Working in Customer Support department may sound like a stressful job for you. However, for many customer support members, like me, this nine-to-five job doesn’t always wreck our nerves but it also brings us happiness to be able to help our customers out there. Especially with live chat support, it always feels like we are talking with each other face-to-face. The connection is so real.

Now let’s step back a little and take a look at live chat in a boarder view of an e-commerce business, you’ll see that live chat nowadays is one of the critical elements to decide one business’s success.

Don’t believe it? Let me show you some facts about live chat that might make your jaw drop! And all is backed by precise statistics.

1. Your customers are in love with live chat

If I visit any e-commerce website to buy something I need, say, like buying a book online but then the book I want is out of stock and I want to know when it will be in stock again, I’d prefer a quick chat to ask than creating a new thread in support forum then wait for the next 24 hours to know something so simple.

Interestingly, I am not alone in preferring live chat than other support channels like forum, ticket system or contact form, etc.

According to Forrester survey, 44% of online consumers believe that one of the most important features an e-commerce website could have is to let customers have their questions answered by a live person.

Also, 57% of online consumers prefer live chat among other support channels. That’s not all. Taking Rockwell Automation as a case study, this organization’s customer support service receives 100,000 chat requests in a year.

Now tell me, is it obvious enough that online consumers love having a live chat with you when they need your help?

2. Live chat can bring absolutely smooth user experience for your e-commerce websites

Chat conversations are always much faster and interactive than email support or ticket/forum support since most companies require 24 hours to reply a customer via these support channels. Plus, one live chat support member can deal with multiple chat requests at once, unlike telephone support who can only talk to one by one.

Plus, live chat transcripts can usually be saved and sent to customers so they can use the solution again when needed. Hence, the user experience is better with live chat. This is proven by numbers.

63% of online consumers said they were more likely to come back and buy from a website that has live chat. Also in this report of eConsultancy, 31% of customers expect immediately response to their support request while 40% of them demand support within 5 minutes. If your website doesn’t offer live chat support, you can’t provide customers such prompt reply for their requests. That also means you fail. The Forrester survey showed that 57% of online consumers are very likely to abandon purchase if they can’t quickly get their questions answered (isn’t it scary?).

Lastly, up to 73% of consumers satisfy with live chat support since live chat saves them time (it takes only averagely 23 seconds to have initial reply) and money. Impressive numbers, aren’t they?

3. Live chat support helps your business earn more

By “more”, I mean both in sales (revenue flowing into your pocket) and your brand reputation.

Forrester says that due to a chat session, 38% of online consumers had made their purchase decision.

A good live chat support does affect customer’s purchase thanks to satisfied user experience delivered through the support and help reducing purchase abandonment.

For example, Nationwide Mutual Insurance who is among the largest insurance and financial services companies in the US, via proactive chat solution they captured 30% to 40% of previously abandoning customers.

With live chat, you also have 63% of online consumers to return and buy from you. They return because they highly appreciate the quick response and your will to assist them through their purchase process.

4. Custom chat greetings engage your customers better

Personalization is always the key tactic in modern marketing strategy. Don’t skip this factor. Utilize it for your live chat support too.

Statistics showed that 27% of online consumers agree that they want an instant popup chatbox asking if they need any help with their purchase. Furthermore, you can get 26% more leads and 17% higher conversion like Check-in-London did with customized chat window on their website. In the same study, it showed that companies with personalized greetings got 10 times more chats than only using reactive chat.

So, if you’re using live chat on your website, don’t forget to use chat greetings and proactive chat to acquire more leads and potential customers.

5. There are millions of businesses in different types using live chat

Survey pointed out that the usage of live chat has risen from 30% in 2009 to 52% in 2013.

You’re not the only one running wild in e-commerce business. There are millions out there. And the truth is that any type of business can win over customers by offering live chat. From consulting to travel agencies, hotel booking, insurance, pharmacy, etc. any type of online business can utilize live chat for better benefits.

6. Live chat in Asia has a brilliant performance

Well, 42% of the world’s internet users live in Asia and there has been a dramatic growth in e-commerce in Asian countries. Of course, running e-commerce in Asia needs live chat support too. What amazes me is that, the statistics for live chat performance there is very pleasing.

From LivechatInc report, the response time of live chat in Asian countries is generally very short, around 35s and with very high satisfaction (up to 93%). As shown in the report, Thailand is a country with longer chats (16m5s) and really high satisfaction scores whilst Vietnam is one of the top countries providing fast response with live chat.

7. Subiz Live Chat is the number one live chat solution in Vietnam

You haven’t known that yet? Now you have.

Subiz is a live chat solution service (SaaS) for e-commerce websites providing many features for your store to carry out a successful and lovable customer support service, such as chat on web browser, customizing chat window, monitoring web visitors, proactive chat invitation, multilingual support, mobile compatibility, chat survey, chat report, and many more.

To give you a glance at Subiz’s number one position in Vietnam and its promising dominance in international market, it has more than 8,000 customers (among them are national-sized corporations like FPT, Pico), more than 3 million visits per day, around 700,000 messages each day and more than 880,000 support hours. The numbers don’t stop there and will keep climbing up!

Try Subiz for Free Now

Go build your live chat support!

I believe that you understand why it’s a must to offer live chat support for your e-commerce website. If you still don’t want it, well, I guess you refuse to make your website the store everyone loves to buy from. You’re fine with letting go of your precious potential customers.

And if you do get it now, start building a real good support service with a trusted service, like Subiz and rest assured that your brand will always be in the back of your customers’ mind.

Feel free to share these cool numbers about live chat around and share with us your experience with live chat software you’re using! We’d love to discuss with you.