Category Archives: Customer Data Platform

Virtual Events: Stats and Trends You Need To Succeed

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Virtual events have continued to increase in popularity in 2021. To put the year’s virtual events in context, this year in review will reveal the virtual event stats, key trends and opportunities you need to succeed next year.

4 Facts You Need To Know About Virtual Events

Recent industry research commissioned by LinkedIn reveals essential insights about the evolving nature of business events.

1. Majority of Event Organizers Have Launched Virtual Events. 

Across Germany, UAE, France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, most event organizers arranged a virtual event, webinar, or online talk in 2020.

2. Fully Virtual Events Grow In Popularity. 

50% of events organized in the UK and Ireland have focused entirely on virtual events.

3. Critical Drivers For Virtual Events. 

Health concerns related to the pandemic are not the only driver for virtual events. In addition, one-third to one-half of event organizers think that virtual events are more cost-effective than traditional events. Further, saving travel time and environmental concerns are other key motivations for virtual events.

4. Virtual Event Content Quality. 

A significant number (44% in the UK and 38% in Germany) of event professionals agree that content development is a key priority. As expectations for event quality increase, there’s no need to start your virtual event planning from scratch. Download a copy of Arena’s Live Events Ebook to make your next virtual event more engaging.

Virtual Event Best Practices: 3 Ways To Maximize Engagement

In the past, organizing a virtual event or webinar was something of a novelty. That novelty has long since worn off. To keep your audience engaged in your content, aligning with the following best practices is vital.

1. Adjust Session Length. 

Asking attendees to sit through hour-long lecture-style events may not be effective any longer. Instead, consider adjusting your approach to emphasize shorter presentations. For inspiration, see the TED website, which features a significant number of presentations less than 20 minutes long.

2. Encourage Participant Interaction. 

Use live chat capabilities to allow attendees to ask questions. If there is no easy way to interact, you run the risk of attendees becoming disengaged. To get started in live chat, check out our post What Is Live Chat?

3. Invite Multiple Speakers. 

Offering diverse perspectives gives you more opportunities to connect with your audience. Use the live events script ebook to organize your content. Once your content is developed, invite multiple people from your company to give a presentation. If you have the budget, invite an outside speaker or influencer to deliver a short talk.

From Presentations To Live Shopping

Traditionally, virtual events like webinars and virtual conferences emphasized sharing content and networking. Those types of events are still important and worth organizing. That said, traditional virtual events do not directly drive revenue in most cases. If your company needs to grow revenue faster, you need a different approach: live ecommerce. In a live ecommerce event, you have the opportunity to present products to your audience and drive immediate sales. Livestream e-commerce sales in the US are projected to grow to $17 billion in 2022, up from $6 billion in 2020, according to Statista.

To plan your next live ecommerce event, use Arena’s Live Ecommerce ebook as your starting point.

The Most Successful Virtual Events of 2021 And What You Can Learn From Them

It is easier to plan your next virtual event with your team when you have examples to discuss. Use this list of events

Collins Aerospace: Keep Events Focused With Moderation

Remember when virtual meetings were disrupted by “Zoom bombing”? In its most extreme form, some of these disruptive participants posted harmful and alarming content. This kind of disruption is a risk that needs to manage in virtual events. Thoughtful event moderation can go a long way to prevent disruptions and keep attendees focused.

The; Collins Aerospace’s Introduce a Girl to Engineering virtual event was aimed at young girls to encourage them to consider careers in aerospace and engineering. In February 2021, the company invited students from five local schools to meet engineers and Joan Higginbotham, a former NASA astronaut. By using moderation, special guests, and a small invite list, the company created an engaging experience.

Virtual Event Lessons

There are a few lessons to adapt from the Collins Aerospace experience.

  • Consider Small Events. Events with a few dozen participants can be successful. Large scale events with hundreds or thousands of attendees tend to get all the attention but smaller events
  • Family-Friendly Event Design. The company’s decision to focus on teenage girls meant moderation was important. Arena Live Chat offers built-in moderation features so you can create a family-friendly experience.

YouTube Launches Multi-Day Virtual Shopping Event.

Short duration events of 1-2 hours are popular, but they are not the only approach. In November 2021, the video streaming platform ran the event YouTube Holiday Stream and Shop. The event drew participation from multiple YouTube personalities like Gordon Ramsay, Patrick Starrr, Jackie Aina, and MrBeast.

Virtual Event Lessons

There are two key lessons to draw from YouTube’s live ecommerce virtual events.

Delivering surprises to attendees is the crucial learning from YouTube’s 2021 entrance into live shopping. In a recent survey, 75% of shoppers agreed that the video platform “enhances the traditional shopping journey by delivering unexpected inspiration.” This is a crucial lesson as you plan your virtual event. For example, how can you offer exclusive product news, limited editions, or access to exciting presenters? Take inspiration from YouTube’s live shopping development to engage customers.

Consider organizing events over several days and connecting those events back to a seasonal trend. In the case of YouTube’s virtual events, the event was tied to the holiday shopping season.

Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue

Held in March 2021, this virtual event was sponsored by Siemens Energy, ING Bank, and other companies. The event’s approach to attendee engagement included the event moderator highlighting comments from attendees.

Virtual Event Lessons

The Berlin event offers a key lesson for you as you plan your event. Event moderators encouraged attendees to post questions for speakers on Twitter. Seeking input from attendees is a great idea. However, there is a downside to relying on social media sites. Event attendees might get distracted by conversations unrelated to the event and disengage. A better approach is to use Arena Live Chat to keep attendees on your website while they ask questions.

Keeping attendees on your website also means you can form direct relationships with customers. Traditional Google cookies are disappearing due to privacy changes. Keeping virtual event attendees on your website makes it far easier to use a customer data platform to understand audience behavior.

Hybrid Events

In addition to entirely virtual events, many organizations and organizers are developing hybrid events. In this type of event, an attendee has the option to participate virtually or in person. For example, Social Media Marketing World is offering four kinds of tickets for its next event. The higher-priced tickets include in-person access to the event. At the same time, Social Media Marketing World also offers “streaming” and “on-demand” tickets to accommodate virtual-only attendees.

Without careful planning, keeping everyone engaged in a hybrid event can fail. Virtual event attendees may feel left out of the conversation happening in the conference center. Using Arena Live Blog to share live updates from your event as it unfolds makes it easier for virtual attendees to feel involved.

How To Get Started With Virtual Events

Virtual events and hybrid events are here to stay. Your only question is to decide when you will take advantage of this way to engage with customers. Adding Arena Live Chat and Live Blog to your website is fast to make your virtual events more engaging.

Black Friday: 7 Trends You Need To Know About

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Black Friday 2021 is coming up in a few short weeks. To make the most of this holiday sales season, there are seven trends you need to know.

Black Friday history goes back to the 1960s when some started to point out heavy shopping traffic on the day after Thanksgiving. For some retailers, Black Friday deals also represent an opportunity to from the red (i.e., running at a loss) to the black (i.e., earning a profit).

Trend 1: Plan Black Friday Deals Early Or Else

Your Black Friday marketing strategy and planning needs to start weeks or months in advance. There are three significant reasons to start early: logistics, marketing, and competition.

Logistics: A Key Challenge for Black Friday Deals

Logistical challenges are continuing to impact stores around the world. A recent survey found that two-thirds of logistics managers shift to local and regional suppliers rather than international suppliers (source). Multiple companies have faced shortages getting products shipped from Asia. Placing orders early and allowing for additional shipping time is one way to mitigate this threat.

Black Friday Marketing Is Getting More Competitive

Research indicates that customers start to think about Black Friday sales far in advance from a marketing perspective.; Keap, a leading ecommerce software company, encourages businesses to start talking about Black Friday deals several weeks in advance. To take advantage of those early conversations, make an effort to have your content marketing assets and social media updates ready early.

Competitive Pressure

The days of running a Black Friday sale on a single day appear to be over. Several major retailers are approaching the event differently. For example, Amazon has created its shopping event, “Prime Day,” which lasts several days. According to; Jungle Scout, some customers are starting their holiday shopping as early as October.

In 2020, several companies like Sam’s Club, Best Buy, Target, and Kohl’s started their Black Friday promotions before Thanksgiving (source). In addition, a growing number of companies are focusing their efforts on “Cyber Monday” sales. Cyber Monday promotions generated approximately $10 billion in sales in 2020, according to; CNBC.

The lessons are clear. To be competitive in Black Friday promotions, you need to act early. It is also wise to plan out different kinds of promotions before and after Thanksgiving. For example, you could run pre-Black Friday, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday deals. You don’t have to choose one option in the Black Friday vs Cyber Monday debate – you can offer other sales on each day.

Trend 2: Use Live Streaming Events To Attract Attention 

Standing out in the crowded marketplace of Black Friday deals is getting complicated. However, there are still ways you can stand out without cutting prices further. For example, you can use live streaming events to showcase your products.

Take note of the following live stream events that generated attention and sales over the past year:

  • Macy’s. In 2020,; Macy’s had a virtual live stream parade instead of the traditional in-person event. If an event with a ninety-year history can go virtual, anything is possible! Flexibility in marketing Black Friday is necessary.
  • Instagram. Instead of waiting for Black Friday promotions to arrive, Instagram has pioneered something new. On Sept 1, 2021, the company announced ten days of live shopping events. According to; Social Media Today, 27% of shoppers have tried Live Shopping in the past year, and many are planning to increase their Live Shopping this year.

Running these live stream events takes some planning. It’s not enough to hold your products up to the camera. To help you create an interesting virtual event, download our virtual events ebook.

Trend 3: COVID-19 Isn’t Gone Yet!

Businesses have to face facts: the COVID-19 pandemic is still with us in 2021. While public health measures and vaccines are making progress, the effort is far from over. That means that your stores may be closed or subject to limits. That’s not all. Some customers may be reluctant to gather in large crowds, even for amazing Black Friday deals.

As a business, there are a few ways you can address the pandemic and the suffering it has caused in your community.

Companies like Dollar General, Instacart, Kroger, and McDonald’s (source) have all announced efforts to encourage employees to get vaccinated. Offering paid time off to get vaccinated is one crucial way to make infection less likely.

  •  Offer curbside pick-up and delivery options.

As a result of 2020, an increasing number of employees have shifted to buying online. To stay competitive, offer online purchases. For delivery service, companies have multiple options like traditional delivery companies and newer options like DoorDash. Offering these options means you can still succeed even if your physical stores are closed.

Spacing out your sales can help to relieve pressure on your employees. Pushing employees too hard may cause some wonder, “Is Black Friday a holiday?” and call in sick that day!

Trend 4: Black Lives Matter #BlackoutBlackFriday

Your Black Friday marketing strategy should consider social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #BlackoutBlackFriday. For example, companies are aiming to help address racial equality by purchasing products from Black-owned companies. According to the; 15% Pledge, multiple companies have already commited to buying at least 15% of their products from Black-owned businesses like J Crew, Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Old Navy.

Signing up for the 15% pledge isn’t the only way to get involved, either. Take a look at how other companies are addressing racial issues.

  • Sephora. According to the; Washington Post, the fashion company has announced that it will reduce the number of security guards at its stores and buy more products from Black-owned companies. The company is also training its staff to greet customers equally to reduce racial bias.
  • Learn About; #BlackoutBlackFriday. A growing number of consumers are expressing their displeasure with companies by boycotting them. According to Blackout Friday, activists encourage people to avoid Walmart, Best buy, and national chains and buy from small, locally owned businesses instead.

Trend 5: Use Inventory Shortages As An Advantage

Scarcity is one of the best ways to sell products. In 2021, your business might struggle to keep every product in stock. You can turn those shortages into an advantage. How?

On your website, highlight products that have limited inventory: “X units remaining in stock.” Low inventory can nudge customers to act more quickly to purchase products.

For example, Best Buy runs a “Deal of The Day” promotion with limited quantities of each product. In this case, the company creates scarcity by putting a deadline of 24 hours on each sale item.

Trend 6: Get More Reviews For Your Products

When more people share their reviews and opinions of your products, it’s easier to sell your products. Getting more reviews on your products takes work. Keep in mind that you can keep those reviews on your website for months and years to come! So it is well worth the effort to get more reviews.

To help you get more reviews, use these tips.

  • Review customer feedback. A large number of customer complaints on the Better Business Bureau website is a bad sign. For example, Zaful has more than 200 complaints on the Better Business Bureau website. It is wise to address ongoing customer complaints before requesting additional reviews.
  • Ask For Reviews. Considering putting an insert in the box asking customers to leave a review. Specifically ask customers to leave positive reviews is a good idea as well. When you receive positive reviews, consider sending a thank you card to customers to show them that you care.
  • Influencers. Sending a free product to influencers or paying for a sponsored post isn’t the same as a customer review. However, customers may still perceive it as a credible option. Several services can help you to find influencers relevant to your brand. For instance,; Upfluence has services and software that make finding influencers to promote your brand easier. Remember that influencers with a smaller following are usually cheaper to work with than influencers with a larger audience. According to; Influencer Marketing Hub, nano-influencers (i.e., 1,000 to 10,000 followers) typically charge between $10 to $100 per post.
  • Can we mention here something related with customer review in the chat. Live Review to live shopping?

Trend 7: Earn More Sales With CRO and ML

Machine learning technology is here, and it can help you to make more sales during Black Friday. Of all the trends mentioned here, machine learning is one of the more complex opportunities. If your company has limited technical expertise, consider revisiting machine learning and conversion rate optimization (CRO) in the new year.

Before you optimize your results, you need to collect a significant amount of data. If you only have data on 10 or 100 customers, it won’t detect patterns. You can collect data from multiple sources like website analytics (e.g., Google Analytics), social media, and customer buying activity.

Once your customer data collection efforts are set up, it is essential to stay organized. That’s where a CDP (customer data platform) platform plays an important role. The; Arena CDP makes it easy to understand customer behavior in one place. For example, you can see how a single customer interacted with your brand on social media, visited your chat room, and went on to make a purchase.

Check out these resources for inspiration on what’s possible to achieve with conversion rate optimization and machine learning.

  • Nosto. This ecommerce software platform helps companies earn more sales through personalization. Kate Somerville increased revenue by 14% using Nosto.
  • Syte. This conversion rate optimization platform helps brands in fashion, home décor, and jewelry earn more sales. By using the platform, PrettyLittleThing was able to; double its conversion rate.

Conclusion

With these trends in mind, you can confidently start planning your Black Friday deals. Across the world, we are starting to see increasing signs of a global economic recovery. Employment in the USA, Canada, and other countries is increasing. The long-term effects of the pandemic are not yet apparent. However, there are clear signs that the economy is opening up and consumers are ready to shop.

Set your Cyber Monday deals apart from the competition by offering live chat on your website. To see how Arena Live Chat works in your business, sign up for a; free 14 day trial.

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 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!

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.

Live Chat: Shorten Sales Cycle & Improve CX

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If you want to close deals faster and improve the customer buying journey, Live Chat can be an excellent tool for your sales team. Find out why!

Sales funnels are at the core of business strategies nowadays, whether your company sells B2C products or sells software, equipment, or services in the B2B market. Having the right sales channels will help you guide leads and prospects through the conversion process.

Companies of all sizes have tried hard to fasten the sales cycle and shorten the path that leads customers to get to know a brand to buy from it.

That’s understandable, considering that just a slight tweak in the sales funnel can positively affect a company’s bottom line.

Think about it: the less time a customer spends in your sales funnel, the more return on investment (ROI) he or she generated for you!

But how can you shorten the sales cycle without rushing your customers? Well, Live Chat can be a great way to engage with qualified prospects at the right time and with the right messages, helping to guide them faster towards the purchase.

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Live Chat combines the convenience and real-time experience expected by empowered audiences while also serving as a gatekeeper for your sales team. After all, not every customer on your website is mature enough to convert or start a conversation with sales reps.

In this blog post, we will explore how Live Chat can shorten the sales cycle and the importance of doing so. Read on to find more about the advantages of Live Chat in the sales funnel.

What is the sales cycle?

The sales cycle is the process that comprehends all the touchpoints between your company and potential customers, from the very first contact until the deal is closed.

The sales funnel describes the steps needed to create awareness around your brand, make your prospects considerate buying from you, and then convert. This process can be described through AIDA’s acronym (awareness, interest, desire, action).

The sales Funnel also includes your entire team’s effort to create and maintain interest in your products, engage; potential customers, answer their doubts, and finally sell to them.

How can Live Chat shorten the sales cycle?

Reducing the Sales Cycle is about helping customers find the information they need at any time and help them understand your product before you sell to them. Live Chat empowers the customer and relies on conversational commerce, which can help warm up your leads until they are ready to buy.

According to CrazyEgg;, 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company if they offer Live Chat. Besides, Forrester; noted a 10% increase in the average order value when reviewing the sales from customers who used Live Chat before making a purchase, compared with those who did not use it.

A few ways Live Chat can help you shorten the Sales Cycle:

Faster feedback to marketing

Let’s say you have a two-month sales cycle time. That means it will take a lot more time for the marketing team to understand which marketing tactics worked or not for a given group of customers that converted in that period.

Live Chat gives you the possibility to get quicker feedback (in real-time) and then reinforce the marketing strategies that led to better results so far.

Efficiency for B2B Sales Teams

Live Chat is particularly great for B2B companies that wish to streamline their prospection activities since it works as a gatekeeper to filter qualified leads.

In the traditional sales model, the sales cycle is a back and forth process: the customer discovers the website and fills out contact forms. A sales representative then reaches out via e-mail or phone call without fully understanding the customer’s needs.

What if sales reps could make a more assertive approach towards prospects? Live Chat can undermine inefficiencies by helping your company start a personalized conversation with the customer.

A real-time chat combines the engagement level and immediacy of a phone call while still allowing your sales reps to manage more than one conversation at once.

That way, you can understand initial questions and objections in real-time before even having a more in-depth conversation with a client. Live Chat can replace some boring contact and assessment forms since initial client diagnosis can be made directly through the Chat, shortening the Sales Cycle.

Better conversion rates in e-commerce

When it comes to; e-commerce, it might sound tempting to assume that your visitors will browse your website on their own, find exactly what they want, be satisfied with the information provided, and then go straight to the checkout process. However, that’s not necessarily how it happens.

More often than not, customers will have doubts about products, payment methods, pricing, and shipping, sometimes leaving your website to search for other options and then eventually come back to make the purchase.

Incorporating proactive Live Chat in e-commerce websites creates a real-time space for customers to ask questions and find complementary information. Altogether, it can help reduce friction in the buying journey and move your customer quicker through the sales funnel.

Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)

Once a prospect is engaging via Live Chat, there is no need to put them through the pipelines of your funnel. Live Chat can help you skip them straight to the conversion stage.

Of course, there must be a good strategy behind the conversational flow. It can still be an effective way to reduce costs with social selling and other intrusive marketing channels, allowing you to skip a few steps usually necessary until the purchase.

Live Chat might seem like just a simple resource, but it can be a powerful tool to engage customers and reduce Customer Acquisition costs through the funnel.

Fasten upselling and cross-selling processes

Shortening the sales cycle is not about being pushy or rushing the customer to close a deal. In that sense, Live chat can help you build trust and provide customers with helpful information for their unique needs – resulting in a shorter and more efficient sales cycle.

Beyond optimizing the Sales Cycle for one service or another, Live Chat is useful to perform cross-selling and upselling strategies. With a proactive approach, your sales agents can offer complementary products related to customers’ interests and products they were initially looking for.

As a result, companies that use Live Chat tend to increase average order value and faster ROI in shorter periods.

Let’s say you run a media company, and a customer wants to sign up for a live conference you’re organizing. When he goes to the checkout page to pay for his badge, you could use Live Chat to send a personalized message recommending an essential content subscription with a discount. That logic applies to any industry and niche.

How are brands using Live Chat throughout the sales cycle?

Are you still skeptical about how much Live Chat can help shorten the sales cycle?; A study by AMA found that live chat can be used effectively throughout the entire customer journey.

The study shows that:

  • 29% of companies are using Live Chat for marketing awareness
  • 32% of companies are using Live Chat for early-stage sales development
  • 39% of companies are using Live Chat for the post-sales customer support

8 steps to use Live Chat to reduce the sales cycle and close more deals

As great as it is, Live Chat won’t just magically shorten your Sales Cycle from the moment you implement it. Your team should have a well-thought sales strategy that uses Live Chat as a key touchpoint with the customer, considering many variables.

Here are a few steps to make the best out of Live Chat for your sales cycle.

  1. Understand how long is your sales cycle

The basic step is to understand how long your company’s average sales cycle is. That might seem like an obvious recommendation, but many salespeople have never stopped to think about it.

It is important to consider different customer segments and products and then establish parameters of what your team considers a short or long sales cycle. From there, you can set up a strategy for improvements.

  1. Make sure your Live Chat is mobile-friendly

Live Chat is usually built for websites and with desktop navigation in mind. However, you should make sure your Live Chat is also easy to access through mobile devices, to offer your buyers a great; customer experience.

Customers who are ready to buy want to be able to buy quickly from mobile devices, and the same expectation exists when it comes to getting help or information through Live Chat.

  1. Bring different content formats to Live Chat

Many people think of corporate and e-commerce Live Chat as a text-only channel, when in fact, many Live Chat tools offer you the chance to incorporate video chat, voice chat, and formats like maps, forms, and spreadsheets embedded into conversations.

When you have different resources within the chat, it’s easier to target personalized messages and answer doubts from visitors, which ultimately can help them make purchase decisions faster.

  1. Rout customers to the right sales or support agents

There is no use adopting Live Chat to optimize your sales cycle if you’re routing customers to the wrong department or sales representative. Agents should be well-trained and equipped to handle specifics about products and services your offering, payment, and onboarding processes, pricing, etc.

That is something you should be careful about, especially if your company deals with extensive portfolios and many business units.

  1. Plan different steps of the conversation

If you truly want to use Live Chat to close deals faster, it’s important to have a well-mapped conversation flow for each stage of the customer journey (awareness, consideration, conversion😉 and each of your buyer personas. Consider the most frequent doubts and stages for each stage in the journey and customer segments that you would like to reach.

What kinds of materials and information they would want to have access to? What is the best language for each buyer persona? Having those aspects in mind, you can better train sales agents and be prepared to guide customers to the next stage.

  1. Don’t keep Live Chat data in silos

This one is crucial. Live Chat might be an excellent starting point with a potential customer, but you need to make sure data generated from chat sessions are integrated into other sales management platforms.

Live Chat allows you to gather valuable information about the customer profile and his pain points, so it’s thoughtful to have Live Chat software integrated into Customer Relationship Management Platforms (CRM) and Customer Data Platforms (CDP), just so your sales and marketing team can understand the full picture about a customer and set the best strategy to follow up with them.

  1. Use Live Chat triggers to encourage customers to take action

There are many triggers you can use to send proactive messages in Live Chat and help customers move through the sales funnel faster. you can send messages about coupons, events, discounts, free items, and sensitive offers that are related to their profile.

  1. Have clear next steps

At last, it’s not enough just to show you have a great value proposition via Live Chat. To truly shorten the Sales Cycle, your team needs to take advantage of Live Chat to indicate CLEAR next steps for the customer.

Does he need a second round of conversation with sales agents? Does he need to complete an assessment? Does he need to proceed to the checkout page? Make sure you use Call to Actions (CTAs) and the right language to guide him through the next steps.

Conclusion

Are you interested in the potential of Live Chat to optimize your Sales Cycle? Maybe your company already uses Live Chat in Customer Support, or perhaps it’s still figuring out how to incorporate it in its website.

Either way, you can experiment with Live Chat little by little and then adjust it to your Sales operation.

Arena has one of the most complete Live Chat solutions on the market, with many features to help you personalize your sales approach.

Request your free trial today and see how Live Chat can optimize your sales funnel like never before.

How to build an eCommerce strategy with Live Chat

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The best retailers use Live Chat tools to inform and engage online shoppers. This post will show you how to use it on eCommerce and give examples of successful use cases.

Have you ever thought about what defines conversion on eCommerce? Most online retailers believe that the checkout process defines sales. However, many variables lead the customer to the purchase, so the conversion process involves much more than the checkout page.

Build an eCommerce strategy with Live Chat

In a messy and pulverized eCommerce market, where online brands are often competing for customers’ attention, it can be a struggle to lead users from research to purchase.

An excellent strategy to maximize sales and engagement could be through Live Chat. Look at the most successful online services – from marketplaces like Amazon to digital retailers. You’ll see that all of them have a Live Chat window in their webpages and applications, where they offer the possibility to talk to customer support or sales agents.

Beyond just a convenient button, Live Chat serves as an essential touchpoint with the customer across the decision-making process and after the purchase. It’s as if brands are transposing the classic tagline “How can I help you?”, the cliché of physical retail, to digital spaces (but in an organic, non-intrusive way). 

In the age of immediacy, digital marketers and salespeople need tools that help them quickly respond to customers and solve problems more dynamically. In that sense, Live Chat can be a great option for companies who want to professionalize their eCommerce operations.

In this post, we will explore:

  • The concept of Live Chat
  • Examples and use cases of Live Chat in eCommerce
  • Specific benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce
  • Using Live Chat beyond Customer Support

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a tool that allows customers to comment and interact via messages directly on a company’s website, usually while browsing products and viewing content. The Live Chat is generally presented as a window in the page’s corner or as a pop-up button. It can sometimes be hidden in the customer support section.

Live Chat makes communication between brands and their customers much quicker and organic as it emulates messaging platforms. That is crucial for brands that want to build more personal connections with clients. 

Also, Live Chat allows users to speak directly with companies, without having to reach them by email or phone, for instance.

One of the main benefits of Live Chat is that it allows multiple interactions in a single web interface, which is vital in the age of digital multitasking. According to a study from E-Consultancy, 51% of customers prefer Live Chat to other channels precisely because it allows them to multitask. 

Sales and customer success teams typically use live Chat to provide customers with support and personalized answers in real-time. It can be used by companies in different sectors, from marketplaces, online retailers, entertainment, and media companies. What varies is the person behind the live Chat.

If you run a media company, you might have editors commentating live events and sales reps behind the Chat offering subscription services. Now, if you run a fashion eCommerce, for example, you might have a customer support professional offering to help with product and shipping information, and so on.

Why using Live Chat in eCommerce

When it comes to the experience in eCommerce websites or marketplaces, customers want more than great products and a neat catalog curation. Interactivity has become a key element of shopping, and customers want the chance to have their problems and doubts solved all at once if they can. 

That’s where Live Chat comes to play. It can boost your eCommerce strategy, improve customer experience (CX), and give your teams more instruments to convert customers and gather business insights.

Let’s explore a few benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce and how it can enrich Customer Experience.

Fast customer support

Online retailers know that the longer they take to answer a customer, the less likely they are to convert and stay loyal to the brand. The truth is nobody likes waiting for replies through email, SMS, and other support channels.  

Because Live Chat is instantaneous, it’s a lot more attractive as a customer support tool. A recent research suggests that it takes only 42 seconds for a live chat support staff to solve a customer query, which makes the customer experience (CX) much better. 

Human touch

In the age of automation and chatbots, a human approach to customer experience might actually give you extra points in the relationship with customers. Even though automated emails and chatbots can be a blessing for optimizing customer support, studies show that users want to interact with humans whenever possible.

The 2019 CGS Customer Service Chatbots & Channels Survey found out that 86% of American customers prefer to talk to humans over chatbots. With Live Chat, you can give customers personalized, warm assistance in an easy, user-friendly way. Besides, much like at physical stores, consumers are more likely to buy when they are treated well.

Non-intrusive

Unlike other communication channels, Live Chat shows customers that the brand is available to help without disturbing customers’ attention. This non-intrusive approach is crucial for a customer-centric strategy and shows respect for customers’ time, which might help them reach a purchase decision.

Integrated shopping experience

If your company sells products online, you know how complex communication with customers might be. Let’s say a customer just checked out of your website and realized he registered an old shipping address. 

Traditionally, they would have to leave the website and reach out to the right customer support email address or phone to solve the problem, something that could take a couple of days to resolve.

Live Chat, however, can remove this type of friction by integrating the communication cycle in real-time, which is smarter and more effective than executing communication through different channels. 

Besides, E-consultancy shows that 29% of customers want to be in control of the conversation with brands, and Live Chat gives them that. 

Improve Conversion rates

While offering customers rapid solutions to their queries, Live Chat can speed up the decision-making process and improve conversion rates. A study by Emarketer found that more than 60% of consumers would return to a website that offers Live Chat, and more than 79% of consumers feel that having quick answers impacts their buying decisions.

Make personalized offers

While Live Chat is great for solving transactional problems in eCommerce (related to payment and orders, for instance), it can also be a great channel for offering product recommendations and special discounts. A study by ATG Global Consumer Trend found, for instance, that more than 90% of customers think Live Chat was helpful for them while shopping online.

By offering customers personalized recommendations or coupons, brands can use Live Chat to get them out of “research-mode” and convert them into actual buyers. Ecommerce players can also use it to upsell frequent customers. 

Optimize customer support costs

Live Chat represents a cheaper and effective way to communicate with customers from an operations standpoint if compared to call centers. With Live Chat, you don’t have to put your customers on hold, and a few representatives can talk to multiple customers at a time. 

Increase Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Every marketer’s goal is not just to convert customers, but to make them satisfied and loyal to your brand, so they always come back. Ultimately, customer satisfaction is related to customer convenience. 

An eDigital Research survey found that 73% of customers who used live chat support for online shopping were highly satisfied and willing to come back for future shopping. Another study by J. D. Power discovered that overall customer satisfaction was higher when customers used the Live Chat window than in other channels. 

Examples of Live Chat in eCommerce and digital platforms

If you look at the digital landscape, you will see that many highly regarded brands have used Live Chat to enhance their websites. 

Still having trouble visualizing how Live Chat can be incorporated into eCommerce? Let’s see how successful digital platforms and retailers are using it. 

Amazon

One of the global references when it comes to marketplace and eCommerce experience is Amazon. They offer Live Chat options that allow users to chat with customer support specialists about account details, orders, and shipping processes. 

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 support agent. 

PlayStation

Can you imagine how many customer queries PlayStation, from Sony, receives in its customer support channels everyday? Probably loads of them. In order to make communication with game players easier, the company has Live Chat rooms linked to its webpage, whereby customers can chat with support agents about things like account access, game purchases, and charge refunds. 

Apple

Among the companies that offer great user experience is also Apple, which has a real-time customer support team on Live Chat. Through the chat, customers can arrange a chat with 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 and waiting for emails and phone calls. 

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Shoply.tv

Shoply.tv is a project which was developed collaboratively with Arena, unifying a great live video solution with a powerful live chat tool. Even though some features are currently being developed, the results are already used by more than 2,600 clients around the world, and we’re still counting. Shoply used Arena Live Chat to develop a live video shopping solution that enhances customer experience by enabling the best sales and engagement tools.

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How to derive even more value from Live Chat in eCommerce

So you have learned that Live Chat has many benefits for your eCommerce operation. However, in order to effectively sustain its value, you have to manage it wisely. Here are a few tips to take advantage of Live Chat beyond customer support.

1) Share customer feedback with marketing teams

Insights from Live Chat can be useful for other departments, not just customer support and sales. Online stores can share customer feedback with marketing teams as well, just so they can make changes in their strategies according to what’s best for your audience. 

2) Integrate Live Chat leads to your CRM and Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Live Chat tools can also provide information to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and be integrated into Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

You could choose to add CRM contact information to your Live Chat tool, integrating valuable customer information that can be used by support and sales professionals during sessions with customers. 

By having all customer information available, you can reduce friction and improve conversions. After all, your team should focus on answering your users’ needs, without spending too much time searching for customer information.

A CDP, on the other hand, can use Live Chat information to determine customer profiles, products bought by single customers, and the value generated by chat conversations. It can also integrate Chat information to data generated by other channels and customer platforms.  

That way, your teams can follow up with the created leads, having access to easy conversion reports and reducing the friction between different data platforms.

3) Understand where users come from

One of the challenges for eCommerce players is to understand how their marketing efforts connect to online conversions in a granular and accurate way.  Talking about Live Chat, how can they track what led to a conversion in the Chat?

Some Live Chat tools allow you to connect the dots between chat sessions and the marketing sources that led the customer to the chat – whether it was a campaign, a keyword, or landing page.  You could integrate your Live Chat to Google Analytics for instance, and see a bigger picture of chat conversions and Adword campaigns that led customers to chat sessions. 

Such data is important to determine if your marketing channels are actually bringing people to your page – and how they are connected to your Live Chat. That allows companies to optimize campaigns more accurately according to the insights.

Want to try Live Chat on your eCommerce?

If your company still hasn’t adopted Live Chat support, maybe it’s about time to change that!

Not sure where to start? Arena has one of the most robust Live Chat tools in the market, and the best part is that you can try it for free! Access our free trial and get the best out of the Arena Live Chat.

14 Ways Live Chat a Customer Service Game-Changer

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Live Chat is transforming customer care across many segments. Discover how this tool is leading a “micro revolution” to customer support and sales teams.

What are the main pillars that sustain the relationship between companies and customers? Let’s think for a second about brands that are known for excellent customer experience.

Digital apps, fintech, eCommerce, you name it. No matter the segment, it’s clear that successful brands offer more than great products, advertising, and content. They have a superior approach towards customer service and always try to make sure communication is dynamic and assertive. 

Live Chat is the ultimate tool to offer that. After all, in the age of instant communication, people are not willing to wait much time to have their questions answered. Besides, they increasingly want to count on omnichannel support.

Well, Live Chat is changing Customer Service in many ways. In this post, we’ll explore how this tool is boosting productivity and efficiency in Customer Service and customer satisfaction. 

The context behind Live Chat

For those who are not familiar with Live Chat, here goes a brief description of it.  Live Chat is a tool that allows customers to ask for support via instant messages directly on a company’s website or app while browsing products and viewing content.

Besides, some brands have integrated their Live Chat tools to other messaging platforms to provide a seamless support experience across different brand channels. 

By why exactly is Live Chat disrupting the customer care business? According to Forrester’s study,; 33% of consumers now expect to see Live Chat services offered on every website.

The same report says the number of U.S. online shoppers who use live Chat has increased from 38% to 58% in the last five years. 

Live Chat is mostly used in B2C businesses by support agents and Customer Care teams, but it can also be used by Customer Success and Sales teams in B2B companies.

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Why Live Chat can take Customer Experience to the next level

Live Chat makes communication between brands and their customers much quicker and organic as it emulates conversation platforms. 

Why have the customers reaching for support through email or phone if you can help them in real-time through Live Chat? Here are a few reasons Live Chat is changing customer service in companies. 

1) Enhancing brand experience

It’s no secret customers are more demanding when it comes to customer experience. They have become used to personalized messages and offers in every aspect of their lives, and thus they have high expectations regarding customer service. 

According to Salesforce, 80% of customers believe brand experience is just as important as a brand’s products or services. Another study by Capgemini shows that the same percentage of customers are willing to spend more money to have better customer service. 

Following this logic, customer service can be the central element to differentiate your brand from the competition.

2) Providing fast responses

A few years ago, it might have been OK to make customers wait a couple of days to get responses to their requests via phone or email. That is no longer the truth. 

A study from Hubspot says 90% of customers rate “immediate response” as very important when they have a query. 

Having Live Chat on your website or app gives you the ability to answer queries in real-time. In addition, Live Chat has proven to provide higher customer satisfaction rates than channels such as phone, email, and social media. 

3) Decreasing resolution time 

From a business perspective, Live Chat also has helped companies streamline their customer support processes and optimize customer care strategies. 

With Live Chat, you can route customers to specific departments and agents according to the keywords they use in the chat, for instance, avoiding repeated communication across different support channels. Because it offers instant communication, Live Chat can potentially decrease the average answer and requests resolution time. 

4) Boosting brands Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Agile and effective customer service is the key to drive customer satisfaction. If you want to improve your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), Live Chat is the way to go. Offering real-time, personalized support shows that your company is truly customer-centric;. That is why many companies notice better retention rates after using this type of software.

5) Non-intrusive communication

The best thing about Live Chat is that it happens in an inviting and non-intrusive way. Unlike emails that flood up your mailbox or phone calls from support agents that happen at the worst timing, Live Chat offers an easy way for customers to get done with your requests – in the best timing for them.

It is estimated that 46% of consumers prefer live chat over email and social media, for example. 

Live Chat empowers customers in many ways, allowing multiple interactions on a single web interface. That is vital in today’s digital landscape. According to a study by E-Consultancy, 51% of customers prefer live chat to other channels precisely because it allows them to continue performing other tasks.

6) Using Live Chat Data to improve overall business 

Apart from the; benefits Live Chat brings to daily tasks of customer service, it can serve as a strategic tool to enhance your brand’s marketing, sales, and product strategies.

Because Live Chat provides detailed insights about your website visitors’ journey, it can offer valuable data to help companies grow their bottom lines. 

You can use Live Chat customer insights for:

  • Mapping the customer journey and identifying frequent complaints
  • Personalizing your conversations according to different buyer personas
  • Routing chats to the right department or team
  • Feeding CRM and other data management tools, like Customer Data Platform
  • Improving support agents training according to customers needs and response
  • Improving customer service important KPIs, like first response time and average queue time

7) Understanding where customers come from

One of the challenges for online players is to understand how their Customer Care efforts connect to online conversions. 

Some Live Chat tools allow you to connect the dots between chat sessions and the marketing sources that led the customer to the chat, whether it was a campaign, a disclaimer on the website, or a web search.  Some tools allow you to integrate Live Chat to Google Analytics, for instance, and see a bigger picture of what led customers to chat sessions. 

Such data is important to determine if your marketing channels are actually bringing people to your page and how they are connected to your Live Chat. 

8)  Increasing conversion rates

The study by Forrester shows that consumers who use Live Chat are 2.8x more likely to convert to a sale than those who don’t.  By allowing users to get support without moving to other channels, Live Chat makes buying decisions much quicker and can boost conversion rates.

Placing Live Chat across different touchpoints on a website can also be a good idea. Some companies are using Live Chat in their checkout pages, which helps to solve doubts about payments and shipping, for instance, and thus reduces cart abandonment rates.  

9) Avoiding repetitive tasks for customers and support agents

With a Live Chat customer service tool integrated into your CRM or Data Management Platform (DMP), your team can access customer data or notes from previous interactions to assist customers. That way, you save time that could otherwise be wasted in repetitive conversations. 

Actually, 72% of customers expect customer support agents to know their details like buying history and detailed information — without asking for them.

10) Increasing customers Lifetime Value (LTV) 

Having a sustainable repeat customer base is the dream of every brand, right? Research shows that 63% of consumers who used live chat on a website are likely to return to that site. That is why Live Chat is boosting Customer Life Time Value (LTV) among companies that use it, adding value not just to customer service, but to the whole business. 

11) Cross-selling and upselling products 

Around 33% of the money spent online comes from repeat customers and they generally spend 3 times as much as one time shoppers. Once you build a loyal community of shoppers around your brand, you have the chance to offer proactive communication through Live Chat whenever they access your website. 

Your team can start the conversation, suggesting personalized offers and products through the chat according to the customers buying history and interests, leveraging upselling and cross-selling rates. 

12) Increasing customer engagement

With Live Chat, you are likely to see a significant rise in customer engagement. Because Live Chat emulates messaging apps, it makes interactions with brands more fluid and organic. 

Besides, you can add layers of engagement to Live Chat by adopting a few features in it, such as:

  • Co-browsing: Co-browsing, in the context of Live Chat, is when a customer and a support agent browse a page together during a chat session. It delivers a guided experience and it’s a great way to guide customers through form fill-ups and complex applications, for instance. 
  • Vídeo and Voice Chat: Customers sometimes have requests that are complex or take too long to explain by text. With that in mind, some companies are adding Vídeo and Voice Chat to their Live Chat experience. Not only can it help solve queries quicker, but it also makes interactions more dynamic and personal. 

13) Increasing productivity in Customer Care

At last, another triumph of Live Chat is to leverage Customer Care productivity. It reduces the queue time and enables faster resolution of issues, but beyond that, it allows agents to handle multiple chats at the same time. 

As a result, Live Chat can boost important productivity KPIs such as first response time (FRT), average queue time, number of chats answered, and so on. 

14) Human touch

In the era of hyper-automation and chatbots;, a human approach to customer experience might give you extra points in the relationship with customers. Even though automated emails and chatbots; can benefit customer support, users have shown that they want to interact with humans whenever possible.

The 2019 CGS Customer Service Chatbots & Channels Survey found out that 86% of American customers prefer to talk to humans over chatbots. With Live Chat, you can give customers personalized, warm assistance in an easy, user-friendly way. Besides, much like at physical stores, consumers are more likely to buy when they are treated well.

Conclusion

As we have seen, Live Chat has the potential to change Customer Care across many different industries, and your company shouldn’t be left behind. 

Live Chat can optimize many aspects of a 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.

If your organization has not yet incorporated Live Chat into customer service, it’s time to change that.

Arena; has one of the most complete Live Chat solutions on the market, and the best thing is that you can try it for free. 
Click here to access the free trial of our Live Chat and start answering your customers quickly right now!

The Future of Customer Experience

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The first Arena Customer Experience and Data Live Event is happening soon! Arena GO will introduce you to the tools that connect all user data dots to create world-class customer experiences.

The Future of Customer Experience

In the digital era, capturing and owning the right data is the recipe for success. Business solutions must be integrated and condensed in a single touchpoint, instead of being pulverized and lacking coherence. A-list services platforms, such as Arena, understand the importance of guiding strategies throughout the entire customer journey.

This unique 360º view of the user allows the brand to follow the customer along the entire buyer’s journey, from lead acquisition to purchase, until post-sales services. That’s because Arena provides the right tools to create a data driven and highly personalized customer experience.

At Arena GO you will explore our real-time customer experience data platform, discover our tools, and link them to serve relevant, meaningful, and engaging content.

You will be able to create an environment with powerful triggers to achieve your purposes, whether it is a purchase, a new subscription, or whatever else you need.

Learn how to explore real-time possibilities better, and exceed your customers’ expectations. 

At Arena Go, We will walk you through product demos and use cases to give you a glimpse of the future of customer engagement.

Customer Experience

What does your audience want? Why do they want it? How? When? If key-questions like those aren’t guiding you through your CX strategy, the odds of failure are higher.

That is because you are not building a connected experience for your customer. Although, when you count on tools, such as Customer Data Platform (CDP), that provide you high-quality data analysis, you can tailor each stage of the strategy based on real demands and information.

Customer Data Platform (CDP)

A strategy that is not data-oriented can’t really be called “strategy”. 

Having Arena’s Customer Data Platform (CDP), a unified data source that gathers all your touchpoints in a single place, will offer you the most reliable insights to build up a killer strategy for your audience.

Besides gathering the data, Arena’s CDP analyses it and creates organized clusters of customers with matching information. As a result, you will have much more depth of knowledge about your customer. It will feel like you are looking at a picture of them to truly understand their needs.

Live Chat

As we have said before, using real-time solutions is the way to exceed customers’ expectations. So, having Arena’s Live Chat allows you to engage in real-time with the audience while they are browsing on your website. That will enable you to create meaningful approaches, increasing the value of your customer’s experience.

Whether it is a reactive contact (which is when the customer looks up to you when they need something; to get a question answered, to get more information, etc.); or a proactive one (when your team approaches the audience to offer something able to raise the value of that browsing moment) Live Chat can be the most strategic and successful way to do it.

Live Blog

Still following the steps of creating meaningful real-time engagement, Live Blog is the answer companies needed to increase browsing time.

Through Arena’s Live Blog, you can create live coverage of an event, display updated news, use text, audio, video, and extra-sources. All on a single screen!

Your audience won’t need to look up for updates on other pages or keep refreshing the website to check if there is anything new. Also, using Arena’s Live Blog, the audience will be able to simultaneously engage that content on their social media pages without shifting tabs and bouncing off of you.

Rogers Media increased engagement by 64% using Arena

One of the world’s largest communications and media companies, the Canadian Rogers, was looking for a smarter and more efficient way to make their audience engage with their content and, thereafter, increase retention. They needed straightforward ways to integrate other tools used by more than 50 teams. 

Combining the power of the Live Chat, Live Blog, and the Content Wall to cover real-time events, Rogers was able to promote users’ interactions in their multiple domain channels. At Sportsnet, for example, Arena’s Live Blog covered all the matches with exclusive content, and Live Chat enabled fans to engage with passionate discussions during the games.

As a result, Arena helped Rogers to increase their engagement by 64%, and retention by 28%. Besides, their ROI skyrocketed, increasing the numbers of new subscriptions, app downloads, and advertisement revenue.

Globo brings real-time coverage to the next level with the NBA 

The second-largest commercial TV network in the world, Globo TV was a pioneer by adopting two of Arena’s Customer Experience solutions to broadcast the NBA Live finals. Globo was looking for fresh and real-time alternatives to provide relevant and valuable content to their audience.

By using Arena’s Live Blog to cover NBA Live matches play-by-play, with Arena’s Live Chat to create an environment of enriched engagements, Globo had audience peaks of tens of thousands of users simultaneously. 

Arena helped Globo understand the importance of delivering dynamic and interactive content for such an amazing event, during all the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, which was the key to a successful strategy.

Providing multimedia content and an innovative experience paid off well for Globo. Their user engagement had amazing growth, as well as the time the audience spent on their domains and the higher ROI.

Tecmundo covered Amazon Prime Day and boosted engagement

One of Brazil’s most popular technology websites, Tecmundo, combined Arena’s solution to bring massive traffic to their page and increase revenue during Amazon Prime Day. 

Creating a unique environment, what Tecmundo did was pretty much comparable to a real store during Black Friday season: it had customer interactions, conversations, and lots of sales. 

Prime Day is the most profitable day of the year for eCommerce. On that day, Tecmundo created a hot site to cover Amazon’s best deals in real-time using Arena’s Live Blog. To stimulate users’ engagement, they also had Arena’s Live Chat. 

The audience could get the offers while they had ongoing discussions about them, the products, and providing honest customer reviews. 

The complete solution made by Arena to Tecmundo also used the Customer Data Platform (CDP). As a result, they gathered data from different touchpoints, enabling companies to find out where their potential customers were. By doing that, a more assertive approach was made and better deals were closed.

Arena GO

To dive into the possibilities of Arena’s real-time customer experience and data platform, Arena GO is an open event to walk you through the construction of consistent and effective customer engagement strategies.

How AI and Live Chat enhance Black Friday experience

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How will your business compete with the biggest brands in the market now that the busiest time of the year for retailers is here? You need a little help from Live Chat and AI!

To understand why these two are necessary, I think it’s important that we give you some context:

Today, consumers expect their favorite brands to know them almost personally. However, at the same time, they don’t want to feel overwhelmed by random ads popping up while they’re navigating online.

How does one establish that fine line between personalization and data privacy?

That is a big challenge. One that also revolves around the GDPR, a regulation for Customer Data protection. But there is already a solution for brands to keep working with their clients’ information while still following the law.

So, to make your marketing and sales strategies create a real connection with the consumer, you need the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

Especially when dates like Black Friday and Cyber Monday are getting closer, companies need to focus more on targeted shopping experiences to enhance their results. Because of that, every marketing effort needs to be assertive.

Through AI technology, you’ll understand what makes a purchasing decision happen and what leads to an abandoned cart. 

Long story short: it’s all about Customer Experience.

Keep reading to learn all about how to enrich your eCommerce this year by:

  • knowing what is and how to use AI on a Live Chat
  • understanding how AI will improve your customer experience
  • using a Live Chat for Black Friday
  • learning what the role of Customer Data in modernizing your brand’s Black Friday experience

What is AI?

From the popular Siri and Alexa to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence has become quite common these days. It is a computer science branch that develops machines capable of performing tasks that would typically require human intelligence.

For example, talking to a customer through chat support.

Nowadays, companies are using this technology more and more, putting it to different uses. Whether it’s to perform a support service or to automatize personalized recommendations.

Why is this happening?

Simply put: because AI can create valuable knowledge for a business strategy. I mean, not only can it collect and analyze Customer Data, but it can also select what is relevant and what is not. Even more than that, it can actually understand what needs to be done to reach the customer the right way (and at the right time).

Arena AI Concierge for Publishers, Content & Affiliate Commerce is here. Request early access.

How will AI improve customer experience?

One of the biggest issues retailers face today is personalized content and offers to their customers. Usually, the major retail brands out there can do pretty well on this matter. They use systems that allow data collection and content personalization.

However, some of these data come from third-parties. Now, you might be asking, “why is that a problem?” Well, this type of data typically comes from external sources, that is, not directly from the relationship between the brand and the customer.

The most reliable way to work with Customer Data today is to focus on first-party data, the type shared with the brand from the consumers themselves. That is where the opportunity to enhance business results is.

You can easily do this by using a Customer Data Platform. That’s the best guarantee you’ll be working with clear, assertive data. Any guess on how this platform works? Yeah, that’s right, with AI.

Some more examples of how AI can be used to enrich your customer experience:

Online chatbots

There are two types of chatbots, the simple ones and the ones that work through AI. This first type is pre-programmed with questions and answers, so the client can’t really ask a question. They can only click the options available on the chat.

The second type, the one we are indeed interested in, is the AI chatbot. It has some pre-programmed information, but it works mainly through machine learning. That means that each customer attended will make it learn a little bit more.

At first, it may not be so efficient, but it will become a robust customer support tool as it keeps being used. That’s actually why it’s recommended to test it out and use it before making it available to your consumers.

Machine learning

As mentioned right above here, AI is directly associated with the machine learning concept. 

Where do I want to get with this information?

Well, machines don’t just learn information about the customer. They can also learn how to detect the tone of voice and sentiment in their communication. This allows retailers to see how their products impact their audience, what makes them desirable, and what doesn’t.

Besides, they can use this information to create offers and ads that trigger the consumer’s emotional aspect.

Analytics and personalized recommendations

Every bit of information is beneficial for a company, even more so when a system performing through AI does the main job of selecting the most important for you. When AI learns what customers are saying about the brand (both online and in-store), you can analyze that and create new ways to improve the facets that are getting complaints.

In the same way, you can work with marketing and sales teams to refine the method you’re currently using to attract and retain customers.

A CDP, for example, gathers similar customer profiles into a singular place. Then, you can use it to send personalized offers and promotions.

Targeted deals and promotions

So, here it is. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

Targeting is the key to success this year. You need to nail your segmentation groups to achieve the best results you possibly can. Additionally, using connected strategies will make your goals easier to accomplish.

Live Chat is an example of a tool you can use to reach those groups I’ve just mentioned. By being proactive and sending the first message like, “Hey there, do you want to learn how to get 50% off on this product?” results will come quickly.

Of course, it’s necessary to know what the customers like and dislike. What drives them away from hitting the “finish order” button? 

Once you have that answer, your work with targeted deals and promotions will be at its prime.

Better understanding and tracking of consumers

For that reason, artificial intelligence also assists in knowing your consumer. While it gathers customer data, all the information is read, analyzed, and selected to present only what actually has some value to the company.

When AI solutions were being created, aiming to help retailers do better in the sales department, no efforts were saved.

What do I mean with this statement? Well, have you noticed that each topic I’ve included here has completed each other? That is an indication of how AI technology works and how it’s thorough doing its job.

After the technology you’re using to help your brand collect and analyze information from your consumer base, you’ll just need to take that, transform it into a strategy, and define what the next steps and goals to be achieved are.

The live chat experience

I’ve talked about live chat above, and I think it’s interesting to focus our energies on this subject a little longer.

First of all, what is live chat? If you’re still wondering about this, let’s make it clear: it’s a tool similar to chatbots, but the conversation happens with a human agent, not a robot. Although, it can also be programmed with some automatic bot messages — such as, “an attendant will be available in about 2 minutes, hold tight.”

It works for many purposes, but the main reason is sales, followed closely by customer support. It can also be used for marketing, cross-selling, and retargeting; strategies. For most of these, you can be a proactive chatter; that is, you can send the first message instead of waiting for the customer to start a conversation.

When you have this software installed in your eCommerce, you will notice the positive outcomes like increased conversions, qualified lead generation, and more productivity for your customer service team.

How will Live Chat help you during the Black Friday season?

This time of the year is the busiest time for retailers. Not only is it the period for Christmas shopping, but it’s also an opportunity to make big purchases (new notebook, phones, etc.). Many people wait for this season to get the best deals on the products they want.

Because it’s such a hectic period, especially on Black Friday itself, website pages might be congested, or people might need extra help to find what they want or to apply for discounts. Thus, Live Chat is a must-have gadget.

It provides your brand with a combo of better supporting customers and selling more. Overall, it generates the best Customer Experience you could ask for. 

Working with Customer Data

While using a Live Chat, you will need to perform your strategies through Customer Data. Even though the amount of data generated yearly is immense, you may have noticed it’s not so easy to work with it.

That’s because you need to stick to the GDPR rules of data privacy. So, instead of randomly collecting data and using it to reach more people over the internet, you should center your approach to using a trustable data system.

As previously mentioned, the Customer Data Platform is of immense help in this matter. It collects, selects, and stores clear and valuable information from your customer base. Moreover, it breaks data silos, automates marketing workflow, tracks shopping events, and so much more.

The Arena solution

Here at Arena, our AI is built to enhance the results of your business. Do you want to improve your campaign results? Arena is here for you. Do you want to have more engagement? Arena is here for you. Do you want to have a better branding experience? Arena is here for you.

Basically, we can solve any issues you have related to your Customer Experience and make the best of it.

Are you interested? Start by trying our Live Chat platform for free!