Virtually all (99 percent) customer service executives recognize benefits to using chat with customers to bolster customer experience and drive revenue and growth for their businesses, according to new research from chat commerce firm Clickatell
The firm’s latest Chat Commerce Trends Report finds that customer service teams are increasingly responsible for revenue with 81 percent saying they are compensated based on performance and sales within their teams. These executives are facing challenges in achieving results with 95 percent saying there are technology or process challenges in their departments hindering success. Notably, 43 percent said their customers find their payment technology hard to use, and 41 percent said reporting and analysis is disjointed.
“Revenue-generating responsibilities of customer service departments have significantly increased, while many of their technical capabilities have remained the same,” said Pieter de Villiers, co-founder and CEO at Clickatell, in a news release. “With rising revenue expectations should also come the tools and investments that help customer service departments meet them. Chat Commerce providing seamless and secure engagement and transactions that allows representatives to support customers along their entire path to purchase, while also encouraging the opportunity for increased sales.”
Customer service executives trust chat for sales and payments
Overwhelmingly, 96 percent of customer service teams in these revenue producing departments are responsible for taking payments from their customers, and yet, more than half still use antiquated processes, such as sending a bill or invoice (60 percent) or taking credit cards (53 percent).
In addition, 97 percent of leaders agree customer service teams would benefit by using chat-to-pay technology and nearly half (48 percent) of organizations that don’t currently accept chat payments plan to do so in the future. Additionally, 88 percent of leaders agree that using chat channels for payments will help meet revenue goals; 97 percent said that chat payment investments pay for themselves.
WhatsApp, Google Chat and Facebook Messenger are the chat apps most used by customer service teams:
- WhatsApp (47 percent)
- Google Chat (40 percent)
- Facebook Messenger (31 percent)
- Instagram Chat (30 percent)
- Apple Messages (23 percent)
- WeChat (23 percent)
- Telegram (21 percent)
- Discord (15 percent)
- Snapchat (15 percent)
- Line (6 percent)
- Viber (5 percent)
- Signal (5 percent)
Ninety-nine percent surveyed find a significant number of benefits when using chat with customers including the following:
- Faster response times
- Simple and easy for customers
- Improved customer satisfaction
- Increased customer engagement
- Convenience for customers
- Reduced call center costs
- Stronger customer relationships
- Improved agent efficiency
- Continuation from existing or saved chat history
- Lower risk of fraud
The survey findings also noted that email (30 percent) and chat apps (27 percent) are the most preferred channels for customer service agents, while phone calls (19 percent) are least preferred.
Download the full report here.
Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Trends Report, which is based on a survey of 340+ senior customer service leaders in the U.S., can be viewed here. To learn more about how to implement chat payments, see Clickatell’s Chat 2 Pay product page and read how it enables businesses to securely accept payments in chat messaging by sending consumers a payment link.
