Live chat benefit: collect data

Live chat has many benefits, such as offering a faster service or generating higher sales numbers. But, something that not many companies immediately think of is that live chat provides the option of collecting a lot of different types of data, and this data can be used to structurally improve your website and service. 

So, which data can be collected? Glad you asked. Although there are differences between the types of data you can collect depending on the live chat software you are using, general speaking, you can count on the following information:

Time spent on the website

You can see how long your visitor has been on your website. Using that information, you can chat to your customer proactively, or wait a while if the visitor just arrived at your website.

Number of website visits

Also, useful to know: has the customer visited your website before or is this the first visit? This can be seen based on the number of visits the customer has paid to your website.

Chat history

And, based on the chat history, you can see whether the visitor in question has previously chatted with your company, and, if so, how many times. You can also see with which employee the customer spoke and when the chat took place.

Transcriptions

All chats are also stored, allowing you to view them at a later point in time. This can help you to improve your service or website, or perhaps to learn from good or bad chats, and to keep your chat operators sharp.

Device and operating system

Do visitors primarily use mobile phones, laptops, or do they surf on a tablet? You can often see which device they use when they are chatting with you, and sometimes even which operating system the customer is using. If many of your visitors use a tablet with iOS, but your website is not optimized for this, it might be time to consider making a change!

Location

The IP address will also often tell you from where your customers are chatting. If you know in which country and city your customer lives, you can optionally redirect people to the closest physical shop.

What the customer is doing at the time

You can also see whether the customer is browsing your website or is currently “frozen” and not actively scrolling through your page.

Referring link

You can see from which page your visitor arrived at your website or opened a chat with you via the referring link that you can see. This allows you to determine what type of information your customer is looking for. This could be a good topic to start a chat with.

Browser history

It is also often visible which pages the visitor visited while browsing your website. This allows you to see what the visitor was looking for, and this information can be used to offer a faster service or conduct more directed marketing.

Personal details

If customers are able to create an account and log in on your website, you can also see their personal data, such as their name, location and ordering history. This personal information can be used to make the chat more personal, by using someone’s first name for example.

Ordering history

You can also assist the customer faster with their ordering history, should there be something wrong with a product. You can immediately see what the customer ordered in the past.

All the above mentioned points refer to quantitative data. Another thing that is important to mention is qualitative data: the customer’s behavior, motivation, the reason that someone purchases a particular product, how this made him or her feel and what people think of your website. This will allow you to learn exactly why people spend their money on your products and/or services.

Like quantitative information, this knowledge can be used to optimize your marketing, which will ultimately generate greater profits. This qualitative information is generated from chat transcriptions, which you will have to analyze for this. This is a good article concerning how you can use this qualitative information to generate more conversions through your landing page.

Finally, after closing a chat, you can also show your website’s visitor a short questionnaire. By asking one to three short questions, you can obtain additional information regarding the customer’s experience. Ask questions about the waiting time, the quality of the answer they received, or how easy they could find information on your website, for example.