Technology
Why Businesses Are Using Instant Messaging To Stay In Touch
Having an online business can mean those who own them are somewhat removed from their customer base. They can provide email addresses and online contact forms to enable their customers to get in touch with queries and so on, as well as a phone number.
But while online contact forms are often useful, they don’t provide a two way form of communication. What is required is a real time form of communication – and while the phone does provide this, it isn’t the best way of achieving it.
This is where instant messaging comes in. The key phrase to remember with instant messaging of any kind is that it occurs in real time. If you trawl the web nowadays, it shouldn’t take you too long to find at least one website which has incorporated messaging into its design.
How does it work? Perhaps not surprisingly, it has distinct benefits for both customer and business owner. Let’s suppose the customer arrives on the website and has one or two questions about a specific product that need answering. Before instant messaging came along in this context, they would have had several other choices.
Firstly they could have picked up the phone and been held in a queue for some length of time before an operator finally got round to serving them. If they didn’t like that option they would have had to email the website and wait for a reply before considering whether or not to go ahead with their purchase.