Of course, both humans and bots have their shortcomings. Humans can\u2019t always respond instantaneously and can become burnt out. And bots aren\u2019t always able to respond to people\u2019s questions properly, leading to frustration.<\/p>\n
So, is the live chat plugin really here to stay, or is it just a passing trend? And if live chat retains its prominence, will the future of chat be bot-dominated, be human-centric, or balance human and automated chat?<\/p>\n
We asked marketers about their experiences with live chat, and about where they think the future of chat is headed. Twenty-three marketers shared their insights. We\u2019ll cover their predictions about live chat\u2019s future later in the article, but first, let\u2019s examine the statistics we gathered.<\/p>\n
Live chat experiences as a consumer<\/h2>\n
All 23 of the marketers reported that they have used live chat as a consumer. We were curious to find out about their live chat experiences on this end. So, we asked them how they would rate their overall live chat experience as consumers on a scale of 1\u20135 (with 1 meaning \u201cleast satisfied\u201d and 5 meaning \u201cmost satisfied\u201d). On average, they rated their experience as a 3.47 out of 5, indicating slightly positive but still very mixed satisfaction.<\/p>\n
About 17% rated their experience as a 2, 26% rated their experience as a 3, 48% rated their experience as a 4, and 9% rated their experience as a 5.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Live chat experiences: The business perspective<\/h2>\n
Most of our questions, though, dealt with live chat experiences as businesspeople, including the plugins they use, and their thoughts on user experience and productivity. Overall, the majority of people we surveyed believe that every business should use live chat plugins, but at 65%, this majority isn\u2019t overwhelming. This makes sense given that our group\u2019s average live chat experience as consumers <\/em>was mixed to positive.<\/p>\n When we asked whether the marketers currently use live chat plugins on their own websites, we found that the majority (88%) do. No one plugin clearly won out over the others in popularity, however. We received 10 distinct answers: ActivEngage, Drift, GupShup, Intercom, LiveChat, Manychat, Tawk.to, Tidio, WhosOn, and Zendesk Chat. And the four most popular programs were separated by eight percentage points or less: Tawk.to won out (but not by much) at 17%, followed by LiveChat and Manychat at 13% each.<\/p>\n We also asked them about the average volume of customers who reach out through live chat plugins daily. Understandably, this varies based on the size of each company; here\u2019s how they responded. About 26% have an average of 0\u201310 customers reaching out daily, 30% have 11\u201350 customers reaching out per day on average, 17% have an average of 51\u2013100 customers reaching out daily, and 4% have 100\u2013500 customers reaching out per day on average.<\/p>\n Despite the mixed consensus on whether live chat is a beneficial tool for every business, most agreed that live chat notably impacts user experience and company productivity.<\/p>\n A staggering 96% of marketers feel that live chat support<\/a> has a significant impact on user experience. Of course, we weren\u2019t asking if they think that live chat usually has a positive or negative effect on user experience in this question.<\/p>\n However, it seems like this impact is usually positive based on the results of our next survey question. A majority 91% believe that live chat makes their brand\u2019s support team more productive. This seems to indicate that live chat is effective, as customers who aren\u2019t satisfied with a response would keep trying to contact customer support, clogging support\u2019s load.<\/p>\n Live chat can also be used as a potent lead generation tool, if set up correctly. About 65% of the marketers we surveyed reported that their company definitely tracks leads that come through their chat plugin. (In addition, 9% told us their company does not track chat leads, while 26% weren\u2019t sure.)<\/p>\n But does live chat work well for bringing in leads who actually convert? Our survey seems to indicate that it works reasonably well for generating new customers, but not notably better than other methods. About 47% report that at least 10% of their live chat leads convert into customers, while 30% report that at least 20% convert.<\/p>\n The full breakdown of percentages is below.<\/p>\n With the increasing popularity of chatbots<\/a>, we wanted to see just how many of our respondents\u2019 businesses currently use these automation tools. Interestingly, the slight majority do not <\/em>use chatbots \u2013 57% do not use chatbots, while 43% do. This likely reflects the current fallibility of bots \u2013 they can\u2019t always understand queries at human level (especially more advanced ones), often return incorrect and confusing answers.<\/p>\n But where do our marketers think the future of website chat is heading? Most agree that there\u2019s no stopping the rise of bots and automation, but some rightfully caution that, although bots are valuable tools, we can\u2019t replace human interaction.<\/p>\n Jeremy Lawlor of Active Business Growth<\/a>\u00a0says, \u201cThe future of website chat is automation via bot capabilities. To some extent, this is already true today. Most Live Chat Plugins allow you to set up an automated chat sequence using IFTTT (if this, then that), where the bot will provide options for a user to click, and then brings the user through a predetermined sequence of messages and additional options based on the initial option the user clicked. This will only become more advanced in the future, where AI will help the bot respond more effectively to consumer needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael Anderson of GeoJango Maps<\/a> believes that \u201cIn the future, we’ll see a rise in the percentage of websites utilizing live chat in order to improve conversion rates. Additionally, I believe that live chats will become more automated and that bots will become more sophisticated over time. This will allow business owners to assist prospective customers in completing a conversion without having to spend much time or energy.\u201d<\/p>\n Laura Ferrari of Hyperchat Social<\/a> predicts a rise in chatbots to serve customers at all hours of the day: \u201cWe’re seeing a trend in all aspects of our lives, that everything, including communication is going digital and that business is actually being conducted “outside of business hours”. The future of website chat is going to go well beyond just your typical help support and become more sales driven. With the introduction of bots being able to serve prospects customized information during all hours, we’ve actually seen an increase in our business for appointment scheduling in addition to our prospects being more educated about our services by the time they make the decision to speak with a live person.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, Charles Floate of DFY Links says, \u201cAs companies gather more information on their customers and FAQ’s, robots and AI will be the future of chat, with more than 50% of sites live chat manned by robots, with an option to speak to a real person. Outside 9\u20135 hours, I suspect bots and AI will cover the customer service angle, with his automation also transferring to social media direct messaging too.\u201d<\/p>\n And Shayne Sherman of TechLoris<\/a>\u00a0shares, “I believe that live chat will only get more and more intelligent as AI gets more and more sophisticated. \u00a0Soon people will feel like they’re interacting with a person but never need to take up resources. \u00a0AI chatbots<\/a> mean that consumers will never be placed in a queue or with a customer service representative who’s had a bad day.”<\/p>\n Laura Gonzalez of Audi Spokane<\/a> believes that chatbots will lighten the load of human support teams at early stages of the sales funnel: \u201cWith the developments in AI, I foresee chatbots sticking around for some time. If they can be tailored to interact with clients then they can save your support\/sales team a lot of time that could be better spent elsewhere. Your sales team could focus on prospects further along the buyer’s journey and your support team could spend time on more pressing matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Arnett of Arnett Credentials<\/a> believes we\u2019ll see a rise in predictive, bot-based live chat: \u201cHaving a live chat can answer customer questions right away and keep customers engaged while they wait to get their answers. As technology advances, live chat will help prevent consumer problems and facilitate the customer experience. If not happening now, live chat will have bots to communicate certain messages with customers up to a point where they need a person to respond to their specific request. This will help predict certain issues and overall save time and money.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Crumrine of Guava Family<\/a> says, \u201cWith rapidly growing customer support expectations, website chat support has become increasingly important for eCommerce businesses. In fact, Zendesk claims that live chat offers 92% of customer support in relation to other support tools. It is critical for website chat technology to adapt to changing industry and customer service standards in order to spur its continued success. Certainly, the biggest factors of any successful website chat are the supporting AI systems in place. A strong, intelligent live chat software<\/a> eliminates the need for human interaction, which reduces operating costs and streamlines the overall chat procedure. Going forward, supporting databases will have to proactively predict customer issues using historical data. AI\u2019s will also have to engage in realistic, human-like conversations all the while accurately interpreting various linguistic elements. Eventually, support technology will even start to incorporate augmented reality using cameras and holographic displays.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Anand Iyer<\/a>, the future of chat is all about voice support and augmented reality: \u201cVoice search queries are increasing year over year and with the success of Google Assistant, Siri and Alexa, this trend will continue. As we make progress in natural language processing and improved voice recognition technology, more customers will interact with brands using live chat software<\/a> and expect a more natural \u2018humanlike\u2019 response.<\/p>\n “Augmented reality can be used to provide customers a way to showcase their live environment using their camera and provide technical support. Live chat agents can explain steps to complete an action and answer any questions by analyzing the virtual\/augmented environment.”<\/p>\n James Watkins of PHS<\/a> predicts about \u201c90% of customer queries will come through live chat, as it is instantaneous, with the rest coming through phone calls and social media contact. There will be direct options to add products to the cart direct from the live chat, with automated responses available for quick selection for both customer and business.\u201d<\/p>\n Matt McKenna of DELT<\/a>\u00a0says: “Our website does not currently have a Chat Plugin, but I have set them up on several other websites. When they first came out, all of our clients wanted them; no matter what the industry. We soon learned that, for the most part, they were doing more harm than good. On one of our client’s site, customers weren’t getting the answers they wanted and about 30% of users were leaving the site (most likely in frustration).<\/p>\n Recently, we have integrated Intercom and Drift into a few of our client’s websites, and have noticed they are significantly more functional and their features are suited for just about every industry. As artificial intelligence evolves and demand continues to rise, I think future website chat plugins will focus on being used on websites with lower traffic (right now they all seem to be geared towards extremely active sites). Additionally, I think we will see them start to be created for specific industries rather than being marketed towards every website.”<\/p>\n Ryan Scollon<\/a>\u00a0thinks \u201cLive chat will continue to grow, simply because people do not want to wait anymore as we expect everything to happen so much faster now. Over the last year or so, I have also seen a rise in the usage of websites using Facebook messenger tools as a replacement for a live chat system. The trend I have noticed with this is that people are more likely to use live chat via Facebook compared to a dedicated live chat plugin.\u201d<\/p>\n Mathew Richard of TradeKey<\/a>\u00a0states, \u201cThough many experts believe that Live chat is evolving and with the help of AI (chat bots) they are able to deal and facilitate more clients, it’s killing the human touch. As a consumer and marketer, I believe that person-to-person interactions are much more effective in live chat sessions. Therefore, we should stick to dealing with queries with human representatives and use automated messages in case of unavailability. Or, websites could also direct users to their learning center where they have published guides and tutorials while a human representative isn’t available.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly, Eric Anderson of El Mejor Trato<\/a>\u00a0emphasizes the need for personalization: \u201cWebsite chat is heading towards a more personal customer experience, as that’s what I as a customer have perceived. Sometimes website chat may feel robotic and that’s what should be tackled. There are more chances for Live Chat leads to convert into customers when they feel they are getting personalized attention.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/pasted-image-0-6.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nType of plugin and volume of responses<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nLive chat, user experience, and company productivity<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nLive chat and leads<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe future of chat<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nRise of the chatbot<\/h3>\n
Lightening customer support\u2019s load (especially after hours)<\/h4>\n
Predictive live chatbots<\/h4>\n
AR and VR in chat<\/h4>\n
Cart-integrated, automated chat<\/h4>\n
Chatbots for all \u2013 regardless of business size<\/h4>\n
Automated live chat on social<\/h4>\n
Personal interactions are still vital<\/h3>\n
Human chat will be alive and well<\/h3>\n