The Business Case for Web Chat

We have previously talked publicly about the uptick we are seeing in companies implementing web chat as a new customer communication channel to complement traditional phone calls and email.  Even organizations like Medicare now offer web chat as an alternative customer communication channel. I wanted to share what we are hearing from customers about the business case for web chat.  There are three primary justifications for implementing web chat:

1.    Phone Call Deflection – Chat sessions cost less than phone calls for a company to handle because an agent handles multiple chats at once, especially if customers do things like run off to find receipts or serial numbers while the agent waits.  Experience shows that if an invitation to chat is placed on a web site next to a phone number, about 1/3 of people who would have called on the phone will now chat. For example, the University of New Mexico knew the cost of phone support was high, so they implemented chat.  The university has been able to minimize their costs even as they continue to expand the scope of services and the quality of end-user support for students.

2.    Alternative to Email – Although an individual chat session might often be more expensive than an individual email response, it often takes multiple emails to resolve a customer issue making the single chat interaction less expensive.  Plus if the chat session lasts 15 minutes and multiple email roundtrips take days, the customer experience is much improved too.  One large consumer electronics firm we work with recently turned off email in favor of chat for this very reason.  Customer emails cost them $3 each to answer by offshore resources and a chat took $5, but on average it took them three emails ($9) to resolve the customer issue making chat less expensive per issue.

3.    Drive More Revenue – Chat essentially adds a retail assistant to a web experience.  Placed strategically, proactive chat can help consumers through checkout and drive incremental revenue.  Proactive chat capabilities can even look for the most likely candidates based on which pages they have traversed or how much time they have spent on a page. For example, Beauty.com (a subsidy of drugstore.com) is using chat to replicate the beauty experience consumers have at the make-up counter in their local department store.  Trained beauty advisors, with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their needs from the convenience and privacy of their homes or office.  Beauty.com is converting approximately 25 percent of chat sessions into product orders, with certain promotional weeks converting at as high as 40 percent.

Any project being proposed these days needs to have solid business justification.  Chat often provides solid ROI.