News

Online shoppers embracing live chat options

April 4, 2012

Online shoppers in the U.K and the U.S. are embracing live chatting options as a way of communicating with retailers, according to a study by LogMeIn Inc. and the e-tailing group.

The BoldChat Live Chat Effectiveness report, a collection of research on the effectiveness of live chat technology in e-commerce, surveyed more than 2,000 regular online shoppers about heir attitudes, opinions and behaviors toward live chat during their online shopping experience. The report, which shows chat adoption continuing to grow in the U.S. and U.K., also reveals declining use of email, the most prevalent e-commerce communications method, as a preferred means of interacting with merchants online, according to a company press release.

The research found that one in five shoppers prefers live chat more than any other communication method and that these live chat "fans" typically have a higher household income than average and spend more online per year than other shoppers.

Other key findings included the following:

• Live chat adoption continues to grow. Nearly two thirds of shoppers (65.5 percent) have engaged in a live chat session while shopping online, up from 57.5 percent in 2011.
• Use of chat amongst U.K. shoppers has grown significantly in the past year from 41 percent having engaged in a live chat session while shopping in 2011 to 59 percent having engaged in a live chat session in 2012.
• Support and/or customer service are the most popular entry point to chat while shopping online. Of shoppers who have used chat, 42 percent indicated that their first use of chat was for a support or customer service question, by far the most popular response.
• Follow-on use of chat suggests migration from support/service to sales assistance. While support and service was the most common entry point, use of chat to "inquire about product information before a purchase" was by far the most popular response when asked how shoppers most recently used chat, coming in at 52 percent of all chat users
• Shoppers are becoming more receptive to merchant-initiated chat; 39 percent of shoppers are now receptive to merchant-initiated, or "proactive" chat sessions, up from 33 percent in 2011.
• U.S., U.K. shoppers differ on email and phone preferences. The use of telephone by UK shoppers as a preferred method is almost half of that by U.S. shoppers, while U.S. shoppers are far less likely to use email when compared to U.K. shoppers.

Read more about consumer behavior.