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To begin with, we must answer the following question: what is behavioural targeting and what does it have to do with customer service via Click to Chat?
The answer is quite simple. You can compare Behavioural Targeting to the shop assistant in the local grocery store. The shop assistant knows his or her customers well and knows from experience, at which point each customer needs advice - this is precisely what the clients appreciate. This system only works because the shop assistant closely monitors whether the clients may need help or information.
Thanks to behavioural targeting, this sales and consulting expertise is transferred to online stores.
- How do your website users navigate,
- who needs support,
- when do they need it and where?
These questions can be answered with behavioural targeting. The answers to these questions enable you to draw up a set of rules. A rule is a combination of different criteria (for example a transaction value and address of the current URL) which triggers off a chat button or a proactive invite to chat when these specific criteria are combined.
Defining a successful targeting strategy
Why choose to use behavioural targeting? From an organisational point of view, this method makes dealing with customer queries much more manageable. On pages with high traffic, it is impossible to offer chat to all users. In fact, all operators who attempted to do this were constantly overloaded.
Furthermore, the answers to the majority of questions could have been found on the website and added little value. Thanks to targeting rules, you can decide to only offer chat to a certain type of visitor, potential customers or visitors who are in critical situations.
But how do you build a successful targeting strategy? Your targeting rules are based on your global strategy with the aim of achieving precise objectives. They greatly affect your ROI and influence what kind of questions your visitors will ask you via chat. Generally, the later the customer receives support via chat to complete the purchasing process, the more likely it is that the visitor will be converted into a customer thanks to good advice.
How does it work?
The targeting strategy defines a list of all the scenarios in which you offer live chat. These scenarios are described in terms of rules. To define a targeting strategy, it is important to identify the following elements:
Which users offer a high ROI?
In which circumstances is online customer service in real time needed?
What are the critical situations? Where can drop-out rates be minimised?
1 Defining objectives
Before defining the targeting strategy, it is key to identify the objectives (increase conversion rate, boost average order value). These goals must be clearly defined, for example "conversation rate after a chat should be 20%."
2 Analysis
It is essential to analyse the navigation of users on your page. Identify key steps and possible critical situations where you could lose users. And do not forget to take your users’ needs into consideration: what are your users‘ expectations regarding service and advice?
3 Defining targeting rules
Once you have identified your website’s weak points as well as your customers’ expectations, you can translate these scenarios into rules.
Step by step:
Who is your target audience? What kind of contacts are quality contacts? Create a list of qualitative criteria (transaction value, customer type ...) and assign a value to each criterion (e.g. a visitor with a basket value of more than € 199 is a "VIP" customer) to which you offer help via chat.
On which pages of your website will live chat appear? It makes sense to offer live chat on pages which are key in the purchasing process. You should have this information thanks to a thorough analysis of your website.
How would you like to offer customer service via live chat? You can either make the chat button appear reactively and leave it to the customer to click on it or send a proactive pop-up chat invite (use this version rarely!). Of course, visitors can decide whether they want to accept the invitation or not. Most of the time, chat should be available on a reactive mode. Proactive chat invitations are most adapted to critical situations with a high abandonment rate, identified during the analysis phase.
4 Implementation and result analysis
Once the rules have been successfully implemented, it is of course essential to carry out an analysis. Evaluate each rule with regard to contact typology, contact volume, response rate, conversion rate, sales and customer satisfaction. In proactive invites, response rate should be around 10%. If this is not the case, the targeting rules should be changed accordingly.
5 Constant optimisation
This can never be repeated too often: ensuring optimal integration of Click to Chat and thus achieving optimal results goes hand in hand with a regular analysis of results and subsequent optimisation!
If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment!
Author: Delphine Nölke is Communication Manager at iAdvize. They launched a Click-to-Chat, Click-to-Call and Click-to-Video solution to give online businesses the possibility to interact with their website users and thereby increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. Today, iAdvize accompanies more than 800 European companies from a variety of sectors. In France, iAdvize is already market leader. The iAdvize solution is available in English, German, French and Spanish.
