What To Consider Before Integrating Live Chat Into Your Website

Update: Originally written in 2019, this post received an update in July 2022.

Marketing Managers today may find themselves wondering whether integrating a live chat option into their website is a good idea.

The wrong approach can make you come off as pushy, outdated, and impinge on page load speeds and usability. Creating an educated plan of attack regarding implementation could serve to elevate your business considerably.

There are upsides and downsides to live chat. Not every business will be able to take advantage of every positive aspect. Just as not every business will be able to evade every negative one.

However, with proper preparation and knowledge on your side, you’ll be well-poised to make informed decisions about how to leverage the technology to your benefit.

The Pros and Cons of Live Chat Software

Pros For Your Website Visitors

• A well-implemented and managed chat system can provide your users with a sense of instant gratification. People want answers quickly, and sometimes users find themselves frustrated, confused or left wanting by the content on a website. They may just be too busy to search for the information they need, or have specific questions relating to their account.
  
  Having a live chat app in place can do wonders to prevent them from just giving up and leaving. Whilst their questions may not be answered right away, they can be asked immediately, and that’s what counts. Especially if they can ask, and then go on about their business.
  
• Live chat also helps contribute to the experience and perception of your brand formed, as people interact with your business. Whether for the first time, or the 50th.
  
• Having somebody (or something) on hand to greet website visitors and address questions can help you appear more communicative, knowledgeable and attentive.

Pros For Your Company

• You’ll be able to acquire customer information and enquiries 24/7 and 365 days a year with live chat software in place. Even when nobody from your business is available, visitors can leave information for future follow-up, or questions to be answered at a later date.
  
• Implementation and deployment tend to be simple and they can integrate with other systems to simplify a variety of processes. This is especially true for businesses that have customer support or ticketing systems. Allowing them to provide immediate automated responses notifying users that queries have been received or tickets successfully created.
  
• They can even be used to schedule meetings or appointments quickly and effectively.
  
• Numerous live chat apps and software services offer extremely affordable incremental pricing, based on how many customers you interact with. Some are free or very low in cost for businesses with lower visitor numbers.
  
• If your company finds itself facing growing mountains of voicemails, emails, or other forms of communication to respond to, live chat can help alleviate some of that stress and help better manage the customer service process.
  
• Customers will be able to ask simpler questions through the chat. Leaving other avenues of communication open for more urgent or complex problems.

Cons For Your Business

• Not every client or lead who visits your website will understand how to use the live chat.
  
• Countless live chats become inundated with meaningless, irrelevant, and nonsensical questions on a daily basis. This can make working through to find genuine enquiries a chore.
  
• Depending on your team structure, and the time and resources that your business can afford to invest in live chat, some chat functions can have the potential to demand a hefty amount of those things from your company.
  
  If you can add more than one team member to chat duty, you can cut down on the amount of work an employee needs to dedicate to managing chat. But then you’ve potentially used two people to do the job of one. If you have a customer service team, this could be a natural addition to their workflow.
  
• In some cases, live chats can turn into free-for-alls. Just as with in-person or over-the-phone communication, people who elect to use live chat can be angry. Nobody wants to put their team through hell with a customer who’s determined to cause some damage. Although your team may prefer live chat to enable calm and measured responses.
  
  As with any service role, your chosen live chat operators will need to have thick skin and be ready to deal with people who may be looking to pick fights.
  
• Depending on implementation, live chat solutions can slow your page load speeds. A developer can assist you in negating the impact, but if you have a slow site already, you may want to address this first before adding another speed reducing factor.
  
• Particularly on mobile devices, chat popups can be very distracting and take up a lot of screen real estate. If you also have other popups that load when a page is opened, adding another can be very frustrating for a user. Consider usability and appearance when considering adding a chat function, and consider deferring how quickly it appears on page load.

Cons For Your Customers

The upsides of live chat mentioned above are great reasons to consider implementation, but some are double-edged swords.

• Most live chats offer users the option to offer information or ask questions to be addressed at a later date.
  
  Whilst this is better than no information and a quick click out of the page, some users may still be unhappy with the prospect of a delayed response. It shouldn’t be used to totally replace more direct communication methods, such as phone numbers.
  
• Some older audiences or those inexperienced with internet technologies may feel alienated by live chat. You can typically alleviate these issues by making sure that other ways to contact you are abundantly clear.

Which Live Chat Solution Is Right For You

There are numerous options and ways to implement live chat technology for your business’ website. Because of this, researching and getting an understanding of which option suits you best can be a little bit of a chore.

We’ve compiled a brief outline of some of the most popular ways live chat is offered, and who’s likely to be best served by those options:

Customer Service Suites

Some live chat services, like those offered by Zendesk, are part of larger customer service suites. These include knowledge libraries and customer support systems.

• This is a more costly option since live chat can come with a slew of other features and benefits – although you can usually purchase the chat system independently.
• Your business will likely have access to a good deal of support, as the larger or more expansive the tool, the more likely a provider is to offer support and assistance for it.
• Ideal for companies who are interested in or require the other tools in the suite. The support ticket system for example. Impact uses this for our WordPress support tickets.

AI & Chat Bots

Other live chat services like LivePerson are AI-based and offer chatbots, rather than needing to be actively manned.

• If you continuously receive the same few questions that can be answered with simple, predictable replies, implementing an AI live chat bot could save you a considerable amount of time and manpower. It could reduce demand on customer service phone lines and inboxes.
• These do take some time to set up and program. If you’re unsure of your skills in this department, you may need to outsource implementation, or lean heavily on the provider for support.
• Ideal for companies that receive repetitive questions and can’t always have a live agent on hand. They’re also well-suited to organisations without time or internal resources to funnel into live chat.

Standalone Chat Solutions

Many live chat offerings are standalone, like LiveChat.

• The solution and provider you choose, will decide the level of support you receive. Some companies may offer very specialised help because they offer a very specialised product. Whereas others may not be of much assistance because the scope of their work is rather small.
• Ideal for businesses who already have other successful marketing and advertising procedures in place, and those with customer service teams or adequate resource.
• Some even offer external manned chat services for companies who lack the staff resources to run their own chat. They can either provide responses briefed by your company or act as a gatekeeper, and forward important interactions and queries on to your team.
• Facebook offers Facebook Messenger chat, which allows users who are already logged into Facebook to send messages quickly without inputting their email.
• WhatsApp also provides a similar solution which can be embedded on your website for immediate conversations that can be managed directly from WhatsApp.

The Takeaways

Regardless of your industry, your company stands to gain a lot when you leverage live chat software. If managed well, not only will consumer confidence in your brand increase, but you’ll be able to free up staff and resources to address other tasks, or reduce heavy workloads for your customer service team.

Impact Media can help integrate a chat solution into your WordPress website. But no matter where you source your software and how you deploy it, it’s your own understanding and management of live chat that will ultimately decide whether the venture is a success.