- Ability for the content to impact a live chat implementation in a measurable way.
- Absence of fluff. [We’ve all downloaded white papers that don’t contain anything specific - just grandiose statements of superiority.]
- Real data. [The antithesis of the previous criterion.]
- Cross vertical applicability. [Live chat is in use across industries so our aim here is to provide widely relevant information.]

With these criteria in mind, our Three Best Live Chat White Papers are…

Live Chat Performance Benchmark Report
This report is based on the summative data across our entire customer base. It provides a definitive guide allowing customers to measure their performance against customer medians.

Live Chat Effectiveness Primary Research Report
Fielded a year ago, this report looks at chat from the shopper’s perspective. What it shows is that live chat’s role in the sales cycle cannot be denied. A new version of this report – an even more robust version – is currently underway. Familiarizing oneself with the inaugural report is a pre-requisite to the next version.

Abt Case Study
There are dozens of other choices we considered for this last slot but we ultimately decided that Abt’s real and impressive results were worthy of it. This electronics retailer uses live chat to increase sales, boots up-sells, and improve customer service. Access to this case study is provided automatically when you download white paper #2 above.

Your live chat operators are often at the front lines of your business. They can provide the first (and last) interaction your customers have. Whether they are providing sales or customer support, your live chat operators should leave a lasting, positive impression. Here are five best practices for operators to ensure they’re doing just that.

1. Approach a chat like you would a phone call, not an Instant Message. While one of the huge advantages of live chat is the ability to quickly and efficiently assist multiple customers at the same time, you still want each customer to feel like they have your undivided attention, just like they would if they were talking to you on the phone. Answer promptly and greet your visitor, preferably by name. If it will take a few minutes to pull up their account or order or look up the information they are requesting, let them know instead of leaving them hanging. If you are using a canned message and part of the message doesn’t apply to the customer, edit the message before you send it. (Nothing is worse than being at the receiving end of an obviously scripted message.) And remember, while you want the chat to be friendly and helpful, it’s not the same as IMing your friends. Stay professional and avoid any typical instant messaging abbreviations (LOL, BRB, etc.).
    
2. Ask permission. If you’d like to utilize the push page feature to “push” a visitor’s browser to a specific page of your website, ask first. If you want to launch an Active Assist session, ask. Even though the visitor will be prompted to give permission to begin the session, make sure it’s something they are comfortable with before taking that step. For some customers, live chat may be an entirely new frontier. Ensure that their first experience is a positive one.
    
3. Use BoldChat to help you multi-task. Organize the BoldChat grid using the Group-by and Column Chooser options. Pop out chats into individual windows when managing more than one chat at a time using the View feature. Set up the one-click greeting option so you can automatically greet your visitors when you click the Answer button. Set up hot keys for canned messages. With so much flexibility and so many different ways to configure BoldChat to fit the way you work, helping multiple website visitors gets easier and easier. If you haven’t attended our Getting Started with BoldChat webinar series (dates and times are regularly posted on the BoldChat home tab), be sure to sign up for the next session and get more out of your BoldChat experience.
    
4. Send an image before you send a hyperlink or a push page. Whenever appropriate, insert an image into your chat, either by using the insert image button and entering the image URL or by dragging and dropping images into your chats. Keep the visitor engaged in the chat instead of pushing them somewhere else. Plus, the visitor can request an email transcript at the end of the chat and save the images for future reference.
    
5. Enable the post-chat survey. Nothing can boost operator morale like positive feedback from customers. Sure, the post-chat survey provides supervisors with a great tool for measuring operator performance, but it also lets operators see how they’re doing. Add the survey fields to the BoldChat grid using the Column Chooser and operators can review the survey results as soon as the chat ends. It’s a proactive way of improving your chat implementation, one chat at a time.

Here are the top-cited reasons people abandon shopping carts:

1. 46% – High shipping charges
2. 37% – Comparison shopping
3. 36% – Lack money
4. 27% – Want a coupon
5. 26% – Want to shop offline
6. 24% – Couldn’t find the preferred pay option
7. 23% – Item not available at checkout
8. 22% – Couldn’t find customer support

If you read our report on Live Chat Effectiveness, you’ll discover that live chat can reduce shopping cart abandonment. By placing a live chat button and utilizing BoldChat’s proactive chat feature within your shopping cart pages, you get a chance to address #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. (I’m not really sure what to do about #3.) We suggest you place a proactive chat invitation on your checkout page with a timer delay based on your knowledge of your abandonment metrics. You can use our A/B testing capability to try special offers like free shipping or a discount code. You can also place an invitation on any page that displays an error code offering to help the shopper resolve the error. If nothing else, at least put a prominent live chat button in the cart and on the checkout page so your visitors can find you when they need you (#8 – 22%).

Our customers routinely report a 30% decrease in shopping cart abandonment by taking these (and other) steps. Don’t wait. Your competitors won’t.

image source

The second reason came from macro-market forces which continue to redefine how businesses interact with their customers.  The dialogue generally revolves around convergence, integration, and single contact resolution (for both sales and support).  We thought, therefore, that a new name – one that embraced this holistic view of customer interaction – was needed.  BoldCCM was born.

CCM stands for:

Customer
Communication
Management

Two product offerings bear this name which means they both offer users the ability to interact with website visitors in multiple ways.  You can learn more about these products and the benefits of integrated website communication management by following the link.

So what’s new?

Basic edition users can now proactively invite their visitors to chat, utilize detailed website visitor monitoring (including Geo-IP information), search live chat history, create unlimited, searchable canned messages, and receive a comprehensive report with chat and visit data.

Based on results from our Live Chat Performance Benchmarks Report, we know that adding live chat to your website can increase conversions by up to 86%. Getting started with BoldChat’s Basic edition is a great way to easily, quickly add live chat to your website and begin chatting with customers in minutes.

For a limited time, when you sign up for BoldChat Basic, you can get two licenses for the price of one – $29.

Are you using BoldChat Basic? Tell us what you think.

As part of the sales team for the past few years, I’ve been asked the same set of questions on a daily basis and we used these questions to give us a place to start. “How many chats can I expect based on traffic to my website?” and “When should I proactively invite my visitors to chat?” and “What percentage of chatters will convert to sales?” are just a few of the more frequently asked questions used to shape the benchmark data.

A sample of the results featured in the report:

• Chatters are 4.1x more likely to convert than visitors who don’t chat.
• Chatters that engage via proactive invitation are 6.3x more likely to convert than visitors who don’t chat.
• The median percentage of website visitors that accept proactive invitations to chat is 6%.
• Visitors invited after being on a site for two to three minutes have a 79% higher acceptance rate than those invited earlier than that.
• Placing the chat button on a second page increases the number of chats a website receives by a median of 53% versus sites that place the button on only one page.

To read more and begin measuring how your live chat implementation stacks up with our findings, download the Live Chat Performance Benchmarks report.

Static Buttons (13 available)

Animated Buttons

Instructions for Bold Software Customers

Pick the image that you like, right click on it, and select “properties”.  Copy the image’s URL.  From the Bold Software client, click on Setup > Account Setup > Chats > Custom Chat Buttons

Select your custom chat button definition (for many customers it’s called “My Custom Chat Button”) and hit Edit.

In the screen that appears, paste the URL of the image into the appropriate field. Repeat for the unavailable image and that’s it!

Though it may be counterintuitive, we think that enterprise-sized e-tailers can save money by thinking inside the box. Here’s what we mean:

1. Consolidate Communications: We know from our own proprietary research that a website visitor’s communication technology preference is dependent upon where they are in the buying process. In a given moment then, there are people on your site who want to chat with you, initiate a click to call with you, email you, be actively assisted, or have no communication with you at all. Putting each of these communication methods into its own box and under its own management is wasteful. Enterprises should consolidate all of these methods under one umbrella with the same interface and staff. We recently launched an integrated suite to accomplish just that. Learn more at BoldCCM.com.
2. Get in the Driver’s Seat: Taking control over your own live chat, click-to-call and email management solution is valuable to an enterprise for two reasons. First, it saves money in the short-run because it avoids costly fees associated with ongoing professional services engagements. Secondly, it enables companies to build intellectual capital around an increasingly important competency. We recommend, at least, that firms develop a working knowledge of live chat reporting metrics and proactive invitation logic.
3. One Chat Resolution: Many enterprises who utilize live chat for support should consider an active co-browsing or full remote control capability. If your product line is complicated or if you sell computer-related items, the ability to actively view and interact with a target customer’s PC could allow you to resolve their buying or support issue in one session. This not only provides a positive experience for the customer, but avoids costly escalations.

The topic clearly struck a chord for business owners evidenced by several days of the story being tweeted and retweeted. While we’d like to believe that it was a fascination with live chat technology that drove the excitement, we understand that the story’s real appeal was its unspoken message.  The idea that website owners aren’t simply beholden to the whims of their visitors but, instead, can effectively exert influence over the buying cycle is a powerful message.  Another recently published article discusses this as well.

“Mastering Customer Capture on Your Website” appeared in Website Magazine not to long ago and was authored, in part, by Bold Software’s CEO.  The article, like the WSJ one, is focused on ‘after-click’ marketing.  It’s primary concern is helping businesses to think about capturing contact information from visitors in a way that drives bottom line improvement.   Even if a visitor can’t be immediately converted to a sale, capturing their information is a step toward making them tomorrow’s customer.

The article discusses using visitor monitoring, live chat, and other tools to assist in information capture.

We’re thrilled to see one of the largest and most influential mainstream business publications report on After Click Marketing.  While the reporter, Raymund Flandez doesn’t use that term, the article’s introduction is its very definition; “These days, the tech-savvy small business is using search engine optimization to steer customers to its home page. But once those online visitors land, how do you get them to buy?”

This simple question, we believe, is giving birth to a new discipline (or at least a new vocabulary) associated with what website owners can do to drive visitors into the sales cycle. After click marketing concerns itself with an engagement action we want the visitor to take.  In fact, after click marketing is really about the optimization of those engagements.  Today’s Wall Street Journal article clearly defines three such actions which ultimately drive conversions.

The three best ways to convert website traffic are:

Add a Click-to-Call Feature

Visitors input their phone number and the technology automatically connects the visitor with a website representative.  This idea is particularly useful for businesses that can’t be tethered to a computer all the time.

Add Live Chat

Congratulations to ImprovementDirect (an online retailer of name brand faucets, among other items) for being featured by the Journal as a smart retailer who uses live chat to drive sales.

Offer a try-before-you-buy program

Allowing customers to try out a product before purchasing it is excellent advice.  In fact, its advice we follow across our own product lines.