Most stores look at live chat as a customer service cost center. But if you set up live chat to track sales and other e-commerce metrics, you can shift the focus towards leveraging chat as a tool for increasing sales and transforming it into a revenue-boosting CS that significantly contributes to profits.

HelpFlow runs 24/7 live chat teams for over 100 e-commerce stores and on this post, we're sharing how to track conversions from live chat and optimize sales from there.

Revenue-Boosting CS: Track Live Chat in Google Analytics

In order to track sales effectively, you need to get live chat data pumped into Google Analytics.  The end result should be each live chat with a visitor being added to their google analytics record as an “event”. Once this is in place, you can analyze all of your data in Google analytics with a focus on people that chatted.  For example, you can track:

1. All revenue for people that chatted
2. Conversion rate from people that chatted
3. Average order value
4. Sequences of metrics (i.e. visit > chat > left website > returned > converted).

Track Checkout Abandons Saved with Chat

You can add live chat directly into your checkout flow and engage automatically with someone if it looks like they’re going to abandon.  You can track the results from this in Google Analytics using advanced segments similar to what we described above.  From there, you can experiment with the best time to automatically invite somebody to chat to drive maximum checkout recovery results. This strategy is aimed at enhancing revenue-boosting CS by maximizing checkout completion rates.

We discussed how to predict abandons and how to integrate a live chat into cart recovery emails in our past blog post.  You can read more about it here: http://helpflow.com/blog/live-chat-cart-recovery/.

Drive Average Order Value Higher with Live Chat

Right out of the gate, you will typically see average order value for people that chat higher than non-chat visitors. The personal touch just helps.  But over time, you can track the impact of different cross sell and upsell campaigns driven by live chat conversations, and ultimately drive up the average order value significantly.

Drive Repeat Orders and Subscriptions

Depending on your business model, you are probably already using Klaviyo to trigger repeat order campaigns or subscription upsells at some point after the initial purchase.  With live chat, you can treat these visitors differently and get more results from these campaigns and contributing to a revenue-boosting CS.

For example, if you know someone already purchased you can tailor the conversation to their past purchase and get them to buy more or become a subscriber.

The bottom line...

Yes, customer service happens on live chat. But ultimately it should be a sales driver for your business.
By measuring sales from live chat, you can drive those sales higher and optimize just like any other sales driver.

Want to Dig Into Your Data Together?

We run 24/7 live chat teams for over 100 stores. In our strategy sessions with customers, we dig deep into Google Analytics to find potential revenue we can recover with live chat.  We're happy to jump on a call with you if this would be helpful. Even if we don’t work together, you’ll get a ton of value from talking through the data together.  Click below to book a time that works for you.  Happy to help.

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