3 live chat questions that improve sales if you listen and act

Last updated on June 13th, 2023

Pardeep Kullar
Pardeep Kullar

Customers give 10x more feedback via live chat than a contact us email link. They’re also willing to say things they won’t bother with on email. This is how we turned repeated questions into changes that improved sales for an email marketing startup.

1. How do you compare to X competitor?

They know about our competitors? Of course they know!

They did their research and wanted to know about the specific differences. Eventually, having typed it out so many times, we created an article explaining the differences to point them to.

Then we realised that we may as well put a link to that article as an auto-message on the home page and so far 400 people have read it. Conversions went up rapidly.

2. What’s your cancellation policy?

Wow, didn’t we make that clear in the FAQ? People don’t always find and read the FAQ! They prefer to get the answer directly from an agent.

At it’s core, our product is not something many people need for 12 months. It’s more likely they’ll need it for a few months each year and besides which, people don’t want to be tied into a contract. We had it in the FAQ but so many people asked, we put it in the main header of the pricing page and repeated it across other in-app messages.

3. Where are you based?

WTF, it’s right there in the…. oh!

This set off alarm bells. When we ourselves purchase a product from a company we’re not familiar with, we check where that company is based and it should have been obvious to users that we were a real and active company. We put a flag and phone number on the home page with an activity icon. We also added testimonials to key pages. We put our location in the about us page and rather than just an address, we showed our beer on tap office and mentioned the wonders of Soho in London ? Since, we’ve had the question at least once then but it’s rare.

Result

We’ve had a distinct increase in sales. Around 20%+ in each of the first 2 months compared to previous months. It is difficult to measure sometimes because of seasonal changes and other variables but this came in what’s normally a low season. We are not doing anything different and we’ve had a good uplift.

1% changes add up. A 1% improvement a day compounds to 37 times better in a year. 1% a day on an initial investment of $100 becomes $3,778.34 = $100 * (1 + 1%) ^ 365. Live chat gives us the feedback to improve. We might not manage 1% a day, but we’ll damn well try.

Final note

If you’re a live chat user then give yourself the gift of sight with Upscope.

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We built it while working on the email startup while using live chat. It helped us take even the toughest and most confused from sign up to purchase in minutes, where normally they can take up hours in the day. Give it a try for free ?

Pardeep Kullar
Pardeep Kullar

Pardeep overlooks growth at Upscope and loves writing about SaaS companies, customer success and customer experience.