Why does chat rule? Well, the answer to that question is simple, and it is the same reason why no one over thirty is really considered “cool.”

Ever looked at how the next generation communicates? They’ve got their head in their phones constantly, and they’re chatting.

The generation just before them seemed to live in email. And the divide is getting greater as we become more chat-entrenched. As someone with teenage children or grandchildren if they are more likely to get a response by text than any other form of communication.

Major corporations realized this a long time ago, moving a lot of their customer interaction to chat. And here’s the surprising thing. An automated bot in chat isn’t nearly as annoying as an automated voice system. I don’t know why that is. It just is.

And now, there are finally a whole host of platforms out there that small to midsize companies can implement to both improve their customer relationships and lighten their workload. And the costs are typically less than an expensed lunch a month.

So the question isn’t really “should I be using chat?”, but rather, “what’s the best way to be using chat?”

At Cowbell we’ve looked at a number of easy-to-install plugins for most websites, and here’s what we’ve found.

There are two basic levels: 1) I just want to chat, or 2) I want to actually embrace chat and use it as a competitive advantage.

For those who want to “embrace chat” for all it can deliver, we’ve recently discovered a tool that actually replaces most of your lead nurturing and similar drip campaign platforms. It uses an “omni chat” feature that links your facebook messenger to your website chat. This not only means they can chat to you in an environment they’re familiar with, but they are instantly a lead in your CRM. 

You can also configure pre-programmed bots to help your customers quickly get to the information they need without someone on your team having to hold their hand.

Let me make sure we’re completely clear about this. I didn’t mention CRM to scare you away. I’m not talking about having to invest into a holistic software solution for customer relations and lead nurturing.  The chat tool itself IS its own CRM. 

In other words, once they begin a chat conversation with you, they are converted. They are a lead, and all of their contact information, like name, email address or phone number that they have on Facebook, is now attached to their record in your chat tool. 

In the backend, we can develop a whole series of drip campaigns that can run directly through the facebook messenger or through SMS text. In other words you are communicating with your customers in the space they actively communicate throughout their day.

If this sounds too good to be true, it gets even better. Imagine if you will, that you are running an online banner ad campaign and someone is on a mobile device. And, someone then clicks on that ad. What if, instead of going to a landing page, they were launched immediately into a chat session with someone on your team. And, you immediately had all of their contact information and were in your system as a lead. You didn’t have to worry about whether they would find your call-to-action on your landing page. There is no landing page! 

In fact, conversions through chat are now as much as 10X greater through landing page or email-based drip campaigns. Why? Because…and some marketing professionals may be afraid to admit this… we have moved past the email-to-landing page-to-contact list paradigm. We are now in the instant mobile chat phase, and those who recognize that first will reap the lion share of benefits.

If you want to learn more about how the different chat platforms work and which one is best for your business needs, contact us at Cowbell, or better yet…why not just chat.