Cancel the Phone – It May be Time to Move Customer Support to Chat

If you are an online business owner you’ve, no doubt, jumped into the world of ecommerce.  Ecommerce has sparked such a revolution that four out of five businesses have online stores. The idea is that the product and the store are available all the time, unlike a traditional brick and mortar store. But how does this affect customer support?

The Old Method

A lot of individuals feel left in the dark with modern customer support. Phone trees and automated phone lines make reaching a real person seem like a fairy tale. Constant cut backs in budget have forced most companies to cut back on telephone support. This, in turn, has left a lot of customers in the dark.  Most of these efforts make customers feel like money more than people. Modern customers also don’t wait nearly as long for help as customers years ago. The world, as a whole, has grown to a “want it and want it now” mentality. However, a really good alternative is live support help chat.

Live Support Chat Advantages

Live support chat has many advantages. One of these is that the customer no longer has to play with the phone tree or deal with the automated hotline. Most customers that had to cope with these old fashioned ways would give up and end up not buying the products at all.

Online support chat is cheaper than traditional telephone systems and in most cases one person can carry on multiple chat support sessions at one time.  It can also help to promote sales. Support technicians can pitch customers on new and upcoming products from the company, while assisting them. This, coupled with almost instant problem-solver to help save time, makes most customers rate the experience very high.

Out of the Box

There are a lot of out of the box solutions for online chat support. Some of them are even free, making this an invaluable tool for the current business market.  One key feature to look for is automatic responses. Good customer support chat software will automatically respond to an incoming chat. This alleviates the need for the support technician to always type in the welcome statement.

If you find yourself struggling to make customer support work, consider online support chat. It’s cheaper than traditional phone lines and phone support. It also has a much more positive review from the customer base.  This, together with the fact that one technician can handle more than one customer at a time, makes customer support chat an invaluable tool for your business.