6 Live Chat Research Studies and Their Conclusions

Is live chat worth your investment of software and human resources? You could answer this question through an A/B test, but you could also first take a look at objective research that's already been done on the topic.

Here's a collection of some of the best research on the effect of live chat and their main findings:

1

Internetretailer.com, Surveys and Case study

Internetretailer.com did both a survey as well as a case study about live chat, which produced the following results:

3.5 times higher conversion rate for customers who chat versus those who do not.

15% higher average order value for consumers who use live chat versus those who do not.

The average chat agent can cover the work done by 15 agents focused on e-mails.

20% of consumers say live chat is their preferred way to interact with a merchant.

29% of consumers more likely to make a purchase with the option of live chat, regardless of whether they used it.

2

Crazyegg.com , Case Study

CrazyEgg.com covers a case study research into Sam's Furniture's use of live chat. Its main findings:

15% higher additional order value from users who use the live chat function vs those who don't.

60% of chats lead to a sale.

3

Bold Software , Survey

Bold Software conducted a survey based research among US online consumers on whether live chat impacted their buying behavior. The findings:

Online buyers who use live chat are 1.8 times more likely to make online purchases per week than buyers who don't chat.

Those who had never used live chat were likely infrequent online buyers. 36% of this group made less than one purchase per month, compared to 18% for people who did use live chat.

63% of chatters indicated that they were likely to return to the website, with 62% stating that they would probably buy at the website again.

38% indicated that they made their purchase because of the chat support.

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4

Software Advice, Survey

Software Advice conducted a survey on live chat usage. The first finding concerned the age of the user base. As expected, the younger age groups (18 - 34) use live chat more frequently. Nearly 60% of the respondents with the age above 55 had never used live chat.

It was also found that live chat was relatively more popular for simple and shopping-related questions. For financial questions people would rather use the phone.

5

Forrester Research , Case Studies

A consulting study by the Forrester group focused on the payoffs of adopting a paid live chat strategy. It revealed the following findings:

• A 305% ROI from sales chat with a payback period of 6 months.
• A 120% ROI from customer service chat with a payback period of 6 months.
• A59% call deflection rate as a result from Live Chat.

6

eConsultancy , Surveys

eConsultancy did a survey-based research on whether consumers appreciate live chat on websites. The results:

• 31% of online shoppers from both the US and UK say they would be more likely to purchase after a live chat.
• This increases to 56% for shoppers who prefer live chat over other communication methods.