Everything You Need to Go Live With Live Chat

Thinking of adding live chat? You’re not alone. Companies across the globe are responding to the changes in the way their customers want and need support. The days of phone-based service are waning as people are increasingly mobile, short on time with ever-growing to-do lists.

These days, customers are demanding the ease of live chat service. In fact, 44% of customers say live chat is one of the most important features your site can offer and half of U.S. adults say they’ll ditch your site if they can’t quickly find an answer to their questions. Ouch!

Maybe you’re ready to reduce your phone support or cut the phone cord entirely. Perhaps you’re with a customer service provider but are feeling limited by their technical capabilities, or just not too jazzed by their service. If you rely on email support, you may be noticing the cost to resolve a ticket is climbing.

Whatever the case may be, if you’re looking into implementing live chat or ready to take the plunge, here’s everything you need to know. This guide will make the transition quick and easy for your company to get live with live chat!

Identify Your Objectives

First thing’s first: What’s the reason you’re seeking to implement live chat on your website? Is it to convert more leads from existing traffic? Provide product troubleshooting support? Book appointments? Or is it simply to spread awareness of your brand’s products and services? Take the time to get crystal clear on what you want to get out of live chat. That helps your live chat provider hone their messaging to help you track progress and reach your goals.

Have Your Assets in Gear

Whenever you bring on assistance for your marketing efforts, you’re going to need to have all of your media assets ready to share. This includes:

• Logos. You’ll need your company logo in PNG format with a transparent background. It’s also good practice to have the source files (usually an Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop file with the extension .AI or .PSD). Tag a graphic designer if you’re not sure you have what you need.
• Company colors. Not all companies have a full suite of brand guidelines that include their corporate colors. If you do, great! You’ll need the hex value of your primary, secondary, and accent colors (used for the web in a format that looks like a pound sign followed by six numbers/letters, like this: #E2E2E2). If you don’t have this information, ask a graphic designer or install a color picker extension on your browser to grab those numbers yourself.
• Videos. Whether it’s a TV ad you aired in the past or internal training videos, gather links and files to any video assets you use for your current customer service training.

Get Google Analytics

To get started with a live chat service provider, your company website needs to have Google Analytics (GA) set up and properly tracking traffic. The rich data provided by GA helps us identify crucial site usage information, including where your customers are engaging and, importantly, where they’re abandoning the site. Already have it set up? Great! You’re good to go. Not sure if you do? Get thee to a web developer pronto!

Create Two CTAs

CTAs — or calls to action — are critical in boosting your business. Ideally, you’ll have two CTAs:

• Direct CTA. This is the equivalent of your “buy now” button. A direct CTA might be to book an appointment, fill out a form, or request a phone call from someone on your team.
• Indirect CTA. This is a low-pressure, no-obligation action your visitor can take to learn more about your company or services. Examples include a one-sheet, brochure, or white paper.

Why would you bother having an indirect CTA? Because not everyone is ready to buy the second they hit your site. Sales cycles vary by industry, and you want to have a hook for people who are in the awareness-building phase of their purchase as well as the hot leads ready to buy.

Set Up Contact or Lead Forms

Create a form that will collect your users’ contact information. The form should focus on the essentials: name and email address, with an option for a phone number if your product or service calls for it. While it’s tempting to collect as much information as possible from your site visitors, make it easy and low-key for them to provide you with this valuable information. A simple Google Form is plenty for most clients.

I’m Ready! What’s Next?

With all of your assets ready to go, signing on with Ravience is a piece of cake. With us, the process from contract to go-live is about a month. Every piece of data you have ready makes the implementation all that much easier. Internally, we’ll review your existing customer service materials and any FAQ you have, then thoroughly train our team of U.S.-based live chat agents on every aspect of your company.

Once we’re live, Ravience monitors every chat to make sure your messaging is on point. And since we’re real people, not bots, we can adjust our tone and responses as needed.

Got more questions? Ready to get started? Shoot us a message and we’ll set up a time to discuss your business’ unique live chat needs.