Shopping Online the Live Chat Way: A Case Study
With the astounding growth of the Internet over the past decade, online shopping has emerged as the single largest activity both for individuals as well as for businesses. Online commerce is now worth over $7 trillion annually and represents approximately 12% of the global gross domestic product (GDP.) According to a 2005 study conducted by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, deactivating internet access in Switzerland alone would cost the country over $3 billion weekly which is about 1% of its GDP. Moreover, with e-commerce expected to account for about 18% of global GDP by 2010, the overall net value of transactions will continue to gain momentum rapidly. If you are the owner of an online company which deploys Internet commerce to generate resources, live chat on your website is a viable avenue to explore. If you own and operate an online shopping website where customers order products for themselves, their family and friends, live chat on your website is an indispensable avenue to explore. Here is why:
The Three Functions of a Shopping Website
- Online shopping portals, especially those with multiple shopping channels, perform three basic functions:
- They help shoppers buy products from the convenience of their home or office without having to negotiate mall congestion.
- They mostly help shoppers save money owing to reduced overhead costs.
- They help shoppers maintain accurate records of their shopping transactions so you know not to give Uncle Joe the same leather wallet for Christmas two times in a row.
Customer Point of Contact and Live Chat
- There are three potential points of customer contact on an online shopping website. Live chat, as we will see in a moment, can go a long way in streamlining the communication protocol:
- The ordering page from where the customer places an order
- The customer services page from where the customer can ask questions pertaining to a proposed purchase
- The accounting page from where the customer can resolve issues such as billing, returns and exchanges.
Many websites, as you have noticed, tend to integrate all three functions by placing a Live Chat link on each web page and connecting customers and site visitors directly with chat operators.
Why Live Chat
Many studies have been conducted on this subject in recent years and all point to the fact that enabling live chat on websites which sell products to customers are more successful than those that do not provide live chat service. e-commerce websites with live chat functionality:
- Tend to build and preserve customer loyalty
- Attract new customers exclusively looking for websites, which offer live chat
- Easily conform to the “returning customer” profile owing in part due to the improved quality of customer service which live chat is able to deliver
Let us take a hypothetical example, which well illustrates this precept.
Amy Wilson is a young wife keen to get a laptop computer for her techno-savvy husband. Amy prefers to access shopping websites rather than visiting local computer stores, which happen to display a Live Chat button. She clicks on an online computer store. There are a number of laptops that fit into Amy’s financial plan like Dell, Mac, Fujitsu, Sony, Toshiba, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard. Each model has a descriptive review and lists all its features. Because of the live chat capability, Amy is able to ask specific questions about the various products she considers for purchase and receive straight shooting answers from a technically qualified chat operator. Toll free customer service lines are great but many online shoppers like Amy prefer live chat. First, it is anonymous. Secondly, it is almost instant and does not subject shoppers to the MUSAC like waiting renditions. Thirdly, since live chat software invariably generates a chat transcript, customers do not have to take notes. The paper trail a live chat interaction generates can play a critical role in resolving potential customer service issues in the future which telephone conversations are not able to do.
In a Nutshell
For the convenience and the enhanced customer shopping experience live chat is able to offer, live chat is certainly a worthwhile experience. It is flat rate-based unlike toll free customer support lines and is much easier to manage from a technical perspective. This is what makes live chat for online shopping not simply a viable but a “must-have” value proposition.
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