If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got. –Albert Einstein
Einstein’s quote makes sense doesn’t it? If it doesn’t then you should consider another of Einstein’s famous quotes: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So, why am I telling you this? Well, let me explain.
When it comes to business, I don’t know of anyone who is satisfied with the status quo. Every business wants to be better, to be more effective, more productive, and more profitable. Nevertheless, many of us who want to improve simply continue to do the same things we’ve done before and just hope for a different result – insanity right?
One of the most valuable technologies available to online businesses is live chat. This technology has been around for more than a decade. Adoption of this technology continues to grow. Most online consumers prefer to use live chat to contact a company’s sales or support staff as opposed to phone or email. Yet the vast majority of businesses simply implement the most basic capabilities that live chat provides. Simply placing a button on a webpage, that when clicked, launches a live chat with a support representative or sales person is about 10 – 15 years old. The core functionality behind making this miracle possible has more or less remained the same over the years. However, live chat can do so much more and some live chat vendors are beginning to explore opportunities for live chat innovation and these innovations can go a long way towards improving online sales conversions and boosting customer service productivity.
Today, there are some live chat vendors that are providing new, innovative ways to make it possible for their clients to seamlessly integrate with a wide variety of other applications, benefit from a multitude of insightful, out of the box, live chat reports, and conduct live chats with a level of security that organizations handling sensitive information – like healthcare and financial information – can comfortably rely on. Yet, most implementation of live chat fail to take advantage of such innovations.
My point in this blog is that if you want to improve your business you can’t continue to operate as you have in the past. With regards to live chat, you need to innovate and move beyond just the fundamentals of live chat. The world is constantly changing, online consumer expectations are continuously evolving, and new opportunities for live chat are always popping up. But to do better, to get more from live chat, to use live chat in new and innovative ways, you need to work with a vendor that has the basics down to a science AND has the experience and vision to take you further.
If you’re wondering what you can expect from live chat take a look at this tool. It will tell you – based on your answers to a short set of questions – how you specifically can benefit from live chat. It gives you an idea of the potential that you may not be tapping into and will serve as a good foundation for a discussion with your chat vendor and an assessment of your live chat functionality.
If you do business online, have live chat or are considering live chat – it’s time to innovate. Do you want to do better tomorrow than you did today? Are you doing the same thing today that you did yesterday and expecting a different result?