As far as live website chat is concerned, call centers and in-house staff can’t perform as well as an answering service. While they may be able to answer calls more frequently and consistently than employees with other duties, call centers and in-house receptionists don’t regularly offer web chat assistance and if they do, they tend to deliver sub-par quality.
Responding to website chats isn’t rocket science, yet still call centers often fail to offer it as a service, despite many leads preferring to use web chat to contact businesses. If they do offer it, call centers fail to perform web chats in a manner that prioritizes your teams’ time and your clients’ satisfaction. Call centers and in-house staff alike are often not equipped to answer common questions online clients have and frequently come with long response times as well as basic web knowledge, leaving online leads understandably annoyed.Â
Answering services like Smith.ai offer thoughtful accommodations, like AI chatbots that can help online leads receive faster, more accurate responses. By paying attention to the details, Smith.ai’s answering service can relieve your busy team of web chat pressures, provide your clients with outstanding customer service, and help your business thrive. Hiring a call center or an in-house staff rather than outsourcing 24/7 live website chat to an answering service may risk your reputation, your productivity, and your customer satisfaction.Â
If you’re a small business, this rings especially true for you. Over 46% of clients prefer to contact a business through live chat, call center agents and in-house staff isolate a huge portion of your clientele. This can destroy any initial impression a client may have and erode any trust they may have in your business, which is critical to establish in the initial conversation with a client.Â
It’s well known that call centers customarily:
- Engage in poor web chat etiquetteÂ
- Leave online clients unanswered for extended periods of time
- Provide impersonal, robotic responses
- Fail to integrate with teams’ CRM or calendars
- Have trouble screening and qualifying web leads
- Fail to provide accurate information to prepare web leads
With over 41% of customers expecting live web chat as an option, call centers fall short of providing an expected service to clients. If they do offer web chat answering, call centers rarely offer satisfactory service. Although over 96% of online clients expect an answer to their web chat inquiry within five minutes, call center agents can take anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, whereas web chats answered by an answering service usually only take anywhere from 1 to 2 minutes. And with only 44% of clients reporting call centers to be helpful compared to nearly 76% of client reporting non-call centers, like answering service, to be helpful, it’s clear to see that hiring a call center will result in longer response times and unsatisfactory customer service.
In-house staff also regularly:
- Come unequipped to address customer service concerns
- Have limited availability
- Lack web chat knowledge
- Cost companies more than they bring in
- Have little to no ability to nurture online leads
- Fail to provide timely answers to web chat inquiries
If in-house staff can provide website chat answering, they still fail to provide coverage outside of normal business hours, which may cost you clients and leads as over 79% of clients use website chat to get an immediate answer to their question. During normal business hours, in-house staff may neglect their call handling duties to respond to the web leads they neglected overnight, resulting in over 62% of calls going to voicemail or being left unanswered. Despite being their sole purpose, in-house staff still fail to answer phone calls, which can cost your business potential customers, as up to 50% of sales go to businesses that answer first. Hiring an in-house staff to answer website chats and phone calls is arguably counterintuitive to your business’s success.Â
All of these common issues with call centers and in-house staff can lead to clients and potential prospects taking their business elsewhere, resulting in your company losing leads, customer loyalty, money, and time. By hiring an answering service, such as Smith.ai, instead, your team can avoid losing out on clients by having a knowledgeable and friendly representative available at all times to answer clients’ questions, screen leads, and schedule appointments online.
If that isn’t enough, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that on average, answering services cost only about 20% of what an in-house staff or call center costs despite offering more features and better quality services.Â
As a matter of fact, Smith.ai’s virtual receptionists can:
- Provide reliable, 24/7 online availabilityÂ
- Demonstrate website chat answering expertise
- Answer online inquiries immediately and consistently
- Utilize AI chatbots to provide faster, more accurate responses
- Foster online leads with personalized, friendly customer service
- Schedule appointments and consultations with your calendar
- Build a foundation of trust between you and your clients
Outsourcing 24/7 live website chat to an answering service like Smith.ai instead of a call center or in-house staff can save your business from overextended budgets, embarrassing client interactions, missed lead-capturing opportunities, and frustrating online complications. Rather than risk your revenue and client relationships on inexperienced or ineffective call center agents or in-house staff, trust Smith.ai’s reliable service to nurture online clients, capture web leads, and take the pressure off of your busy staff.Â
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