As your company grows, you face many challenges like strategies that will guarantee exceptional customer satisfaction, dealing with the competition, lowering operational cost and increasing profits. At the center of all these challenges are customers. They are the key element of how fast your business grows.

Today’s online customer is sophisticated with high expectations of the kind of experience they want. They expect fast and reliable service. On the other hand, the company is looking for the highest return on investment on the platform they use to deliver that superior customer experience.

The solution is Live Chat because it saves money and time while building trust and confidence. It is a win-win situation for customers and the company. I recently read a study conducted by Forrester and the findings show that. “Chat earns 15% on click to chat (reactive) and 105% on proactive chat. This statistic is the basis for our discussion today, what is proactive chat is, its benefits and the how you can incorporate it into your customer service strategy.

Live Chat is an opportunity to speak with a company representative, sales, service or technical. The commonly used live chat functions have been reactive in nature, where the customer has to reach out to you for a service. The service with the highest ROI is proactive, where the company invites you to chat with them.

Here are the top three benefits of proactive live chat

Proactive chat enables your brand to start value adding conversations at crucial stages of customer buying decision process.

Increases sales conversion

In a retail store, once the customer walks in a sales representative greets them and initiates a conversation. Most often, the customer will walk out of the store with an item, because the sales agent was proactive with the customer. They didn’t wait for the customer to ask questions, they anticipated their issues and offered solutions as they talked.

Proactive live chat brings this same approach to the online platform. The agent anticipates the needs of the customer by looking at the areas they are browsing and sends them an invitation to chat. For example, “Got questions? Speak to a specialist.”

The visitor will readily explore that option to get the information they were looking for faster. If they had a question about a product they want to purchase, the information provided would help in their decision-making. Research shows that 83% of online shoppers want to contact a real person before buying.

Increases customer satisfaction

A happy customer will be loyal and become your brand advocate. Important to remember is who your customers are. Today’s online shopper has more information readily available and wants results immediately. They do not want to wait, for example, when someone wants to call an agent, they have to deal with the hold times, and the dreaded messaging “hold for the next available agent.” Do you think this customer will be satisfied?

Live chat, on the other hand, provides the opportunity for the customer to get immediate help. Proactive live chat when deployed correctly makes this even better by inviting the customer to chat immediately if they have any questions. A whopping 94% of customers who were proactively invited to chat were very satisfied with their experience.

Live chat makes it convenient for the customers to contact your company. They can do it anywhere and at any time, for example, in the office, on their way home or at home. They do not have to worry who is listening in to their conversation, leading to increased satisfaction levels.

Reduces operational costs

You cannot have a high return on investment without watching your operational costs. If your operational costs are higher than the sales you are bringing in that is a loss, which will destroy your company. However, when your sales exceed your operational costs, your growth is a guarantee.

For example, an agent can chat with two or three customers at the same time, but can only speak with one customer via phone. Therefore, you will need fewer agents to handle more clients. This cuts your staff overhead by half.

The savings achieved can be used for business expansion.

How proactive live chat works

Speak to a leading live chat software company; they will do all the work for you. Once set up, a live chat invitation can use rules to only invite people who want to chat.  Every person who visits your website is important however, they are not all equal.  You are notified that you have a visitor online. You will see what the visitor is interested in as they browse through the pages.

It is your call; you can proactively invite the visitor to chat about your products and offer to answer any questions he might have. The visitor also can click to chat with you.

In summary, live chat has loads of benefits to your company and integrating proactive live chat in your customer service strategy will increase them. Make the move by either doing it in-house or subcontracting a contact center.