How to Retain Customers with Live Chat

Business growth is driven by one major factor - your ability to retain customers. According to research, customer acquisition is 5 to 25 times more expensive than customer retention (depending on your industry). What that means for your business growth plans is that you need to focus on retaining current customers more than getting new ones.

And that’s where live chat comes to your rescue.

How does live chat fit into your business growth plans? Let’s quickly take a look.

3 Ways to Retain Customers Using Live Chat

Customer retention comes as a result of one thing - customer satisfaction. No, not just satisfaction from your quality product. Customer satisfaction in terms of customer support is the major contributor to customer retention. 

The reason for that is simple — people trust you more if you give them excellent support.

Here are three main ways you can increase your customer retention using live chat-based support.

1. Provide easy access to customer support

Accessibility is a great contributor to customer retention as customers want to know that they can easily get help when they need it. While email and phone have been dominating in providing this functionality for businesses, live web chat is fast taking over. 

So what advantages does live chat have over email and phone?

• Unlike phone chat, you are never put on hold with live chat.
• As for email, you can never tell when you will get a response. With live chat, responses are immediate.

Accessibility will help you retain your customers better than other factors as it helps you create an exceptional user experience. And user experience is what customers value the most. 

Remember, the best way to increase your customer retention rates is by making your customers happy. Live chat helps you to do that easily, effectively, and economically.

2. Always be available

Customers want businesses that are available for them — 24/7. One of the biggest advantages of live chat is the fact that it affords you the ability to be available for your customers round the clock.

When your customers realize that you are always there for them, they will stick to you like glue. After all, if they feel safe with you, why would they risk having a bad experience by trying another brand?

3. The value of responsiveness

We are living in a fast-paced world where everyone expects results instantly. That applies to customers support as well. Customers expect to get answers as soon as they pose their question or lodge a complaint.

Failure to do so in your business will cause you to lose them to your competitors.

With a live chat system in place, you are able to respond to customers in real-time, thus making them feel like VIPs. This wins them over so they become loyal customers.  Not only will they become loyal customers, but research shows that a high percentage of satisfied customers become brand ambassadors. They recommend you to their friends and family.

If you’re looking for a customer retention silver bullet, live chat is the closest you will get to it.

Get started with Smith.ai Live Web Chat risk-free

It's time to try live chat on your website. Just one new client captured via chat can pay for a year (or more) of Smith.ai's live web chat service. We provide fully staffed live website chat with professional agents. Outsourced live chat is best for small businesses like law firms, e-commerce businesses, IT consultants, financial planners, property managers, realtors, and marketing agencies (to name just a few!).

Our live agents are highly skilled and can answer common questions about your business, qualify new leads, schedule appointments, take payments, and more. You stay in the loop when chat transcripts are sent to you after each conversation and logged in your CRM. There's no setup fee, services are month-to-month, and there's no annual contract. Plans start at just just $140/month and are risk-free with our 14-day money-back guarantee.