Introduction
Two-thirds of American consumers are willing to spend more for the brands that provide superior customer service.
What does that imply?
Customer service is the backbone of every business!
And live chat in 2020 is an integral part of successful customer service.
Live chat has diverse and far-reaching benefits. It impacts sales, or support, or service, or satisfaction positively.
Let’s break down live chat by the numbers from various resources, reports, and surveys to see how well the live chat is accepted from both consumers and business perspectives.
In this post you could see the following things:
- Fascinating facts about live chat
- Live Chat Usage and Adoption Statistics
- Live Chat Customer Support and Satisfaction
- Live Chat Response time
- Live Chat Benchmarks
- Live Chat Forecasts and Trends
Let’s dive into some fascinating facts of the live chat stats.
Fascinating Facts of Live chat Statistics
- More than half of all the consumers have adopted live chat for real-time support.
- By 2023, the Global Live Chat Software Market size is expected to reach $987.3.
- By 2025, the global market size for chatbots will be around $1.25 billion.
- 92% of customers feel more comfortable using a live chat and have a higher satisfaction rate.
- In 2018, the first-ever average response time using live chat was 48 seconds.
Live Chat Usage and Adoption Statistics
- By 2021, 71% of businesses believe that live chat will be the top when compared to other channels like applications, email, social media, and phone.
From a Bold 360 survey in 2018, companies are aware of shifts in communication preferences. Study participants have recognized the importance of live chat for consumers. Traditional customer service communication channels will be surpassed by live chat in the coming days.
- A shocking 26% of companies feel that they are not prepared to adopt live chat via social media applications.
And 16% of consumers prefer to use live chat as customer service and support than social media platforms and self-service.
(proprofs)
- More than 50% of all the consumers have adopted live chat for real-time support, rather than a call.
56% of organizations with less than 100 customers have adopted live chat. And 74% of the companies adopted live chat when they had fewer employees around 10.
Additionally, 25% of companies implemented live chat when they were less than one year old, and 30% of businesses adopted live chat when they were more than 10 years old.
- Trading online has become very easy and more businesses are getting digitized, live chat adoption is gaining pace.
The adoption of live chat has raised the revenue of travel and hospitality businesses by $16 million in 2019.
In 2019, Live chat adoption has helped an insurance company to save $1 million in 90 days from a call deflection.
- For providing a great customer experience, CX experts are using live chat.
CX experts have incorporated live chat with the CX technology toolbox. 38% of leading CX experts are using live chat while 26% are planning to use it for delivering instant support.
(business)
- 87% of businesses adopted live chat to connect with real-time web visitors.
Wanna know why companies adopted live chat?
From Zoho’s live chat statistics for business, the organizations that opted for live chat support are highest in percentage to connect with their site visitors in real-time.
(zoho)
- The primary reason for 61% of the businesses adopting live chat is to increase sales and conversions by offering live chat support.
Some other reasons to adopt live chat includes providing convenient support for consumers(43%) and website visitor tracking(45%). Customers prefer to live chat as a more convenient way to reach out to the support team.
(99firms)
- Customers need answers from the business within 10 minutes.
Based on Hubspot’s live chat study, Customers would be expecting a response from the support team within 10 minutes or less from the moment they have reached out. The majority of the customers would expect an immediate answer that translates to a minimum of 10 minutes.
(hubspot)
- From the Hubspot’s live chat study, 60% of customers need an immediate response from the customer support team.
46% of the customers also have the same expectations as the marketing support team. In the sales department, the need for speed is at the highest levels, 62% of the customers expect an immediate response.
(hubspot)
- Live chat usage for customer support is 67% in B2C (Business-to-Customer) companies.
Customer support is the most common use of live chat. Zoho’s statistics state that 66% of B2B (Business-to-Business) and 67% of B2C (Business-to-Customer) use live chat for consumer support.
Marketing and sales are the most prominent uses of live chat. Based on the source, 74% of B2C and 85% of B2B companies use live chat for sales. And only small portions i.e., 31% of B2C and 54% of B2B companies use live chat for marketing.
Live Chat Customer Support and Satisfaction
- 63% of millennials prefer Live chat for getting customer support.
Millennials are 20% more likely to use live chat for customer support than their Baby Boomer counterparts. The heaviest live chat users are the young generations. Providing live chat support is a must to draw the attention of younger generations.
(commbox)
- 92% of customers feel more comfortable using a live chat feature in businesses, than any other communication option.
59% of customers prefer to use additional channels rather than voice to communicate with customer service.
And 71% of customers would really like to use messaging for business to communicate with customer service.
- High quality and thorough support are more valued by 95% of the consumers than the speed of the customer service.
Technology is getting advanced where customers have high standards. The quality and speed of the responses matter whether it’s a live person or AI.
(cxl)
- 79% of businesses with live chat support have had a positive impact on customer loyalty, revenue, and sales.
Businesses with live chat support are likely to have more consumers. 51% of consumers are likely to stick with or purchase again from the same businesses.
If businesses have live chat support, 52% of the customers are likely to purchase again from the same company.
- 63% of customers who spend more online are more loyal to businesses that provide live chat support.
Customers who spend money $259 – $500 online are more likely to purchase and remain loyal to businesses with live chat support.
(99firms)
- The customer satisfaction rate with live chat support was 83.1% in 2018.
According to Statista, consumers find live chat support as more convenient and shows the rise in trend.
The live chat support tool has made a significant mark in the support industry, marketing, and sales industry. Statistics show that live chat support tool usage is increasing in the market.
(statista)
- 42% of customers prefer to live chat support in order not to wait for long durations.
Live chat usage is more in the market as consumers do not prefer to wait or to be put on hold.
Consumers better prefer to avoid legacy customer support tools.
Also, 29% of customers do not like to receive scripted responses.
(proprofs)
- CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) rate is 92% with live chat as businesses customer support.
Live chat support has the highest CSAT than any other channel because of having a back-and-forth conversation.
(drift)
- The highest and lowest satisfaction scores of certain industries using live chat support are as followed:
High CSAT scores are for industries like Healthcare(93%), Transportation(93%), Education(90%) and Manufacturing(90%).
Low CSAT scores are for industries like Telecom(81%), Finance(81%) and Recreation(81%).
Average CSAT scores for teams with 25-50 people is 82.7% and teams with more than 50 people are 85.7%.
(comm100)
Live Chat Response time
- In general, the average time spent by consumers on live chat is 713 seconds (11 minutes 53 seconds) in 2018.
Almost 12 minutes are spent on live chat by customers when desired support is received from the businesses. This time includes every task like customers explaining their problems, operators search for a solution and provide the desired solution immediately.
(livechat)
- In the transportation industry, the wait time of the customer using live chat records is 43 seconds.
Consumers seeking assistance for transport-related queries had to wait for 43 seconds. Unlike call support or email, Live chat turns out to be a better channel for consumers to get desired solutions for the problem.
- In 2018, the average wait time before speaking with an agent on live chat has increased from 37 seconds to 48 seconds.
Organizations with 90% CSAT or higher on live chat had an average wait time of 46 seconds and had a chat duration of 12 minutes and 26 seconds.
(comm100)
- 19% of businesses have noted that long waits may cause frustration to the customers.
Some organizations around 43% know that user experience is not good enough due to long waits.
(livechat)
- 24% of the customers say that the source of frustration is due to long waiting times.
Sometimes customers get frustrated due to long waits. The average wait time of the teams within the range of 25-50 people is around 80 seconds. The longest chat duration of these teams is 13 minutes and 41 seconds per chat session.
(livechat)
Live Chat Benchmarks
- The first average response time for a live chat was 48 seconds in 2018.
Some additional research about the live chat statistics helped to reveal the figures over the years.
In 2015, the first average response time on live chat was 59 seconds which gradually decreased by 11 seconds in 3 years which is a good improvement.
(forbes)
- Chats are mostly high between 7 AM and 7 PM.
According to Zendesk live chat statistics data, peak hours of the chat representatives are between 11am and 3pm. Also states that CSAT ratings are 80% between 2 pm and 5 pm.
(zandesk)
- Customers need a better quality service. So, 95% of the customers would accept slow-paced chats.
Live chat statistics of Kayako states that customers do need quality of service but not speed services. 19 out of 20 customers need a better quality of service. Businesses need to adapt to the new consumer support climate where live chats dominate, chatters are not impatient.
- Slow responses have made 84% of the customers give up the live chat due to frustration.
According to live chat benchmarks, using live chat in businesses as an afterthought is not important but investing for necessary training for their personnel is needed. This makes a spike in churn among the consumers.
- The highest satisfaction level for any customer service channel is around 73 – 81%.
According to live chat benchmarks, undeniably obvious CSAT scores are as high as 92% for a live chat when compared to channels like email(61%), applications(53%), social media(48%), and phone(44%).
(icmi)
Live Chat Forecasts and Trends
- By 2023, the projected revenue of global live chat software market size is expected to be $987.3 million with a CAGR of almost 8%.
By the end of 2020, the global live chat software market is expected to reach around $820.
Growing demand from consumers to use live chat as a customer support tool has led the market size of global live chat software to increase the revenue.
- By 2025, the global market size for chatbots will be around $1.25 billion.
More than half of the businesses will be investing in chatbot development rather than mobile app development by 2021.
- In 2019, 54% of US consumers expect that the quality of life will be affected negatively with chatbot interaction.
Only 14% of US customers expected that interaction with chatbots had a positive effect. And 8% of US consumers expect a very positive interaction with chatbots.
- Without human intervention, chatbots can handle around 80% of all the customer issues from start to finish.
Common customer queries can be solved by chatbots without any assistance. Besides, 88% of customer queries would be solved when human agents work collaboratively with chatbots.
Closing Thoughts
Among all, if live chat support is properly used then it offers convenience, speed, and real-time support. All the aspects of ideal customer experience are covered by adding knowledgeable operators that are eager to help the consumers.