However, online selling with live chat is more than just setting up a live chat software and picking some chat agents to talk to your visitors. To make your eCommerce business successful, you need to know some basic techniques to persuade people to buy and increase sales through live chat.
If your goal is to have live chat as a selling tool, below are 6 useful tips to help you sell more with live chat. Let’s find out.
1. Be knowledgeable about what you’re selling
Would you buy an expensive laptop from a hi-tech store if the chat agent you talked to had no idea about its features or availability status? Absolutely no. When it comes to live chat support, quick and precise answers give a sense of credibility.
The customer reps behind your chat window should know your product or service inside out. They should get proper training on how to respond gracefully to some frequently asked questions, especially sales questions and tough ones. That way, they can give accurate responses to customer’s queries instantly and avoid making them wait.
Who knows how many prospects you may lose if your chat agents keep 50% of your visitors “on the hold”?
2. Be a real person
One obstacles of online selling is that you can’t interact with customers directly face to face. So don’t make it harder for your sales efforts by letting your chat operators sound like a robot during the chat. If you want your customers to pull out their wallet, make sure you connect with them on a more personal level.
Don’t use too many canned responses while chatting. It makes you sound less human and may sabotage the good impression you’re trying to create.
And if you have to use canned messages, make sure it sounds natural, human-like and is personalized to each customer’s need. People love customized service since it makes them feel more special.
3. Start a chat right
How you greet someone determines whether they are going to buy from you or not. Don’t talk like a bot with the boring and cliche greeting like, “How can I help you?” all the time.
Get your creativity going and try to shake up your chat greeting to make it more impressive and compelling. This can not only grab people’s attention easily but also help to leave a positive impression and make people want to do business with you.
When to start a chat is as important as the chat greeting itself. You don’t just go out there and fire your invitation to anyone landing on your site. To increase the chance of converting while still considering the limitation of your support resources, you should choose to when to offer proactive chat smartly.
It could be when people are viewing your product detail page, when they seem to struggle with the checkout process or when they have been idle for too long, etc.
4. Offer useful recommendations
When you’re too obsessed with trying to sell, you may not be selling anything at all. The best way to make people buy from you is to show them how helpful you are. Many visitors come to live chat for expert advice and opinion on the item that suits them the most and which one they should buy from you.
This is when you show them how their benefit is your top priority. Don’t try to tempt them into buying your most expensive thing. Give them suggestions that are tailored to their specific needs and they will see how attentive and helpful you are.
Once you gain their trust and leave good impression, people will be more willing to buy from you not this time, but many more times in the future.
5. Be sensitive to customer responses
When it comes to sales techniques, being pushy never works. Customers want to have the feeling that they’re making their own choice. Don’t make them feel like they’re forced into buying something. They may like the item, but will not buy it if the chat agent is being annoying with their constant “you should buy this, you should buy that”.
If your chat invitation is turned down or the customer ignores your offering help with the product suggestions, you should respect their choice and choose to leave the chat conversation. Don’t try to pester them with another offer, even if it’s a much better deal. People may think you’re being desperate and wonder if anyone ever buys from you.
When your proactive chat or other offer is declined, just leave and remind your customers that you’re still there whenever they need you again.
6. Know your customers better
It’s obvious that you can’t sell to someone you nothing about. Understand your customers is the key to persuade them to buy. With live chat you can have many great tool to observe your customers’ activities and figure out their buying behaviour.
For instance, the real-time monitoring feature shows you what customers are doing on your site, which items are they viewing, how is their navigation path and purchase history, etc. From the live chat analytics and report, you can also see which pages drive the most chat volume, which pages are the stickiest, which pages have the highest bounce rate, which pages need the most chat support and many more.
These insights you get from live chat will be your powerful weapon in dealing with your customers, entertaining them, making them stay and converting them into regular buyers.
Different customers in different industries may need different approach when it comes to delivering your sales pitch. Do you have other ideas to share? Just comment and let us know. If you are thinking of boosting sales with live chat, try Subiz live chat today to experience its competent features.
