Outsourcing live chat – an investment or a cost item?

For a company, live chat is a sales tool that offers many more benefits than just support and promotion of the company. You will be amazed to know that over 42% of customers prefers communicating via live chat when shopping online. Online businesses recognize the value or live website support; that is why most entrepreneurs want it on their e-commerce website. Before you place it on your website, make sure you know that live chat is not just about software, but also about live chat operators. It sounds simple, but sometimes companies do not have the time, money, resources, and expertise to implement effective live chat on the website, and small errors can turn the live chat experience into a disaster.

Outsourcing appears to be the solution, because you can easily get a team of live chat experts that can be trained to function as an extension of your existing customer service team. One might argue that outsourced live chat operators are a major cost item for the business, meaning an entrepreneur should not consider this option, but experts in business operations say that it is a cost item with a return, so it should be considered an investment that provides an immediate and attractive ROI (Return on Investment). Let’s take a look at the return that outsourcing live chat can deliver.

Inexperienced Chat Operators = Unsatisfied Customers

This is the main reason to outsource your live chat service to experienced live chat operators. Because only dedicated and experiences live chat operators can communicate with customers better, you will not be able to efficiently answer questions and your customers may be unhappy and unsatisfied. When you are working with people in real-time, you should know how to handle their expectations. If a customer clicks a live chat icon and receives a message that nobody is available, they will probably leave your website and go elsewhere. This is also enough to ruin a repetition purchase.

Even worse is when chat operators are available, but nobody responds to the customer’s question. Customers want live chat operators to be available when they need them, and not just during regular office hours. Your customer service employees are probably inexperienced in this and cannot be in the office 24 hours a day to handle questions via the chat. The best solution is to outsource live chat to a different company. Because outsourced operators such as those of Outsourcechats.com, a live chat service provider, would be available 24 hours a day.

Outsourcing is cost-effective

In most cases, outsourcing is cost-effective. For many online businesses, it is expensive to hire and train an in-house team of website live support operators. This is not just due to the salary and other wage costs, but also recruitment costs, training costs, and the physical infrastructure needed to accommodate them. In addition, there is still no full coverage when operators take days off or fall ill. By outsourcing live chat, entrepreneurs can avoid all costs involved in recruiting, training, and managing live chat operators.

You are still in control, but everything will run smoothly. The only thing you need to do is pay them and ask for results.

These two clues clearly indicate that outsourced live chat should not be considered a cost item, but an investment with immediate results in the form of a high ROI. Through the use of live chat, you will profit from increased average order values and much higher conversion.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *