chat, define the best approach and strategy to use, or you can integrate your CDP to automatically collect data from the Live Chat.

Through both ways, you elevate the chances of conversion by getting to know your audience like no one else in the market has done so far.

Live Chat and Chatbot are not the same thing

If at any point of this reading the idea that Live Chat is the same thing as those automatic stiffed messages you get on most of the websites around, you’re wrong!

Those are called chatbots: responses previously set to “help” customers in need. There is a long list of reasons why we could say Live Chat is a million times better than bots, but we’ll give you just one: chatbot doesn’t have a real person behind the service. Live Chat does!

Nothing can replace the greatness of human interaction. No customer service can reach a level of perfection using the same shape formulas for everybody.

The type of communication your brand must aim for should be based on emotions, empathy, respect, and affection. It is not only about sharing cold dry information, but about understanding what’s between the lines.

Get Arena Live Chat for free

Now you have some of the answers you’ve been looking for to increase your website’s user experience. It is time to take action! We want to see you thriving, making better impressions, expanding the possibilities, and, of course, making more money.

That’s why we are giving you free access to our Live Chat service. You can have as many Live Chat rooms as you want on your website in a matter of seconds.

All you have to do is signing up, embedding a single line of code on the page you want, and start chatting!

Don’t waste more time! Click here and get the Arena Live Chat for free.

Customer service: mistakes, strategy and trends

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Customer service is a must for any business today, and for a reason. Brands need to gain a competitive edge, and winning over the customer is the best way to do so.

It’s not new to say that the customer is a key piece in the business’ success. But for a long time, companies were trying to sell their products at any cost without focusing on the “perfect” customers. Now, that’s the real key: finding the right customers for your product.

While you can convert people that are not exactly ideal, do you know what will happen then? They will probably find something to complain about, say that it wasn’t what they expected or that it didn’t meet their needs.

Still, even in those cases, exceptional customer service will make customers have an overall positive experience.

Common customer service mistakes

Bad customer service will cost your business a lot. Not only will you lose a customer because of that experience, but you also are losing the chance to acquire new consumers that would, otherwise, get a recommendation from that person.

Not being proactive

If you keep waiting for people to reach you and ask about their problems, that’s what we call reactive customer service. Although this is still a good way to offer your support, it’s a mistake not to provide proactive services.

This is about anticipating the customer’s needs. For example, using a chat to ask if the person needs any help.

Not training attendants

You might hire the best and most experienced agents around, that doesn’t discard the necessity of training them to be your employee. They need to learn about the company’s culture, customer service strategy, the product, the protocol you follow for support and sales, etc.

They must receive proper training to perform better at their jobs.

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Having a lack of availability

If you offer customer service online, it’s crucial to be available for the consumers. Can you imagine acquiring a Live Chat feature and not having an agent to answer the conversations? What’s the point of getting a real-time chat tool if you’re not going to take advantage of its prime quality?

You see where I’m going with this, right? It actually doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with phone calls or emails, the client needs to have someone answering them as fast as possible.

Taking too long to answer

On the same note, taking too long to answer will make customers angry and upset. It’s not like speed is the most critical factor. You should take your time looking for the customer’s information since a high-quality service is more important than quick answers.

However, don’t leave them waiting too much. At least send a message: “just one more minute, I’m getting the information for you” if it’s not going as fast as you’d like.

Not listening to the customer

When you listen to the customer, you know exactly what to do, talk, and look for solutions to solve their problems. Even when they ask about something, you might notice they actually want to know something else. You should still answer their question to the point and then complete it with further information.

Customers want to be heard, understood and cared for. More than reading their message, you need to detect their tone of voice. Keeping this in mind, delivering a more personal service will make your brand stand out from peers.

Not having an omnichannel support

Even though Live Chat is currently a crowd favorite, many customers like to have other options to contact the brand. Phone and email are still popular and used by many, though social media has grown a lot these last couple of years.

There are tons of companies using social media chats as an SAQ 2.0 because clients and prospects are always reaching them through this channel. It doesn’t cost you much to offer omnichannel support because you will be rewarded with more satisfied customers.

Not being polite, empathetic, and positive

This one is pretty obvious: you can’t be rude to your customers, even when they’re rude to you. One of the most praised skills of customer service attendants is patience. Alongside that, keeping a positive attitude towards the conversation.

Since customers will react to how you treat them, your support team needs to learn how to be empathetic to understand the customer’s point of view and how to turn it around.

Impersonal customer care

Customers want to feel close to the brands they purchase from. That is probably not new information. Besides, they hate it when brands sound like a robot and treat them like just another person.

That’s why, even when companies have model answers and a protocol to be followed, attendants should edit and personalize the message according to each customer. It will have a huge impact on customer satisfaction.

Not having human agent

In the same context, if you don’t have a human agent to answer the customer questions, your customer service results will be harmed—the same way as being passed around from sector to sector trying to resolve a problem.

Can I tell you about a personal experience? Earlier this year, I ended up with a debt with my phone company and, as I tried to call and negotiate with them, I couldn’t reach a human agent with ANY of the options.

There were six options; none of them were going to resolve my problem, but I tried one by one to talk to an attendant, and it simply wouldn’t happen. At last, I reached them through an online service that, by the way, was also not at all efficient.

The conclusion is: I never want to do business with them again, and that’s how people will feel when you offer this type of poor customer service.

This is what you need to improve your customer service strategy

Overall, to improve your customer service, you need to check that list of mistakes and see what you’re doing wrong today. Once you discover that, you can start to fix and improve your processes.

Some examples of what you need to improve your strategy are:

Although it seems obvious, it’s not so evident for many that you need to put the consumer at the center of your actions to improve your brand’s perception. Every decision should be made based on the customers’ data, principally if you already performed surveys beforehand, use the feedback you got to learn what you need to do.

That being said, putting the customer at the core of your business will reflect on the culture inside the company, which every collaborator needs to know about and follow to provide the best service.

Moreover, you also need to analyze important metrics, such as customer satisfaction, conversion rates, retention rates, churn rate, average resolution time, and average response time, to name a few.

Some tips to boost customer experience

According to a research, 45.9% of businesses say they will focus on customer experience in the next 5  years. This number represents how brands started to notice their product has no value if they don’t provide good service and experience for their consumers.

Which reminds me, even though customer service and customer experience are related, they are not the same thing. While the service part is about customer and brand interactions to, yes, provide a service, experience is more about the entirety of the relationship with the brand.

To clarify, customer service will include a chat conversation, ease on problem-solving, and making purchases easy to complete. Meanwhile, CX will include all of that and more, like sending a surprise small gift after the client made a big purchase.

So, how can you make your Customer Experience better?

Firstly, you need to understand who your customers are, that will make it easier to know how to talk to them, what type of content and offer to make, and what is the best approach to increase conversions.

In addition, it also helps on the next tip: create an emotional connection with your audience. People like it when a brand transmits positive feelings and, although it seems hard to do that, if you follow our first advice, it should be quite simple to communicate with emotion.

I’d also like to mention the importance of getting feedback, both from customers and employees. After all, your collaborators are the ones who are dealing with the clients on a daily basis, so who better to help you learn what are the pain points and what to improve than your own team?

And, of course, you know that the information customers share with you are worth gold, right? That’s the moment they’re talking loud and clear what they want from your brand, some even give suggestions of what you should do — good ideas can come from this practice!

Customer-centric: the strategy of the moment

As I said earlier, being customer-centric is having a business that works with the customers at the center of everything. Every decision made, whether for marketing, sales, or even product development, has to be made thinking about the customer first.

Will they like it? Will it be effective? Will it be worth the investment? All of these questions need to have an answer and you may be wondering how will you know that before anything happens. It’s simple: Customer Data has all the responses.

By understanding behavior patterns, interests, audience engagement, and so on, it’s possible to create a strategy that will be beneficial to the customer and the brand equally.

In spite of this method having become popular in the last years, it’s definitely not a new strategy. It has been around for many years, but now, with the growth of the digital world and the increase of generated data, companies realized they need to stand out for something other than a great product.

Hence, the customer-centric approach gained a new perspective. More than ever before, customers are being considered the most important aspect of a business.

Overview of customer service in 2020 and beyond

This year, customer service in eCommerces suffered a big unexpected impact with the pandemic. Nonetheless, many companies were able to keep quality in their services. From that, we learned a number of trends and predictions for the upcoming year. They are:

  • Higher customer expectations: service needs to be quick, available at all times, personalized, effective, and of high-quality
  • Proactive support: companies started to be more active and look for the customer instead of waiting to see if someone would show up and it has shown amazing results
  • Chatbot and Live Chat: chatbots can help deliver fast answers and sift the problem so the customer can either resolve their issue alone or be transferred to a human agent on Live Chat. This tool that is a new customers’ favorite is essential to provide personalization and fast responses.
  • Predictive analysis: with the growth of data generation, companies understand their consumers better than ever, enough to the point of being able to predict their needs and anticipate solutions
  • Privacy and security: also because of the increase in customer data, the laws of privacy and protection are becoming more strict, for the next years, there’s a tendency to see new, more specific regulations on the subject

At Arena, we offer solutions that will make your customer service shine. I can keep telling you how our thousands of clients worldwide are succeeding in their strategies, but the truth is, each one has particular needs, and so do you.

If you came here, you’re most likely looking for ways to improve your brand’s customer experience as a whole, am I right? With our platform and content just like the one you are reading, you can create an unbeatable strategy that will make you grow and stay ahead of competitors.

The best part is: there’s a free trial period. If you don’t see the results (which I highly doubt will happen), you can just stop using – no cost. Start using the Arena platform for free today!

 

Customer Service Strategies to amaze your customers

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52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience. You know Customer Service Strategies are essential, but do you know what makes them remarkable?

That’s what I want to tell you here. First of all, a good customer service strategy implies having a satisfied client base. For that, you need to create a good relationship.

And what defines these relationships? It can be how you communicate, the information you make available on your pages, the means of payment, you offer, and more. Every interaction you have with a customer classifies as part of the customer service you offer.

It’s clear that there’s a big connection with customer experience, right? Moreover, I’ll still talk in more detail about:

  • what is customer service
  • what defines good customer service
  • how offering good customer service will make your business thrive
  • what does it take to create a good customer service strategy

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Here’s the definition of Customer Service

When we talk about customer service, we’re talking about the relationship between a brand and its consumers. Generally, people consider mostly communication as the most important factor, but services include much more.

That is, including the buying experience, how easy is it to go from the product page to the checkout cart, how fast the shipping is, the variety of payment options, etc.

The title “customer service” is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s still good to make it as clear as possible in order to create a better customer service strategy for your company.

After all, when you provide good customer service, you provide a good experience, thus you create a happy customer. That’s the ultimate goal for any business!

These are the characteristics that will establish good Customer Service Strategies

Provide easy communication channels

Overall, email and telephone were, and still are, two very popular ways for the customer to reach the company. But, recently, Live Chat is becoming the new favorite channel of consumers. That’s because it’s easy to use and it’s fast service, a combination everyone loves.

Companies that offer a Live Chat service are more likely to have comeback customers, so what are you waiting for? Go and install this feature on your eCommerce now!

Give fast responses

On the same note, and one of the reasons for the Live Chat success is that customers want to have their problems dealt with in real-time. I’ll paint a picture for you because the similarity is big:

You go in-store to ask an attendant about a discount that wasn’t consummated on your purchase and when you get there there’s a huge line! Are you happy to have to face that? Most likely not, right? Nobody is thrilled when that happens, people don’t want to wait to have their problems solved. They want to arrive, ask, get answers, and go home.

So, when customers go online, it’s the same feeling. If people don’t like to wait in person, why would they like it online? It just makes sense that you provide instant communication for your customers.

Offer high-quality service that actually solves a problem

Still on that matter, and adding in some praiseworthy information: it’s worth nothing to give fast responses and not resolve the customer’s problems. Did you know most people would rather wait a couple of minutes to have their questions answered than to have quick, shallow answers?

It’s okay if you say “just a minute, I’ll check that information” and take that minute to actually do something that will help the customer. Way better than giving a 7-second response saying that you can’t do anything about that problem, or giving a robotic answer followed by a “was that helpful?” question.

That being said, our next topic is highly related to this subject:

Work on personalization

There are a few things that make customers angry. For example: being thrown from agent to agent trying to solve a problem, taking too long to solve a problem, and being treated like just another person.

The truth is people want to feel close to the brand they buy from. So, if you put an effort into making communication (and the entire experience) more personalized, results will pay off. Of course, there must be a protocol or model answers to be followed, but giving that personal touch when sending these messages to the customers is crucial.

Know about the product

There are three main teams inside a company that are directly related to the customer: support, sales, and marketing. For that reason, all of them should know every little thing about the company’s product.

Let me explain each one a little bit better:

  • The support team needs to be able to answers questions about problems happening with the product, as well as show benefits and use cases when required
  • The marketing team needs to know the product to show the audience appealingly what they will be acquiring
  • And the sales team needs to know the product to sell it and close more deals.

Do you see the importance of everyone knowing the company’s product or service in detail? Great! Let’s go to the next topic:

Stay positive & use creativity

In general, customers respond to the attendant’s tone of voice and feeling surpassed in the conversation. So if you keep a positive attitude even when a person starts a conversation angry or upset, it’s likely that things will turn out okay in the end.

Besides, attitude is highly related to the use of creativity. It’s not only the marketing sector that needs to use this trait to improve their work, but this is also a skill required for support and sales too.

This way, when you go out of your way to solve a problem for your consumer, they will reward you with loyalty and commitment.

Allow self-solving problems

What does “self-solving problems“mean? Well, many customers prefer and try to look for the answer to their problems on their own before contacting an agent. Because of this, you should make it easy for customers to do that whenever possible.

FAQs, most asked questions, mini-tutorials, and so on, all of these will help your customer to deal with their issues. So, allow them to find information within a few clicks and they will be more satisfied with your service.

Listen to the consumer

When you pay attention to what the customer is saying you will be able to know them thoroughly and start to anticipate their needs. It’s quite common that a person comes with a specific question, but they really want to know something entirely different.

So it’s essential to listen to the consumer and find the best way to be proactively helpful. That means, to help them before they even know they need help. Whether that is by sending a newsletter, a discount, or a small gift.

Deliver as promised

This is definitely of the top 3 most important rules of customer service strategy: deliver as promised. The bottom line is you can’t say you do or have something and then let down your public because that wasn’t true.

Have you ever gone to a restaurant, saw the perfect plate on the menu, and when you asked for it the waiter said they ran out of an ingredient and weren’t producing that dish for the moment? That’s a huge disappointment and I’m sure you’d think twice before going back to that restaurant again.

 It’s because of these not-so-small details that are essential, of ultimate importance, that you deliver what you promise.

How offering good customer service makes an impact on your business

Loyal customers, longer lifetime value, increase in conversions, lower acquisition costs…is this enough for you, or do you still want more benefits for your company? I’m just naming some of the main advantages of improving your customer service strategy because let me tell you, THERE IS more to it.

For instance, people are always posting on social media about their likes and dislikes, and it’s easy to be noticed for either good or bad customer service. New customers will take into account what other people are saying about your brand, especially if they’re close friends, family, or influencers.

I’d also like to mention here that a bad experience is hard to come back from. If a customer gets poor service, he or she will talk about it and people will avoid buying from your brand. This way, the efforts you make to acquire new customers will most likely increase because of it.

Additionally, when you provide good customer service, you may be getting a great opportunity to increase your prices a little bit. In fact, most customers would rather pay more for better service, than to have lower prices and no help at all from the brand when they face a problem with the product.

Now, I could keep going and talk even more about the impacts on your business, but I’d still like to tell you more about what it takes to deliver the best customer service. So, carry on:

Everything you need to deliver great customer service

To know how to create an efficient customer service strategy, you need to first know what this is and what makes customer service stand out as excellence. So far, we have already got that covered for you so far. Then, you need to understand what attributes will help you provide in this matter.

For starters, you need to work with Customer Data, can’t get away from that these days. And why do you need it? To know who is your consumer. That’s another factor that you need to deliver the best customer service in the market.

When you know who you’re talking and selling to, it becomes easier to create content, offers, and promotions that will genuinely impact the customers.

One thing that will help you gather and organize customer data is the Customer Data Platform, it’s the most complete tool there is out there for this purpose. It gathers, selects, and stores all sorts of data. Even more, it can help you create a persona profile, segmentation groups, and so much more.

Finally, you need to hire a good Live Chat platform. As mentioned earlier, having this type of close and instant communication with the customer will give you lots of positive reviews. That way, you can hire the best Live Chat service around because there is no doubt it will give you a great return on investment.

Where to get the best tool, you ask?

Arena has thousands of clients all around the world that use our solutions, including companies like Fox Sports, Microsoft, and Sony Music. 

We are offering a FREE TRIAL PERIOD for our Live Chat. Did I get your attention? Well, then start using our tool and see for yourself your new results!

Marketing: why you absolutely need a Live Chat tool

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Live Chat is a tool for instant communication between a brand and its customers. Moreover, it’s a business feature that will make your company convert more visitors and offer better service.

Whether you’re involved with big retailers or small brands, a Live Chat will help you connect to your consumers in the best possible way. Real-time answers are one of the reasons customers love to make deals with companies that offer this tool.

But there’s so much more you need to know about Live Chat, especially since one of the following year’s marketing trends focuses on providing a greater customer experience.

Since we’re on the subject, both things are highly related to each other — but I’ll get into more details later on. Here, I’m also going to tell you everything to understand how to use this feature and create a positive brand perception for your business, plus how to choose the best live chat software.

Just one more thing before you learn all about acquiring a Live Chat as a marketing tool for 2021: it will only take you as far as you’re willing to put your efforts. What does this mean? It’s worth nothing to work with this type of chat if you don’t create a strategy and work to see the most beneficial results it can offer.

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The growth of Live Chat

First, let’s start with some background on this tool. As I said, it is a communication tool, and its purpose is to connect brands with their customers. The concept has been around for many years, but only recently, companies started developing modern software that actually focuses on the customer experience.

Most customers prefer to make deals with companies that offer Live Chat. It’s more practical and convenient for them to talk, ask for help or support from the brand’s attendants.

Because of its many benefits, both for the brand and the customers, this feature has grown exponentially over the last few years. Even though companies still aren’t living the tool to its full potential, the process of adaptation has started.

In fact, many companies know this feature is important, they have a solution for their brand, but they also know they aren’t using it as they should to see the impact Live Chat can have.

Statistics that prove you need a Live Chat

Since it has gained much attention, companies wanted to learn some statistics and understand how important Live Chat really is. After all, numbers and facts are big helpers to make more intelligent and assertive decisions.

After gathering data from several business and customers, these are some examples of statistics that show how Live Chat is growing and making itself a must-have solution:

  • It’s expected to grow as much as 87% in the next months
  • 46% of consumers prefer Live Chat over other communication channels
  • B2B companies saw a 20% increase in conversions after they started using Live Chat
  • This tool is 50% cheaper than phone customer support
  • 79% prefer this channel because they get faster responses

Once again, I’ll repeat that: these numbers are only true if you work to make them that way. For example, customers prefer this chat because conversations are instant and faster than other means, right? So, if your customers are to think that way, you need to make sure attendants will be available to make real-time answers happen.

Do you see what I’m saying? It’s quite simple, really. Use it right, get the results. Leave it to chance, and you’ll be losing money.

How Live Chat and Customer Experience go together

If you haven’t made the connection so far, I will make it clearer for you: Live Chat IS customer experience.

What encompasses customer experience? Mostly, it is about the entire exposure and participation a person will have with your brand. From the first contact to closing a deal, every single moment is considered inside this experience.

And how important is CX? Well, I’ll recur to the statistics here one more time and there are two thing I want to show you:

  1. 96% of consumers say they consider this to be a deciding factor to encourage them into being loyal to a brand
  2. Businesses that focus on customer experience see a revenue up to 8% higher than their competition

CX is about increasing the customer lifetime value as well. The better the experience, the more long-lasting the relationship will be. This means that customers will either buy more frequently or make bigger purchases at once. Whichever happens, each customer will be worth a lot.

You probably know this already, but maintaining a customer is less expensive than acquiring new ones. So make sure to have a proposition to create loyal consumers.

Create a positive brand perception with Live Chat

As you may have noticed, offering good service is also related to how your company is seen through the eyes of the consumers. Are they giving you compliments or complaints? Are they recommending you? Are they coming back or making unique purchases?

Additionally, tracking consumer behavior is vital to understand their connection with the brand. If you know who looked at a product page, who added to the cart and gave up, and so on, you will know what kind of strategy to use as a follow up.

As you gather data, your whole team can analyze the information and have some insights on how to improve marketing, sales, and the customer experience itself.

Why do you need a positive brand perception?

I know this is probably a somewhat foolish question, but it needs to be answered. That’s because you must understand the benefits of having a good word of mouth.

Most decisions nowadays are made based on how your company is known in the market. If people give you good reviews, you’ll have higher chances of getting new customers. However, if your reviews are bad and full of complaints, people won’t think twice before turning to your competitors.

It’s all about increasing customer retention, attraction, and loyalty.

How is this related to Live Chat?

You’ve seen above how Live Chat and CX are part of the same thing. Which means, when you give customers a good service through this feature, it will pay off in customer satisfaction.

Once you get clients to be happy with what you give them throughout interactions, they will be more likely to talk you up. In reality, 89% of consumers say they would recommend a brand after a positive experience.

Hence, your brand will start getting recognition and be more attractive to make deals with.

What to do with your Live Chat to enhance CX and brand perception?

Simply put: you need to humanize your service. Create a real connection, asking and answering questions without sound like a pre programmed machine — one of the reasons why Live Chat is surpassing chatbots too.

Of course, you can use chatbots when your agents are so busy the response time will be longer. In these cases, your can program the bot to say “hi, an agent will be available in 3 minutes, would you like to wait or can I help you in the meantime?”.

Besides, you should always ask for feedback from your conversations. When problems are resolved, ask the customer if they can help you by answering a few quick questions about the service they just got.

This is good to see what worked, what needs to improve, and to get to know your consumer better as well.

Summing up: why you need a Live Chat for 2021

Now, I just wanted to make a short list that will give you all the reasons to acquire a Live Chat for your marketing plans for 2021. That is:

  • increase customer retention
  • enhance customer engagement
  • improve your marketing strategies with proactive service
  • increase your revenue by using Live Chat for sales strategies
  • give the best customer experience
  • improve your brand image
  • increase lead conversions

How to choose the best Live Chat software

“What do I need to consider to choose a Live Chat?” is a question that may have crossed your mind. And I will tell you what you need to know.

Features

What are the features the software has? Does it offer proactive chat? Does it have visitor monitoring options? Will your customers be able to use it through mobile? This is all important to ponder when you’re choosing a Live Chat solution for your business.

You shouldn’t go with the software that has more features. It’s necessary to check their quality and make your decision based on real facts.

Security

Will your information be safe inside this software? What about data from your customers? The last thing you want is a data leakage incident.

Make sure to be hiring a trustable Live Chat system.

Support

Since this tool is likely to suffer updates and renewals along time, you might encounter some difficulties to use it. Will there be a support team to answer your questions when that happens?

It’s very important to receive support. If they keep you waiting, it means you’ll be keeping your own customers waiting. And we don’t want that, do we?

Pricing

I wouldn’t say the price itself is the most important factor, but the cost benefit your chosen system has. Is it worth its price? How long will it take for the tool to “pay itself”? What’s the ROI for the software?

Have these questions answered, even if through projection, and put it to weight on your decision.

Customization

Not everyone takes this into consideration, but I find it crucial. Will you be able to put your own twist on the looks of the chat? Personalize colors? Use logo and create agent profiles?

Remember to learn more about this element before making your final decision. Keeping your brand’s image and visual identity on the chat is a matter of consistency.

Reports

Is the software you have your eye on checking all of these items? Here’s one more you need to rock off: team productivity reports.

To understand how your service is going, what needs to be done and who needs more training can be read in monthly reports the Live Chat system can offer you.

That is, considering the software you chose actually offers this feature.

How about you give a chance to Arena Live Chat?

At Arena, we can offer you everything that has been talked about and even more. To learn more about our solutions, simply go to our products page.

However, if you are already interested and ready to start reaping our Live Chat’s benefits, go ahead and start your free trial period. You’ll have up to 14 days to learn all about our tool, how to use it, and see how fundamental it is to your business.

How to enhance Customer Experience with Live Chat

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Do you ever feel like your company could have an upgrade in Customer Service? Or that you could sell more and drive more engagement if Customer Experience was a little better on your website? Trust me, this feeling is more common than you would expect.

Companies might have good services and products, but the truth is “good” is not enough in today’s competitive scenario. Most brands rely on standardized approaches and interactions that are impersonal and time-consuming both for your customers and Customer Support agents.

Think about the “love brands” worldwide: Amazon, Apple…you name it. They all have great Customer Experience (CX) and go beyond the basics in customer support. Actually, most of them offer one thing in common: Live Chat. 

Live Chat can be used across many steps in the Customer Experience, whether to answer questions about products and services or to assist customers after a purchase. Another trend is to use Live Chat proactively to display personalized messages and offers while the customer is browsing. 

In this post, you will learn all about Live Chat and how to use it to drive customer loyalty and more business results.

What is Live Chat?

You probably might have bumped into Live Chat on websites before. Live Chat is a messaging tool strategically designed for Customer Experience in real-time. It is usually placed in the Customer Support section or as a discrete pop-up button that shows up while you’re browsing. 

Some people might confuse Live Chat with a Chatbot, but there is a slight difference between them. While Chatbots work only with automated answers, Live Chat is a tool used by human agents instead. 

Some Live Chat sessions can start with automated messages, like greetings and basic introductory questions, but then the customer is routed to an actual human professional. 

Live Chat can serve many purposes, from Customer Support to Sales and Marketing. The classic way of using it is in Customer Service, where the approach is mostly reactive. That means the Customer starts the conversation in order to solve some problem.

Live Chat can also be used for cross-selling and retargeting tactics in a proactive way – when your agents start the conversation, not the customer. 

Why should you pay attention to Live Chat software? 

Live Chat has become the new standard in Customer Service, and companies from all segments have relied on it to provide high-level engagement and humanized interactions with customers. From e-commerce to media brands, Live Chat offers the possibility to optimize companies’ communication channels and improve customer experience (CX) altogether.

Think about your company. It is likely your brand has multiple direct and indirect Customer Service touchpoints, from email to social media, for example. Sometimes it might be hard to manage requests coming from different places in a fast, efficient way. 

Live Chat can be a cure for this pain point and act as a hub for customers, allowing them to solve doubts and requests quickly without having to leave to other channels. From a business standpoint, Live Chat can help you give life to omnichannel strategies and optimize service costs.

Imagine answering (and solving!) customer requests in a single chat session with Live Chat, with no more back and forth emails and lengthy calls. Trust me, your support agents and customers will thank you!

What about the outcomes of adopting Live Chat? You can expect an increase in support team productivity and Net Promoter Score (NPS) —  which ultimately means more customer loyalty and good referrals. 

Other benefits of Live Chat include:

Non-intrusive communication

Live Chat allows your brand to be available 24/7 in a non-intrusive way, once the customer can call out for an agent whenever he needs without being flooded by emails and phone calls. 

Personalization

Personalized messages are key if you want to engage customers and surpass their expectations. With  Live Chat, you can serve a more personal approach instead of serving customers with standard and automated messages. In fact, research shows that people prefer to talk to real human agents instead of chatbots.

By integrating Live chat with other platforms, such as CRM and Customer Data Platforms, your support team can know the customer’s name, buying history, and more! With that type of information in mind, it gets much easier to personalize messages and fasten problem resolution.

Productivity

Do you want to offer top-notch customer support and still make customer service more efficient? Live Chat is the perfect tool for that. To get an idea, a Live Chat attendant can handle 6x more customers at once compared to a phone agent.

Some brands take this optimization to the next level and categorize Live Chat options for different types of customer issues, just so the customer is routed to the right agent before the conversation even starts. We’ll show you a few use cases later on in this post.

Customer Support and Live Chat: statistics behind this combination

If you are considering a Live Chat tool for your company, you probably want to quantify the type of results you can get from it. You will need to justify the investment to your boss, after all. 

We have gathered some data that clarifies the potential of Live Chat for your business and customer experience:

  • While e-mails get 61% of customers satisfied with Customer Service, and phone calls get 44%, Live Chat gets up to 73% of customers satisfied.
  • 63% of customers said they are more likely to return to a website if Live Chat is available.
  • 83.1% is the average customer satisfaction rate globally with Live Chat.
  • When asked about what made them happy in Live Chat support, 79% of customers said they like this type of support channel because of the real-time component, while 51% said it was because they can multitask while talking to the support agent.

Live Chat Examples

There are many examples of companies that are using Live Chat in a creative way. Some are more sophisticated and others are simpler, but all serve the same purpose: improve customer experience and customer service. Let’s look at a few successful cases below:

Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger’s plugin is perhaps one of the most common Live Chat integrations for businesses. It was launched in 2017 as a way to connect brands to their customers via Messenger, which is widely used by the audience. 

By opting in via their Facebook account, customers can ask questions and communicate with brands, without having to reach out via the company’s website. Facebook’s plugin, along with tools like WhatsApp Business, aligns with Facebook’s strategy to provide more and more services dedicated to corporate communication management.

Facebook Messenger’s integration can represent an important source of insights for companies, and even a good channel to start Customer Service procedures. The bad news is that the plugin’s interface is very basic and doesn’t allow much personalization from CX managers. 

Besides, your company cannot let multiple agents work from the same Facebook account, use response templates, or assign a conversation to the most suitable support agent in your team. While Facebook Messenger can be a great tool to start a conversation, you can take better advantage of it by combining it to more complete, integrated Live Chat tools.

Amazon’s Live Chat 

Amazon is certainly one of the global benchmarks when it comes to Customer Experience and Support. It embodies the “customer-centric” mindset, and Amazon’s Live Chat reflects that as well. It is no coincidence Amazon has one of the best customer service ratings in the industry.

The company offers a variety of support options: customers can browse through FAQs lists about popular topics, quick solutions, and a community forum. That is very helpful not to waste agents’ time with common questions that are easy to solve in a self-service model. 

Then, if customers can’t find the answer to their doubts in Amazon’s knowledge base, they can reach out to a real person via Live Chat. 

Users are routed to support specialists according to different request categories. How it works: 

the customer can choose the topic he wants to chat about (memberships and subscriptions, ordering and shopping preferences, Login & Security, etc) before being redirected to a specialized agent. 

By narrowing down the customer’s case, Amazon optimizes Live Chat sessions and agents can go straight to the point in the conversation, improving the overall customer experience. The combination of real-time service and FAQs provides a great balance, just so the customer can solve simple doubts on his own and reach out to human agents for more complex issues. 

Apple’s Live Chat

Known for its great service design, Apple is also on the list of companies that use Live Chat for Customer Service. On Apple’s Support Page, the user can choose the product or service he is having issues with.

From there, the customer can choose to talk via phone or Live Chat to an Apple expert who specializes in their exact area of request. Everything happens within Apple’s website, so the customer doesn’t have to send requests through other channels and wait too long to solve their problems.

That’s a great example of how intuitive and specific Live Chat can be, helping solve customers’ unique needs in a convenient way.

Arena’s Live Chat: why you should test it to enhance your Customer Experience strategy

After showing a few use cases to inspire you, let me introduce you to Arena’s Live Chat, one of the most complete tools in the market. It might be difficult to choose a Live Chat tool that best suits your needs, but Arena has a flexible and intuitive enough to help any company, no matter the size and complexity.

Let’s explore some of  Arena’s Live Chat features:

  1. Multifunctional Live Chat

Our Live Chat tool can be used in different formats to better suit your engagement strategy. Arena offers the classic one-on-one Live Chat tool, used in Customer Support and proactive Sales, but also a Live Group Chat tool that can be used for specific events or permanent discussions, like a community forum.

If your brand generates proprietary content, for instance, it can use Live Group Chat to engage audiences in blogs and Live Blog pages, for instance.

  1. Simple Setup

Setting up Arena a Live Chat tool is super simple, all you have to do is paste a line of code on your website to embed it to your page. Our tool also works both on desktop and mobile pages, including Google AMP, and supports more than 17 languages. 

  1. Scalable

Arena’s Live Chat can help you handle Customer Service no matter the scale of your company. Our enterprise-grade platform will handle chatrooms with thousands of hundreds of concurrent users, so your support team doesn’t have to worry about the stability and availability of the program. 

  1. Customizable

Our tool allows you to choose where you want the Live Chat to be displayed on your website, and also customize it to match your brand’s identity and design.

  1. Social Features

Unlike other cold Live Chat tools, Arena’s Live Chat tools are somewhat similar to messaging apps customers are used to.  It has social features to make communication between your agents and customers more dynamic and personal, such as emojis and avatars. 

  1. Control Dashboard

Our Live Chat tool offers a complete dashboard to help your team control chat rooms. With such a dashboard, your agents can see which customers are online, moderate, and delete messages if they need to. 

Try a free live chat now

If you think it is time to adopt Live Chat support in your company, why not start with Arena?  The best part is that you can try our Live Chat tool for free! Click here to access our free trial and upgrade Customer Service in your business.

Tips You Need to Know

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Push Notification Segmentation is super-effective for marketing purposes. Notifications become even more efficient when the audience is segmented.

Unless you have a static audience (which is impossible), Push notification segmentation is one of the essential steps you can take to get the right messages to the right audience and achieve your marketing objectives.

The goal of sending push notifications to your subscribers is not just to get them to buy what you are selling. Actually, the purpose is to enable you to get closer to them.

You can only do this when you send highly personalized messages. This is what segmentation will help you achieve.

What is segmentation?

In simple terms, segmentation means dividing a heterogeneous audience into more homogenous and manageable parts. Segmentation is done based on parameters marketers consider very important, such as demographic, geographic, social, and behavioral patterns.

By segmenting your audience, you are creating target groups. This is normally done directly on websites by embedding filters, forms, and questionnaires before or after a visitor has made a purchase. External tools can also be used when trying to attract new customers.

How is segmentation used in marketing?

It has been reported that as much as 75% of internet users are concerned about how their personal data are used by companies. At the same time, up to 62% of users expect brands to send them personalized messages. How do you reconcile this? The answer is segmentation.

Basically, segmentation is used in marketing to get the right message to the right audience. For push notifications, segmentation is used to create a target audience so that it becomes relatively easy to reach the different target audiences with the right message.

Types of segmentation

As hinted earlier, there are parameters used for segmentation. These are the criteria that determine where each member of the audience falls into. They determine the type of segmentation in use:

Geographic

This is segmentation based on the location of the website visitor. You can collect data on the location of website visitors and use it to target your audience. You can target according to country, city, or even district.

Demographic

This pertains to age, gender, nationality, and a few other parameters. Age significantly affects people’s buying behaviors, and you can use your demographic data to target your audience and send relevant push notifications.

Social

Social parameters, like education level, income, marital status, among others, are also used for segmentation.

Behavioral

Based on the behavior and activities of a subscriber or website visitor, you can send push notifications that will get him/her to buy your products or services. It is not rocket science; frequency of purchase, interest in certain products, etc., can be used for targeting.

Segmentation can also be based on device type, whereby the device used by the visitor to subscribe to the push notification is captured.

How does segmentation work for Push Notification?

Fundamentally, segmenting works in push notification almost the same way it works with other marketing methods. Here, you will need different subscriber groups and create push notifications with information that corresponds to their tastes and needs.

It is important to state clearly here that segmentation is not exactly the same as personalization. Rather, segmentation facilitates personalization. In effect, it allows marketers to improve campaign conversion rates and overall efficiency.

Depending on the tools in use, push notification segmentation may operate on metadata, tags, and aliases.

Metadata filters

This is deployed during the subscription process of the push notification system. Within the little time it takes to subscribe, the system can capture information regarding the browser being used (Opera, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.), the Operating System (Windows, iOS, Android), and the location of the device. The information can be used for location-based push notifications.

Tags

Tags are used to target subscribers and website visitors according to their interests and activities on the site. It can be set for categories or product pages to observe and tag visitors that open the pages and those who perform specific actions.

Tags are used to send push notifications about new arrivals, improved offers, and discounts, as many more, according to the interest of the subscribers.

Aliases

Aliases are personal identifiers that can be effectively used to personalize offers and trigger notifications. The push notification system accesses personal identifiers for subscribers as they log in or provide their details.

It can be the username, email address, token, etc.; this allows marketers to send push notifications to subscribers individually.

Benefits of segmenting your audience

Good push notifications are the ones that help marketers to get closer to the subscriber and convince them to buy. It has to be personalized, and it has to convert. These are the things push notification segmentation can bring. Here are specific benefits of push notification segmentation:

It Gets you closer to your audience

Segmentation is regarded as the first important step towards personalization. When you are able to effectively segment your audience for push notifications, you will be able to send everyone messages they will find useful. You can take a step ahead to personalize the messages. When you do, it takes you a huge step closer to your audience.

It Improves your conversion rates

Conversion rates, and not click rates, actually defines success in marketing. As you most likely know already, push notification segmentation will take the right messages to the right people who will click through and make purchases or subscribe to your services because it actually interests them.

It Improves user experience

If you want to run a sustainable business, user experience is another important area you need to work on. Luckily, push notification segmentation helps you so much in that regard.

Personalized messages to your target audience will show them that you actually care about them, even though you want to sell.

It Improves your marketing efficiency

When you get the right messages to the right people and get many of them to take the actions you want them to take, your marketing efficiency improves.

That is what data-driven marketing is all about. That is one of the benefits you get from segmentation of push notification and Arena Personas use. Overall, you will spend less to achieve great results.

Conclusion

Push notification segmentation improves your marketing efforts in many ways. It is based on customer data and helps marketers personalize push notifications.

As you probably know already, data-driven marketing is the future. Push notification segmentation is part of the future.

Arena is always here for you. Your brand’s Customer Engagement Platform can leverage Arena Personas first-party data. Get started for free in minutes.

Benefits of using Push Notifications for eCommerce

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No doubt, you have come across Push Notifications within your own daily business and e-commerce needs.

However, you may not be aware of how such a tool is used for communication updates, specifically by internet-based businesses and—most importantly—you may be unaware of the major benefits that push notifications can offer your own business and e-commerce. 

Here we will look at a brief history of what push notifications are, and how they best benefit e-commerce within the modern global market.

What exactly are Push Notifications?

First off, let’s be honest. To many people, many traditional web-based marketing formats have become outdated. Email marketing is more often than not regarded as “spam,” and SMS marketing is slowly being phased out by new, modern trends to match updated software and industry standards. 

Today, “push notifications” has now taken over as the most reliable and utilized tool for consistent, trusted updates for businesses to “get the word” out in all kinds of industries. For example, if you use online shopping apps, you’ve been using push notifications for the past few years and not been aware of how often.

Over the last few years, the practice of using push notifications as the most powerful and effective marketing tool chosen by online businesses to reach out to their demographic in real-time has become incredibly popular. 

Most companies now rely on the push notification method to keep their clientele updated on sales and premiums, ultimately driving more e-commerce conversions.

Thanks to their current popularity, push notifications capture almost double “open and click-through rates” as compared to email. The trend of app-based push notifications is now being followed by “Web Push Notifications,” also known as “Browser Push Notifications—messages or notifications that are delivered to the subscriber’s device in real-time. 

The notifications are sent even if the subscriber is not present at your website, making them all the more attractive within the world of e-commerce.

What are the benefits of Push Notifications for e-Commerce?

Just a brief look at some of the most current shopping trends impacting the world of e-commerce can give an idea of the importance of reaching your audience on a real-time basis. Just to list a few statistics, for example:

  • 67% of Millennials and 56% of Gen Xers prefer to shop online rather than in-store.
  • Baby Boomers spend 4 hours per week shopping online.
  • Men and women both report spending 5 hours per week shopping online.
  • When shopping online, 48% of online purchasers first turn to an eCommerce store that offers various products.

Of course, all mobile shopping apps first ask for a user’s permission to access their location. If they grant it, you’ll get a great opportunity to personalize the customer experience with location-specific push notifications—another incredible e-commerce benefit unheard of with traditional web marketing. Now, you can target users according to country, state or city.

Moreover, you can alert users to discounts or specials when they’re in a particular location. Push messages based on a user’s location can help you engage users with a high degree of personalization and relevance, while making the potential shopper of client feel as if their unique needs are bing specifically addressed—which, of course, they are.

Are there any drawbacks to Push Notifications?

While it wouldn’t be fair to say that there are any genuine “drawbacks” to utilizing push notifications for your e-commerce needs, it must be considered that some of the flexibility offered to potential customers can also undo some of the “direct” communication that notifications can provide.  

For example, it is crucial to remember that push notifications must be manually permitted by each person before your message is allowed to reach them.  In fact, Nearly one-third of users disable push notifications—and opting out, or ignoring, push notifications is becoming easier.

Updates to notification settings—like provisional authorization, push notification groupings, and notification center features—mean users have options for de-prioritizing your notifications.

Finally, it must also be noted that most people still prefer emails or ads. Nearly half of users (41%) say they prefer to receive marketing messages via email or mobile ads, while fewer than one in five (18%) prefer push notifications.

Of course, depending upon the generation of users pooled, these number can also reflect the growing popularity of push notifications, as more mobile-based shopping trends evolve.

Arena for all your push notification and e-commerce needs

If you are considering integrating push notifications into your e-commerce practices, and want to make it your goal to reach as many potential clients and customers are modern technology trends allow, then you can truly benefit from using Arena—a state-of-the-art cloud-based marketing platform that can be uniquely catered to all your marketing needs.

At Arena, our mission is to empower media companies to take back ownership of their audience from social networks and grow their community within their own website.

With our cloud-based e-commerce technologies, we enable publishers, media, and broadcasting companies to cover events such as news, sports, finance, and tech. Through powerful AI technology, Arena is capable of aggregate, curate, and distribute content to any device, anytime, anywhere.

Our fully customizable widgets help media companies to increase traffic, engagement and earn revenue. From bloggers to large enterprises, from Oscars to Super Bowl, Arena.im is ideal to manage any type of live experience.

Partnering with the largest media groups, Arena has grown rapidly in over 120 countries and reaches over 100 million monthly page views. Companies such as Microsoft, Turner Broadcasting, and DMG Media count on Arena to increase organic traffic, encourage engagement, and generate revenue directly from our platform.

If you are considering push notifications for your e-commerce needs, as well as utilizing all the new marketing trends as they are developed in real-time, then Arena.im may be perfect for you and your company.

You can also learn more about our state-of-the-art cloud-based software, as well as try it for yourself for free, at Arena.