But Sascha Griffin, founder of shoe storage company pinklily, says live chat has actually helped her interactions with older customers.
“I have a lot of older clientele who have seen me on TV and they are a bit daunted about online shopping,” says Griffin. “My quick response gives them back their confidence.”
Griffin has been using a live chat service called ‘Zopin’ on her website for 12 months and says the service can be extremely valuable for a small business – as long as you are willing to make yourself constantly available.
“I have a reputation for getting back to my customers instantly and I want to have a business like that,” she says.
If Griffin is out of the office when one of her customers shoots through a question, she gets an email notification on her phone. No matter what’s she’s doing, Griffin will make it a priority to reply.
“If I’m out for dinner I’ll excuse myself or I’ll wake up at 3am and reply.
“People are quite shocked when the owner gets back to them and they always say thank you for getting in touch with me so quickly.”
Griffin says she understands the value of an immediate response when shopping online from her own experience as a customer.
“When you’re shopping online you have so many choices and so many distractions.
“The phone could go, the dishwasher goes off, the child screams, and so you only have a few minutes to catch them before they lose interest.”
The enquiries Griffin normally fields are product related, but range from questions about delivery to IT problems.
“Even if you say ‘someone will get back to you’ that’s better than nothing,” says Griffin.
Mark Baranov from Office Earth has been using live chat on his virtual office website for 12 months and says live chat is an invaluable tool to hear what his clients are saying.
“I’ll jump on to hear the live chat with clients just to hear what the questions are and what the pain points are to better understand their needs and better accommodate for them,” says Baranov.
He said listening to his client’s questions gives him a fantastic opportunity to finetune the website’s content, such as the FAQ section.
“In most cases, clients are on a website because they’ve searched a business out or they’ve stumbled upon you, but they haven’t made their mind up if they want to be your clients or not. But now here’s your opportunity to show them what you can do.”
Like Jacobs and Griffin, Baranov says live chat is best used not as a sales channel, but as a channel to provide good customer service.
“Mostly it just gives us happy clients.”
Baranov, Jacobs and Griffin agree on one further point too, if you can’t deliver live chat effectively – don’t do it.
“If you’re not going to be available all the time, don’t get it,” says Griffin.
“It’s better to under-deliver than overpromise.”
Baranov agrees: “If you don’t have the resources, my advice would be switch live chat off; you’re doing yourself a disservice.”
Jacobs says sometimes businesses think because one company is doing something, everybody should do it, but each business should make a decision based upon their clients, their staffing and their technology.
“You definitely want to make sure you’re delivering a good service over chat if you’re going to offer it.
“If there is a small retailer who might not be able to man the chat channel all the time, which means when someone tries to chat with you, you never get a response, I would say don’t even bother, you’re going to hurt your brand more than help your brand.”
Kirsten Robb is a former journalist at SmartCompany. Previously, she worked at News Corp as a property reporter for Leader Newspapers and the Herald Sun, and holds a Masters of Journalism at Melbourne University.
