5 Ways Live Video Chat Can Help Your Business Grow

Effective communication is crucial in any successful company.

From answering customers’ questions to holding internal meetings, good communication has a powerful impact on a business’s ongoing success. Without an effective system in place, companies risk damaging their internal operations and consumer-relations.

Live video chat is becoming more and more important in the modern business world, gradually replacing text-based chat, email, and phone calls as the must-have communication tool. Research shows that around 100 of the world’s top 500 corporations will use video chat in their customer-facing communications by 2018. In an age when consumers have more choices and a louder voice than ever, providing the most cutting-edge serve available is critical to maximize satisfaction.

However, there is more to live video chat than customer service: it can help your business grow in a variety of ways.

Here are five of the most important.

1. Your Customers Will Enjoy More Convenient Support

The service a business provides can make or break a customer’s experience.

No matter how good your products or service, keeping customers happy is critical to secure repeat custom and build brand-loyalty. When customers have a comment, question, or query, a business must have a system in place to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Live chat is a preferred choice of many consumers, with 79 percent of those questioned in a study praising the speed with which their questions were answered. 51 percent cited it as their top choice as it allowed them to multi-task, while 22 percent disliked speaking on the phone.

However, video makes the live-chat experience even more convenient for customers. As standard live chat, today is text-based, users must type their query and wait for their assigned agent to read it, before awaiting a reply. Articulating technical issues, and trying to describe complex problems, can be difficult over text.
https://www.businessblogshub.com/2019/04/how-to-create-a-more-efficient-business-with-video-conferencing/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>live video chat, users can draw on visual aids and use gestures when explaining their problems. Likewise, agents can demonstrate solutions with visual examples or walk callers through a process step by step, ensuring a faster, simpler type of support.

2. Your Sales Will Rise Over Time

There is a delicate balance to great service. We all know the frustration of pushy sales clerks hanging around us as we browse in a brick-and-mortar store, but staff with no interest in helping you find what you need are just as bad.

In an ideal world, you would have access to the friendly, knowledgeable staff as and when you need them. Live video chat makes this a reality – in the online marketplace, at least.

Standard live chat has already proven successful in building loyalty and securing repeat sales. According to emarketer.com, 63 percent of consumers were more likely to return to a website that offered live chat, with 38 percent making a purchase as a direct result of their chat.

Live video chat allows for a faster conversation, with no time wasted waiting for the other’s written response, and enables support agents to read customers’ body language to handle delicate situations better. It also puts a face on the business, encourages a less formal tone, and is available at just the touch of a button.

With video chat, the staff is there when you need them, without intruding. Being able to access expert assistance so easily during the purchase phase ensures more sales are completed, rather than leaving potential customers with questions they can have answered on competing sites.

3. You Will Free Up Expenses For Investment Elsewhere

Every company has expenses, like it or not. Live video chat can reduce yours considerably.

How?

First and foremost, video chat is faster than standard live chat, given the power of visual aids and verbal articulation, enabling agents to handle more calls in less time. You can therefore reduce the number of call center staff you need

Secondly, you can cut expenses accrued through traveling for meetings and client pitches. Video chat allows you to hold face-to-face dialogues just as you would in an office elsewhere, without having to travel. Money saved on even short-distance trips can be channeled into your business instead.

4. You Will Save Time On Colleague Collaboration and Training

At one time or another, colleagues have to collaborate on various tasks. Whatever the reason, live video chat allows businesses to reduce the time employees spend away from their work, boosting productivity in the long run.

Rather than having to take several minutes to walk to another floor or department to collaborate, staff can just tap a button and enjoy a brief face-to-face chat from their workstation. This makes it far easier for employees to multi-task, such as working on a document while discussing it with their colleagues. Video chat also reduces the risk of crossed wires which may result from emails, particularly if one employee’s lack of linguistic skills causes confusion.

Live video chat also simplifies training, as newcomers can access help from their desk at the touch of a button without having to shadow a colleague or pull them away from their work again and again.

In short: the less time staff spend talking about work, the more time they have to actually do it.

5. You Will Stand Out From Your Less-Advanced Competitors

Live video chat provides the fastest, most convenient customer service and is vital to building a stronger presence. Video chat before, during, and after a purchase ensures your consumers can get the expert help they need without having to leave the site or pick up their phone. Not every business can boast this quality of customer-focused care.

According to the Customer Care Institute, 95 of the customers who engaged in a video chat with a company representative remembered their conversation three days later, while just three percent remembered their text-based discussion.

So when you incorporate live video chat, make it impossible to miss.

QoE (Quality of Experience) Is Everything

Simply offering live video chat isn’t enough. To make the most of this service, you have to invest in the best technology available.

Video chat over a poor internet connection or to a remote location can fall apart due to lagging, interrupted signals, or total blackouts. Not only will this affect employee collaboration and meetings, it will also cause immense frustration to customers.

Investing in a reliable service today will reap rewards in years to come. According to Tony Zhao, CEO of video chat company Agora.io: “Standard WebRTC can lead to poor quality of experience (QoE) for consumers, with lagging video and audio making existing service problems worse, not better. Trying to reach regions with poor connectivity, or pushing your connection harder than it can cope with, can lead to wasted time and energy.”

The company, Agora.io, for example, has 80 data centers around the world that fill in gaps between dropped data packets, ensuring video calls stay clear, crisp, and reliable for everyone involved. The better your customers’ QoE, the better your chances of seeing them again – for the right reasons.”

Businesses introducing live video chat to their operations can revolutionize their internal and external communications, boosting productivity while reducing wasted time and expense. As this technology becomes more common, providing the best quality of service will help companies to stand out in a crowded marketplace.