Cut Your Sales Cycle in Half with Live Engagement

Do you know what the average sales cycle length is for your industry and how yours compares? If you don’t have this number available, it’s actually quite simple to calculate. First, you’ll need to add the length of each deal together for a total of 40 days. From there, divide the number of days by the number of deals to get the typical length in days. Voila! You have your average.

Sales cycles vary greatly in length per company, depending on the price point of the items, the size of the company, sales and discounts offered to shoppers, and many other factors. However, one proven element in the shopping experience that consistently reduces the sales cycle is excellent customer support. In fact, 80 percent of people stop doing business with a brand because of poor customer experience. Here are three easy ways to leverage live chat engagement to provide outstanding online service to customers and close more deals in a shorter period of time.

Treat Each Prospect Differently, But the Same

Online companies who provide a consistently high level of customer service are definitely recognized. Now imagine if you could enhance their experience on your website even further by offering prospects personalized, one-on-one support outside typical business hours. With AI-enabled live engagement, this is possible. Online shoppers can expect VIP, concierge service whenever they browse your site, whether that is via one-on-one text or video chat, co-browsing, or engaging with a ChatBOT during late evenings or early mornings.

Although customers desire the same level of support across the board, no matter the time or day, they also want to be treated individually and to feel that their specific needs are understood. With Vee24’s live engagement platform, the agent is able to view the customer’s background information all in one place during their engagement. This means viewing their previous orders and chat transcripts. With this type of information at the agent’s fingertips, it’s easy to personalize each customer interaction.

Be the Same Tour Guide That You Would be in a Brick and Mortar Store

85% of customers conduct online research before making their purchase. If shoppers are browsing your site and viewing various product pages to gather more information, are you available at every step of the way to answer any questions they may have? You should be providing the same support and guidance online that you would in a physical store location.

For example, if a customer in the store is looking for a pair of jeans but doesn’t know where to find them, one of your store assistants would be there to physically lead them to the pants. Live engagement sessions with co-browsing capabilities, such as the Vee24 platform, allow agents to do just that, but online. Your customer may be wandering around the store lost (or in this case, fumbling through your site), but with live engagement, you will be able to approach them, ask them questions, lead them to the right product, and ultimately close that deal faster.

Be Available at Every Stage of the Sales Cycle

No matter the length of the sales cycle, there will always be the same three stages of the buying journey – awareness, consideration, and purchase. It can be tricky to find a happy medium with your customer sales and service. You want to give your customers space but also be there when they need you. Additionally, some of your visitors may come to you too late in the buying journey for you to really impact their decision to make a sale. According to David Skok from For Entrepreneurs, “The ideal situation is to make sure you get to know customers earlier in the process and become the player that helps shape and define their shopping list.”

If your customer sales, support, and brand is present from the get-go, whether on social media, embedded in your nurturing email campaigns, or on your website, you are much more likely to build that relationship with the customer and reduce the sales cycle length. It is essential that you are “manning” all your digital channels and helping your customers just like you would do if they walked into your brick and mortar store.