Best Practices: Online Chat Sales

When it comes to shopping, the web offers convenience, choice and information. As a result, consumers continue to move more of their shopping online, or make in-store purchase decisions that are "web-influenced" first. Online retail sales in the U.S. are forecast to grow to $250 billion by 2014. This presents a tremendous opportunity for companies with a web presence to grow their customer base and provide top-notch customer service and sales through online chat, a growing customer service delivery method.

Providing a quality online chat session has showed significantly increased sales ROI as well as some of the highest customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores over phone or in-store purchases.

To validate best practices for online chat sales and to help companies maximize online sales and customer service, TELUS International commissioned a benchmarking study using an independent consulting firm, SPOT Consulting. 60 in-depth web chat sessions were conducted with six Fortune 500 companies to analyze the qualitative metrics of an ideal online chat sales session. Full results are available in this white paper.