If you want to understand what role live chat plays in the current digital marketing scenario, checking live chat statistics and what they represent is very important. It will help you see the benefits of implementing a live chat and how it can impact your business.
Customers Prefer Live Chat Over Other Channels
A Hiver research revealed that:
1 - 63% of customers use live chat to contact businesses
2 - 40% of customers get frustrated by long waiting times on the phone
3 - 51% of customers feel getting support via email is highly time-consuming
4 - 52% of customers want their queries resolved within 24 hours
Takeaway:
Customer search for ways to solve their issues fast. Therefore, they prefer live chat as it allows them to get real-time support and save, instead of waiting in line on phone calls, which prevents them from multitasking.
Live Chat Helps With Enhancing User Experience
How customers feel when dealing with your company reflects how likely they are to purchase or not on your online store. A Tidio research shows that:
5 - Customers who use live chat are 5 times more likely to complete a purchase
6 - 41% of internet users choose live chat as their favorite support channel
7 - 60% of customers say they are more likely to return to a website that offers live chat
8 - 38% of customers are ready to make a purchase after a nice chat session
Takeaway:
Live chat is an efficient conversion tool that can help businesses turn website visitors into customers. As live chat is the favorite choice of many website users, offering this option also helps with increasing user experience, and improving their satisfaction.
Average Time Response Decreased
Time response is crucial in live chat effectiveness to increase sales and customer loyalty. The Live Chat Benchmark Report made by Comm100 shows important live chat statistics about that:
9 - In 2023, the average live chat wait time decreased by 23% to 23 seconds.
10 - Chat duration fell to its shortest time since 2017, dropping by 19% to 9 minutes 36 seconds.
Takeaway:
According to Comm 100, the wait time reduction is connected to the increasing use of AI-powered automation tools. Live chat software is commonly used with chatbots, only queries that can't be solved by chatbots are transferred to live agents.
Mobile Chats are Highly Popular
Comm100 report also revealed that:
11 - 74% of total chats are mobile.
12 - Mobile chat use increased by 7% in 2023 compared to 2022.
13 - Mobile chat use increased 68% over 6 years.
Takeaway:
These live chat statistics highlight the importance of enabling customers to access your website live chat on their mobile devices. It's essential to guarantee that your live chat app will function properly on desktop or mobile.
Live Chat Experience Prompts Customers to Share Their Thoughts
Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways to grow your business visibility and credibility. The Kayako live chat statistics report showed people feel compelled to share their customer experience when using live chats.
14 - 20% of consumers have told friends or colleagues about a poor live chat experience.
15 - 29% of consumers have told friends or colleagues about a positive live chat experience.
Takeaway:
When it comes to the live chat experience, customers are more likely to share their positive feedback. Offering high-quality customer service through live chat can help you create brand awareness, and be known in your business sector.
Consumers Have High Live Chat Expectations
Offering live chat for your customers isn’t as simple as adding a live chat button on your website. Customers have high expectations to the service they receive through all channels, and live chat is no exception. To unlock its full potential, you need to know exactly what those expectations are.
16 - More than 41% of customers expect a live chat window on your website. (Forrester); The same percentage think companies that offer live chat are more trustworthy than those who don’t.
17 - 62% of customers expect live chat to be available on mobile devices, and if possible, 82% would use it. (ICMI)
18 - 51% of customers want businesses to be available 24/7. (Inc)
19 - 51% customers prefer live chat for multitasking purposes, with another 21% preferring live chat so they can shop while they work. (Inc)
20 - 70% of customers prefer human chat agents to AI or chatbots. (Zoho)
21 - 29% of live chat users hate scripted responses. (Kayako)
Takeaway:
Adding live chat to your website is only the first step. You need to make sure your chat window is easily accessible, hours are clear, you are using proactive triggers to personalize the experience, and have real humans behind the screen, as often as possible.
Live Chat Improves Lead and Sales Conversion Rates
Lead generation is a critical aspect of any business. Live chat is a great way to get as many quality leads as possible and ultimately, higher sales conversion rates. And those customers are more likely to return too.
22 - Live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate. (ICMI Report)
23 - 40% of buyers who use live chat are more likely to make online purchases (versus 22% of buyers who had never chatted). (Emarketer)
24 - 44% of online consumers say that "having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a website can offer. (Forrester report)
25 - 79% of businesses say that offering live chat has had a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty. (Kayako)
26 - 94% of customers who were proactively invited to chat were satisfied with the experience. (Vtldesign)
27 - 53% of customers are likely to abandon their online purchases if they can’t find quick answers to their questions. (Forrester)
28 - 38% of customers said they had made their purchase due to the chat session itself. (Digital Marketing)
29 - Chatters are 85% more likely to convert into customers. (Intercom)
Takeaway:
Make it easier for customers to reach you. If your team is limiting itself to just email, phone, or social media, it’s nearly impossible to track and communicate with every visitor that comes onto your e-commerce site.
With live chat, you can approach your customers the moment they appear on your website with proactive triggers to send the right messages at the right time. Connect your live chat tool with your CRM so your sales team can follow up with each new lead, and quickly access chat histories in the future.
Live Chat Lelps Lower cost and Boosts Productivity
We know that live chat can boost sales and revenue, but it can also help lower costs and boost productivity, making it that much more profitable. By replacing a chunk of the phone support you’d otherwise provide, live chat cuts down on customer care costs, increasing businesses’ revenue per hour while lowering cost per transaction.
Plus, because agents can talk to multiple customers at the same time, it boosts their productivity as well. They can even share rich content via chat they wouldn’t be able to do over the phone, making it easier to troubleshoot and find solutions to customer questions.
30 - Live chat is 15% to 33% cheaper than phone support for businesses. There was a 12% decrease in phone call queries for companies who use live chat. (Gartner)
31 - Live chat improves annual customer care costs by 2.6x. (Aberdeen Group)
32 - Live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate. (ICMI)
33 - Live chat implementation resulted in a 70% drop in overall cost per transaction. (Forrester)
Takeaway:
Live chat will lower customer care costs without compromising—and even boosting—customer satisfaction. This is because your reps will be able to be more productive, handling multiple chats at one time and serving customers in a more efficient way versus if they were on the phone. Wins all around.
Live Chat Provides a Positive ROI
It’s important to keep in mind that live chat doesn’t need to be used exclusively as a customer service support tool. According to Startus Magazine, live chat has a return of about 300% on investment, which makes it one of the best values for a customer service channel.
34 - Proactive chat earns 105% ROI. (Forrester)
35 - There was a 10% increase in the average order value of sales from customers who engaged in a chat before making a purchase compared to those who didn’t. (Forrester)
36 - Companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies (that include live chat support) retain an average of 89% of their customers. (Aberdeen Group)
37 - 22% of surveyed companies recorded a 5-10% increase in revenue because of live chat. (99 Firms)
38 - 79% of businesses that implemented live chat reported increased customer loyalty, sales, and revenue. (Kayako)
39 - Website visitors that engage with your company via live chat are worth 4.5 times more than those who don’t. (ICMI)
Takeaway:
Live chat has a higher ROI than any other communication channel. This is not only true for customer service teams, but marketing, sales development, and post-sales customer support as well.
To integrate live chat into your sales processes and use it to guide customers through your sales funnel, consider each customer’s needs and pains to offer the very best solution. Also, make use of upselling and cross-selling strategies to boost your average ticket size and sell more.
Live Chat is not a Key Channel for all Demographics
Live chat as a communication channel is nothing new, and while it’s the preferred method for many customers, it varies across different demographics. As a business, it’s important to understand which of your users are the most—and least—fond of using live chat.
live chat statistics
40 - Millennials are 20% more likely to use live chat to seek out customer support than their baby boomer counterparts. (ICMI)
41 - 63% of millennials prefer to have their basic customer support questions answered through a live chat widget vs. traditional channels. (ICMI)
42 - 36% of Gen Z users would use live chat when contacting a company with a customer support question. Unsurprisingly, they’re also more likely to use not-so-mainstream messaging channels like Whatsapp or live video support. (HubSpot)
43 - 61% of customers under 24 admit that they purposely avoid calling companies, and 60% of millennials prefer live chat to traditional channels. (WhosOn)
Takeaway:
While most customers prefer live chat over other communication channels, not all of them do. It’s important to be mindful of this and ensure you’re catering to all of your customers both live chat and your business’s other channels as well.
Why Some Companies provide a Poor Live Chat Experience
There are many reasons why a live chat experience could go wrong. Scripted canned responses, delays because the information from prior chats isn't available, and having customers repeatedly explain their queries over and over again to multiple agents are some of them.
Your live chat software should be integrated with a CRM so that reps can access previous chat history as well as notes from other reps, eliminating the need for the customer having to repeat themselves and empowering your reps to provide the best service possible.
Here some stats to back up the importance of a solid chat experience:
44 - 29% of live chat users hate canned responses. (99 Firms)
45 - 80% of live chat reps had to access multiple systems to find the information they needed. (CCW Digital)
46 - 11% of website users dislike proactive chats (Econsultancy).
47 - 20% of consumers spread negative word of mouth about poor live chat experience. (Kayako)
Takeaway:
It’s important to have a live chat solution that accommodates personalized, proactive chat messages that are triggered based on things like browsing behavior, past website visits, location, and the content being viewed.
It’s not enough to only provide live chat, you need to offer a top-notch experience to make it count for your customers.
Investment in Live Chat Will Continue to Grow
With all the data out there supporting the importance and value of live chat, many companies surprisingly have been slow to adopt. If you’re one of them, it might be because you’re not sure if live chat is here to stay. The stats below show it most definitely is, and is only getting bigger from here.
48 - The global live chat software market size is projected to reach $987.3 million by 2023. (Knowledge Based Value Research)
49 - 71% of businesses believe that online chat will be the most popular communication channel by 2021. (99 Firms)
50 - Companies report approx. 2.4x greater annual increase in revenue from cross-selling and up-selling when live chat is in use. (ICMI)
51 - Live chat is a popular channel for B2B businesses. 61% of B2B businesses report offering live chat, versus only 33% of B2C businesses. (Zoho)
52 - 87% of companies adopted live chat to connect with web visitors in real-time. (Zoho)
Takeaway:
Live chat isn’t going anywhere. More and more companies are investing in this technology to improve support and increase conversion rates. If you haven’t added live chat to your communication arsenal yet, the time is now.
Harness Live Chat for Better Sales and Support
Live chat is a powerful tool that many consumers have now come to expect businesses to offer. Companies that invest in live chat reap many benefits, including a boost in sales and revenue, lower costs, increased brand loyalty, and an overall better customer experience.
If you’re interested in seeing what live chat can do for your business, try JivoChat’s free trial today.
