Proactive Live Chat is a great tool for increasing the overall interaction on your website, increasing conversions, and improving the customer experience. In a nutshell, proactive live chat is an automatic message generator used to encourage customers viewing your website to engage in a conversation with customer service representatives through a chat window. It allows you to target specific website visitors during their customer journey and invite them to a live chat session using audio-visual signals. The invitation is in the form of a chat window with a customized message, for example: “Are you experiencing a problem with the payment? I can help you with this. ”

Reactive chat is where the chat button on your site just waits for a customer to click on it when they know they need help. In contrast, proactive chat looks for interaction with visitors based on their behaviour. A proactive chat is triggered by the actions of users and, instead of the customer, we’re the ones to initiate the conversation (on behalf of your company). Proactive chat can detect the customer’s problem as soon as it occurs, it offers help and leads the customer to a solution and/or sale. So, proactive chat can help meet customers’ need to interact while increasing incremental sales and reducing cart abandonment.

How does proactive chat work?

With this function, the chat window opens automatically for visitors after certain conditions are met, like if the visitor has been on the website for a certain time. For example, if the average time on the checkout page is 1.5 minutes, you can automatically send out a chat invitation after 2 minutes to assist the visitors who are experiencing problems or doubts. The software we use only invites a visitor once per browser session to prevent annoying the visitor.

Proactive chat communication almost always takes place automatically through the implementation of one or more business rules. The most effective proactive greetings are fully customized greetings that are triggered based on detailed visitor behaviour. The possibilities are endless, but they’re also the most difficult to set up. At Digital Customer Care Company we have extensive experience with proactive greetings that are successful. The collected data from the visitor tracking function is used for the business rules. Different business rules can be created to target certain types of buyers, specific areas of the website, and specific locations in the sales funnel.

In order to develop the correct business rules, you need to have a good insight into the behaviour of the visitor. This insight is obtained from Google Analytics at Digital Customer Care Company. Digital Customer Care Company uses experts who have the ‘Google Analytics Qualified Individual’ certification.

Proactive invitations must be carefully worded so that they’re aimed at the right people and at the right times. Proactive chat offers an opportunity for higher engagement, and if they are targeted, they can really drive engagement.

Proactive live chat is used relatively little by other companies; no doubt because of the complexity of the implementation. We almost always deploy tailored proactive greetings with our customers, so we know what to do to make sure that the live chat on our customers’ sites is effective. We have been using proactive live chat for years. If you don’t use it, you will miss out on valuable conversations, leads and conversions.

In short, proactive live chat can be a major boost to your online performance in terms of both increasing conversion, and creating a better experience for your customers. If your current proactive live chat strategy is not driving more chats with customers on your site or is not improving overall performance, then you may want to contact us to help you with this.