The Benefits of Live Chat for the Software Industry

If you are a bit familiar in the SaaS industry, you will have probably noticed that many of the software vendors offer live chat on their website to support their users. You can see it deployed on Teamviewer, PipelineDeals, and Positionly, just to name some examples. What is it that makes live chat such a beloved tool among SaaS service providers?

Why Using Live Chat for SaaS?

1. Converting visitors into customers

Software tends to grow more complex over time. If you're doing it right the usability of the software won't suffer, but in general software solutions offer a wide and increasing amount of features. From the user point of view, this large amount of features make comparing SaaS competitors a huge and dazzling task. Each solution has so many solutions, the same features with different names, different features with the same names, and different features addressing the same need. Comparing them is not easy.

Partly because of this SaaS providers entice visitors to just "try it out", with a low barrier trial period (like the 14 day no-credit-card required trial we offer at Userlike). This is a good practice, yet the problem is that nearly all providers offer something like it. From the user's perspective, simply trying out all solutions is certainly not less time consuming. Before trying it out, savvy users want to know whether the solution could fit their needs. That is where live chat jumps in.

Live chat allows providers to tailor their offer to the needs of the visitor in question. By asking the visitor questions such as “What is your business?”, “For what purpose do you want to use this solution?”, "What are your main concerns?", you can relate and address their pain points.

At Userlike, for example, we generally get 3 types of customers:

• The customer that wants to raise his conversion
• The customer that wants to raise the satisfaction level of his customers
• The customer that wants to reduce service costs by diverting pressure from the email and hotline channels

Often it's a combination of these points, but you get the idea. Once we uncovered the visitor's main motivations for looking for a software solution, we highlight the features relevant to those specific needs.

Live chat can also be a powerful weapon when you're dealing with a price-sensitive customer. Imagine you have a potential user who complains that your competitor is cheaper and he does not need those extra features you offer that justify your higher price. "You’re not sure because competitor X is $3 cheaper? Here you have a $4 discount coupon, but don’t tell anybody I gave it to you ;)”. Do we deploy this tactic? Of course not. Maybe only if you ask super-nicely. Give us a chat and find out.

2. Product Use Support

Software is complicated not only before the purchase, also during its usage. With so many features and novelties, most of them will remain unknown to your users, and many won't be using your tool to its full potential. Moreover, when trying it out for the first time, users might have a hard time trying to understand exactly what they can and can’t do, an inevitable part of the adoption process.

With lack of support, some SaaS users might easily become frustrated for not being able to use the product, thinking it can't do what they thought it could (even though it can). These customers are likely to cancel their subscription will never recommend your service, a sad loss to your business.

With live chat you can offer support straight from anywhere in your website. Implementing live chat in your backend area will allow you to help your users understand all the features of your product and enhance the value and loyalty of each single one who requests your help. Furthermore, when you receive many questions about a certain feature or section, it's an indication that your website communication could be improved. This brings us to the next point.

3. Product Feedback

Feedback is essential for the survival of any software business. Feedback concerning features, usability, and website navigation. Live chat gives you extra insights into all of these points. Of course there are many feedback tools out there that collect explicit feedback. What these tools don't capture though is implicit feedback. We don't often receive feedback from the likes of "I think you should move this section X of your software in the starting menu in your dashboard to increase your visibility". Instead we get users asking "How do I get to section X?", "Don't you offer the X feature?", etc. We collect frequently asked questions and use them to optimise our website.

Other Benefits of Live Chat for SaaS

Earn Credibility

In the SaaS field there are fierce competitors eagering to tear you apart by slashing their prices, scaling up or joining giant partners with endless resources. However, that doesn’t mean you have lost the battle. Customers dig for different aspects before making their final call and not always price is a final determination. In Service Software business it is very important to grow your credibility and authority below your audience.

With live chat you can do that by giving a face to your website, showing a person representing the business, a clerk available to any enquiry. This shows customers that you value them enough to offer personal support and that your business is trustworthy.

Become Personal

In a digital world where avatars tried to gain some terrain, people have shown to prefer knowing one another, seeing a face behind a screen. Therefore, becoming personal about the way you host your customer service is an important asset to conquer the masses.

During a chat you can get to know the visitor, find out its name, here he is from or in which company does she work. Doing so will help you bond to your customers, create personal relationships and engage your customers directly into specific actions.

Improve Customer Satisfaction

Customers - and basically almost everyone standing in the planet - hate to wait, especially if they are doing it when trying to call you, or worst, refreshing their email inbox desperately waiting for your answer (ok, now I am are exaggerating).

However, with live chat they don’t have to wait any longer. Just click on your chat button and someone will be there waiting for them. Also, it can decrease contact centre pressure while also improving customer satisfaction.

Increase support productivity

While chatting, with up to ten people at the same time, operators can also multitask. Doing several other things while still providing excellent support is of course quite a skill yet it is an easy to develop one.

With Userlike productivity features such as Macros, operators can reduce the time it takes them to respond to customers by using common pre-set answers. Also, live chat software includes the possibility to request screenshots, check the user browser, device and even some useful custom data.

Upgrading Chance

As pointed out before, live chat can be seen as a major sales tool. More than onboarding newcomers, through live chat, sales representatives have the opportunity the get to know in-depth customers’ preferences and needs which can eventually end in a product upgrade.

Are you ready to give it a try? If so, we offer a 14 days free trial .