Using Live Chat for Sales: Tips, Examples, and Things to Know

Live chat can be a powerful addition to any eCommerce business, yet it remains heavily underexplored or underutilized by many. Some just don’t want to bother with implementation, while others think that their personal approach doesn’t translate well to the “generic” chat format.

But, with today’s live chats, you can give every potential customer who strolled into your online store a personal shopping assistant and provide the same level of guidance as you would in presence. This is a unique opportunity to make a shopping experience more personal, insightful, and memorable.

In a world where instant answers and seamless interactions rule the roost, live chat is a must-have for anyone conducting business online. Moreover, with a sprinkle of AI and automation, your chat will be there for your customers 24/7 while retaining that personal touch and charm that your brand is known for.

So, let’s talk about how you can make that vision a reality. We’ll discuss why incorporating live chat into your sales strategy can be incredibly beneficial and how to avoid common mistakes while doing so. Also, we’ll show you popular use cases for sales live chats and real-life examples of stellar live chat implementation.

What is live chat?

Live chat allows customers to have real-time conversations with a business or website. It’s that little chat box that often pops up in the corner of a website, saying something like, “Hey there! How can I assist you today?” The customer can type in their questions or concerns, and the company responds right away.

Today’s live chats are not fully live per se — they usually include some sort of automations and AI integrations. This allows businesses to always stay on top of customer conversations and assist their audience around the clock.

Live chats allow users to get quick answers without having to dig through FAQs or wait for an email reply. This way, all their questions about product details, shipping information, and payments can get clarified in a matter of seconds, making the whole shopping experience much smoother.

Ten reasons to start using live chat for sales

Forget generic, rigid, and overly scripted sales chats of the past. These days, live chat widgets can enrich your customer communications in ways unimaginable before. Here’s just a quick overview of what can be achieved with them:

1. Initiate conversations instead of making customers wait. Live chat gives you the upper hand — you can be more proactive with potential customers, meeting their needs in real-time and fostering a sense of instant connection. You get to offer assistance before they even ask for it.
2. Anticipate your customers’ next move. Engaging with customers right when they’re interested can lead you to higher conversion rates. Live chat is perfect for turning idle questions into real sales opportunities.
3. Deliver tailored, human-centered experiences at scale. Live chat allows for truly personalized assistance — you can chat with your customers in a natural, conversational manner while adhering to your brand guidelines, tone of voice, etc.
4. Prevent customers from leaving after running into minor problems. By addressing customer concerns or uncertainties during the purchasing process through live chat, you can reduce cart abandonment and leave a strong, positive impression.
5. Show your customers that you care. Demonstrate your availability and responsiveness by offering instant assistance through live chat. This builds trust, showing customers that you’re committed to their satisfaction.
6. Make your sales interactions more time-efficient. Live chat saves both the customer’s time and yours by resolving queries without the delays associated with emails or calls. You can also qualify leads based on the info they provide in the chat, which empowers you to address their pain points more precisely.
7. Understand your customers better. Analyze live chat transcripts and customer interactions to gain valuable insights into their preferences, pain points, and frequently asked questions, helping refine your sales strategy.
8. Stay accessible through a variety of channels. Live chat platforms provide yet another valuable communication channel that some of your customers may prefer over others.
9. Help your customers get what they need no matter the time of day. Provide round-the-clock sales assistance by utilizing automated conversational flows and integrations with AI during non-business hours.
10. Cut costs and streamline your sales efforts. Live chat can be a cheaper alternative to traditional customer support methods, allowing your team to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously.

Implementing live chat gives you a competitive edge in terms of customer communication and satisfaction. This isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating a dynamic, responsive, and customer-centric sales environment that aligns with the expectations of your target audience.

What businesses can use live chat for sales?

Live chat for sales is such a versatile tool that it can be utilized for virtually any industry and scenario. If you still have doubts, here are some common use cases and niches where using live chat for sales and customer support makes a lot of sense.

eCommerce

Use live chat to assist online shoppers with product inquiries, sizing questions, and shipping details. It’s especially effective during the checkout process to prevent cart abandonment.

Software and SaaS

Provide real-time support to potential customers exploring your software. Address questions about features, pricing, and compatibility, and help them make the most out of their trial or subscription.

Consulting, coaching, and other personalized services

Provide instant guidance to potential clients exploring your services. By communicating through live chat, you’ll help them set the right expectations and book their first appointment with confidence.

Real estate

Engage with website visitors and gently guide them toward their first viewing. Answer queries about listings, arrange virtual tours, and help them find the right property.

Travel and hospitality

Assist travelers with booking information, travel itineraries, and accommodation details. Answer their questions on the go and set them up for an unforgettable journey.

Fintech

Offer personalized assistance for banking, insurance, or investment inquiries. Use live chat to guide customers through the application process or explain financial products while removing the need to visit the physical bank.

Healthcare and mental health services

Provide support for patients and their relatives navigating healthcare services, appointment scheduling, or insurance-related questions. Live chat can also be useful for telemedicine inquiries.

Education and online courses

Assist prospective students with admissions, course details, and application processes. Use real-time communication to help them assess their level and find the right educational product that suits their needs and budget.

Automotive

Engage with website visitors interested in purchasing or renting vehicles. Live chat is a great channel for providing information about models, financing options, and guiding them through the test drive scheduling process.

Telecommunications

Use live chat to handle inquiries about mobile plans, internet services, billing, and technical support. Assist customers with account-related questions and demonstrate your commitment to providing superb quality coverage.

Live chat empowers your customers to research, select, and purchase even big-ticket products or services from the comfort of their own homes or on the go. In addition, real-time chat conversations are easier to keep track of and analyze, which benefits both parties involved.

Live chat tips for sales

Whether you’re just implementing live chat or rethinking your existing approach, we’ve gathered a few tips that will set you up for success.

• Start off on the right foot. Personalize your chat welcome message and set the right tone for the conversation, making customers feel recognized and understood.
• Make sure your live chat lives up to its name. Aim for quick response times. Customers appreciate immediate assistance, so strive to address inquiries promptly or apologize for delays, should they occur.
• Find the sweet spot for initiating your live chat widget. Use proactive chat invitations to engage visitors but avoid bombarding them with messages the second they land on your page.
• Make sure your chat window has an easy-to-navigate menu and prompts. Offer pre-written commands and quick replies to help users quickly connect to the right department or communicate their needs without having to type lengthy messages.
• Opt for mobile-friendly chat widgets. Ensure that your live chat can be easily accessed from any device. Many users browse websites from smartphones, so a seamless mobile experience is everything.
• Use automation wisely. Implement chatbots for basic queries, frequently asked questions, routine tasks, and when all of your agents are busy or offline. Let your team focus on more complex interactions.
• Enable chat history to preserve conversational context. Make sure your users can access or even download their live chat conversations and keep receiving replies if they accidentally close the widget or their browser tab.
• Make sure your AI replies on-brand and doesn’t discuss unrelated topics. If you use AI integrations, which many live chat platforms offer, feed it information about your company and specify the topics you want it to stay on.
• Ask your customers to evaluate how helpful your live chat is. Use live chat to gather feedback on the customer experience. Rely on that input to make changes in your conversational marketing and support strategy.
• Find a live chat widget that is compatible with your CRM and other channels. Integrating live chat with your CRM ensures a seamless transition of data between sales and support teams.
• Let your customers know what happens to their data. Be transparent about how their information is handled. If discussing sensitive information, reassure customers about the security of their data and educate them on how to avoid potential scammers pretending to be your company.

Now, to the common mishaps that could ruin your customers’ experience with your live chat.

Common mistakes to avoid when using live chat for sales

It’s easy to get carried away and lose focus, but that is less likely to happen if you keep the following don’ts in mind. These are the things that you should actively exclude from your live chat strategy.

• Leaving customers hanging. Always let your users know if you need more time to look into their inquiry. Abandoning customers and hoping that they would just stick around is a guaranteed way to frustrate and lose them.
• Relying on default canned responses and generic scripts too much. Personalize each of your automated messages and flows to maintain the realistic impression of a human-like dialogue. There shouldn’t be a stark contrast between how your chatbot responds and how your sales agents speak.
• Overusing automation. Your live chat should remain live, meaning that there should always be an option to connect to a real agent. Overreliance on chatbots without the option for human interaction defeats the whole purpose and can be off-putting.
• Being overly sales without providing value. Avoid being aggressive with sales pitches. Focus on assisting customers rather than pushing them to make a purchase. The whole reason why they use your live chat is because they hope to receive help and support from you, so you shouldn’t disappoint them.
• Not enabling sales and support agents to do their best. Ensure agents have access to comprehensive information. Providing incomplete or inaccurate details can lead to customer dissatisfaction. Invest in training to enhance product knowledge and communication skills.
• Ignoring feedback and hoping that your customers will “get used to it.” If your users tend to avoid using your live chat and consistently choose other channels to connect with you, there might be a reason for it. Use that reaction as a sign that something needs to be adjusted or reviewed.
• Providing help without sending a follow-up. Failure to follow up on leads or inquiries received through live chat can result in missed opportunities. Establish a system for automated follow-up to find out if your live chat is as valuable as you intended it to be.
• Accepting the status quo. It’s normal to optimize your live chat strategy once in a while. Regularly monitor live chat interactions and go through chat logs to identify areas for improvement and ensure that agents maintain a high customer service standard.

By following the best practices we’ve outlined above and avoiding these common mistakes, you can maximize the impact of live chat for sales, creating a positive and engaging experience for your visitors. Your sales reps and support agents will also receive a productivity boost if you equip them with the appropriate tools, content, and routing systems.

Three sales live chat use cases to take notes of

Live chat is a versatile tool with countless possible use cases. Let’s zoom in on these three examples demonstrating the use of technology for niche B2B and B2C businesses.

SaaS EdTech company

Labster is a leading virtual lab simulation platform enabling students to conduct realistic experiments and work with the gear they otherwise wouldn’t have had access to. Here’s how the company utilizes live chat to connect with its potential clients and present its complex product to them.

The live chat widget allows prospective customers to arrange a demo tailored to their needs as well as ask in-depth questions regarding the software. There is a rich library of canned responses aimed at helping newcomers better understand the product before talking to sales.

At the same time, we can see that there is a team of real humans behind that chat widget — their photos are displayed at the top. Labster also clearly states how much time, on average, it takes to get connected to a support agent or sales representative, which helps set expectations.

Fintech company

Bunch is an investment platform aimed at helping people manage their funds, portfolios, and taxes. The company relies on live chat to facilitate customer conversations and handle inquiries related to onboarding, account sharing, pricing, and more.

Live chat is enhanced by a self-service help section that enables users to find helpful info related to their questions while waiting for a support or sales team reply. It’s also easy to check the team’s availability as the widget shows the average wait time.

Skincare brand

Paula’s Choice is a brand of research-based skincare products whose assortment may not be easy to navigate for someone who doesn’t know much about retinol or pH levels. That’s why the company introduced a chatbot, through which users can find an appropriate product or talk to a skincare expert.

The chat widget invites users to take a short quiz, resulting in a personalized product recommendation and an opportunity to talk to an expert. All sorts of post-purchase inquiries can also be handled through the chat. The variety of quick replies enables users to articulate their needs without having to type — this helps save time and reduce the load on the support team.

How to set up your sales live chat with SendPulse

With SendPulse, businesses across various industries can develop and implement convenient live chat solutions. Our platform provides you with the right tools to initiate conversations with potential customers and deliver rapid responses, with and without the help of AI.

Head over to your SendPulse account, click on the “Chatbots” tab, and choose “Manage bots.” Then, click “Add bot” to be able to install a live chat widget on your website.

Enter your website’s URL and choose your widget’s color scheme and placement. In the editor, you’ll be prompted to add a live chat welcome flow to your widget. Click “Edit the flow” to customize any sequence by adding a personal touch and even throw in some visuals, videos, carousels, or emoji.

With any live chat flow, you can use drag-and-drop building blocks from the left bar and edit them by clicking on them. You can also ask AI to create a flow for you by describing its desired tone of voice and target action.

You can rely on automated flows to reduce the necessity for direct agent involvement. It’s possible to configure intricate conversation flows that seamlessly blend automated responses with human input. One effective method is to specify keyword triggers that prompt your live chat to initiate specific flows, particularly beneficial for addressing recurring questions.

To enhance the personalization and human component of your chat interactions, include variables in your messages. You can add them by clicking “{}” when editing a message.

Make sure to explore other conversation flows from the main menu. If needed, go back to your welcome flow, add a “Flow” element, and connect relevant flows to your welcome message buttons. You can enable or disable flows at any time using the chat dashboard. SendPulse also allows you to monitor your overall live chat statistics in the “Audience” and “Statistics” tab.

Within the “Conversations” tab, you can get an overview of all customer chats from various channels. This setup enables you to review dialogue history and respond to inquiries without having to switch between platforms.

You can also set up automated CRM deal creation to preserve customer data shared in the live chat and use it for nurturing or promotional campaigns later on. This can be achieved by specifying actions that trigger your CRM to automatically generate new deals, for instance, when a visitor shares their email address.

If you’re aiming for a more conversational and AI-powered live chat, head to the bot settings and enable integration with ChatGPT.

The best part? You can test out the live chat builder’s functionality for free. Send up to 10,000 messages per month across up to three of your bots. We don’t ask for your credit card information when signing up for the free plan. Later on, you can upgrade to a more advanced plan — our prices start at $8 a month for 500 subscribers.

Summing up

Hopefully, this post has convinced you to start using live chats for sales, customer support, and beyond. Now, why not elevate your game by creating smart conversational chatbots for all your social media channels? With SendPulse’s code-free chatbot builder, your options are limitless.

Signing up for a SendPulse account will also unlock access to our complete toolkit, from email automation service to pop-up builder, SMS service, website builder, CRM, and more. No need to juggle between apps and messengers — this could be your ultimate solution for sales and marketing. Create your free SendPulse account now and see for yourself!