As we have posted before, Live Chat has become a more valuable practice in the online retailer’s toolbox. So, where are we with Live Chat today?

• James Arnold, Business to Community — “You’ll find that the benefits of using a live chat feature to provide real-time customer support to your valued shoppers are numerous. The ability to answer questions, provide useful information, and solve problems makes purchasing products easier and more pleasant for users. Keeping things convenient and enjoyable means your customers will be more likely to complete their initial transactions and make repeat purchases, as well as recommend your site to their family and friends.”

• Craig Borowski, Software Advice — “Online live chat is proving to be one of the best service channels for meeting customers’ needs throughout their journey, from first contact through post-sale support. As an online tool, it meets customers in the very place they increasingly turn for answers: the Internet. And unlike other channels such as E-mail, live chat provides instant support, with minimal customer effort required.” These two charts show Borowski’s survey results about live chat.

• Daniel James, Business to Community — “63% of customers are more likely to return to a Web site that offers live chat as opposed to one that doesn’t. 73% of customer satisfaction comes from live chat.  44% of customers feel that having a live chat specialist available during an online purchase is one of the most important features a company can offer. Most problems get resolved in 42 seconds – meaning you can help more customers, while your customers get the answers they need in the fashion they want. 79% of customers say that they prefer live chat because of the immediacy it provides. 42% of customers say not having to wait on hold is a key reason why they prefer live chat. Studies show that 77% of customers won’t make certain purchases if there’s no live chat support.”

• Software Advice‘s   Customer Service Report 2017  — “Australia takes the gold in customer satisfaction in 2016 with 91.35% average satisfaction score as one of the biggest countries in terms of the number of chats.U.S. companies improved on their 2015 score with an average result of 90.84% for over 23.6 million chats in 2016.” These are live chat’s high and low usage months.

• 2016 Live Chat Benchmark Report by Comm100 — “The Comm100 live chat benchmark report explores (1) customer service metrics in live chat: customer satisfaction rate, wait time, chat duration, chats per month, and chats per operator per month; (2) what makes customers satisfied; (3) customer service metrics across industries; and (4) customer service metrics across countries.” Here is customer satisfaction by industry.