One day, I received a consultation from a web manager at a B2B company who said, "We are considering introducing a chat tool in conjunction with building a corporate website."
Although our company does not provide chat tools, I was also curious about chat tools, so I decided to take this opportunity to do some research on my own. I quickly searched for "chat tools," narrowed it down to three companies I found, and decided to actually make inquiries using the "chat" feature on each company's website to experience using the chat tool.
My question was straightforward: "What are the advantages and disadvantages of your company's chat tool?"
Three different companies, three different "insiders."
Let's take the first company, Company A.
After entering your inquiry in chat, you will be asked for your company name, name, and contact information in the second reply.
They said they would call me. "I wonder if there was any point in contacting them through chat..."
It doesn't really seem like a chat tool, and I don't really see any benefits to it.
The second company is Company B.
Once the chat starts, your questions will be answered promptly.
After the seventh interaction, you will be more interested in the service.
I wanted to disclose the information and then get more details over the phone.
I felt this was a good service because I was able to get the gist of things in a short message at a good pace, so I gave them my contact information, such as my company name, phone number, and name, and they called me. Even though it was just chat, after about seven exchanges I began to feel at ease with the other person, and perhaps I wanted to hear more.
This really makes you think, "This is the benefit of chat tools!"
It felt like the plan worked perfectly.
The third company is Company C.
Basically, it was an instant response from an automatic reply. It seemed to be automatically responding based on the keywords entered.
As soon as I asked a question that could not be automatically replied to, the message "I will look into it" was displayed and the responses stopped. After about 30 minutes, I was contacted and the chat resumed.
It took a while, but I received a proper response and was able to understand the service. This gives you a glimpse of how difficult the operation is for the management side.
Although the automated reply was instantaneous, I was concerned about the long wait time when the reply changed to a human. However, I was able to fully experience the benefits of chat tools, such as the ease with which inquiries can be made and the ability to listen carefully to questions.
The advantages and disadvantages of chat tools that I discovered after using them
merit
- Because the psychological barrier is low, we can expect an increase in the number of inquiries (this is key!)
There is a sense of ease in being able to ask questions at an early stage without revealing your identity.
Disadvantages
- It is necessary to build an operation, establish a response method and know-how that is unique to chat, etc.
- If you introduce chat to a website with too few visitors, chat may not be used. Also, for low-priced products, the cost of responding to chat may be greater than the increase in sales.
summary
It is easy to introduce the tool, but to use it effectively, training is required from the company. It is necessary to determine whether the effort is worth it. Chat-style tools such as "LINE" have become widespread as a casual means of communication.
SAKAMOTO Yasuo