Providing Live Chat on your website comes with many significant advantages. It provides high-level engagement with your website visitors and can completely transform your customer experience. By delivering personalised human interactions you can increase your leads, sales and customer loyalty!

How do you know if you are leveraging your live chat software to its potential and maximising the benefits it provides?

Measuring key performance indicators (KPIs) can enable your business to continually improve your live chat function and performance. Before you can implement changes from the statistics you need to know what exactly to measure! Here at C4B we are constantly reviewing our clients chat statistics, to help maximise their Return on Investment (ROI). We have compiled a list of 5 of the most crucial live chat metrics that you should measure on a regular basis!

1. Chat to Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the key chat KPI to monitor. Conversion rate is the percentage of chat visitors who convert into customers. The successful conversion of enquiries will be determined by the sales qualification process. For the property sector this is when a chat visitor books a viewing or schedules a valuation. For care homes it is about increasing care home admissions. Ultimately, conversion rates can tell you how effective the efforts of your agents/advisors are.

2. First response time (FRT)

The first response time (FRT) is a key metric for measuring your customer experience. It is the time an agent takes to respond to the chat visitors first message. Measuring how long a prospect must wait for a response is crucial to maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction. If a prospect visits your website and starts a chat it is vital that their message is answered quickly.

If your prospects must wait more than a few minutes, they may grow impatient and you will risk that they will look for an answer elsewhere (i.e., your competitors). At C4B our FRT is an average of 5 seconds, ensuring your customers are engaged promptly and enhancing your brand reputation.

Ultimately, if you offer a live chat function on your website you should ensure that there are always responded to quickly and professionally.

3. Total Number of Chats

This metric is quite straight forward, but also vital! Measuring the number of chats that are initiated by visitors each day can tell you how effectively your online strategy is performing. It is important to constantly review this metric; if your chat volume increases you may need to expand your team.

This metric can also indicate the success of other elements in your digital strategy. It is important to understand that the success of your live chat is dependent on your ability to drive traffic to your website. Without website traffic, you will not have leads to capture and convert into sale.

4. Point of Interest (POI)

Our chat software offers a POI (Point of interest) function. Each chat visitor is assigned to a category depending on the nature of their enquiry. For example, clients in the property sector may have ‘Vendor, Tenant, Buyer, Landlord and Other’ groupings. This function can enable agents to categorise chats ensuring the context is always clear. This also enables you to review how many requests you are getting per category.

These statistics can provide you with valuable information; for example, which marketing campaigns are working as well as what is not working and may require change. Consequently, these insights can help you structure your sales and marketing activity to better suit the needs of your customer

5. Average Chat Length/Duration

Chat duration (chat length) is the amount of time it takes for an agent/adviser to answer a visitor’s enquiry. Monitoring this KPI can help you assess the overall effectiveness of your live chat process. Ideal chat length varies by industry. Unusually short chat length can indicate the agent may have not obtained enough information and the visitor was not engaged in the conversation. Similarly, long chat length may indicate that the visitor was not engaged due to slow responses.

At C4B the average chat duration ranges from 15-25 minutes with approximately 27 interactions. This ensures a fully qualified sales lead with the correct contact details to follow up with.

Summary

These are not the only chat KPIs you can monitor. There are plenty more. However, these 5 KPIs are all key to chat performance. The most crucial KPI being conversion rate and return on investment (ROI); put simply is live chat on your website driving sales?

In conclusion, measuring KPIs can enable your business to continually improve your live chat function and performance. By providing live chat on your website, you can increase your leads, sales and customer loyalty!

Are you looking to implement chat onto your website but not sure where to start? Launch a chat now to speak with a member of our team or contact us here.