Live Chat: The statistics that show your website needs it

We’re bound to tell you that you need a live chat function. After all, it’s one of our most popular services, our bread and butter. The good news is that you don’t need to take our word for it – because the figures speak for themselves.

If you’re unsure about the next steps on your customer support improvement journey or hesitant about taking the leap and introducing a live chat function to your website, these findings and statistics will show you why it’s a no-brainer.

The expectation for live chat

  • Did you know that 41% of customers expect there to be a live chat function on your website?
  • In fact, among mobile users, the figure is higher, and as many as half of all website visitors will feel disappointed if you don’t offer this option.
  • An even higher proportion prefer a live chat to having to pick up the phone. One study found that as many as 79% of customers prefer live chat to other channels.
  • Only 29% prefer email, and just 16% social media.
  • One customer survey showed that 44% of participants found specialist help via live chat to be one of the most important services a business can offer online.

The context

  • As a result of the above, live chat as a customer support option is expected to grow by 87% in the coming year or year and a half. In some industries, the equivalent figure is 150%.
  • When you do offer live chat, however, the response time is crucial. One in five customers, according to one study, are prepared to move on from a product or service as a result of slow response times.

The results of using live chat

  • In one study, eight out of ten businesses saw increased customer loyalty, sales and revenue when they added a live chat to their site.
  • Another study saw the conversion rate go up by 40%.
  • The revenue per chat hour, meanwhile, increased by 48%.
  • As for the average order value, one study reports that it grew by 10% when live chat was added.
  • For each customer who ends up using the live chat, the average spend will increase by 60%, one study found.

There are countless studies out there and countless impressive figures. You can take our word for it or not, but there’s no doubt that live chat is the customer support channel of choice for a huge portion of your web customers.

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether you can afford to add live chat to your site – but whether you can afford not to.

Further reading:

IKEA helps to prove our point about chat in this article.

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