Marketing in the Cloud Blog

Live Chat for Lead Generation relies on the same technology you might have used for technical support, to re-book your airline tickets or reconnect with a High School friend on Facebook. Smart companies have adapted the same Instant Messaging (IM)  and Live Chat technology that’s been around for a decade, for their lead gen activities.

If you are in the complex sales business, leads are your lifeblood. Increasingly, prospects expect instant information, yet are reluctant to pick up the phone and wade through your phone tree, and even more reluctant to register for and wait for collateral materials by email.

Live Chat – Benefits for You:

• More leads: live chat is an easy, ‘safe’ action for your users to take.
• Efficient: multiple conversations per agent.
• Systemized: Canned responses enable a systemized conversation/script flow.
• Knowledge: Analytics tell you where your website is failing and where your customers need help.

Benefits for the Prospect

• Fast: immediate response
• Easy: safe action – without needing to wade through a telephone tree or register
• Immediate: no need to wait for collateral by email

1. Liveperson: the industry leader. Per seat licensing on a SAAS basis. Advanced integration can be a pain.   They have a large installed base and advanced client software.

Also rans:

Following have been tested. There are benefits and drawbacks to each. A few fit for small/solo organizations (Olark) , others for large enterprise integrations (Ngenera).

2. Boldchat

3. Zopim

4. Ngenera

5. Olark

Millions in sales for our clients from this simple idea:  When you walk into a retail store, it’s nice to be welcomed with a simple “Hi!.”   But, when you are agonizing over a buying decision within the store (will this widget really do what I need it to do), it’s massively helpful to have a friendly, knowledgeable, clerk offer help.

Like the helpful, knowledgeable sales clerk, we’ve doubled leads overnight by simply (and it really is simple) adding live chat “can I help you” invitations to key action web pages.

The process?

• Determine your key selling pages.
• Add a timed chat invitation: ‘friendly, experts here to help”.
• Develop your ‘Bait’ pieces to get the prospect opt-in info (email, telephone).
• Develop your  soft closing script to move conversation to next level.

Double Your Leads?  Try a  One-Month, “Double Your Leads” Test:

• Sign up for a 1 month test of Liveperson or Zopim (free)
• Designate a single sales rep as the test agent
• On your key conversion pages, add an automated live chat invitation
• So: when your your designated agent is online, every visitor to a key conversion page sees 1 invitation to chat
  - visit rackspace.com and wait 10 seconds to see a sample of this in action
• Note: be sure to set a minimum time on page before the invitation appears (20 seconds has worked very well)
• Analyze your conversations: what’s the key question in your visitors minds?
• Track your conversions: are leads improving?
• Track your leads sources, including live chat.
• Incrementally, you will see a dramatic increase in leads.

Here’s a few pitfalls we’ve encountered in Live Chat for Lead Gen integrations.

Test. Test. Test.
Last year, we tested a new Live Chat Invite creative with one client. The creative bombed.  Terribly. Over a 2 week period, we saw 50% drop in leads. When we replaced the test creative with the control, leads bounced right back. What was the problem?  We replaced a friendly, custom, operator icon with a coupon code. “Chat now to get 15% off immediately” — it was a good looking ad that was completely ignored.  Testing is your friend.

Integration
Integrating chat into your analytics and lead tracking systems will be a pain.  First, make chat interactions a goal within your analytics framework.   This can be challenging (contact us for a free/quick cheat sheet).  More painful is tracking your lead source and automating lead source capture.  We’ve had success with this, but there is a distinct lack of API’s in live-chat land — and much depends on your chat vendor.

Typing
Many sales folks are awful typists. It’s hard selling via Live Chat if your AE is thinking more about typing than engaging the prospect.  If you plan to roll out chat across the sales force, you may find a few folks who need typing training.  Free typing games do wonders for typing speed and accuracy.

Bait
Chat windows are easy to close. You’ll need to entice your chat prospect to take your preferred next action. At a minimum encourage the opt in. Half or more of your sales script and canned responses should be devoted to this task.

Bottom Line?

Can you double your leads this month with live chat?   No way to know without a test.  Fortunately, it is quick and easy to get started.  Follow our 1-month test guidelines and see for yourself.  How much difference would 50% more leads make in your organization?