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Efficient and responsive customer support is essential for businesses that want to grow successfully and in the right direction. We’re used to customers contacting companies via phone, email, or, more recently, social media. However, there’s also a way to allow your employees to answer customer queries more comprehensively without dealing with a crowded inbox or always busy phone lines. The answer lies in a customer chat plugin for your company website.
Different Online Chat Options
When you first start looking into customer chat options, you’ll notice the three most common ways to add a chat feature to your website:
1. A Basic Chatbot
The simplest option out of the three involves the so-called basic chatbot. This type of chatbot operates based on a pre-configured set of rules. The users’ questions and answers will further guide the chatbot’s responses. An excellent example of this chat option is the Chatfuel chatbot service.
2. An AI Chatbot
Unlike the basic chatbot, AI chatbots utilize machine learning to understand user input and provide a more comprehensive output. However, to utilize machine learning properly, a company must invest in the software and hardware necessary to support it. An excellent example of this particular chat option is the IBM Watson Chatbot.
Integrating your bot-based chat software with your social media messaging is also possible. Chatbots’ most significant benefit is that they can quickly answer customer queries 24/7. But this doesn’t mean you should ignore the third online chat option; quite the contrary.
3. Live Chat
Live chat support is the most frequently used online chat option. Essentially, a real person—not a bot — is responsible for answering users’ questions via live chat.
According to a LiveChat benchmark study, the average business handled approximately 2746 chats per month in the last 12 months.
Benefits of Adding a Customer Chat Plugin to Your WordPress Website
WordPress is the leading content management system for many modern business websites. Adding a chat plugin to your WordPress website has numerous benefits.
Ease and Simplicity
WordPress makes it easy to add any plugin to a website, including chat plugins. The plugins are functional and readily available and can be customized to perfectly match a website’s style.
Versatility
Regardless of what industry you’re operating in, you can be 100% sure that there’s a helpful chat plugin for your niche. What’s more, it’s possible to program your chat feature to show up on specific pages on your website.
Measurable Effectiveness
Using a chat plugin also lets you track and measure chat data, which is handy for boosting customer support even further.
Security
It’s crucial that your customers can trust you with their information. That’s why the best chat plugins provide adequate chat encryption, thus improving overall security and privacy.
Advantageous Competitiveness
Utilizing the chat plugin for your business can give you a much-needed advantage. Furthermore, you can link your chat with existing PPC and SEO campaigns to boost conversions.
Responsiveness
It’s no secret that most online traffic originates from mobile devices. This is why WordPress allows you to create a fully responsive website and responsive chat plugins that function across different mobile devices.
How to Add a Customer Chat Plugin to Your WordPress Website Step-by-Step
Thanks to the plugin feature that WordPress supports, adding a customer chat plugin to your website is easier than ever. You don’t need any coding knowledge to do this properly. All you have to do is log into your WordPress account and follow the next steps on your dashboard. We’ll use Chatfuel’s chatbot plugin as an example.
Automatic installation method:
- Go to Plugins and click on the Add New option.
- Type the name of your plugin, for example, “Chatfuel Customer Chat.”
- You’ll see the “Chatfuel Customer Chat plugin by Chatfuel & Master of Code.”
- Click on the Install Now button next to it.
- Once the installation is completed, click on the Activate Plugin button.
Manual installation method:
- Start by downloading the plugin on your computer.
- Extract the “chatfuel-customer-chat” folder.
- Open your FTP software.
- With the software, upload the “chatfuel-customer-chat” folder to the “wp-content/plugins” folder in your WordPress directory.
- Once that’s done, open your WordPress dashboard.
- Go to Plugins and look up “Chatfuel Customer Chat” in your list of installed plugins.
- Click Activate to activate this plugin.
If you encounter trouble with your plugin, ensure your WordPress website has an HTTPS server.
Why Install a Customer Chat Plugin on Your WordPress Website?
Drift’s 2020 State of Conversational Marketing study revealed that 33% of US customers only tend to use a chat feature on a website to interact with a business. Providing an online chat tool for customers means that the companies can effectively:
- Boost customer loyalty and satisfaction
- Grow their sales
- Save money and time while handling customer queries
- Increase customer engagement
- Control and direct customer interactions better
In closing
Conversational customer service is the future of customer support. Soon enough, it will be a factor that makes or breaks a business. In that sense, adding a customer chat plugin to your business website shouldn’t be treated as just another chore but as a business-boosting strategy.
Thanks to WordPress CMS’s intuitive nature, installing a chat plugin has never been easier or less time-consuming. However, chatbots are a fantastic tool for helping take the load off your customer support agents rather than a complete solution. The best way is to rely on chatbot technology, and human-to-human live chat interactions for more complex queries.