Live Chat vs. Chatbot: Which is Best for Customer Service?
Live chat is a convenient communication tool that can be installed on your website to provide online customer support. If your website visitors have a question, they can always send a message in the chat window and receive an answer from an operator.
Read more: What is Live Chat? Definition, Key Features, Use Cases
Live chat gives you more opportunities to deliver truly personalized customer service. Every customer is unique, with their own specific requirements, interests, preferences, and behavior. By analyzing this information, a live chat operator will be able to offer the most suitable solution for each particular customer, and add a personal touch to customer support.
A support agent’s ability to empathize plays an especially significant role in interaction with customers. Unlike chatbots, a human being can recognize and understand the feelings, emotions, and intentions of a customer. An operator can respond to a customer’s joke, cheer them up, or show sympathy. An individual approach and personalized responses make your customer feel important and cared for.
Live chat makes your website lively (sorry for the tautology 😀). It shows your customers that you are always ready to communicate with them. Sometimes customers need to hear answers from a real person, not a robot with predefined responses. The possibility to contact you directly is especially important for customers of online stores. Sometimes a few simple answers given by a live chat operator can significantly increase a customer’s trust and influence their buying decision.
Tip: When creating a profile, use the operator’s real name and photo. Don’t use stock photos: they lack authenticity, don’t inspire confidence, and can cheapen your website.
In a live chat, support agents can answer all kinds of customer questions. For some queries, human involvement is essential, and a live chat is perfect for resolving issues that go beyond standard customer questions.
Even if the question is difficult or unexpected, a qualified support specialist won’t leave customers without a response. Live chat operators can always use clarifying questions or ask the customer to wait a bit while they prepare an answer. Besides, many live chat tools allow transferring chats to other operators for more effective teamwork.
Live chat allows customers and operators to exchange files. While chatting with an operator, a customer can send screenshots and documents to better illustrate the issue. This feature helps support agents to quickly understand the issue and speed up the resolution of the problem.
Live chat is a quick and convenient way to contact support. Today, many people prefer chatting rather than talking on the phone.
Firstly, some people simply don’t like phone calls, so chatting will be much more comfortable for them than a telephone conversation with a stranger.
Secondly, with a live chat, it is possible to do several things simultaneously: while waiting for an operator’s response, customers can continue browsing the site or doing other things.
Thirdly, live chat keeps a history of messages, so a customer can always return to the chat and read it again.
Tip: To make live chat even more convenient for your visitors, you can combine multiple communication channels in one place. Use a multichannel support system and let your customers choose how to contact you: via chat on your website, Facebook, Telegram, or another communication channel.
A chatbot is a program that can automatically interact with an audience according to a specified algorithm. Recently, more and more businesses have been using chatbots on their websites. Bots can initiate chats with visitors, answer their questions, and collect the necessary information.
Chatbots can work autonomously without human involvement. You just need to write a scenario once, and your chatbot will be ready to help your customers.
A chatbot will take over all the routine work, so you no longer have to answer repetitive customer questions over and over again. Plus, it will automatically collect customer info and save you valuable time.
Chatbots can stay online all the time, providing your customers with 24/7 support. No matter at what time of day and from what time zone your customers decide to contact you, they will always get an instant reply to their question.
If your support team only works during certain hours, a virtual assistant could be a perfect complement to it. Chatbots will step into the breach outside your business hours and help increase your customer reach.
If you work in customer service, you have probably noticed that the flow of customer queries can be quite unpredictable. Sometimes you have a lull period, and sometimes you face a flurry of customer queries, each of which requires a quick answer.
It is not always possible to manually process all the requests at once, and long waiting times only annoy customers. This is where chatbots come in handy. They can handle any number of queries simultaneously with no queues and waits.
In addition to multitasking, chatbots feature an almost instant response time. It only takes them a fraction of a second to answer a customer’s question. Speed is one of the key performance indicators of a service desk. The shorter the response time, the higher the customer satisfaction.
As we already know, chatbots can automate some customer service tasks, save you time, and, consequently, save you money. It is much more cost-effective to use bots rather than hiring additional staff for the same tasks. Chatbots don’t require salaries, vacations, or sick leaves, and thus help reduce operating costs.
As you can see, both live chat and chatbots have their advantages. Some companies prefer to automate their support processes using bots, while others continue answering all customer questions themselves via live chat.
Fortunately, there is no need to choose between the two and contrast them with each other: it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Both live chat and chatbots are great tools for customer service, although they perform completely different tasks.
Chatbots are effective for automating routine work. They can be particularly useful for companies that often receive repetitive and predictable questions from customers. Bots will help reduce the load on your operators by answering routine queries so that your support agents can focus on more creative tasks.
Live chats are indispensable for solving complex issues. Also, live chat support is more effective when communicating with potential customers who have not yet made a purchase. In such cases, a conversation with a real operator and a personal approach will help build customer trust and increase customer satisfaction.
When used together, live chat and chatbots turn into an effective combo that can significantly improve your company’s quality of service. Here are some simple rules to help you take full advantage of these two tools:
Such a strategy will not only fail to improve your customer service, but will even backfire. If your customers want to contact you but bump into chatbots at every turn, this will only annoy them. Don’t forget to use live chat and always give your customers the opportunity to contact you directly.
These two tools complement each other perfectly. Use a chatbot on your website to greet visitors and offer them help. If their query is too difficult, the chatbot can transfer the chat to an operator.
Even if the chat is transferred to an operator, that doesn’t mean your bot didn’t bring any value. In such cases, a chatbot serves as an intermediary between your company and customers, saving time for your support agents. After receiving a chat from the bot, your operator will see the chat history and necessary information about the customer.
Sometimes customers can confuse a chatbot for a real person. Sooner or later, they will realize that they are talking to a bot and feel deceived. In order to avoid that, it is better to tell them right away that they are chatting with a bot. Thus, you will demonstrate your honest and respectful attitude towards your customers.
This applies to both chatbots and live chat. No matter what tool you use, your communication strategy should be customer-oriented. You should put your customers’ interests first and focus on customer satisfaction because this is the key to achieve your own business goals.
When creating a chatbot, it is essential to write a clear and meaningful scenario. You need to design a smooth conversational flow so that your customer can easily find an answer to their question. Don’t overload the script with unnecessary questions, and make sure there are no dead ends.
In the case of live chat, the quality of your customer service depends entirely on the operators and their communication skills. Listen to your customers, try to understand their needs, and make sure they get the help they need as quickly as possible. Effective communication is directly related to higher customer satisfaction.
So, here is a simple conclusion: when choosing a support channel, you don’t have to stick to just one option. We recommend combining live chat and chatbot support to get the maximum benefit. You can test the effectiveness of this approach yourself: sign up for Chaport and try live chat and chatbots for free.
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