Many small business owners can find themselves hesitant to buy a subscription to live chat software. They know the benefits it can unlock. They know the features that can turn their online window shoppers into loyal customers. But they’re worried about live chat costs.
Well buying a live chat subscription isn’t as expensive as it might seem. For example, our own live chat solution, WhosOn, starts at just £25 per month. (And that’s for a feature-rich option with all the bells and whistles.) This is an amount that’s easy for any business to spend without even thinking about it.
So, we’ve put live chat costs into perspective. Here are ten things you can buy for the price of live chat software.
1. Two small cheese pizzas from Domino’s
That’s 12 slices. If you want toppings, you could possibly stretch to one medium pizza and a side.
So live chat costs could cover a cheesy lunch for two office workers, or maybe a big dinner for one hungry employee. (Drinks sold separately.)
2. Two boxes of copier paper
You can use the money you save from avoiding live chat costs to get two boxes of copier paper. But you couldn’t then get the toner or ink cartridges you’d need to print on it.
It would make a lot of paper aeroplanes though. It’s a fun way for your team to pass notes to each other.
3. An office phone
(If it’s on sale and you go for a cheap model, that is.) A new office phone will be useful for the mass of customer support calls you’ll need to handle without online help. Of course, it can only handle one customer at a time.
Or, you could get live chat software for a month and support multiple customers online at the same time. You keep them onsite and away from long phone wait times. Looking at it this way, those live chat costs might just be worth it.
4. Three new mugs for your office
Who doesn’t love a new mug? Live chat costs could be used to get three new vessels for your hot drink of choice.
That’s one for tea, one for coffee and one for hot chocolate. Until they somehow get broken in the dishwasher, anyway.
5. 1,200 tea bags
You can choose the brand, PG Tips, Yorkshire Tea, it’s up to you. We recognise the importance of having a cup of tea, and not paying any live chat costs can certainly get you a few months’ worth of tea bags.
But if you’re on the phone with customers all day, how will you find time to drink it? With live chat software, you can chat to customers and drink your tea at the same time.
6. 36 first-class stamps
(Or 42 second-class ones.) Instead of live chat costs, you can send a month’s worth of small letters. Or a day’s, depending on how many letters you send.
This is a rather time-consuming way to chat with customers though. Why not get the live chat software and chat with customers in real-time?
7. 1000 window envelopes
If you aren’t paying live chat costs, you could spend the money on 1000 envelopes instead. The kind with the fancy plastic window.
Of course, you’d need to buy stamps to use them. And paper, and a way to write on said paper. Conducting correspondence via snail mail is looking a bit costlier than installing live chat software.
8. 500 Jaffa Cakes
Forgoing live chat costs means you could keep your support team munching away at Jaffa Cakes for a week. Or a day, depending on how self-disciplined they’re feeling.
We’ll forgive you for this one, but your waistline won’t.
9. A new phone contract
Your live chat costs could be spent on 10 GB of 4G data with unlimited calls and texts. If you’ve got a phone to put that SIM in, you can take your support calls and emails on the go. If you want the phone too, you only get 2 GB of data to answer your customer’s emails with. No big attachments, please!
Or you can get live chat software, which lets you and your customers upload and share files without worrying about your data.
10. Two boxes of ballpoint pens
If you have a need for 100 ballpoint pens, you can get them for the same price as live chat software.
That’s probably about half a year’s worth of pens for a small team to use, lose or break. Or an infinite supply for teams that prefer pencils or typing.
A live chat channel for your site
When live chat costs are put in perspective, they don’t seem like such a huge expenditure. You can get any one of these things for the price of live chat software. Or, you could get a live chat channel for your website.
For the price of live chat software, you can keep customers on your website with proactive chat invitations. You can monitor customer sentiment with sentiment analysis. You can serve multiple customers at once and convert your passive web prospects.
So, what are you waiting for? Why not see for yourself what paying live chat costs can get you, with a free trial of WhosOn.
Useful links
Live chat pricing: the 101 for buyers