Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A very simple (and free) way to increase trust and sales - be there.




Every once in a while one makes a small change, or does something a little differently that makes a huge difference in their bottom line.  Well, we just did one of those things: we added live chat.  Yup, that’s it.  Seems so simple, it’s everywhere right?  Well, in the short time we’ve been using it our sales have gone up considerably.  You, or your operator, is notified when someone is on your website, what page they're on now, etc.  Although there’s a “live chat” icon in the corner, you can also send an “invitation” to the browser to chat with you - you know when you’re on a website and a bubble pops up that reads “How can I help you?”.  Well, that’s someone spying on you and then finally thinking the time is right to say “hi”.  It’s more or less the equivalent of a store clerk allowing you to browse for a bit and then asking if they can help…   
We tried a couple live chat programs, and found them very difficult to implement and/or use, but ended up using mylivechat.com and it took, literally, 5 minutes to implement and is super easy to use.  Oh, and it’s free (if you have just 1 operator).  

It’s important that someone’s there to actually answer questions.  I don’t know about you, but I get frustrated when I’m on  a website during ‘normal business hours’ and the live chat icon reads “leave a message” (not to mention there’s no ‘please’).  Even if I don’t want to chat, the fact that no ones there to chat with me at 2PM on a Tuesday is sketchy….  Don’t be sketchy.

Peter Monaco
Proving your trustworthiness.