10 Things to Consider When Choosing a Live Chat Partner for Your Website

Live chat works, but not when you try and do it yourself. Things get in the way, and this always gets dropped. You need a vendor for this, but finding a professional and reliable partner is tough. Here’s what to look for.

1. Does the live chat company have experience in your industry?

This is key because they’ll know how to engage with your prospects and speak appropriately to them.

2. Are they able to keep up with changes in your business?

Your partner should allow you to customize your business talking points and be able to ask custom and specific questions related to your business and their needs.

A good live chat partner has systems for keeping notes on your business and the leads they send through to you. They learn based on these ongoing notes and perfect their approach to converting more visitors and getting you more leads.

3. Do they employ native speakers in your target language?

Nothing irritates prospects more than getting into a live chat, and there’s a language barrier. This is a sure-fire way to lose business. Make sure the people who support your website’s live chat are native to your customer’s language and test them out on a sample client site of the partner you’re looking to work with.

4. Are the live chat specialists highly trained and professional?

A bad live chat experience can instantly turn away a customer. And that isn’t good for business.

A trained professional, on the other hand, will know exactly how to handle a live chat and employ these best practices expertly:

• Greet customers appropriately and make them feel welcome
• Read messages carefully so they understand what’s being asked
• Give clear, accurate responses and well-detailed solutions
• Write legibly and proofread responses before sending
• Know when to transition to an email or phone call
• And, most importantly, come across warm and human

5. Is the chat solution easy to set up, and does it look good on your website?

A good chat solution is easy to set up and has helpful options, such as allowing you to adjust how long the chat box appears on your site and at what frequency it resurfaces for repeat users.

It should also be visually appealing and brandable to blend seamlessly within your site and represent your business. And it should be non-invasive to users who are browsing your site.

6. Is it mobile friendly and have you played with it on mobile?

Try it out for yourself on mobile, is it still a good experience?

7. Does the service include tracking, automated notifications and a dashboard to view progress?

Notifications should include instant email and/or text notifications. A lead tracking dashboard will give you complete details, including information on where the user comes from, plus how they found your website. Easy to download reports are a must so that you can sit down and review chats to see how well they are being handled, and what kind of return you’re getting from the service.

8. Does the solution have flexible parameters to increase its appeal, use and effectiveness?

Ideally you want a chat solution that can support your business in a flexible way.

• Can they support you 24/7/365?
• you need to, is there flexibility if you wanted to only offer it part of the day or week?
• Is there a fast connect feature that allows the user to be connected immediately to your business phone line should they want to speak to someone now?

9. Do they understand the legal and regulatory requirements in your industry?

Certain professions, like legal and medical, have unique requirements. Does your live chat partner understand these, and can they support them well?

10. Will this solution help my business grow?

Live chat can really help certain businesses grow. From what we’ve seen, it works best for our professional service clients (legal, accounting, mortgage, consulting, SaaS, etc.). It also works well for home services (remodel, plumbing, HVAC, roofing, solar, etc.). We’ve seen an incredible ROI across a lot of different clients.

In our own business, in the first half of 2022, we saw 60 chats that led to 32 leads. That represented 5.5% of all leads we received. It may not seem like a lot, but it has already led to two new clients, with a combined value of over $85,000 in new contracted revenue.

Final thoughts.

Live chat is more than just another feature on your site. It’s an integral part of your business—it’s how people connect with you, and it has the power to turn those visitors into buyers.

At WISE, we provide a robust live chat solution that checks off all the boxes. Want to learn more? Try the live chat in your browser now—you’ll find it in the lower right-hand corner of our website. Or book a call with us.