Why is chat introduction indispensable now? Benefits Compared with Mail

At your company, what is prepared as a customer inquiry tool? Generally speaking, a company's inquiry tool is telephone, mail, web form, etc. Especially, 95.4% of consumers use e-mail for communication with companies (MarkeTimes examine 2016.02).
However, in recent years, more and more companies have set up chat on the site.
In this article, we compare e-mail which was the center of the inquiry tool to chat which is attracting attention now, and introduce merits and demerits of each.

If you read this article, you can understand
・Advantages / disadvantages of inquiring via e-mail
・Advantages / disadvantages of inquiring via chat
・how to avoid the disadvantages of chat
・how to introduce chat well, increase inquiries, improve satisfaction

Advantages / disadvantages when inquiring via e-mail

Advantages of inquiring via e-mail

●Prevent loss of prospect customers wanting to inquire outside reception hours
Inquiries by e-mail are accepted even at midnight and early morning, regardless of time.
Those who work for daytime are often unable to make inquiries within the business hours. So if you do not prepare an e-mail reception desk for outside business hours, you lose the opportunity to receive inquiries. Receiving inquiries for e-mails is extremely effective in order to capture potential customers.

●Compared to telephone, the restraint time is reduced and the personnel expenses can be kept down
In response to inquiries by e-mail, unlike the phone that talks in real time, the person who receives it can reply at the timing he or she prefer.また、Also, on the phone, the conversation with customers like conversation lovers and customers with complaints becomes long and it takes time more than necessary, but in the case of e-mail, it does not happen. So personnel expenses can be kept down.

Disadvantages of inquiring via e-mail

●Can not check whether the customer read or not
You can not check if the customer has read the inquiries by e-mail securely. In order to check if the other party read the mail, you need to call or something. If you want a reply soon, you need techniques such as making subject matter and sentence well.

●Tend to be words without warmth
When exchanging only fixed phrases and requests, it will lack warmth. For inquiries by e-mail, it is difficult to convey subtle nuances because it can not be supplemented with vocal color. So devices are necessary for expressions and phrases.

Advantages / disadvantages of inquiring via chat

Advantages of inquiring via chat

●Solve customers' questions in real time
The merit of inquiries by chat is real-time property anyway. If you can answer "now" to what customers want to know now, their satisfaction level will rise dramatically, making it more likely to lead to customer satisfaction and purchasing / contract.
Since there is a data that shows 90% of visitors who visit the site leave within 30 seconds, it can be expected to reduce the exit rate from the site.

●Increase the number of inquiries
Since inquiries by chat are only typing questions in short sentences on the screen, the psychological hurdle of inquiries falls. In general, many people lose concern about products and services without calling and sending an e-mail while having doubt. It is because telephone and e-mail have high psychological hurdle. If you set up chat, the number of inquiries will be increased dramatically.

●Improve efficiency
In correspondence to inquiries by chat, one person in charge can exchange with multiple customers at the same time. If you deal with multiple inquiries concurrently in chat, you can improve the efficiency of inquiries correspondence work.

Disadvantages of inquiring via chat

●Satisfaction may be reduced if it takes time for initial response
Because the strength of inquiry by chat is to be able to solve customer's doubts in real time, the company side is required to have immediate responsiveness accordingly. There are people who think it may be hard to respond to chat immediately.
The trick for replying to chat is to quicken the initial response anyway. You can respond without losing satisfaction degree, by telling the waiting time or that you will call back later if it takes time to confirm.
In Chat Plus, you can register the first response sentence and respond for the first time immediately. Also, you can use a chat bot that automatically responds to customer questions. As you receive inquiries, frequently asked questions are accumulated as data. And if you set them in advance as chat bots, you can automatically answer immediately .
Also, when replying manually, if you use fixed form sentences or knowledge bases (dictionaries), you can return quickly without lots of effort.
Also, if you need confirmation inside the company, you can use the function of the ticket and follow it later.

Setting up a chat bot
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/chat-startup

Using fixed form sentences
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/shortcut-list/

Using the knowledge base
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/chat-knowledge

Confirming the ticket function
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/ticket

●Frequent chatting will interfere with browsing the site
When customers visit the site, get interested and want to gather information, frequent chatting may hinder site browsing. If you place a chat window in a conspicuous place, launch a chat window automatically and talk to the customer, you can get inquiries right away, but there is also the possibility that it stresses out them.

In Chat Plus, it is possible to finely set behaviors to prevent customers from feeling stressed, such as hiding chats according to specific URLs or customer attributes, not chatting for a certain period of time for those who have finished chatting.

Set not to display chat on specific page
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/general-auth

Set not to display chat for a certain period to those who have finished chat
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/chat-menu（finished）

In addition, in Chat Plus, you can choose eye catchers from among dozens of types. They are displayed while waiting for a chat. Images prepared by yourself are also available. In addition, you can make various settings such as changing eye catcher to display by access from personal computer and smartphone, hide eye catcher, use only eye catcher, adjust display position of eye catcher, etc. So let's devise how to design and display so that it does not stress out customers.

Changing eye chatchers
https://app.chatplus.jp/admin/cp/chat-menu（待機）

Summary

How was it? Reading this article, you can understand each advantages and disadvantages of e-mail and chat.
E-mail also has merits. So you should introduce chat and make the best of each.

Chat has a lot of merits like following
・Solve customers' questions in real time
・Increase the number of inquiries
・Improve efficiency

By by utilizing the function of Chat Plus, you can avoid disadvantages like following

・Satisfaction may be reduced if it takes time for initial response
・Frequent chatting will interfere with browsing the site

Please set up a good chat at your company, increase your inquiries and customer satisfaction.