When should you outsource live chat?

Many people are not sure about the decision to outsource live chat to another company and weigh the pros and cons of limiting the number of hours they make live chat available on their website with the price they need to pay to a company for the service they receive. While the actual decision of outsourcing live chat on a website is entirely up to you as owner of that website, there are a number of factors that can make it easier to distinguish whether live chat is the best solution for the overall productivity of your business.

Traffic

The first factor you should consider is the amount of traffic your website receives during the day, and during peak hours when traffic is the heaviest. The reason is that if you do not receive more than a dozen visitors per hour, outsourcing live chat is probably not profitable due to the fact that very little additional revenue can be generated with it. Measuring your traffic, especially during peak hours, is important because it helps you determine whether you are able to be online at those times to talk to all visitors, or whether you need the help of a live chat contact center.

Skilled staff

The next thing you need to consider is whether you already have employees with the necessary skills and capacity to function as live chat operators. If they aren’t busy, they can chat with online visitors from time to time. But many customer service employees and salespeople need specific skills, such as typing professional Dutch quickly and correctly. In fact, handling the chats in an effective way almost always requires hiring dedicated chat operators.

Availability

If your business is doing well, you may not have any free hands to help you deliver live chat on your website. In that case, it may be more practical for you to consider outsourcing live chat, especially if you receive a lot of traffic on your site every day, mainly in the evenings and on the weekend, because this means the basis for the investment is already there.