Live chat moves from service to sales

HP Home and Home Office Store has used live chat for several years, but until recently saw it primarily as a customer service tool. However, after seeing a growing number of customers using chat to ask sales-related questions, the company upgraded its chat platform last year and put the live assistance option on product, category and checkout pages, as well as in the customer service area of the site, says Nikhil Behl, vice president of call center sales and customer service for the direct-to-consumer division of computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard Co.

More recently, HP combined all its live assistance options, so that when a visitor to the site clicks for help she can ask HP to call her, initiate a text chat, send an e-mail or get a toll-free number to place the call herself. “The total number of interactions is increasing and our conversion rate is increasing, which is even more important,” says Behl, who would not disclose details.

He says those who choose the click to call option and receive a call back from an HP agent are especially likely to purchase, even more so than if the customer places the call to HP. The average order size is also bigger. “There are customers who have done their homework, but they have that one thing that’s missing or want a little reassurance before they order a $1,500 laptop. Sometimes it’s the simplest little thing. It clicks in for the customer and we’re able to capture that customer.” HP Home and Home Office Store is No. 5 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

HP is not the only retailer focusing on chat more as a sales tool, says analyst Zachary McGeary of research and consulting firm JupiterResearch. He says many retailers deployed live chat a few years ago hoping it would be a less expensive way to answer basic questions, but often did not see an adequate return on that investment. Those types of inquiries are more efficiently handled by self-service features, McGeary says, such as Frequently Asked Questions pages.

Today, he says, more retailers are looking at chat as a way to persuade customers to buy, especially customers checking out expensive or complex products that they are likely to weigh carefully before buying.

“For the most part, when companies are looking to deploy chat, they’re not looking at contact deflection, they’re looking at targeting consumers within the context of an online interaction for which revenue or a potential business relationship is at stake,” McGeary says. Some retailers are going beyond the live chat option and inviting customers to chat, or offering click to call options. McGeary says those options especially make sense on pages that customers frequently abandon, such as the checkout page, and when customers are shopping for high-ticket items.