For a long time, email was the main way customers talked to online stores. Until recently, all web shops included a contact page with a contact form, essentially just initiating email communication. Usually, this meant full inboxes and slow replies, risking customer happiness.
Slow Replies = Lost Sales
In e-commerce, slow replies mean lost sales. Customers expect fast answers to their questions, or they'll go elsewhere. Competition is just one click away.
Adding live chat is a step forward: customers get instant help during your open hours. Another step forward (and a real game changer) is implementing an AI Chatbot. It's on 24/7, giving immediate replies even to midnight shoppers.
E-mail vs. Chatbot - Face Off
E-mail 📧 | Live Chat 💬 with Chatbot 🤖 |
❌ Unknown response time | ✔️ Instant response The chatbot answers in seconds and keeps your customers from leaving. |
❌ Slow and lengthy Answering an e-mail rarely closes the ticket. Usually, it opens a lengthy ping-pong communication that can last a few days. | ✔️ The problem is solved here & now More than 50% of clients’ queries can be answered immediately by a chatbot. The rest are forwarded to chat agents. |
❌ Unreliability E-mails often have delivery problems or get lost in SPAM. | ✔️ The AI is finally reliable The GPT-powered chatbots can finally do the heavy lifting while matching the human agents' C-SAT scores. |
❌ Overflowing inboxes E-mails pile up, and then they are answered in the order they arrive, so urgent and important messages wait in line with less important ones and SPAM. | ✔️ Smart automation With a chatbot dealing with most of the mundane tickets, your support team can focus on more interesting things - like additional sales. |
Getting Customers to Chat
By promoting live chat as the primary contact option, you can shift the usual email-to-chat ratio to favor AI-automated chats. So, make live chat the obvious choice.
Put a big “Chat Now” button on top of your contact page
Make sure it stands out as the first and preferred way of contact.
Image: CurvyKate.com suggests Live Chat as the first option on the “Contact Us” page.
💡 See tutorial: How to make an “open chat” link for Gorgias?
Add an “open chat” link in the footer of all your pages, above any contact details
The website footer is another place, where clients are intuitively looking for contact information.
Image: Example of a “Chat with us” link placed above contact details in a website footer.
Use chat pop-up messages (Gorgias “Campaigns”) to grab attention.
Campaigns open pop-up messages, that proactively appear next to the chat bubble and encourage the users to start a conversation.
In the case of customer service scenarios, we strongly recommend using them on the contact page and in the whole help center.
Image: Example of a campaign pop-up inviting to a chat conversation on spacircle.au
💡 See tutorial: How to set up a Gorgias Chat Campaign?
Add a “Chat Now” link in all your emails.
To reduce the number of email responses, add a link or button in your emails' footer that opens a live chat with your store.
Image: PuraVida Bracelets e-mail footer contains a graphical invitation to start a live chat conversation.
To create a link to your store that makes the chat box open automatically on page load, simply add the ?gs_open_chat parameter to your URL. The resulting store URL is now www.my-store.com?gs_open_chat.
Turn on the “Chat contact card” in your Gorgias Help Center
In your help center settings (Settings > Help Center > Contact), turn off the “Contact form card”, but turn on the “Chat contact card” instead.
This way, your team deals with less email, and customers enjoy faster, smarter service.