Today, we live in a world where everything is available to us on demand. All we need is an app on our smartphone to get a taxi, book a hotel room, and get laundry picked up on our schedule. As a consumer, we have the power to interact how we want, when we want, and what we consume on our terms.
The on-demand future is made possible through the intersection of speed and accessibility. Brands engage in serving customers where they are, offering incredible experiences in those platforms, and making those channels easy to convert. To increase sales and revenue, brands are trying to meet customer demands for ease of access.
But there’s another recent development that’s making it more difficult for any brand to reach buyers in the on-demand world. The “liquid expectation” is a term coined by Accenture to describe this phenomenon. This ensures that, rather than competing with your rivals in terms of service experience, your brand can compete with any business that your customer will interact with.
Your business must now be mindful of how services are delivered in different sectors. “If a customer can buy groceries with a few clicks on an app, why do they have to wait on the phone to purchase a new home?”
Customer expectations are no longer exclusively under your control; they are now influenced by market leaders (whatever market that may be) who can satisfy customers’ needs in an on-demand world.
It’s no longer adequate to look at the competition and think, “Oh, well, this competitor is bad, and we’re a bit stronger, so we must be thriving.” As a strategy, that’s not going to get your business any further.”
Why Conversational Marketing is the Channel for On-demand?
Conversational marketing platforms such as Live Chat and Chatbots are the only interactive, real-time platforms that allow you to connect with consumers when they are on your business website. From promotional emails to product fulfillment, all conversation takes place through these platforms before or after the sale. This level of access to consumers is revolutionary.
Since Live Chat and Chatbots allow for real-time communication, brands may influence a shopper’s behavior. The rest of the process is asynchronous. Furthermore, the digital world is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. More and more businesses are providing an always-on operation, and it has become a basic requirement for many customers.
The impact of Live Chat and Chatbots isn’t limited to e-commerce and retail. You wouldn’t walk into a car dealership that does not have a car dealer, would you?
Chat is available 24/7 days to gather and convert website visitors. And the second crucial point about on-demand services is their speed. Note that chat is faster than most customer service or sales platforms, even the phone (Source: LiveChat Inc.). Chat allows businesses to increase sales by catering to on-demand customers.
Live Chat
Live Chat has been around for a long time now. However, it has a much greater impact than most brands know or are willing to invest in. To get the most out of the Live Chat, businesses must first define their business goals and then create a Live Chat strategy that will help them achieve those goals.
Prospects choose to engage with a business through a Live Chat over some other platforms, and in some B2B businesses, 77% of customers would not consider making a transaction if there is no Live Chat on the website.
Most businesses have a Live Chat service because they believe it is required of them. That’s the limit of their thinking. That’s fine.
Because of this mindset, brands are missing out on sales and revenue opportunities. With the Live Chat platform, brands must begin viewing the customer journey outside of the customer service funnel. Think of the people who will be handling your Live Chat, the analytics you will measure in the chat, and the additional revenue you will generate by deploying Live Chat throughout the buying process.
Don’t just have Live Chat because you think it’s a good idea. Understand the objectives it can assist you in achieving, and monitor its success using Live Chat quality assurance and KPIs.
Chatbots
Chatbots have quickly become a valuable addition to the conversational marketing arsenal. The worst and the most common mistake most brands make when launching a Chatbot program is that they just buy a Chatbot and it would know everything they need to know.
Chatbot technology isn’t particularly intelligent. They are years away from out-of-the-box capabilities that perform precisely as your business wants them to and accurately represent the brand during the customer interactions. At the moment, all Chatbot can do is simple semantic matching on its own.
You must prepare, strategize, create, launch, refine, practice, upgrade, and track a Chatbot if you choose to use it as part of your conversational marketing strategy. You must thoroughly test it to ensure that the dialog flows and resolves customer queries and delivers useful consumer data in a compliant and iterative manner.
Why do Chatbots need so much supervision? Simple, they are not humans and cannot mimic human emotions. They will only be as good as the data they use and the programs they run.
That isn’t to say that Chatbots are worthless. They’re highly useful though not easy to build and train to excel in established processes and address common questions.
Chatbots excel in sales and service operations where brands are trying to push processual interactions, such as updating a billing address, reviewing order status, or locating the nearest branch.
So, which conversational marketing tool is best suited for your business?
The easy way to assess how to get started with conversational marketing is through auditing your products and sales process and understanding where the conversations will work into your customer contact points.
Chatbots for Basic Sales and Support
Say you run an online retail shop where you sell custom-designed apparel. Your marketing campaign is highly dependent on gathering and nurturing a large email database. However, gathering lead details is difficult.
If you’ve collected a lead’s contact details, the expectations are processual, and the brand’s business goals are clear to implement. There’s a compelling case to use a Chatbot to drive more leads.
Sometimes if there a defect in your products and you have a free replacement or return policy. When a customer contacts you, the process is simple: you simply exchange it as soon as a valid stock-keeping unit (SKU) and customer ID is available.
You can deflect basic support requests and address time-consuming admin tasks to a Chatbot instead of making a customer call in with the SKU and their customer ID for a replacement. Your employees would be able to concentrate on more critical tasks.
Live Chat for Complex Sales and Support
Consider your customer profile (ICP) and existing customer base if you’re selling software, custom jewels, or a high-value service. Not only will you spend a lot of time and money on developing the products, but you also spend a lot of time and money getting those products to the market. Relationships are crucial to your brand’s success. Your brand offers big-ticket products, so you’re used to dealing with longer sales cycles and customers who study you and your competitors.
Your digital communications should be conducted by a knowledgeable human Live Chat agent. For sales and service, these big-ticket products depend on flawless and genuine customer experience and understanding and digesting the queries that deviate from the basic FAQ script.
Here, what your brand needs is a Live Chat support service rather than a Chatbot.
Looking for 24/7 Live Chat Support?
If you want to grow your business beyond 2021 and further, ensure that your digital conversation strategy is available during breaks, holidays, and sick days.
Chat Metrics – The #1 leading Managed Live Chat service providing 24/7 digital engagement access to your website visitors when they need us. Our online sales executives (OSEs) communicate with your visitors, so you or your team don’t have to stop what you are doing. Our OSEs engage with your website visitors, asking them sales-qualified questions when they need help. With a proactive chat strategy and 24/7 availability, we have proven track of converting a minimum of 25% visitors into leads.
Don’t know where to begin? Click here to learn more about our proactive lead generation service.
You are also welcome to sign-up for free to see how Chat Metrics is a no-risk way to generate leads.
