Already a preferred channel by online customers, Live Chat is likely to dominate future customer experience, due to the integration of game-changing technologies. This week's guest article comes to us courtesy of Jake Rheude of Red Stag Fulfillment who has taken a look at the Top 7.
Many companies experience the benefits of live chat nowadays. That's because it serves as a useful tool in boosting customer experience. For one, it allows customers to receive answers to their queries immediately. At the same time, it helps your company filter simpler customer support issues, and resolve at first point of contact.
But best of all, you can boost conversion rates and cultivate customer loyalty. This encapsulates the importance of leveraging live chat for your e-commerce business.
But looking at Live Chat more deeply, we have identified seven ways that online digital engagement could evolve even further, indicating that live chat needs to be a primary feature of your customer experience now, because customers are about to demand even more in the very near future:
1. FROM LIVE CHAT TO Voice and Video INTEGRATION
Customers have gravitated online in 2020 faster than ever before, and your website is far and away your number one sale and marketing asset. Spending so much time on websites, customers love live chat, because it's quick, convenient and they can multi-task.
Well very soon they will also be able to use to voice and video support, directly from within a website. Just like Live Chat. Technology that will super-charge customer engagement, but also create expectation demands on businesses. These are things to keep in mind if your goal is to create a better website.
Using webRTC technology makes it possible to offer the customer voice and video calls. This will be invaluable to capture customers who want to contract your company immediately. Doing so removes the need for having contact numbers on a business website. It is also one of the best ways to engage customers minus the hassle.
2. the addition of Augmented Reality
In a nutshell, this is a live view of highly informative graphics from the wearer's point of view. It brings together various elements of the digital world with the help of computer-generated sensory inputs. Through Augment Reality, customer support agents can provide customers with required information. It also allows customers to look beyond what they see.
Live chat and AR can present specific data, or details of a product, through smartphones or laptops. With a multitude of AR apps constantly being developed today, many using GPS to improve local searches, operators will be able to access very sophisticated information with ease, and offer it to enquiring customers via a live chat interface. This could take the form of visual technical support for customers, who are trying to resolve issues, then easily integrated with a request for physical support to be sent to the location from a service centre if required.
Whilst AR is still relatively limited, it is expected to develop significantly in the next few years, and there is no reason why live chat will not use this technology to provide seamless and accurate services to customers.
3. HOLOGRAMS AND 3D TECHNOLOGY
Integrating 3D technology and holograms into live chat takes traditional customer service to a whole new level. That's because it makes the interactions "livelier". The use of 3D technology makes objects come alive. A live chat that offers a 3D experience could enable both customers and agents to interact as if they were in the same physical space.
Products can be presented on the screen in full resolution to offer detailed information to customers. By 'virtually' overcoming geographical barriers, customers can more accurately express objections they may have, and in turn, agents have greater ability to understand and deal with satisfying the needs of customers.
Moreover, having this sort of interaction can rapidly influence customers in making purchasing decisions. As a result, brands and their customers can enjoy a much closer relationship because they better understand each other.
4. Omnichannel Customer Support
The highlight of these innovative technologies is their ability to provide better customer service. And by "better," we do not just mean more high-tech tools. We are talking about enabling customers to reach us, regardless of the communication line.
The combination of Live Chat and Artificial Intelligence may appear to take away customer support agents' jobs. But that is not the case.
What it does is make customer support more efficient. For one, it reduces the need to answer the same questions from different people. Doing so enables you to focus resources on higher value priorities. You would instead want to leverage human customer support agents in dealing with more complicated issues. Matters that demand human intervention.
As live chat continues to evolve, customers and support teams will be brought closer across various channels. Communication technologies will merge into a substantial omni-channel melting pot. Digital conversation platforms will become the norm, as businesses look to systemise and manage conversations at scale.
Live Chat is a starting point for business right now. It's here to stay, but in time, it will become one part of an integrated conversion engine.
5. Natural Language User Interfaces (NLUI)
This is an interface that helps interpret voice through engine or syntax. Quite similar to how we humans understand speech. Live chat will incorporate NLUI to offer seamless voice-aided support.
This feature allows customers to open the support tool and then speak relevant commands. The software will then process the customers' information and then connect the chat with an appropriate operator.
This makes chat interactions even easier and more accessible for customers, and will take levels of engagement to an entirely new level.
6. AI and Chatbots
One of the most significant changes in live chat software is the growing usage of chatbots and AI functionality. More and more businesses are using chatbots to streamline the entire customer journey, servicing linear or selectable processes with a clear outcome.
Many sites have been introducing a convenient 24/7 chatbot option to provide an instant promise of help out of hours. The jury is out on whether customers are fully satisfied with the approach at this stage.
But AI continues to be developed to truly personalise the customer experience, accessing new depths of available data, and it will only get better.
7. Screen Sharing
Screen sharing (already commonly available in online meeting apps) allows both the agent and the customer to share screens. This provides an enhanced experience where both can offer rich visual support to their discussions.
This feature potentially decreases the time required interacting with the customer, to solve their issue, making complex processes and situations a lot easier. Imagine being able to run a demo of your software to a potential client within a live chat, because they have asked a question.
Some live chat software already accommodates screen sharing functionality, creating an incredible way to further humanise your business's approach in helping customers online.
SO What's in Store for Live Chat Software?
These days, live chat software is more than just another customer support channel. As AR, 3D Holograms, voice recognition, and all these new technologies edge closer to the mainstream, customers will demand greater levels of customer experience from your live chat. Where is your business on its Live Chat journey? Becoming expertly proficient in the channel is now a MUST for all businesses.
Our glimpse of the future only goes to show that live chat will continue to provide better and more immersive customer experiences, and some businesses will harness this better than others. Ironically, these new technologies will actually serve to enhance the human touch, that live chat software is providing.
Whether eventually it is voice recognition or augmented reality, your opportunity in future with live chat certainly looks promising.
Thanks again to Jake for this article. If you'd like to discuss the role of Customer Experience in your business, I'd love to hear from you @ simon.taylor@yomdel.com. Or just get in touch with any of us for a chat.
