Any modern marketer knows that asking your buyers to wait for an email response is no longer the user experience they expect when they come to your website. 

We’re in a fast-paced era with high expectations for corporate websites–no one is waiting a day or two for a response from your sales reps. Buyers are primed for instant answers, easy access, and modern communication strategies. 

Implementing live chat isn’t just about providing a better user experience–the benefits to your sales team is instant access to your customers and in-the-moment engagement that allows you to engage your buyers around the clock and accelerate your sales cycles. 

79% of businesses report a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty when they implement live chat software–nailing this aspect of your buyer journey is crucial. 

In this guide, we'll walk you through the process of adding live chat to your website, step by step. 

1. Selecting live chat software

The first step in the process is choosing the right live chat software for your website. Look for features that align with your business needs and ensure compatibility with your website platform.

Unsure where to start with live chat vs. chatbots vs. AI chatbots? We have a few resources to help: 

• What is B2B live chat?
• How to use chatbots to improve customer experience
• 10 things to look for when investing in AI chatbot software

2. Implementing live chat on your website

Once you've selected your live chat software, the next step is to get it up and running. This can be as simple as adding a code snippet to your website, but with platforms that offer more robust integrations you want to make sure you aren’t just setting and forgetting it. 

To implement a conversational marketing strategy that moves the needle, you’ll want to make sure your chatbot connects to your CRM and uses the targets you’ve set within it to segment your traffic and engage with them accordingly. 

This is the time to get your live chat strategies up and running with your sales team, too. If you’re brand new to conversational marketing, we’ve got plenty of resources to help you understand the strategies your team will need to implement to maximize your pipeline generation from live chat tool. 

Click here to check out Speed to Lead, our guide to Conversational Selling ➡️

Once you’ve prepped your team and set your live chat software up for success by syncing your CRM data, you can start testing these strategies and measuring their impact, making tweaks as you go. 

3. Optimizing live chat appearance for engagement

Your chat widget needs to be optimized for engagement from a functionality perspective, but also from a visual perspective. If your widget blends into your website, a visitor might miss it. Make sure the placement and colors are on brand but eye-catching. 

Prioritize a live chat software that allows you to customize the appearance and showoff your reps faces when you can. The ability to connect to a real human is a huge advantage over anonymous chat. 

A/B tests performed by VWO users showed an average conversion rate increase of over 70% when they replaced generic website graphics with photos of human faces. Showcase your reps and invite more human conversations in your live chat widget. 

4. Proactively engage users

Engage with your website visitors by enabling proactive chat invitations. This allows you to initiate conversations based on user behavior, instead of waiting for them to have a question or try to contact you. 

With AI, chatbots are now able to observe user behavior and proactively engage them with relevant content and messaging, but the old fashioned way with human reps works just great, too! 

At Qualified, we call this “pouncing” and there’s an art to jumping in to your visitor’s browsing with the right messaging at the right moment. Learn the basics here, and when your team is ready to take it to the next level, check out this guide to upskilling your reps’ pouncing. 

5. Deciding on widget placement

You’ll want to strategically place your chat widget throughout your site, particularly on high-traffic pages and pages that might lead to more engaged conversations. Pricing pages, for example, are a great place to start a conversation to book a face to face meeting. 

7. Work smarter, not harder with shortcuts and AI

Live chat creates tons of opportunities to answer the basic FAQs for your product, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. 

With most chat software, shortcuts are an option to arm your sales reps with easily accessible answers to the most frequently asked questions. 

And now, with AI in the mix, chatbots can be trained on your website content to ingest and understand your most common questions, forming helpful answers to free up your reps’ time for more nuanced conversations. 

8. Connecting to your CRM

You’ve already made sure your chat tool integrates with your CRM, but now it’s time to start putting the data you’re gathering from live chat to work. 

While much of this is dependent on your CRM and chat tool of choice, you should be able to start using your live chat conversations to create leads, annotate buyer intent, and build account-level profiles to understand your where your target buyers are in the buyer journey. All of the data you get from these live chat conversations are powerful indicators to your sales teams, and if your tools don’t sync, you’re doing yourself a disservice. 

If you’re using Qualified, start here for step-by-step guides on some of the dashboards and visualizations you have at your fingertips. 

9. How Qualified can help with live chat

Live chat is an awesome tool for both marketers and sellers to have more control over when and how they engage their buyers, and Qualified takes your live chat experience to the next level. 

With advanced features and integrations, it marries your Salesforce data to seamlessly sync every interaction and ensure your team has a full picture on each account. And if your team isn’t available? 

AI chatbots are now able to engage buyers, answer their questions, and book meetings around the clock, so you never miss a chance to convert a visitor. 

Adding live chat to your website is a powerful way to connect with your audience in real-time. By following these steps and exploring the capabilities of Qualified, you'll be well on your way to creating a dynamic and responsive online presence. 

Make the most of this valuable communication tool and elevate your website's user experience–after all, 85% of B2B websites now offer some form of live chat in their sales process. 

Learn more about Qualified live chat here or give it a spin and chat with our team now ➡️