Every year, more and more customers turn to the Internet to shop online and get customer support for products and services they purchased from a website or physical store. For businesses to stay ahead of the competition and put repeat customers at ease, they need to provide quick and accurate answers to users who shop on their website. If a buyer can’t find answers to their questions, they will most likely turn to your competitor. Staffing a live agent help desk requires a lot of resources, including office space, equipment, technology, employees, and managers. Live traders require a lot of work and income just to get started. The time-consuming task of interviewing, hiring, training, managing, scheduling, and firing your agents can be overwhelming, especially for business owners. Most owners, directors and managers would get more out of their time if they focused on growing their business.
However, there is an effective, easy to implement, fast and risk-free solution to adding virtual sales agents to your site. Virtual Sales Agents [VSA] use artificial intelligence and/or keyword-based responses to quickly and effectively answer questions your customers may have in a chat environment. They can also be used to help boost your online conversions and increase your financial gains. A clever example of this is using a virtual sales agent to force abandoned visitors back to your website and create “found” income. This technology is also one of the most successful retargeting/remarketing solutions available.
Virtual sales agents are the perfect choice offering substantially scalable, low-cost solutions that get your message across and provide instant on-site help and guidance. Forrester Research recently conducted a study of North American customers and found that 57% of them are likely to abandon an online purchase if they can’t find quick answers to their questions. They also report that only 28% of US online consumers prefer to contact businesses by phone or email rather than use a website ticketing system to get responses.
Using VSA technology can increase conversions by up to 25% and reduce customer service costs by 25%. Virtual sales chat overcomes conventional obstacles for merchants looking for increased conversions. Most VSA solutions offer no setup costs, no monthly fees, and no additional man hours needed as your recovery campaigns are fully managed and optimized at no additional cost.
Here are some of the pros and cons of using virtual sales agents:
PRO:
• VSA works 24/7/365 never taking time off, a coffee break or vacation
• You control the messaging 100% – always accurate and consistent. No need to worry about what your live agents are saying
• No delay in answering questions. Often a live trader will be busy with multiple clients.
• Significantly lower live agent customer service costs.
• Scalable: you have virtually unlimited concurrent chat sessions
• VSAs gain a greater understanding of customer-related demand, trends and opportunities, providing invaluable feedback that is available in 24/7 online reports.
• VSAs can maintain more consistent brand presentations and better efforts to find, acquire, and retain customers.
Well-planned and implemented virtual sales agents can be used to manage preliminary contacts, route customers to the most profitable resource, support more comprehensive business intelligence and analytics efforts, and improve both service value and overall customer satisfaction. buyer.
Cons:
• Preliminary setup: Writing and refining your agent scripts can take several hours.
• Virtual agents require a foreign code on your website, usually just a couple of lines of JavaScript.
• In prolonged conversations with customers, a user may understand that they are not interacting with a live operator.
• A virtual sales agent may not have answers to all questions asked. However, most systems learn from unrecognized questions and improve the customer experience over time.
As you can see, there are few downsides to using virtual sales agents. Most of the work of implementing a VSA is done up front with a “set it and forget it” approach. Although you will still need to monitor a VSA campaign and optimize it periodically, the time required after implementation is negligible. If you have any questions about virtual sales agents or would like to know what the trials entail, please contact me.
We are one of the industry leaders and have a patent on our VSA recovery technology and would be happy to assist you. There are other valuable uses of a virtual sales agent as well, including the ability to cross-sell other products and services based on user questions. A virtual agent can also cleverly provide an upsell tool and increase your average sales price.