Category Archives: Customer Experience

Want more live blog SEO traffic? Use this 2 part strategy

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Improving your SEO with a Live Blog is simple when you have the right process. To help users to attract more organic traffic, we’ve broken the process down into two steps. The first step is technical SEO: configuration and technical matters that make your website highly readable for users. Once that foundation is set up, the second step of the process is to focus on strategy and content. Both activities are critically important because search engine optimization needs to meet the needs of people and work with search engines.

Technical SEO Foundations For Your Live Blog

The following steps to configure your website and live blog so that Google and other search engines can easily and quickly crawl your website. Without this foundation, your website’s live blog is unlikely to be noticed, indexed, and put in front of people searching for information.

Step 1: Install Arena on your website

The way you install Arena depends on your technology. For WordPress websites, use the Arena WordPress plugin. The WordPress plugin handles the technical SEO aspects of your live blog.

For organizations that have a different backend, there are a few options:

Don’t see your CMS or backend technology covered? Contact Arena to discuss your options.

Step 2: Verify your schema is valid

For liveblogs we add the markups based on schema.org specifically for that type of content. You can read more about it here.

Use Google’s free structured data testing tool to verify that your Arena integration is working properly. If the testing tool fails, contact Arena for assistance.

Step 3: Review your website’s overall technical SEO performance.

At this point, you have set up Arena Live Blog. At the same time, your website probably has other technologies, apps, and plugins in place for performance, SEO, marketing, security, and other objectives. It’s important to review your overall website from a technical SEO perspective.

By using an SEO tool like SEMrush, you can review your website for common problems such as:

  • Website speed. Everything being equal, faster websites tend to outperform slower websites. In other words, load time has a direct impact on your organic traffic and search rankings. Make it a priority to periodically test your speed. Use 3rd party tools like Pagespeed Insights.
  • Mobile Devices. Your website’s customer experience on phones and other mobile devices should also be fast and easy to use. A poor mobile website may have a negative impact on SEO.
  • Broken Links. Identifying and fixing broken links is an important way to provide a good user experience and show that your website is well maintained by search engines. 
  • Security. Reducing your security risk by using HTTPS (Hypertext transfer protocol secure) is important. Check to make sure your website and any other key domains use it.
  • Review Keyword Optimization For Key Pages. On larger websites, you might have thousands or even millions of pages! Reviewing all of those pages in detail may not be realistic. Start by reviewing your top 10 or 20 pages by traffic to save time. At a minimum, verify that keywords in title tags are correct. Your keyword usage should also align with your overall content marketing strategy.

Step 4: Set a reminder to review your technical SEO

Achieving SEO success is a work in process. That’s why we recommend setting a reminder to review your technical SEO a year from now. For example, your content and strategy may change to emphasize international products which may require an update to your website structure. Therefore, set a reminder to review your website for technical SEO annually. If you work with SEO consultants or agencies, they may be able to help you optimize your website performance more frequently.

Creating Your Strategy And Content For Your Live Blog

The technical SEO blog set up is the foundation and frame of your home on the Internet. The next phase brings your website to life with engaging content that directly contributes to your organization’s goals. 

Step 1: What do your customers want to know?

Knowing your audience is the foundation of a successful content strategy. When a blog post or other page on your website provides answers to search queries, you’re more likely to attract customers. As customers and search engines start to view your website as a resource for relevant content, reading time will go up and it will become easier to reach your growth goals.

Take some time to review your buyer personas to remind yourself of what your audience wants from your website. For example, are your customers looking for the latest political news? Alternatively, your customers might be looking for ways to connect with other people who share their interests. Your website’s analytics will give you some answers to these questions – look at the pages and resources generating the most engagement and leads. Depending on your audience, you might have hundreds or thousands of keyword ideas at this point.

Your content should align with your business goals. Consider the specific problems you can solve for customers. This might include questions about how your product or service compares to competitors. Or advice to achieve goals. 

Step 2: What is your most successful online content?

The next strategic step to improve your live blog SEO results is to look at your website and determine what’s working right now. Open your analytics app (e.g. Google Analytics) and look at the pages that have the most traffic and are producing the most conversions. You can also study your social media analytics to come up with additional ideas.

Aim to come up with a minimum of three content ideas that have resonated with your market. We’ll build a live blog around those themes next.

Step 3: Develop a Live Blog event concept

It’s time to develop your live blog plan! Many of the most successful live blogs focus on news coverage where there is rapid change. Journalists use live blogs to cover news content like elections, high-profile cases, and conflicts. Companies can use live blogs to cover industry news, product launches, and company events.  

It’s still possible to run a live blog without a connection to a breaking news event, but it may be more difficult to get your audience engaged. Fortunately, the next step will help to pull in your audience.

Step 4: Promote your Live Blog event

You’ve come up with your live blog idea that speaks to your audience and considers your business goals. Now, it is vital to promote your live blog to your audience! For example, if your live blog relates to a company conference, make sure you mention your live blog. 

Step 5: Create your Live Blog 

At last, it’s time to start making posts to your live blog. As your team creates updates, keep a list of SEO keywords and themes on hand. Look for opportunities to weave those concepts into your live blog updates. 

Typically, a live blog will feature multiple updates per day. If your staff authors have limited capacity, consider bringing in a guest author to augment your team’s capabilities. News publishers do this all the time – they bring in special correspondents to enrich their news publishing. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtcEOAxv9jY

Step 6: Measure the SEO results of your Live Blog

In the weeks following your live blog event, open your analytics. It’s time to assess the results – did you attract more visitors? Did any of those visitors convert to your email list, purchase, or take another valuable action? If the answer is yes, start planning your next live blog concept so you can pull in more traffic. If the answer is no, check again in 30 days to allow the search engines to index your live blog content.

Achieving success in SEO takes practice. If your first live blog provided limited results, go back to the fundamentals to improve. For example, did your live blog offer unique insights that couldn’t be found elsewhere? Could you support your team better to use SEO concepts like keyword sets in their updates? Lastly, review your website’s technical setup to ensure that search engines can easily coral your website.

Grow Your Organic Traffic Today With A Live Blog

Content strategy and knowing your audience takes serious work and dedication. Fortunately, Arena is here to lighten the load. You can add a live blog to your website in a matter of minutes. Learn more about our Live Blog solution. You can get the free version today to see how the live blog works. Arena Live Blog supports both live updates and pre-planned content so that your content team wouldn’t get burned out.

Go-To-Market Executive Leaders Team Announcement

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Today, Arena welcomes three executive leaders who will drive our Go To Market strategy forward. I’m pleased to welcome: Wes Matsumoto (VP of Operations), Bradon Rice (VP of Sales), and Erik “Archer” Smith (VP of Marketing). 

400% Growth Sets The Stage For Expansion

Arena has experienced 400% growth in its accounts since 2021. With over 20,000 accounts today, it’s time to shift focus. When we started the company, we focused on building a great product and finding product-market fit, and we found widespread adoption with our product-led growth motion. With our Go To Market team in place, it is time to build on this foundation and move full steam ahead to start scaling Arena.

Bradon, Wes, and Archer have excellent experience driving both sales-led and product-led growth motions, and all have backgrounds related to first-party data and navigating the cookieless world. They make a perfect team to help global companies that need support to grow engagement and build direct relationships with their customers and audience. Arena offers an unrivaled combination of engagement and rich customer data.

I’d like to share a few accomplishments and personal insights about the new leaders joining the Arena executive team. Over the next few quarters, we’ll share further updates as our teams continue to grow. 

Introducing Bradon Rice, VP of Sales

Bradon’s history of wins in technology sales makes him a fantastic candidate to grow sales at Arena.

Before joining Arena, Bradon achieved impressive success in his sales career. He has led sales organizations at Quantcast and Pendo.io. His experience working with publishers, agencies, and brands is exciting.

While at Quantcast, Bradon played a central role in driving the business to unicorn status. Also, Bradon’s success includes collaboration with peers in the services area. He was one of the first salespeople at NextRoll (formerly known as AdRoll), an AdTech startup that reached unicorn status. Bradon knows the engagement and data analytics space well. With that expertise, we’ll be positioned to serve larger companies hungry to improve engagement.

Helping brands grow in an online world dominated by a handful of social media organizations excites Bradon. As we got to know each other during the hiring process, it became clear that Bradon shares my view that Arena will help brands and media properties grow their audience in an online world dominated by walled gardens. 

With Arena on their side, content creators and publishers will have greater control over their destiny. The world will be better by empowering artists, publishers, and brands with audiences eager for their content.

Bradon lives in Marin, California, with his wife and four children. Bradon has completed several endurance races, including Olympic and half Iron Man triathlons. Outside of races and work, Bradon is often busy seeing his children play baseball, lacrosse, and soccer.

Welcoming Wes Matsumoto, VP of Operations

Maintaining high operational excellence is essential for a fast-growing company. With a strong focus on operations, I’m confident we will grow customer retention and loyalty for years. I’m delighted to welcome Wes Matsumoto to lead our operations team.

Wes’ professional background includes industry-leading infrastructure and analytics work at companies like Arm, Genesys, and Treasure Data. Wes combines deep technical expertise with a focus on improving the customer experience. Further, Wes is focused on supporting product-led growth initiatives. Wes is focused on using technology to accelerate the sales process by bringing together marketing, sales, finance, and customer success teams.

With Wes leading operations, I’m confident that Arena will deliver on today’s customer expectations. Arena customers use our product to run important events and engage their audiences. We take that responsibility seriously, which is why we are investing further to take our operations to the next level.

Born and raised in southern California, Wes has also enjoyed hiking in the great outdoors and visiting the Golden State’s beaches. Wes is passionate about designing luxury watches and watching the LA Lakers compete.

Introducing Erik “Archer” Smith, VP of Marketing

Sales and operational success won’t be enough to reach our bottom-line growth goals, though. We must also build a go-to-market strategy that positions Arena effectively at all stages of the funnel. Archer is a highly successful marketing executive who understands our market deeply and has experience building full-funnel marketing programs for our target market. He has written thought pieces on first party data, data privacy, personalization and has spent years “marketing to marketers,” which makes him an ideal fit to empathize with our current and future customers. 

Before joining Arena, Archer contributed to impressive revenue growth at Treasure Data, a leader in the Customer Data Platform space. During his tenure, the company grew from Series A to Series C over several years before being acquired. In addition, Archer has deep experience in communications technology from his time at 8×8, a noted UCaaS firm, and he also brings a breadth of startup experience, both from his time as a founder in his 20s as well as his recent work in early stage venture capital.

When I met Archer, I loved his marketing philosophy. He starts with an emotional, human-level  deep dive into customer personas so we can effectively create messaging that resonates with users, influencers and decision makers. He supports this “emotional” approach with a deep understanding of data, attribution and performance marketing which will help us all make better, data-driven decisions as we optimize our funnel at different stages of growth.

Laying The Groundwork for 2023

With Archer, Wes, and Brandon joining us at Arena, we’re ready to achieve significant results in Q4 and next year. Specifically, I’m excited to make more significant progress in the following areas.

Bradon will build the sales organization as part of a broader strategy to go upmarket. The decline and fall of third-party cookies have caused considerable uncertainty for media and brands. Arena’s platform offers a way forward to brands looking to engage and grow their audiences in the 2020s.

Archer is focused on three marketing areas for the rest of the year. First, aligning Arena’s core messaging with our market. Second, rebuilding the demand generation engine with a focus on attribution. Finally, he will build a lead and attribution forecast by channel.

Wes will help us grow faster by using his systems architecture and process optimization skills. Specifically, his priority is documenting the end-to-end process from lead to sale. Second, he will develop a technology roadmap to accelerate the lead-to-sale journal. Finally, he will collaborate with Brandon and Archer to find gaps in our conversion funnel.

While there is increased economic uncertainty, I’m confident in Arena’s growth potential for two reasons:

  1. Our new team has the background, passion, and experience to help us tackle this market.
  2. The market itself is being forced to shift to first-party data, and Arena’s solutions enable global brands to engage with their audience in a way that makes first-party data feel like a party.

In other words, the team and the time are right. So, as we like to say in Brazil: LET’S BORA!

What is Customer Service | Arena

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Customer service gives companies an edge over their competition. It is one of the most powerful ways to retain customers. At the same time, customer expectations are rising. They expect faster answers to questions and concerns. If they don’t get those answers, you might not get another chance to win that customer’s loyalty.

To help you succeed in today’s competitive environment, use this guide to build and develop your customer service department.

Bookmark this page so you can come back to it as needed to achieve your business goals.

What is Customer Service?

Modern customer service is crucial for a few reasons. First, high-quality customer service directly contributes to customer loyalty. Second, strong customer service keeps your company safe from social media criticism. Third, robust customer service gives you insights into the concerns and needs of customers.

Customer Service Definition

Customer service means answering questions, responding to complaints, helping your customers use your products, and services and creating a memorable customer experience. 

How To Set Your Customer Service Strategy

Your business goals are fundamental to making customer service decisions. For example, a company focused on growing word of mouth referrals and high lifetime customer value should invest heavily in customer happiness. On the other hand, a company with low customer lifetime value may decide to keep its annual support costs to a minimum.

Step 1: Set Your Business Goals For Customer Service

Let’s assume that your business goals include growing your Customer Satisfaction Score. This goal will inform the types of customer service you provide. Through customer feedback and discussions with your team, you may find that customers want longer service hours, faster answers to their questions, and the ability to speak with somebody on the phone when they have a problem. 

Step 2: Choose Your Customer Service Channels

In this situation, your customer service strategy should probably include the following options: phone support and customer service live chat. To manage your operating costs, you might limit phone service to standard business hours and offer live chat until 9 pm. This combination means that you can offer more service to customers.

Step 3: Create Your Customer Service Metrics

In addition, your plan should include objectives for customer service quality. It is not good enough to say that you want to meet customer expectations. To manage customer queries effectively, you need specific numbers and metrics. To get you started, see our guide to the top 10 live chat metrics. These measures will help you to determine if your customer service agents are responding to customers with prompt, high-quality service.

Your metrics should a variety of scenarios including proactive and reactive customer service. Reactive customer service means quickly responding to the customer when they pose a question to you. Proactive customer service means improving your company’s processes to solve common problems. For example, you might notice that customers have problems entering their payment details. Instead of manually solving this problem repeatedly by issuing a service ticket, ask your IT colleagues to develop a lasting solution.

Step 4: Apply Continuous Improvement To Your Customer Service

Few companies have fully optimized their customer service capabilities. There is almost always an opportunity to enhance the quantity and quality of the service you provide to customers. If you are not yet delivering customer delight, use these two strategies. By using these strategies, you will also find it far easier to keep your loyal customers.

1) Offer more customer service 

While basic, it’s important to start here. Start by comparing your typical customer service hours of operation with customer needs. For example, a company located in California may have a significant number of customers on the east coast. In this situation, you may have a mismatch because 9 am to 5 pm Pacific is equivalent to 12 pm to 8 pm Eastern time. As a result, frustrated customers may have to wait all morning for your customer service to open. This means many customers will have a negative experience due to long response times. Adding customer service reps on the east coast (i.e. increasing the quantity of customer service) can solve to solve this problem.

By the way, your approach to customer service should offer multiple options. For example, you might have the following customer support channels: live chat, phone support, and a knowledge base. Some of your customers might prefer to interact with your agents digitally while others might prefer the human interaction available through calls.

2) Improve customer service quality 

When consumers walk away from their customer service interactions with all of their questions answered, it becomes easy to grow relationships with customers. By reducing the number of bad experiences, customer retention will also get easier.

Each company will have its own approach to customer service training. Some organizations emphasize scripts while others offer a comprehensive knowledge base. Equipping customer service professionals with training and knowledge is essential to raising the quality of service. Without a knowledge base and other support documents, customer support agents will struggle to effectively solve problems or answer questions.

The 6 Key Barriers To Delivering Excellent Service

Now that you have established your customer service strategy, channels and metrics, it’s time to face the challenges. Delivering stellar customer service in today’s environment is tough! Customers have been conditioned to expect instant gratification thanks to ecommerce and other advances. 

Consider the following significant customer service challenges and discuss them with your managers and reps. If you find that your company is experiencing multiple difficulties, you’re not alone. Few companies have solved all of these problems. However, making progress on these challenges is well worth the effort because you can gain a competitive advantage.

  1. 33% of customers are most frustrated by having to wait on hold. (HubSpot Research)
  2. 53% of shoppers believe their feedback doesn’t go to anyone who can actually act on it. (Microsoft)
  3. Over 70% of consumers believe that companies should collaborate on their behalf so that they don’t have to repeat information to different representatives. (Zendesk)
  4. For 33% of consumers, the most important aspect of a good customer service experience is getting their issue resolved in a single interaction. (Microsoft)
  5. Over 40% of customers consider having to deal with automated systems that make it hard to reach a human agent a frustrating experience.
  6. Over 40% of customers are frustrated at having to repeat information  multiple times.

Solving these causes of poor customer service is well worth the effort. Research indicates that 82% of customers will spend more money on companies that deliver great online service. 

Preventing these issues requires multiple strategies including equipping your staff with effective training and encouraging collaboration between customer service. Finally, the right customer service technologies are also critical. For example, a customer service agent should be able to enter a customer’s details into a service ticket into a customer relationship management platform. If a customer has to repeat themselves, call back or contract multiple people to solve a problem, that is a sign that your customer service processes are not working well. 

Five Key Traits & Skills Your Customer Service Team Must Have

Human interaction is at the heart of strong customer service. Therefore, getting clear on the specific traits and customer service skills your customer service reps must have is vital. Keep these capabilities and traits in mind when recruiting new customer service representatives, developing training, and coaching your reps.

1) Communication skills

Communication is the key skill of customer service. It starts with active listening and the ability to express yourself are crucial skills in customer service. This skill set is so important that it is worth testing candidates on their communication skills during the recruiting process. 

For even greater results, it is helpful to break down communication skills into different sub-skills like listening, speaking, reading, and writing. For example, a customer service agent may need the ability to answer phone calls in the morning and then switch to answering live chat questions in the afternoon.

Customer service managers should regularly coach their employees on communication skills as well. Our ability to interact effectively with other people, especially when there are problems, is a crucial business skill. To help your reps deliver a consistent experience, make sure your customer service training covers communication skills in detail, especially listening skills.

2) Company and product knowledge

New hires may join your company with strong communication skills. However, few people will have the right level of company and product information when they join your customer service team. Even if your staff has good technical skills, you still need to train them on how to apply your organization’s customer service standards. That means spending significant onboarding time on company and product training.

There are three popular ways to help new customer service representatives acquire product knowledge. Start by developing a structured training program or handbook covering the most common support questions. New representatives should be equipped to answer common questions before they start interacting with customers. After newly hired customer service representatives have a basic understanding of your products and company policies, you can move to the next phase.

The next phase of developing customer service representatives is to use a job shadowing process. This is a simple way to build relationships between staff and encourage knowledge sharing. Pair your new customer support reps with an experienced rep. Let me listen in as the experienced employee works with customers. After a few interactions switch roles (i.e. let the new person interact with the customers and have the experienced person listen in). Through this process, customer service representatives will learn more about how to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Finally, recognize that all customer support teams need access to ongoing training. Your company will continue to come up with new products, company policies, and change processes. Equip employees to thrive through these changes by giving them access to a knowledge base. This is a common resource where customer support staff can ask questions and share solutions to problems.

3) Problem-solving

Problem-solving skills are critically important when serving difficult customers. Extensive training on your company’s processes will help your customer service staff to solve many problems. However, do not expect training to cover every situation. Therefore, it is crucial to recruit employees who have a track record of solving problems with people.

4) Empathy

Logical problem-solving skills will only take you so far in the customer service world. It’s also vital to have empathy – to listen and understand a customer’s feelings. Finding common ground with customers goes a long way to creating a human connection with the customer.

For example, a customer might be angry if an important Christmas present did not arrive on time. Immediately attempting to solve the problem without acknowledging the customer’s feelings is unlikely to be productive. Instead, acknowledge the customer’s feelings and how this delay may have ruined their day. Instead, it is more effective to spend some time listening to the customer and understanding their disappointment. Only after the customer feels heard will they be open to a solution (e.g. a refund, discount on a future purchase, or something else).

5) Patience

Patience is another vital customer service trait that matters. In a customer support role, you will often interact with frustrated customers. Without the patience to calmly listen to the customer’s comments, a customer service representative may anger a customer even more!

It is challenging to develop patience if you do not already have this trait. Therefore, it is especially important to ask about a person’s customer service experiences during the hiring process. For example, if a customer service representative has had jobs in retail, restaurants, or hospitality in the past, there is a good chance that they have developed patience.

How Excellent Customer Service Boosts Sales

Delivering outstanding customer service is also crucial to lifting sales. When your sales reps have a happy customer base, it is far easier to ask for referrals. High customer satisfaction levels also make it easier to upsell customers on additional products and services.

Offering customer service via live chat is especially valuable as a way of lifting sales. After the interaction is complete, spend some time reviewing the most common customer requests. For example, a software company might find that its customers want hands-on implementation support. Offering that package to customers during the sales process can bring new revenue to your company and ease pressure on customer service.

Lifting sales and customer service becomes easier when you give options to customers. Industry research shows that 41% of customers prefer live chat as a way to interact with companies. With Arena Live Chat, you can meet serve customers quickly and efficiently through your website. Sign up for a free trial of Arena.

3 Ways To Grow Revenue With Customer Data

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The Metaverse is an exciting new development for marketers and brands. Creating immersive experiences and mixed reality experiences on metaverse platforms means a greater opportunity to deliver a personalized experience to customers. 

In the short term, the metaverse customer experience will likely require a virtual showroom, a virtual reality headset, and other resources to create a compelling digital realm. Right now, online games are dominating this type of Internet experience but that will change over time. Arena has this great article with tips to set you up for the metaverse.

Three Ways To Grow Revenue With A Metaverse Concept

Before investing significant resources in interactive content and virtual environments, let’s get clear on the business value of the metaverse. This type of virtual space is at an early stage of development but business leaders have already found a few opportunities.

1. Entertainment

Online games and extended reality – remember the Pokemon Go craze of 2016? – are the first way brands can earn revenue from digital reality. For example, gaming technology companies are already working on creating entertainment experiences for online avatars. Gaming isn’t right for every brand, however.

2. Sell Digital Products

Creating a highly entertaining consumer experience isn’t your only option. You can also offer digital products like non-fungible tokens (NFTs). For example, imagine creating exclusive NFTs and other virtual products to celebrate a product launch. 

3. Augment Your Marketing Strategies

Immediate revenue generation may not be your primary focus. Instead, you can use the digital environment to grow customer loyalty or better understand your prospects. Increasingly, concerns over privacy rights mean brands have to work harder to convince brands to share data. Offering a novel experience, even a straightforward virtual mall, is a powerful way to get started.

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In the rest of this post, we’ll focus on the third strategy – using the metaverse to boost your marketing strategies – since that approach is relevant to most brands.

Why Do You Need A CDP In The Metaverse?

There is a lot of hype around metaverse technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, and virtual worlds. Video game and entertainment companies are early adopters of the Metaverse because there is an easy fit with their business model. If you’re not in the entertainment business, the metaverse is still relevant as a way to enhance your marketing.

Driving business results from the metaverse becomes far easier when you use a Customer Data Platform (CDP). There is no simple way to track which customers and prospects engage with metaverse content without it. 

Integrating a metaverse concept with your customer data platform is the best way to go. In this situation, you can track user activity from your website, the metaverse, and elsewhere. You’re able to measure what kind of people find your metaverse content engaging. Most importantly, you get faster feedback on user behavior. That means you can iterate and optimize your metaverse experiences faster and reach your return on investment goals.

Attaining a profitable metaverse experience starts with creating the proper foundation. Before you purchase virtual reality hardware or consulting, set up your customer data platform foundation first.

Preparing For A Profitable Metaverse Experience

Use these tips to get ready for the Metaverse. The first few steps of the plan do not directly involve the Metaverse by design. Jumping into a metaverse experience without first establishing a foundation is a recipe for wasting time and money.

1. Review Your Marketing Goals and Key Performance Indicators

Start with your marketing goals and KPIs in mind before everything else. Your goals will likely include the following:

  • Lead Generation. You may have a defined KPI like the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs), email subscribers, app installs, or free trial sign-ups.
  • Audience Growth and Engagement. For most companies, this goal indirectly contributes to lead generation.
  • Sales. Ecommerce companies may be focused on metrics like average order value and customer lifetime value.

Once you have your goals in mind, let’s look at how your customer data supports those goals.

2. Assess Your Customer Data

There are three dimensions to assess your current customer data: quantity, quality, and utility. By optimizing all of these factors, you can grow faster.

  • Customer Data Quantity. Count the number of customer profiles you have in your databases. Ensure you check all of your tools and apps like email, customer relationship management, and live chat.
  • Customer Data Quality. The quality of your customer data also matters. For example, do you have processes to test the data? Remove duplicates and errors? Without quality control, it won’t be easy to run effective campaigns.
  • Customer Data Utility. This dimension refers to the capacity of your organization to use customer data to achieve your goals. Using Arena CDP, you can see your customer data from multiple sources in a single place, making the data much more valuable.

3. Analyze Your Content and Engagement

Engaging content and ideas are crucial to achieving success in the Metaverse. You can save time in the content creation process by reviewing your current performance. Use the following techniques to identify high-performing content.

  • Website Analytics. Check which content has the most page views and user engagement. Based on these insights, you can come up with ideas for metaverse experiences.
  • Customer Feedback. Survey customers about which content they are most interested in.
  • Social Media Analytics. Measure the number of likes, comments, and other engagement factors on your main social media accounts.

From the above sources, you should be able to come up with at least 5-10 ideas that can inform your approach to the Metaverse.

4. Set Up A Customer Data Platform On Your Website

The next step is to set up a customer data platform on your website. Leveraging Arena Personas makes it easy to create a single customer profile that covers Google Analytics, Facebook, chat, mobile and other platforms. Adding it to your CDP will lay a good foundation for your metaverse marketing program.

5. Add Live Chat To Your Website

Once your customer data platform is fully set up, it is crucial to make your website more interactive. To achieve that goal, consider installing Arena Live Chat. Live Chat is valuable because it makes it easier for customers to ask questions and get answers fast. Most users can install Arena Live Chat in 5-10 minutes.

6. Test Metaverse Content Ideas Through Virtual Events

At this point, you are ready to start your metaverse experience planning process. You have a strong marketing foundation in place. In addition, going through step 3 should have given a few ideas of the kinds of content your customers are most interested in.

Now, start planning a virtual event experience with metaverse technologies. To inspire your approach, seek inspiration from these events in the metaverse.

  • Augmented World Expo USA (June 2022). With 5,000 attendees, this event explores the metaverse from several angles. Look into the event’s speakers to see some of the newest trends.
  • Metaverse Global Congress (June 2022). Based in San Jose, the Congress event covers experiential marketing, monetization, and training topics. The Congress event also includes events aimed at metaverse beginners.

7. Create A Metaverse Pilot Project

Now you are ready to start preparing metaverse pilot project ideas. Most companies find it easier to enter the Metaverse on an event basis. That is the approach that we recommend as well. Designing a metaverse experience that runs for a few hours to a few days is much more manageable.

8. Enhance The Conference Experience.

You may already be planning an event or company conference. In that case, look for ways to bring some of your panels or discussions into the metaverse context.

9. Experiment With Gaming Style Experiences

Gaming companies have the most experience in creating metaverse experiences. Therefore, creating a branded game could be a simple way to get started. For example, a homeware company might work with; The Knights of Unity to create a branded experience. The company has created a virtual world where users can buy, build and decorate homes.

10. Experiment With Exclusive Products

Earlier, we mentioned the example of Gucci selling exclusive products through the Metaverse. If your company has a new product release planned, launching the product through a metaverse world might help to generate additional excitement.

Once you have selected your metaverse idea, you can move ahead to launch the event.

11. Run The Event

Thoroughly planning a metaverse event goes beyond the scope of this post. Instead, we are going to focus on the marketing implications. Before, during, and after the event, users should have multiple opportunities to visit your website, ask for more information and make purchases. All of this activity should be tracked through your customer data platform so that you can follow up afterward.

In addition, your customers may need additional support because the Metaverse is still relatively new. For example, customers may have difficulties using virtual reality hardware. In this case, providing technical support on your website with Arena Live Chat is smart. Otherwise, confused customers may give up and leave your event if they cannot get the support they need.

12. Evaluate The Metaverse Event With Your Customer Data Platform

Finally, take some time to evaluate the metaverse event using your customer data platform. Refer back to the marketing goals and key performance indicators you outlined in step one of this process. If you did not generate new leads or sales, you have achieved other benefits like increased loyalty.

Lay Your Metaverse Foundation With Arena Personas Today

Whether you join the Metaverse today or in a few years, it is vital to act now to prepare for the event. Arena Personas helps you to create data-driven user profiles so that you can fine-tune your CDP towards marketing.

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Live Chat for Live Shopping: 5 Steps To Success

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Live shopping experiences are a growing retail trend. It’s an innovative way to combine entertainment with shopping. Retail Insider reports that footwear company Aldo created a live shopping experience in 2021 with an average viewing time of 12 minutes by featuring a guest stylist and an entertainer. In China, live shopping is a national pastime – two-thirds of Chinese consumers have bought products through a live stream in 2020.

The Missing Ingredient In Live Shopping

The opportunity to deliver significant revenue in a short time makes live shopping appealing. Designing an appealing event takes more than inviting a celebrity guest. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a moment. They are probably joining the live shopping experience on their phone or computer. There’s a good chance that they are a bit distracted by other activities. Making your event more appealing is one way to encourage consumers to pay attention.

The missing ingredient in live shopping is interaction and support. If you miss these capabilities, your live shopping experience is likely to underperform. You stand a good chance of losing sales because customers couldn’t quickly get answers to their questions. Your audience will probably be less loyal if there is no way to interact with other shoppers during the event.

Three Ways Live Chat Makes Live Shopping Events Better

Adding live chat to your live shopping event can grow sales in a few ways.

Before The Live Shopping Event

Before the event, shoppers might have questions about how to access the event. Make it easy for consumers to ask those questions and get signed up. This type of pre-event support is significant when you first start to offer live shopping events. As your audience becomes more familiar with your company’s approach to these events, pre-event live chat may become less significant.

Arena has prepared a complete guide to get you prepared for live events. You will learn how to create a script for your event so that your shoppers stay engaged throughout the event.

During The Live Shopping Event

Consumers will have plenty of questions about products, shopping, pricing, and more during the event. Providing fast answers to those questions through live chat will help you to boost sales. To avoid keeping customers waiting, add multiple support people to your live chat.

Providing accurate, highly detailed product information to customers during the live chat session may help to reduce returns. According to a 2019 survey, 27% of consumers return online purchases because the product was not as described. By addressing questions upfront about your product, you can reduce returns and increase customer satisfaction.

After The Live Shopping Event

After the event, offering live chat as a customer support channel is a smart idea. Customers may ask for tracking codes for shipping, change their shipping address, or other topics. Answering these topics quickly through live chat can help to reassure customers.

Integrating Live Chat For Live Shopping Step By Step

Adding live chat to your live shopping event is easy when you follow these steps.

1. Review the live shopping event goals

Most live shopping events have a specific theme or focus. For example, a clothing company might have seasonal sales (e.g., summer clothes or a back-to-school sale). If your live shopping event includes special promotions like time-limited discounts (e.g., get 20% when you place your order during the live shopping event), your team must understand the details of the promotion.

2. Draft a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document

A sizeable live shopping event may have hundreds or thousands of attendees. At this scale, there is a high risk that your customer support team will make mistakes. Fortunately, there is a way you can make mistakes less likely. Create a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document for your team to reference. Using this document means your support team will offer consistent answers.

To create your FAQ document, consider the following:

  • What are the most common questions your customers currently ask by chat, email, and social media?
  • What are the typical shipping costs and timelines? Remember that shipping timeframes are different during the holiday season. Reminding customers of this fact can reduce disappointment.
  • Where can customers find product photos and other detailed information?
  • Are there discount codes or special links related to the live shopping event? Make a list of these references so your team can answer these questions accurately.
  • Make a list of troubleshooting tips to help customers who might have problems during your live event. For example, you might recommend a specific web browser like Chrome. Ask your IT team to contribute additional technical support insights.

3. Select and install a live chat platform

Your next step is to choose a live chat platform for your event. Arena Live Chat is an excellent choice because it can be installed in minutes and runs directly on your website. It also has built-in moderation tools so you can keep the conversation family-friendly.

4. Schedule a practice using the live chat platform

Running a live shopping event for the first time? In that situation, consider scheduling a practice event with your employees a day or two before the main event. During the practice session, assign some employees to act as customers and some to act as support. This will help people understand the customer experience and become more familiar with your live chat tool.

5. Run the live shopping event with live chat

With your preparation in place, it is time to launch the live shopping event. Ask your support team to join the event a few minutes before the event opens to the public. As the event starts, invite customers to ask questions to your support team if they have any problems. Now your presenters can focus on delivering the live shopping experience instead of answering support questions.

Try Live Chat For Free

Live chat is a powerful way to make your live shopping events more profitable. How many more sales can you achieve by adding live chat? There’s only one way to find out for sure. Sign up for Arena Live Chat, add it to your website, and run a live shopping experience. It takes less than five minutes to install on most websites.

Top 40 Live Chat Benefits You Need to Know

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Arena Live Chat is one of the most powerful live chat platforms on the market. If you’re undecided on whether to try it, you might not know about the benefits.

Top 40 Live Chat Benefits

1) Increase sales

There’s a saying in sales: the confused mind does not buy. When customers have questions or doubts, they are less likely to buy.  With Arena Live Chat on your website, you can make it easy for customers to get answers about potential purchases. By providing quick answers to interested customers, you can earn more sales.

2) Build a community of fans on your website

Customers are probably talking about your brand and products, but those conversations are not happening on your website. Instead, those conversations are probably already happening on social media sites like your company’s Facebook page. When people talk about your brand away from your website, it is tough for you to provide answers and drive conversions.

By adding Arena Live Chat to your website, you can build a thriving community of users in two ways. First, your customers can make friends with each other during group chat sessions. Second, you can provide a welcoming virtual place for customers to come together as a community. If you want to see some solid events, check out how Nubank leveraged Anita’s community engagement for its IPO live event, or how Vans uses Arena Live Chat to aid live DJ music sets in its website.

3) Keep people on your website longer

According to Crazy Egg, the average person only spends 15 seconds on a website before leaving. Yikes! That’s not much time to make a good impression, let alone earn a sale or generate a lead. What if you could encourage users to spend 10 minutes or even an hour on your website happily?

That’s possible when you organize a virtual event with Arena Live Chat. For example, you could invite a social media influencer to present a live stream video session for an hour. During that session, attendees can ask questions through Arena Live Chat. In addition, you will have the opportunity to drive conversions by using the conversion card feature in Arena.

4) Qualify leads for the sales team

Is your sales team too busy with prospects who are not a fit for your products? That’s a problem you can solve by using Arena Live Chat. Invite customers to answer a few simple questions through chat before booking a call with sales.

For example, consider a B2B company that mainly sells to large companies with more than $100 million in revenue. In that case, the sales team shouldn’t spend their time talking to small businesses. You can use Arena Live Chat to qualify leads before they are sent to the sales team.

5) Reduce customer service delays

Forcing customers to wait in long phone queues to get customer service is no longer good enough. In 2020, more than 10% of customers abandoned their calls before being connected to an agent. When a customer gives up on their call, that disappointment hurts your company in two ways. First, you have lost a potential sale today. Second, the frustrated customer may complain to their friends and family.

Offering customer service through Arena Live Chat can help you to minimize customer service delays. For the best results, equip your customer service agents with a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document and other training to help them answer common questions quickly.

6) Create more engaging live events

Offering a live virtual event to your customers is a great way to build loyalty and drive sales. When planning an event, use the virtual events checklist to plan your event properly. At the same time, you also want to allow for some flexibility to adjust your topics based on what your customers are most interested in.

With Arena Live Chat, you can ask poll questions during an event to gather quick feedback. At the end of the event, you could ask attendees to vote on what your next live event should focus on. Acting on this feedback means you can avoid the frustration of offering live events that nobody is interested in attending. Swoogo has already found out that offering Live Chat is a home-run in live events.

7) Boost conversions in live shopping events

Live shopping events are an exciting way to drive increased sales. According to McKinsey, live shopping events may generate between 10-20% of all ecommerce sales by 2026.

During these events, customers are likely to have questions about product size, color, shipping, and much more. To make the most of your live shopping events, provide fast answers through Arena Live Chat.

8) Gain feedback on new product ideas

Are you debating what product to launch next? You could use market research surveys to gather insight on what people might want. That kind of research will yield some valuable insights. However, there is an even better way – get insight directly from customers using Arena Live Chat.

For instance, let’s say that you run a clothing brand and consider offering a line of blankets for winter. Before investing time in manufacturing and marketing, ask your next 100 live chat users if they are interested in a blanket. If the customers are interested, take note of their contact details and follow up with them later if you launch the product.  

9) Improve your chatbots

Adding a chatbot to your website is an excellent way to provide even faster customer service. However, chatbots are only as good as their input. One of the best ways to make your chatbots more effective is to look through your Arena Live Chat transcripts. You’re bound to find new ideas to make your chatbots more effective.

10) Enable flexible remote work

Survey after survey has shown that flexible remote work is popular with employees. According to Forbes, 74% of professional workers expect remote work to become standard in the coming years.

Give your employees the option to provide customer service, event support, and sales through live chat sessions. Giving your employees flexibility about when and where they work can drive productivity and help you retain more trained workers.

11) Add value to your product’s customization options

Many companies offer many different features, options, and customization choices. For example, think of an online jewelry store that lets customers choose different types of metal or engraving. Many customers like the idea of additional choices, but there is a downside. Your customers might get confused about how to use the options.

Use Arena Live Chat as a solution to this problem – let customers ask questions about custom options. With practice, you may even be able to increase the average order value by selling more upgrades.

12) Provide the most up to date information

Supply chain problems, new product launches, and staff turnover are just some of the changes your company might be managing today. With all of these changes, the information on your website might be out of date. For example, you might only be able to offer a few of your products in the extra-large size category.

With Arena Live Chat, you can invite customers to confirm the details of their order before they buy. This is a great way to prevent buyer’s remorse and disappointment.

13) Offer personalized service

Think about the last time you went to an excellent restaurant or hotel. The way staff greeted you and addressed your concerns was probably a big part of the experience. For example, you might have been asked if you were celebrating an occasion. Taking the time to ask a few good questions makes it much easier to offer a memorable customer service experience.

By engaging each customer through Arena Live Chat, you have the opportunity to build a relationship with the customer. Taking the time to listen to their comments and questions means customers are more likely to come back to your company.

14) Improve the quality of your sales training

Hiring and training a new salesperson is one of the best ways to grow a business. Unfortunately, it often takes a lot of trial and error for a junior salesperson to become effective. With the right approach, it’s possible to get sale people working productively quickly. How? Harness the power of live chat.

To improve the quality of your sale training, keep a log of the most common questions that customers ask during your Arena Live Chat sessions. By developing accurate and persuasive answers to those questions, your salespeople can be prepared to answer common concerns and close more sales. 

15) Enhance the post-sales experience

Making a sale today matters, but the long term is even more critical. If you engage customers thoroughly and pay attention to the details, they are more likely to keep buying from you in the future. 

You can enhance the post-sales customer experience with Arena Live Chat. For example, send customers a message inviting them to ask questions when their new product arrives. Nobody likes to look uninformed but accepting an invitation to a live chat session is different.

16) Grow customer service agent productivity

More sales mean more customer service employees, right? Not necessarily! It all depends on how you plan out your customer service program. For example, a company that only offers telephone customer service might hire more staff to keep up with demand.

By offering Arena Live Chat, you can grow customer service productivity without skyrocketing your costs. Why? A customer service person can easily maintain a few chat sessions at the same time. 

17) Encourage employee service specialization

Specialized employees are often able to provide better customer service and close more sales. Yet, encouraging generalist employees to develop a specialty can be difficult. One way to overcome this reluctance is to start small: encourage specialization through chat.

With Arena Live Chat, employees work with different kinds of customers and sales conversations. After a few weeks, they may better understand what kinds of customers and products they find most interesting. In this manner, live chat helps your employees quickly discover their strengths and build expertise.

18) Enhance the quality of your sales coaching

Sales managers have an essential role to play in helping their employees to improve their sales skills. Unfortunately, it is relatively complex for a sales manager to observe their sales reps in action and provide timely feedback. Asking managers to review live chat sessions can help.

When your sales representatives finish a sales chat session, encourage them to send the transcript to their manager for review. By asking an experienced person to review the interaction, it should be easy to find a few ways to improve. For example, the sales manager might encourage their staff to ask more questions early in the chat session to understand customer needs better.

19) Reduce painful interruptions for customers

In today’s digital world, it is difficult to get focused. Once you get down to work, the last thing you want is an unwanted sales call. At the same time, managers know it is essential to make it easy for customers to reach out. 

Adding Arena Live Chat to your website makes it easy for customers to reach out when they have questions. By focusing your effort on people interested in what you have to offer, you can avoid wasting time on disinterested people. 

20) Never lose another sales lead

In benefit 4, you learned that live chat could be an excellent way to qualify sales leads. That is helpful if your business is overwhelmed with prospects. Your situation might be quite different. If you are struggling to meet your revenue goals, you can use live chat to maximize leads instead.

Use Arena Live Chat to engage every website visitor and ask them questions about their needs. In this way, you can make a personalized pitch to every person who comes through your website.

21) Make your website more inviting to customers

Put yourself in the shoes of a prospect visiting a traditional website. It is a passive window shopping experience. You can look at product photos, view videos, and look up order status information. The lack of interaction means customers may become disengaged before finding the right product.

Adding Arena Live Chat to your website makes your website more like a store where employees greet customers as they come in. By making your website more inviting, customers may be more comfortable asking questions. 

22) Discover your customer’s pain points and solve them

Right now, your potential customers have questions, concerns, and worries about doing business with you. They might be worried that your shipping service or return policy isn’t going to work for them. Every business has different customer concerns to face. Ultimately, you can only solve these problems and get more sales if you know those concerns.

You can discover the worries that hold people back from buying by encouraging customers to ask more questions through Arena Live Chat. Once you have those insights, you can update your website to answer those concerns.   

23) Cross-sell related products and accessories

Cross-selling is one of the best ways to increase revenue. Fast food restaurants mastered this technique years ago by offering customers fries, drinks, and other items when they ordered. You can make similar offers to customers once you start a conversation.

For example, let’s say you have an online sports apparel store. A customer might start by asking about running shoes. By offering an Arena Live Chat session on your product page, you can answer questions about shoes and suggest related products (e.g., running shorts and shirts). 

24) Meet customer expectations for interaction

Keeping up with changing customer expectations is essential. For example, most businesses know that they need a modern website and a social media presence today. Today, many customers expect a live chat experience. More than 40% of customers expect live chat on the websites they use, and that number is likely to rise.

To stay competitive with customer demand, install Arena Live Chat on your website. You can get started for free. 

25) Track customer service performance

Do you know if your customer service is performing well? Traditional ways of measuring performance – like measuring how long it takes to answer a phone call – are limited. It is far better to look at the quality of live chat interactions.

Arena Live Chat includes analytics so that you can better understand how well you are answering customer questions over time.

26) Serve international customers

Did you know that more than one-quarter of revenue earned by S&P 500 companies came from outside the US? Your company might have customers around the world! Serving customers in different time zones and languages doesn’t have to be complicated.

Arena Live Chat can run around the clock on your website. For example, you can staff your live chat function with staff in the US and UK to provide customer service in the US and Europe.

27) Reduce product returns

When unhappy customers return products, your profitability is likely to suffer. Unfortunately, product returns are a significant problem for online companies. CNBC reports the returns cost the retail industry over $1 trillion annually. 

To reduce your product return expenses, engage customers in more conversations before they buy. Taking 5 minutes to answer questions before a customer buys pays off right away in higher satisfaction, lower complaints, and fewer returns.

28) Engage B2B or B2C leads

Consumers and corporate customers have different needs. A corporate employee buying laptops might have questions about contracts, support services, and discounts if they order 500 computers. In contrast, a consumer may ask questions like which computer is best for gaming.

If your company sells to multiple markets, use Arena Live Chat to start the conversation. If a customer says they are buying on behalf of a company, you can route the inquiry to the B2B team to address right away.

29) Troubleshoot live shopping

Live shopping events are taking off in popularity for many ecommerce companies. These events blend entertainment and retail into an appealing package. However, many consumers are still learning how to use this technology. When technical problems occur during these events, providing fast support is critical.

In your next live shopping event, use Arena Live Chat as your support platform. If you fail to offer easy-to-access support, customers experiencing technical problems might give up and leave your event.

30) Build trust in your company

Building trust with customers in the online world can be challenging. Customers may be worried about their privacy and security. Others may wonder if your company can deliver. Facing these concerns directly through a conversation is one of the best approaches.

You can use Arena Live Chat to build trust with your potential customers through multiple interactions. Taking the time to answer questions today through live chat means you can make a positive impression.

31) Improve webinars and virtual classes with feedback

Delivering a webinar or virtual class is a powerful way to equip people with new knowledge. Yet, there are downsides to virtual education and training. It is difficult for the teacher to connect with their audience. Without that connection, students may become disengaged.

With the polls feature of Arena Live Chat, you can make your online learning more engaging. For instance, you can follow up on an assignment with a poll and determine which topics students want to cover in a review. In this way, a teacher can quickly adapt a virtual class to suit student needs.

32) Make asking questions embarrassment free

Asking questions is the key to unlocking sales and connecting with customers. However, some people are reluctant to raise their hands and ask a question. Why? Nobody enjoys looking uninformed, especially in front of an audience, like a live virtual event.

Using the direct message (DM) feature of Arena Live Chat solves this problem. Event attendees can ask questions privately without fear of embarrassment by sending a DM to the event host. 

33) Run engaging family-friendly virtual events

Offering a virtual event suitable for the whole family is challenging. For example, a sports broadcaster might want to encourage a broad audience to view online coverage and participate in online coverage. A public virtual event carries a risk – some people might attempt to disrupt the event with profanity or spam comments. Failing to address this kind of disruption quickly can make the event hosts look incompetent.

Arena Live Chat comes with moderation tools that make it simple to stop profanity automatically. In addition, you can quietly remove disruptive users from the live chat event. These features make it much easier to keep your virtual events engaging and family-friendly.

34) Support advanced marketing campaigns

The changing landscape of digital marketing means companies have to change how they engage with customers. Recent changes by Apple and Google are making traditional digital marketing methods less effective.

One solution to these challenges lies in leveraging the Arena customer data platform and live chat together. For instance, you can identify patterns between customer interests (e.g., sports, business, lifestyle) as expressed in website activity and purchases. Understanding these links can help you to create more relevant marketing campaigns.

35) Quickly improve website engagement

In the online world, high engagement is crucial. Low engagement can cause your conversions to fall. There are also signs that Google and other search engines consider user engagement from a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective. Unfortunately, some ways to increase engagement are brutal, like redesigning an entire website! 

On the other hand, you can install Arena Live Chat on your website in less than 10 minutes. It is one of the fastest ways to make your website more engaging.

36) Improve question & answer (Q&A) sessions

In live shopping events, webinars, and other live events, you might decide to offer a dedicated Q&A session at the end of the event. In larger events with dozens or hundreds of participants, keeping up with the questions is tricky, especially if questions are mixed with other comments in the chat window.

Arena Live Chat makes Q&A sessions easy to manage by organizing all live chat questions in a dedicated Q&A area. Event moderators can then decide which questions to answer.

37) Boost engagement with chat channels

In a conference, participants can go to panels and sessions that specifically relate to their interests. With virtual live events, it can be more challenging to engage each niche interest. Using custom chat channels is one way to solve this engagement challenge.

Arena Live Chat offers dedicated channels for your live chat sessions. For example, you could have one channel for customers, one for technical support, and one for future event suggestions.

38) Keep users engaged with social profiles

Nobody likes to feel like a number in the online world. Unfortunately, some chat tools give users generic usernames and numbers. It doesn’t have to be that way.

When users sign up on Arena Live Chat, they can create custom user profiles with avatars to make them more personal.

39) Avoid live chat reply confusion

With dozens, hundreds, or thousands of live chat participants, it is easy to get confused. One friend might send a question in the chat room to somebody else only to obscure that question by the flood of chat comments.

Arena Live Chat offers reply features so that user replies are kept together with the main message. That’s valuable because user conversations are never lost in the noise as a result.

40) Drive conversions with conversion cards

Organizing a virtual event takes significant time and effort. You might spend hours writing a virtual event script, inviting guest speakers, and promoting the event. Offering interesting content matters, but you also have to watch business results like conversions and purchases. 

Arena Live Chat helps you achieve goals like lead generation and purchases through conversion cards. You can use these cards at several points during your live chat session to draw attention to your offers. By using a few conversion cards at every event, you’ll never have to struggle to prove the ROI of your live chat events.

Get Started Today For Free

Arena Live Chat is simple to install – most customers install it on their websites in less than 10 minutes. Not sure if it is suitable for your company? You can try Arena Live Chat for free.

Enhance the E-learning Experience with Live Chat

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All eyes are on e-learning right now. Don’t be just another platform: improve your customers’ experience using Live Chat. Find out how you can do it.

Technological expansions stimulate the market and companies to put out their products and services. But when it comes to education and e-learning platforms, is just enough technology to reach revenue and success?

We can tell you it is not! But to answer, you need to achieve relevance, improve your services, and make money. We will present to you how Live Chat is the best solution you need right now, especially during this global scenario.

E-learning market evolution

Convenience, feasibility, and self-management are the main reasons digital studies have grown in the past years. Stiff methodologies and schedules complicate this generation’s ability to bend and adapt.

Personal routines do not follow a 9 to 5 structure anymore. Your audience demands options to build their agenda and keep on improving their technical skills and crave for better opportunities.

And that is the combination to birth e-learning: cyberspace that mixes distance, education, and digital resources. Through it, there are no more physical or geographical borders. Anytime and anywhere, the e-learner can join a digital classroom to study.

A fundamental factor in keeping e-learning fresh and updated is human interaction. Here is how you can get it!

Humanize with Live Chat

Live Chat is an add-on to a web page that allows users to interact with each other. Since an e-learning environment requires tutors, teachers, and students, Live Chat can offer multiple resources to establish more excellent communication.

Through text, voice, and video messages, users can create an enriched learning space. They can also share different types of file formats on chat.

Before the pandemic, e-learners could apply their new abilities at workplaces, exchange information with coworkers, engage at workshops, or face-to-face classes. Now, those options are limited.

Having a Live Chat and all of its features and possibilities is your best opportunity to keep on providing relevant experience to the users.

Pandemic times leading to new solutions

But now, amongst every other particularity, a student has in life to choose a more flexible way to learn, there is also COVID-19 and its repercussions. A healthy social interaction is now a must-have aspect that people consider in this “new normal” scenario.

Learning environments have softly evolved over time. Even though there were a few alterations here and there, its structure has remained the same, like the classroom space, for example.

Due to the pandemic, education’s core has been forced to remodel its shape, and e-learning is the only thing able to lead that change successfully.

Two groups of people you should pay close attention to during this are:

  1. The first group is the current customers. E-learners, they are already studying and should not feel that the absence of social interaction can compromise their learning process. These can not wait too long for better solutions to arrive. They want –– and need! –– them right now.
  2. And the other group are possible new customers. There are multiple unexplored niches to work with, like those who already know e-learning platforms and got caught up by your unique services, and those who do not know e-learning yet but saw in your company a reliable, complete, and humanized platform to kick off.

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More than ever, there is no place for halfway, lack of quality, or uncertain results.

Companies need to create this empathic and respectful environment to show that they are aware of the new challenges. But beyond that, present the best solution to keep the highest service and customer satisfaction on top. That’s called Customer Experience.

Improving experience through technology

The economic crisis mostly leads to desperate measures for many. Understandably, companies must do whatever they can to stay in the game, but when business actions arise from desperation and zero strategy planning, the result might be a failure.

That kind of outline calls for proper assistance, and because of the variety of possibilities, technology becomes the most capable one. Properly used, this powerful resource can meet the needs within the context of not having personal interactions on e-learning spaces.

Live Chat, as we mentioned before, integrates human management, relevant engagement, and a high level of support for the students in a single place. 

Following the users through the learning processes creates better engagements. The platform can compensate for the lack of physical relations with guidance programs, such as making a tutor or teacher available simultaneous to studying time on the same web page.

Live Chat bringing real-time interaction

Having a Live Chat on your e-learning platform can promote a sense of community. With a professional content moderator, students can go through paths that will enhance their experience. If you like a good benchmarking, you should check out how Pecege Institute is leveraging Live Chat to enhance the digital learning experience.

As a result, your brand’s status of authority gets stronger, customers can have better experiences, and they may consider making other purchases. They may also put relevant referrals out there since your services amazed them throughout the entire process.

Real-time engagements create live environments, with a sense of fresh curation and professional domain. It means the content is updated continuously and new, systematically watched by the teachers, tutors, and the platform itself.

Have a Live Chat solution now For Free

A well-managed Live Chat solution for e-learning spaces can aggregate more value to your services. You can increase revenue by showing your customers how much they can earn by studying your platform, highlighting the teacher’s role, and adding better experiences during the course.

You can also capture new customer’s attention, letting them know how exclusive, personalized, and complete your products are. Not to mention all the great references made by satisfied users.

Arena can give you a Live Chat solution right now. It will be fully operating within minutes on your platform.

What is live stream eCommerce or Live Shopping

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Live stream ecommerce is the next big opportunity for ecommerce companies to drive more revenue. Live stream ecommerce is a way to transform online shopping into an entertaining event. Typically, a live stream ecommerce event has a specific (e.g., “new fashion”) and takes place live. It is appealing to customers because it lets them see the products in detail. In some cases, ecommerce brands are working with influencers to make their events more entertaining.

What Companies Are Using Live Stream Ecommerce?

Live stream ecommerce is an emerging way to engage customers that several companies are already using effectively.

  • Facebook. In May 2021, Facebook announced “Live Shopping Fridays,” a series of events featuring Clinique, Abercrombie & Fitch, ZOX, and Sephora products. Each event focused on a different theme: Glow Up, New Fashion Finds, and Self Care Spotlight. The live ecommerce event was each scheduled for 90 minutes.
  • Walmart. In December 2020, the retail giant partnered with TikTok creators to promote shopping. While Walmart did not disclose how many sales it earned, it grew its TikTok audience by 25%, according to TechCrunch.

So far, fashion and beauty brands have been the leaders in live stream ecommerce. It is only a matter of time before other ecommerce companies find a way to leverage this opportunity to grow.

Why Live Stream Ecommerce Matters

Offering a live stream ecommerce experience to customers is crucial because it creates an experience. Historically, ecommerce companies have struggled to create memorable events. Sure, ecommerce companies create annual sales events like Amazon Prime Day. However, discount-driven promotions have their limitations. You might not want to train your customers to expect a discount if you offer premium quality products.

By offering a live stream ecommerce event to customers, you can compete against in-person shopping more effectively. When a shopper goes to a store in person, they can touch and feel products. They can see the quality of the materials, colors, and more. In the ecommerce world, it is more challenging to encourage customers to look at products so deeply.

Offering a live stream ecommerce event is a way to make shopping at your ecommerce more exciting.

Tips for planning your first live stream ecommerce event

1. Choose a focus for the event

To make a live stream ecommerce event appealing to customers, it has to be specific. Here are a few ideas you can use to start your brainstorming process.

  • Emphasize new products. Novelty is a tried and tested way to appeal to customers. Ask yourself: what new products or styles can we highlight?
  • Seasonal trends. Look for seasonal opportunities to inform your event. A lingerie ecommerce company might schedule an event in early February to align with Valentine’s Day. An ecommerce brand aimed at school-age children might offer a “back to school” event in late August.
  • Limited edition theme. Your company might have “limited editions” or premium versions of products. Consider promoting these events in your live stream event.

2. Look for influencers to invite

A live stream ecommerce event typically features an influencer. There are a few options to choose an influencer for the event. If your company founder has a large personal following on social media, you might be able to feature them in the event. In other cases, inviting an outside influencer to your campaign is a smart idea.

There are several platforms you can use to find influencers relevant to your campaign. Use the following tools to search for influencers.

  •  Followerwonk. Looking for Twitter influencers? Followerwonk can speed up the process of searching for Twitter users with a significant following.
  •  Klear. This tool makes it easy to search for influencers by audience size, skills, location, audience gender, and other factors.
  • TikTok Creator Marketplace. Operated by TikTok, the marketplace makes it easier to search for content creators with a significant audience on TikTok.

Once you find a relevant influencer, negotiate the details of the event. For example, you might offer a fee to the influencer and a percentage of sales linked to the event.

3. Promote the event

Promoting the live stream ecommerce event is essential. Start by promoting the event to your audience of past customers and followers on social media. If you are working with an influencer, ask them to drive attendance to the event. As a rule of thumb, give yourself at least two weeks to promote the event.

4. Offer something unique to live stream event attendees

Your customers are busy and might not immediately see the appeal of a live stream ecommerce event. Make your event exciting by offering something unique that they cannot get anywhere else. You might decide to offer a discount code valid for 24 hours to those who attend the event. Alternately, you might offer customized products (e.g., get your name printed on the product) to people who attend the event.

Ask your influencer for ideas to make the event appealing as well. They already know what types of content works with their audience. For instance, they might commit to releasing a unique new video to people who attend the live stream event.

5. Use live chat in the event

There are two ways live chat makes a live stream ecommerce event more exciting.

  • Encourage Community. Offering live chat makes it easy for customers to interact with each other and ask questions. Your guest influencer can answer questions during the event and change their approach. For example, guests might ask to see the product from different angles or see a product in a close-up. Responding to these requests during the event makes it more engaging.
  • Boost Sales By Answering Questions. As customers watch the event, they are probably going to have plenty of questions. For example, customers might ask about clothing sizes and shipping times. Make it easy for customers to ask these questions in a live chat. Every customer question you answer increases the chances of a sale.

6. Choose your live stream ecommerce platform

There are two ways to run a live stream ecommerce platform: run it on your website or use a third-party platform. Each approach has its pros and cons.

  • Using Your Website. You can use your website as a live stream ecommerce platform. For example, stream video from your website using YouTube or other tools and enhance the experience with Arena Live Chat. This approach is an excellent choice because potential customers are less likely to get distracted during the event. The disadvantage is that it takes some time to set up. In addition, you should also double-check that your website can handle a significant increase in web traffic during the event.
  • Using A Third Party Website. The other option is to use a third-party website like Shoply, Facebook or TikTok. This option is a good choice if your website is not ready to handle a large amount of traffic. Shoply leverages Arena’s API to offer a great ecommerce customer experience. The downsides in choosing social network platforms are significant – live stream event attendees might get distracted by other updates on the platform and drift away from your event.

Get Ready For Your First Live Stream Ecommerce Event

Planning a successful live stream ecommerce event takes some time and effort to organize. Fortunately, adding live chat to your website is fast and straightforward. Sign up for a free trial of Arena Live Chat. Once you have a live chat in place, you will be on your way to planning your first live ecommerce event.

Customer Engagement Strategy Using Live Chat

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Today customer’s expectations from a brand have risen from mere marketing of freebies and discounts to a brand’s ability to relate with the “human element”. To earn loyalty, customers want the brands to interact with them and prove their worth in this cutting-edge consumer market.

What is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement in simple words is the relationship between a customer and a business. To ensure customer engagement, companies work towards creating a relationship with their customers to improve brand awareness and brand loyalty.

Customer engagement is crucial to a brand’s interaction with its customers. A highly engaged customer will be more aware of the brand’s vision and mission, and will likely become part of the loyal customer base.

What is a Customer Engagement Strategy?

Customer engagement strategy is defined as the tools businesses use to build strong and engaging relationships with customers. It also involves anticipating customer’s needs, solving their problems and helping them achieve their goals.

An effective customer engagement strategy builds long lasting impressions in the minds of consumers. It also increases awareness of the brand and improves customer engagement. 

The key to a strong customer engagement strategy is to introduce technologies that favor user interaction, user retention on the page, sales, and user participation with the content.

Some of the famous brands like Coca Cola, Starbucks, Rogers Media, Super Bowl, and Apple are renowned around the world for their inspiring and effective customer engagement strategies. Let us take a look at a few of them.

1. Coca Cola

When it comes to marketing, Coca Cola is usually ahead of the game. In 2012, Coca Cola launched a marketing campaign called “ShareACoke” where the company’s logo was replaced by some of the most common names of people in the US. Adding a name to the bottle spoke to the consumers on a personal level and thus became a powerful marketing strategy. 

Within the first year, people shared more than 500,000 photos via the #ShareaCoke hashtag. The campaign became consumer driven where highly active users on social media channels began sharing their pictures with friends and family. 

Thus consumers were acting as creative directors for the brand itself which led to a high engagement on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2. Starbucks

Starbucks sets a great example of establishing strong customer engagement strategies every year. “My Starbucks Rewards” program was launched in 2009 which allowed Mobile Order & Pay feature where customers would order ahead of time and pick up their orders in the store. This allowed them to cut lines and order through convenience of their phone.

In addition, the rewards program also allowed consumers to check their balance, make use of their star points and earn free coffee refills or food items.

Starbucks doesn’t just limit its marketing projects to social media but also to a wider digital audience. In one of the campaigns called Starbucks’ Love Project, the company collaborated with several artists such as Dave Matthews, John Legend and U2 to create “All You Need Is Love CD.” 

In participating Starbucks locations, customers would get a free CD with a purchase of $15 or more. They were then invited to upload their video to become part of a massive sing-along. Thousands came on board!

3. Superbowl

We are all familiar with Superbowl — the iconic game that generates one of the biggest days for advertising in the US! Companies can learn amazing lessons from the way Superbowl advertisers harness the power of customer engagement in their campaigns. Many organizations even utilize the pre-gaming screen time to start advertising their products and services ahead of the game. 

For example Uber’s pre-gaming marketing featured #UberPuppyBowl; hashtag and promoted the chance for select Uber offices to enjoy a 15 minute cuddle huddle with puppies in select Uber’s offices.

Today with the rise of social media, organizations are leveraging the power of both the mainstream as well as social media platforms to advertise their products. During last year’s Superbowl, Avocados From Mexico’s advertisement featuring Molly Ringwald didn’t receive as much traction as they were expecting.

However, the brand took to Twitter’s live-tweeting responses for the rest of their ads and the halftime show, garnering more attention than their original ad!

Creating a Compelling Customer Engagement Strategy Using Live Chat

User interaction, retention and participation are key elements in creating a compelling customer engagement strategy. This helps improve sales and builds long lasting impressions. 

One of the tools that can help you create a compelling engagement strategy is the live chat feature. Companies are now utilizing live chats during webinars, online conferences, live events and for free ecommerces. 

A live chat feature improves customer experience, builds stronger branding, and helps you gain a competitive edge over your competition. 

Whether you work with small or large businesses, in 2021, you absolutely need a Live Chat tool as part of your marketing strategy. Although live chat feature has been around for a while, companies are now proactively using it on their websites and social media platforms.

Here are some of the strategies you can use to improve your customer engagement through live chat features.

Create Positive Brand Perception

Brands all around the world strive to create a positive perception for their products and services. Live chat can be a useful tool to help you achieve that perception through real-time user engagement. During your brand’s live event broadcasts such as webinars, fashion shows, conferences, concerts, or stand up comedies, you can use the live chat feature for your viewers to engage not just with the content but also with one another in real-time.

Live chat provides you more opportunities to make meaningful connections, which will further promote your brand perception and awareness. There is a power in the ripple effect that a good word of mouth can cause!

Improve KPIs

When working with live chat tools, companies need to understand how to improve their KPIs to ensure positive results. Technologies such as live chat tools can be forefront in creating real-time engagement for your brand. 

When customers interact with an event on your website, they might pose questions about a product launch or may generally be interested in knowing more about your brand. Ensuring the interaction doesn’t stay one-sided, you can take that time to answer the questions for the viewers.  

In addition, you can improve your KPIs in other productive ways too. For example if many customers are asking the same questions over and over again, it is a better idea to include an FAQ page on your website.  

Create an Online Community

Live Chat feature is not only about consumer and business interaction, it is also about consumer to consumer interaction. During live webinars and online events, you can set up a live chat where the viewers can interact with each other. A great example of live chat interaction can be seen on YouTube live videos where viewers communicate with one another by every second.

Other companies like Daily Telegraph, City Gates, CA, Bridgend College, Fox Sports have been using the live chat feature creatively on their social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Provide a Personalized User Experience

When interacting with a brand, customers look for a personalized experience that can address their demands. A personalized real-time experience increases customer satisfaction and improves the perceived value of your brand.

Rather than treating your customer as a transaction or another name on your email list, approach them as human beings who have goals, interests, and preferences. Through a carefully tailored experience, you can help them achieve those goals.

Increase Your Revenue

According to an eMarketer survey on the attitude towards US online buyers who used live chat showed that 63% users were more likely to visit a site again. And 62% of the respondents who engaged through a live chat feature said that they were more likely to purchase from the site again.

Having a live chat feature on your website can have a significant impact on your sales. Using a chat tool during a purchase can influence your customer’s decision to continue with the purchase.

Conclusion

Companies all around the world use multiple tools to improve their online visibility, user experience and sales. Many argue that a positive customer experience is pivotal to success of a business and we couldn’t agree more.

According to a study by AMA Access on how B2B marketers are leveraging live chat to increase their sales, the research found that throughout the customer journey, companies can use live chat to improve: 

  • Marketing awareness by 29%
  • Conversion to create sales suspects by 39%
  • Post-sales customer support and engagement by 39%

Try our freemium Live Chat tool Arena to stay on the top of your marketing game, implement effective customer engagement strategies and produce happy customers!

All You Need to Know About Content Moderation

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If you are about to, or now managing an online business platform, you might have known already or have been researching about the world of content moderation. Also, you must have heard this popular opinion – the online platform kind of business is not that easy. 

Well, yes sure! It is not, but if you have the right strategy to operate it, alongside ways to overcome possible problems related to it, as well as the knowledge of some other factors that should be avoided and considered in order to get that fast and efficient result, then you are good to go. But if you don’t have any, don’t worry! We got you covered! 

What is content moderation?

There are millions of content online, but not all of them are effective nor meet readers’ expectations. This is where content moderation comes into place. In simple words, content moderation is the process of screening, approving, or removing user-generated content based on some guidelines in order to establish clients’ trust, and maintain compliance with regulatory requirements.

There are lots of reasons why content moderation is important. First, it screens content that is submitted by a certain user to know if the posting guidelines are being violated. Second, it is an effective way for a business to keep a positive reputation which guarantees a decent relationship with clients, thus advances higher accommodation and satisfaction among users and clients.

What is human moderation?

Human moderation or manual moderation is another type of moderating content, however, the one behind it of course – human. Human moderators manually monitor and review clients’ or users’ posts on a particular online platform. 

Moreover, human moderators also ensure the protection of all users or clients from scammers, anomalies, or any type of harassment that occurs in social media. They are also responsible for maintaining the quality and standards of a particular social media platform.

What is automated moderation?

Automated moderation is an automatic process of moderation that automatically determines any-user generated content. In this kind of moderation, contents that are being rejected or published are done based on the pre-defined guidelines by a highly intelligent computer bot that closely monitors the system 24/7.

Automated moderation resolves any physical or psychological stress from human moderators as it can minimize the response time, improve the quality of service, save time, and increase cost quality outcomes.

How important is content moderation in enhancing customer experience?

Utilizing social media platforms is an effective way to connect with customers regarding a particular business you have to offer. With social media, you can create customer service and build strong customer relationships without having to meet them in person. 

In line with this, effective and efficient content moderation can help you know your customers better, engage with them in real-time, establish customer loyalty with your brand, and achieve user retention as it offers good credibility of the event.

Nowadays, every brand is always active on almost every social media platform. In line with this, content moderation is of great help in monitoring social media accounts, comments, images, and videos, as well as categorizing and indexing business offerings.

Content moderation can also help you with online reputation management. Your online reputation is very important for the success of your business. As you might have known, whatever people post or publish online regarding your business, true or not, all have a significant influence on your business reputation. 

And, content moderation can help you fight against harmful content, address clients’ criticisms, and most importantly, feature important and helpful feedback from customers.

Content Moderation in Building Relationships with Customers

As have mentioned above, content moderation can help you build strong connections with your clients or customers. You can use content moderation to make your customers feel satisfied with your services offered by personalizing your responses, as well as keeping them in the loop with any timely news like product updates. With this, the strong relationships you have with them can help you achieve repeat and referral business.

What are the things you should keep in mind when moderating content?

There is a wide range of factors to consider with content moderation. This is very important in order for you to achieve the content that best suits your business. These factors also depend on what platform or site you are using. However, regardless of what site, platform, or business you are having, these are the top 7 things you should keep in mind, or better – do!

  1. Select the best content for your business

There is no one else in the world who knows your business better than you. You know best what your products and services are as well as your users or customers. So, you can use these to help you create the most outstanding content out there that best meets their expectations.

  1. Choose the best content moderation to utilize for your content.

With the best content you have, choose the best content moderation method to utilize. Aim to stand out amongst others. You can do this by using the best content moderation method that is not only suitable for your content and business but also fit your platform’s specific needs.

  1. Always make your content personalized to your customers’ needs.

When your customers feel special, they usually go back to you over and over again. With this, it will drive your repeat and referral business, which often results in more positive business outcomes. That is why, when creating content, make it as personalized as possible, moderate it according to the needs of your customers as this often results in increasing engagement which will lead to more loyalty and conversion rates.

  1. Moderate all your content consistently

Whether you are running your online business via Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms or sites, it is very important for you to make appealing and pleasant content that will surely attract new customers or retain your existing customers. This can be done by moderating your content in a consistent manner. This means that you have to be very meticulous in choosing the right format, images, videos, and other visual factors that will be incorporated into your content.

  1. Establish concise rules and regulations

Establishing concise rules and regulations is one of the most important things to do when moderating content. Therefore, these rules and regulations should be clear for all who are involved in moderating your content, be it from the data analyst to the human or automated moderators.

  1. Utilize all your resources

Every content moderation tool and equipment matters, right? This is why you need to utilize them in the best possible manner. Sometimes, you might see yourself overwhelmed with the available resources in the market, some are paid, some are free.

In this case, it’s very important for you to consider these resources carefully, prioritize the ones that offer innovation and growth as these often boost success to your online platform business.

  1. Quality over quality

Sometimes you have a lot of ideas, and you want all of these to be utilized. This often happens to almost everybody, but always remember that quality is more important than quantity. Quality content builds your customers’ trust, resulting in acquiring more revenue and success for your online business platform.

Customer Interaction

Your interactions with your customers are vital to your business success. Customer experience can make or break your business. That is why you as the business owner have to make these interactions as smooth and flawless and possible. 

There are various ways for you to engage with your customers, you can do this through Live Chats, Live Blogs, posts, tweets, comments, etc. Regardless, when interacting with them, you should be timely when responding to their inquiries, make it personalized, maintain positive emotions when commenting, reposting, and retweeting, and most importantly, always include available links for FAQs in your content.

Conclusion

Nowadays, the online platform business is very competitive. Therefore, you should moderate your content for you to stand out amongst the others. Always think ahead, know the strengths and weaknesses of your business, and engage with your customers frequently in order for you to be able to know them well, alongside their weak points and needs. Try also to utilize the tips mentioned above. 

Additionally, you can also utilize Arena when engaging with your customers through Live Chat, Live Blog, and other Customer Engagement ideas. Arena is easy to integrate, perfect for conversations, community chat, as well as ratings and reviews.

Are you ready to drive more revenue to your business? 

Now, try the Arena for free!