Chat is here to stay, people! In fact, many are saying chat is about to completely replace the online form. The great Neil Patel even proclaims that Forms Are Dead! I don't fully believe that yet, but I do see the rise of chat in popularity and fully appreciate that this is a trend that's here to stay. Several of our clients are using chat on their websites and each one of them is engaging with prospects and customers alike, daily.
I myself prefer chat for many of my online customer service interactions. However, I don't like it as much for sales. But that's just me and I may be in the minority … soon.
adWhite uses HubSpot's Conversation Tool for our online chat. We've set the hours as our normal working hours, so a real, live person can always be online to reply. I know this isn't always the best practice, but we plan to adjust soon and add some valuable options for after-hours visitors. We are following many other best practices by placing the chat option only on certain pages and changing the message that we begin with based on the page our site visitor is on. That said though, we have a long way to go to best implement and utilize chat. Right now we get 2 to 3 prospects a week via chat and they are almost all extremely early-stage prospects.
When looking across the online chat landscape, here are three solutions we've investigated recently and like:
- HubSpot Conversations
- Drift
- Live Chat
Each of these shares these features:
- Integrate with Slack and HubSpot
- Are easy to implement on your website for a cohesive look
- Are highly customizable
What are the benefits of chat, you ask? Well let's once again visit Neil Patel's blog for a great answer. Neil explains the 4 Reasons Why You Need Live Chat Now. Here they are, along with some of our thoughts:
- Responding Faster = More Leads. It most certainly does. When people are on your site and they engage in a chat with you, they want the answer now, and they are more often than not ready to take the next sales step NOW.
- Help People Even When You Aren't There. This is certainly true and with today's tools is not that difficult to set this up. This can be invaluable to many companies.
- Overcome Objections Instantly. Truer words have never been spoken :) Take the guesswork out, chat is truly instant, so clear up what your solution can and can't do in real-time.
- Forms Are A Thing Of The Past. I'm not ready to admit this yet, but it's definitely trending this way.
If you aren't using chat yet, start thinking about it now and be ready to implement a solution soon. Your audience expects it and appreciate it.
