How To Surprise Customers by Being One Step Ahead of Their Questions

With the holiday season upon us, you should be expecting an increasing number of questions from potential customers. This year will present a new challenge - with COVID-19 still forcing many people worldwide to stay in their homes, the number of people doing their holiday shopping online is going to be unusually high.

What does this mean for you? More messages, more questions, and less time to answer them all. Luckily, you don’t always have to wait until the very last minute before preparing your answers.

Use live chat

If you want to get closer to your customers, implementing a live chat widget on your website is the best way to do that. Your website visitors have all sorts of questions about your products, and they’ll appreciate the opportunity to talk to you directly on your website.

Why do I even mention that? It turns out that only 33% of business-to-consumer (B2C) businesses have live chat implemented on their websites. That’s way less than I initially expected. On the flip side, live chat is relatively popular among business-to-business companies, with 61% of B2B businesses offering a chat option on their websites.

Offering live chat on your website is not only the best way to provide fast and efficient customer service - it’s also one of the best ways to increase sales. If you don’t have live chat on your website, you could be missing out on big bucks and higher customer satisfaction.

Take the initiative

Simply having a live chat widget on your store won’t do the trick. Many of your website visitors won’t start a conversation on their own. You need to be proactive. Remember the last time when you wanted to buy something online and a chat window popped up automatically after you spent a few seconds on that site? That’s called a greeting, and it’s one of the best ways to engage your potential customers.

Choose from multiple conditions that a user has to meet in order for a greeting to show up. The biggest benefit of greetings is that you can display them on any page on your website. This means that you’re not limited to only engaging those landing on your home page. A greeting displayed on your checkout page can nudge shoppers to make a purchase.

Read your customers’ minds, sort of

You may have thought (at least once) how great it would be if you could read minds. From a business standpoint, it would mean having all the answers to your customers’ pain points. Doesn’t that sound like a recipe for success? Fortunately or not, we’re not there yet.

What you can do, though, is to prepare answers to your customers’ questions in advance. How is this possible? Whenever you chat with a visitor, you’ll see a message sneak peek, which is a preview of what this visitor is typing to you in the chat window. It will help you find a solution to their problem quicker - being able to preview messages from your customers saves a lot of time and helps you provide lightning-fast customer service.

Hire a chatbot

Adding a chatbot to your website is another way to help you handle an increase in questions while staying one step ahead. Chatbots are available 24/7 and can handle multiple chats at the same time. They will be invaluable in reducing your workload and/or automating your customer service operations entirely, depending on the complexity of your products and typical orders.

One of the best things you can do this holiday season is to implement an FAQ chatbot. It will free you from answering the same questions over and over again, help answer repetitive questions in seconds, and provide essential support around the clock.

At times, chatbots will answer questions and your visitors might need more help getting to the solution. To limit any confusion, you can add suggested answers to your chat design to remove doubt from the equation.

Monitor social media

When it comes to offering customer service on social media, you have to be ready for everything. Some people are very vocal about their complaints, and businesses have to adapt their customer service strategy to handle social media mentions effectively. Let’s not focus on the negative side, though - you can also use those platforms to win over unhappy customers, and surprise those who don’t even expect to hear from you.

Apart from monitoring your business name and social media handles, search for keywords that describe your products or what you do as a business. If you sell vintage t-shirts, for instance, you might want to keep tabs on phrases like “looking for a vintage t-shirt” or “vintage t-shirts.” Chances are, you’re going to find social media posts containing your keywords. Take advantage of those opportunities, and engage those people. Most of the time, they’ll appreciate your initiative and will be more likely to become your newest customer.

This holiday season is going to be different from any other we’ve experienced before. While people plan to spend less overall this year, as much as 64% of consumers say they plan to spend more online than last year. With all this new traffic, you’ll have to bring your “A” game to keep customer satisfaction high. Luckily, with the right tools and preparation, it shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.

Learn more about LiveChat on our integrations page.