Live Chat—The Proactive Outreach Method to Discover Customer Pain Points
A customer pain point is simply marketing jargon for problems customers face. Selling products hinges on the logic that if a customer has a problem with the product or services your business offers, he or she is not going to make a purchase. Until the solution is found to this pain point, that potential customer will not become a paying customer. Businesses traditionally identified customer pain points through surveys and phone conversations. However, there’s a new method for businesses to achieve this goal — live chat.
Live chat has become a far more effective method to communicate with customers and offer customer support. Live chat is speedier and more efficient that call or e-mail customer support. For businesses, live chat can save money as well. Also, live chat is a great tool to identify certain customer pain points. Here is how live chat can be highly effective in discovering customer pain points that may plague your business model.
Real-Time Identification of a Pain Point
In the past, if a customer had a problem with a product, he or she would have had to e-mail or call. Now, most consumers find even e-mailing too big a hassle and avoid doing it. Even those clients who do end up calling might not recall exactly what caused the problem in the first place. There’s a time gap between the problem occurring and seeking a solution. With phone calls and e-mails, this time gap can span from minutes to days. During this time, a lot of precious information that can be used to identify a pain point can be lost.
Live chat, on the other hand, offers real-time support. Customers can send an instant message just as he or she is looking at the product on your company’s website. This allows a live chat representative to be asked questions and give substantial answers. Basically, live chat enables pain points to be identified as they occur.
Live Chat Enables Expression
With traditional phone calls, customers have a hard time articulating problems. Comfort with conversing with a stranger, language fluency, accents and various other factors can hinder expressiveness during phone conversations. E-mail, too, is not any better. Customers can type in long e-mails without actually saying what the problem is. Sending instant messages is much easier for many people. IMs can articulate even a complex problem with a number of simple abbreviations. Therefore, live chat reps find it easy to identify pain points.
Avoid Stress Tones
The main reason customer support goes downhill is changes in tone. If a customer becomes stressed, angry or frustrated, or notices similar emotions in the sales rep’s tone, nothing will get communicated. Live chat can keep the tone neutral for most of the conversation. Even if one party uses caps lock or angry emoticon to express negative emotions, the impact is low, unlike hearing someone scream through the phone. Therefore, it’s easy to identify pain points in a levelheaded manner with live chat.
Do not forgo adopting live chat for your company. Not only will you benefit by reducing costs and boosting the conversion rate, you will be able to discover customer pain points as well.
