15+ Live Chat Statistics You Should Know in 2022

Adopting live chat for your business is one of the most impactful moves you can make as a company today. It not only allows customers to communicate with your brand on a channel they are comfortable with and prefer to engage on but also offers many benefits to agents and team-wide productivity as well. 

Adding one simple component to your website may not seem like it would overhaul the way your customers behave, spend, and view your brand, but it does. Here are some compelling reasons to launch live chat as a strategic customer communication strategy. 

You can also use the links below to navigate straight to the stats that interest you the most: 

10 statistics on why live chat is important

  1. 41% of customers prefer live chat, whereas 32% prefer phone support, 23% prefer email, and 3% prefer social media for support.1
  2. 79% of users prefer live chat support for its instant responses.2
  3. Live chat has the highest customer satisfaction level of 73% versus 61% for email support and 44% for phone.3
  4. The average wait time specified for live chat is 46 seconds./4
  5. 69% of the customers prefer interacting with a human agent than chatbots on chat support.5
  6. 44% of customer service leaders across the world said live chat and messaging were critical for them to maintain service levels through the pandemic.6
  7. Over 41% of the customers expect a live chat widget on websites.7
  8. 20% of customers share their negative experiences with live chat support.8
  9. 33% of proactive chat conversations received responses from customers.9
  10. Customers who use live chat are 2.8x more likely to convert than those who do not use live chat support.10

8 stats on how live chat boosts revenue for businesses 

When it comes to positively influencing purchases, live chat for business can actually be a secret weapon as customers love having the ability to quickly get their questions answered in all parts of the purchasing journey across industries. 

  • Nearly 50% of customers say that having a live chat agent answer their query in the middle of purchase is an important feature that a business can offer. 
  • Live chat has a conversion rate of 40%
  • Live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour, and 40% of customers who use live chat have higher chances of making an online purchase. 
  • 53% of cart abandonment is because customers aren’t able to find answers to their queries. 
  • 43% of businesses claim that they have a better understanding of their customers within one year of implementing live chat. 
  • An experienced live chat agent can handle 4-6 chats at a single time.
  • 94% of the customers who proactively engaged with live chat were very or somewhat satisfied with the experience. 
  • Proactive chat leads to 105% ROI
  • Business report 2.4x annual increase in revenue with upselling and cross-selling 

Live chat investment

Source 

Live chat as a tool for lead generation 

It’s not hard to see why live chat for business excels when you think about the convenience that chat adds to a customer’s journey. Last-minute questions are easily handled, and more extensive inquiries get routed to a sales expert right when a customer raises a doubt.

  • 63% of customers say that they are likely to revisit a website that offers live chat support.
  • 44% of online customers claim that having their queries answered by a live chat agent in the middle of an online purchase is one of the essential features a business can offer on its website. 
  • 40% of live chat users are likely to make an online purchase, as opposed to 22% of customers who have never chatted with a business online. 
  • 59% of customers are more likely to make a purchase when their queries are resolved in under a minute.  
  • Live chat has also influenced 38% of customers to make a purchase. 

Benchmarks for live chat 

The demand for live chat is high and as companies increasingly adopt live chat, consumers are using it more. In other words, as soon as live chat is available, consumers jump at the chance to use it. 

Improve your key metrics with live chat 

It’s well-documented that younger customers don’t like to call phone support, but customers across the board show favorable feelings toward live chat. Live chat is seen as a proactive method of support for businesses, but it is also essential to deliver exceptional support via live chat for it to be a success. 

Empowering live chat with chatbots 

As impactful as adding a live chat widget to your website is, you can further boost your communication and engagement strategy with chatbots. Chatbots allow you to provide 24/7 support without scaling your team, deflect common customer questions and reduce agent workload. 

  • Implementing conversational chatbots helps businesses bring down their service costs by 30%
  • 67% of customers across the world used chatbots for customer service. 
  • Chatbots are estimated to handle 75-90% of banking and healthcare queries by the year 2022. 
  • With present technology, chatbots are capable of resolving queries with up to 90% accuracy
  • Only 6% of customers think businesses should never use chatbots. 
  • 67% of millennials claim that they would purchase products or services from brands that offer chatbots for support. 

Live Chat Statistics: An Infographic

Live chat statistics infographic

How live chat support has evolved since the pandemic 

The pandemic changed the way businesses typically operate, and brought forth a considerable change in customer behavior. This series of changes had a direct hit on customer service teams. From personalizing customer experience to making customer support contactless, the pandemic is giving rise to new trends in customer service. 

  • The support tickets were higher by 20% than the pre-pandemic times.
  • 64% of customers tried a new messaging channel to reach out to companies in 2020. 
  • Globally WhatsApp usage for customer support soared by 219%, while Twitter and Facebook Messenger dropped by 20%. 
  • The usage of automation to resolve queries went up by 25% since 2020. 
  • 74% of customer service leaders claim that customers have become extra empathetic since the pandemic. 
  • 81% of customer service leaders are investing 36% more in live chat and messaging 

How switching to live chat support helped Shuttle Delivery offer excellent customer service 

Shuttle Delivery, a food delivery service in South Korea was on the lookout for a support channel to help their customer support teams navigate better. Offering support via phone was a major hurdle as their agents were caught up in calls for a long time. Their team decided to opt for chat and customer messaging to offer an enhanced support experience. 

“The biggest thing was that Freshchat’s tech stack was quite easy for implementation compared to some of the other ones out there. And obviously cost was also a very big factor for why we chose Freshchat.”

Shuttle Delivery now resolves 80% of their queries directly in the Freshchat app and has also decreased their resolution time by 80%. With agent concurrency and canned responses in chat support, the average resolution time per chat is just 3 to 5 minutes. 

The future is live chat 

All of the stats you’ve read here prove that live chat is a great way to keep up with customer expectations and influence purchasing patterns. Live chat is filling a massive void in the customer experience with tech that consumers already know and love. If you want to get in on the action, there’s never been a better time to adopt the best live chat tool; so contact us today.

Sources 
  1. https://kayako.com/live-chat-software/statistics/
  2.  https://99firms.com/blog/live-chat-statistics/#gref
  3. https://econsultancy.com/consumers-prefer-live-chat-for-customer-service-stats/
  4. https://www.comm100.com/resources/report/2021-benchmark-report/
  5. https://linchpinseo.com/chatbot-statistics-trends/ 
  6. https://www.freshworks.com/the-new-cx-mandate/ 
  7. https://go.forrester.com/blogs/13-01-14-forresters_top_15_trends_for_customer_service_in_2013/
  8. https://kayako.com/live-chat-software/statistics/
  9. https://blog.olark.com/live-chat-data-from-olark-customers 
  10. https://www.whoson.com/ecommerce/converting-online-window-shoppers/ 
11. https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherelliott/2021/01/28/this-is-how-the-pandemic-improved-customer-service/?sh=495f8d6948dd 
12. https://www.zendesk.com/blog/zendesks-benchmark-snapshot-impact-covid-19-cx/
13. https://www.freshworks.com/the-new-cx-mandate/?_ga=2.198671535.1216258017.1626871975-687591039.1605944901 
Originally created in 2021 and updated for relevance in 2022.