Use B2B Live Chat to bolster your reputation

A shop where you only get help if you buy something

I heard this great analogy by a member of our team the other day about live chat and specifically, B2B Live Chat. Consider 2 shops next door to each other, both selling identical stuff. Imagine the first shop, shelves stocked with many products. However, the only members of staff are stationed at the check-out counter.

Maybe you’re looking for something and cannot find it. Maybe you have a question about a particular product before you buy. Unfortunately, there’s nobody around to help you. The staff only want to talk when you’re ready to hand over that cold, hard cheddar.

Understandably, you decide to leave that unhelpful shop and go next door. Next door, it’s very different. They sell the same products, maybe they even charge a little more, but there’s 20 staff smiling ready to help. They’re open, always there, always willing to help to give you quick answers. Even if they’re busy stocking the shelves, you always get a greeting from staff asking “do you need a hand with something?”

Which one would you buy from? More to the point, which one would you go back to next time? Which one would you recommend to your friends?

Your website is your shop front and live chat are your greeters

When done right, B2B Live Chat is like a friendly member of staff that will help you find what you need or answer your questions about the different products out there.

The problem is that with traditional bricks and mortar shops, you can control the opening hours. Your website is open 24/7! This may sound like an amazing thing, but being open 24/7 presents significant challenges to businesses helping maintain the same helpful, customer-oriented “happy to help” reputation.

I mean, it’s hard to expect your 9-5 Mon to Fri staff to answer customer questions at 3 am! Well, maybe you could, but I’m not sure they’d stay with you for very long.

97% of visitors leave your website without enquiring

No matter how well put together your website is, your web pages won’t answer 100% of your customer’s questions. So what if a potential customer has a question and you’re not there to answer it? They go ‘next door’ to another website. B2B Live Chat helps capture that interest before they leave the door.

The problem is, people want answers right now

The usual solution is to have 9-5 web chat and then a contact form saying something like “we’ll get back to you within 1 working day”. If you’re in an industry where reputation matters, quick responses and customer service makes the difference between winning a contract and losing a customer.

Having 24/7 webchat, even for business to business companies, is essential these days:

• Its a customer service thing
• It’s a reputation thing
• It’s a cultural thing of being always ready to help

In the last 10 years or so, people want answers right now! For some reason, people can’t wait a few minutes even. As a side note, it’s actually a little crazy how impatient we’ve all gotten, but that’s another story. The game we’re all playing is we want answers right now and we’re expected to give answers right now. 

Losing sleep over your B2B Live chat? We can help

If you’d like a bit of help with this, our B2B live chat is 24/7/365 with an average 1st response time of 19 seconds. What’s more, we can generate you leads on a completely Pay-Per-Lead basis. Think of us as the friendly greeters in your shop, but you only pay for the results that we get you.

• 24/7 Pay-Per-Lead webchat
• Monthly coaching included to help you close the leads we get you
• We plant trees as we grow your business

For those that qualify, we can organise a free trial too! You can find out more here.