It’s no secret that holiday sales are a big deal. In the 2022 holiday season, which looks at between November 1 and December 31, there were $211.7 billion spent online. This isn’t new, as it’s a trend that has been growing 3.5% year over year.
Bear in mind that this figure fell short of a $239.26 billion expectation, and it’s still mind-boggling.
Knowing that there is such a large pie means you want to do everything you possibly can with every tool in your arsenal to ensure your holiday sales look great.
There are a lot of different things online businesses will do such as creating an e-mail marketing strategy to increase sales. Look no further than companies like Amazon or Netflix to see some simple yet effective e-mail marketing strategy examples.
Exit intent popups are also a popular option, allowing site users to reconsider navigating away.
What if you were told that you could use your live chat tool to help improve your holiday sales numbers? Here are 10 great ways to do exactly that!
1. Be Proactive
Many live chat customers will tell you that their experience is reactive at best, and this is not the category that you want to fall into.
There are different approaches you can take to be proactive on live chat, but one of the best is probably just going beyond what customers are reaching out about.
For example, imagine that you sell and repair printers. Our customer has reached out almost every month to have a component fixed in an aged unit.
It’s very obvious that something is wrong here and there may be greater value in just replacing the printer. This is a good time to suggest doing so to the customer along with a model recommendation and a brief explanation of why the change would be valuable.
The point is to try to identify potential opportunities for sales and show customers that you care about them and their best interests.
2. Be Responsive
If you want to turn customers off, don’t be responsive. You can think about this from a personal standpoint. Imagine you’re trying to have an important conversation with two different people. One is paying attention and responding to you quickly and the other is giving delayed responses and barely even saying anything. Who are you more inclined to talk to?
It’s the same principle with your customers. Don’t make them wait, and if you have to do so to collect information or for some other reason, communicate what is happening and check in frequently if the wait time is longer than expected.
3. Be Knowledgeable
You need to know about what you do or what you offer. If you don’t, you need to at least know who and where you can get the right information from. In most cases, this can be easily found in a company’s internal knowledge base. It sends the wrong signal to the customer that someone who is supposed to work at a given company doesn’t have a clue about what the company does.
It’s even worse if the company seems to be very inexperienced in the industry overall. Everyone, from leadership to line staff workers should have a good idea of what the company does and where they can get certain information. This is especially true for whichever team is going to be communicating with clients via live chat.
4. Be Friendly and Helpful
There is such a thing as a value-driven service, and much of it comes from additions that create a positive experience. Have you ever heard people talk about Chick-fil-A employees before? What’s the common sentiment? They are some of the most pleasant people to deal with.
What you go to Chick-fil-A for is the food. The pleasant behavior is not something you’re paying for nor is it mandatory. However, it does add to the experience, meaning you’re more likely to return to the restaurant.
The live chat experience should be the same. Sure, the customer is probably just asking a question or trying to get a concern addressed. However, pleasantries, addressing the customer by name, thanking the customer for waiting, thanking the customer for the business, etc., can go a long way.
5. Use Canned Responses
Canned responses create efficiency and communicate a sense of authority and ability to address customer concerns. It’s always good for a company to have a set of predetermined responses to certain common queries. This is one of the reasons that automated chatbots can sometimes work so well.
However, it’s also important to know when to use canned responses. If there is an emotionally tense situation or you are at risk of losing a customer, for example, it’s likely better to have more of a customized and personal touch added to the life chat experience.
6. Offer Discounts and Promotions
People love to spend less or get beneficial offerings from businesses. Knowing how and when to offer these in a live chat session can be a valuable tool. One of the clearest examples is when you’re trying to pull off an abandoned cart or service recovery situation.
In other words, something went wrong on your company’s part, and you’re trying to remedy the situation. While you don’t want it to appear that you’re just throwing money at the situation, you can handle the current concern and offer a discount or promotion just to get how sorry you are across.
For example, if there was a shipping delay that caused inconvenience for a customer, you could change the priority of the shipping and offer a 10% off coupon for a subsequent purchase.
7. Upsell and Cross-sell
Upselling and cross-selling successfully improve sales for obvious reasons. Doing so means that customers will spend more money. The key to doing this correctly is appealing to the needs of the client and showing where there’s value. You don’t want it to look like you’re simply trying to make more money for the business, even if that’s what you’re trying to do.
Perhaps you offer three services that a client needs, but only one is taken from you, and two are coming from other vendors. You could upsell by highlighting the fact that you offer all three services, manageability is easier when they’re under one roof, and the overall cost may be lower.
8. Collect Feedback
People can’t grow without feedback, and neither can businesses. Feedback is important because it helps you to continue to do what you do well and make changes to the things that you don’t. Truthfully, an external perspective is the best way to see the things you probably wouldn’t otherwise.
You can collect feedback during the live chat session by simply asking the customer what the experience has been like or after the interaction by providing a survey when the live chat is over.
9. Personalize the Experience
Perhaps it’s a release of dopamine, but people love personalized experiences and responses. It’s good to know that someone or even a business acknowledges you and your needs. This is one of the reasons you need to be careful about when and how you use canned responses.
Ask customers how they’re doing, address them by name, mention something nice about their location, etc. You simply want to convey that you see them and their needs uniquely.
10. Follow Up After the Chat
This is where a lot of businesses fall off. The chat happens, it ends, and that’s it. That customer may never hear from you again until they have another problem. Following up gives you valuable feedback and it’s another way of showing that you care, which is likely to improve customer retention.
Two dentist offices can provide identical services, but the one that calls every few days for the first week after an extraction to check how you’re doing is the one you’re going to remember.
Conclusion
Getting those holiday sales is essential, and you’re going to need all hands on deck to do it. By optimizing your live chat app experience, you put yourself in a position where customers are more likely to respond well to your products and services. Use the 10 tips above to get there!
