We sleep in the on-demand world. I can get a cab, I can book a bedroom, and that I can get my laundry picked abreast of my schedule using only an app on my phone. I can refer to you ways I would like, I can sit down with you once I want, and that I can consume what I need on my terms, as a consumer.
The intersection of speed and access releases the on-demand world. Brands invest in meeting consumers within the channels they use, delivering excellent experiences in those channels, and enabling simple conversion in those channels.TL;DR Brands are attempting to stay up with consumer expectations of easy access to urge more revenue.
But there’s another trend that’s complicating every brand’s smooth journey to fulfill consumers within the on-demand world. Accenture calls it liquid expectations. What this implies is rather than your brand competing along with your competitors in terms of service experience, you’re competing with any company your customer might touch in terms of service experience.
Your brand now must remember of service delivery across industries. For example: “If I can do that on a cab app in two clicks, why do i’ve got to spend half an hour on the phone to change my energy provider?”
Customer expectations are no longer necessarily in your hands; they’re driven by leaders within the market (whatever market that is) who can meet consumers within the on-demand world.
The takeaway: It’s now not adequate to seem in your market and say, “Oh, okay, this company is terrible and we’re a touch bit better, so we must be winning.” That’s not really how we’re visiting cut the mustard as a method anymore.
Why chat is that the channel for on-demand
Conversational marketing tools like live chat and chatbots comprise the sole digital, real-time channels that enables you to interact when someone is “in your store” (eg on your brand’s owned website). Every other conversation happens pre or post transaction, from advertising through to fulfillment. That level of consumer access could be a game changer.
Because live chat and chatbots enable real-time conversation, they permit brands to change a shopper’s behavior. Everything else is asynchronous. Further, the digital world is open 24/7. More brands are offering an always-on service proposition and this access is becoming a baseline expectation to plenty of consumers.
In the same way no street retailer would have an empty shop during trading hours, if you’re not practicing conversational marketing with live chat or chatbots on your brand’s website, you’re basically inviting many people to an empty store.
And live chat or chatbots’ impact isn’t specific to ecommerce and retail. You wouldn’t walk into a dealership and not have a car dealer. You wouldn’t walk into a lawyer’s office and not have a lawyer. You wouldn’t walk into a dentist’s office and not speak to a receptionist. The list goes on.
24/7, chat is positioned to capture and convert your website visitors. which important point spoken earlier about on-demand service being scored against access and speed? Don’t forget that chat is quicker than all other service and sales channels, including the phone.
The takeaway: Chat enables brands to herald additional revenue by catering to on-demand consumers.
Live chat
Live chat has been around for awhile. But it’s rather more powerful than most brands realize or are willing to speculate in. to urge the foremost out of live chat, brands must identify their business goals and develop an efficient live chat strategy that may help them deliver on specific objectives.
Check out our video on live chat for business growth
48% of prospects would rather connect with an organization through live chat than the other means of contact, and in some B2B services, actually 77% of shoppers won’t consider an acquisition if live chat isn’t available.
The Chat Shop has worked with live chat for seven years; one in all the really interesting things that we’ve seen is that brands that come to us have an existing chat program because they think they’re imagined to have chat.
That’s the extent of their brooding about it. Which is ok. a minimum of new channels are being tested. But with this thinking, brands are missing out on revenue opportunity. As a brand, you need to start viewing the customer contact journey out of the customer service silo with the live chat channel. Consider the people staffing your live chat, the measurable variables you’ll test in chat and therefore the incremental revenue you’ll drive from deploying the channel across the buying journey.
TL;DR Don’t just add live chat because you’re thinking that you ought to have it. Understand the goals it should facilitate your achieve and monitor its efficacy with rigorous live chat quality assurance and live chat KPIs.
Chatbots
Chatbots have become excellent tools to deploy as a part of your conversational marketing portfolio. However, the worst (and commonest, in our experience) assumption most brands make when starting a chatbot program is this: you’ll be able to just get a chatbot and it’ll know everything it must know.
Chatbot technology isn’t really that smart. Out-of-the-box solutions that employment exactly how your business want and reflect your brand well in interactions with consumers are years away. Right now, the most effective this technology can do is basic semantic matching on its own.
If you’re considering employing a chatbot as a part of your conversational marketing approach, you wish to plan, strategize, develop, deploy, optimize, train, update and monitor the software. you would like to check it rigorously and make sure that the conversation flows and stories resolve customer queries and dispatch important consumer data during a compliant and iterative way.
Why do chatbots require this much oversight? Because they’re not people. They can’t bring an issue to management and supply feedback. They’re only nearly as good because the software they depend on.