‘Tis the Season to Video Chat

During normal times, the holiday season is the pinnacle of retail sales. Throughout November and December, people enter a trance-like state that takes them from store to store in a hectic buying frenzy. The holiday discounts, sales and the season’s ‘giving spirit’ transform even the most frugal individual into a lean, mean, buying-machine. 

According to the National Retail Federation, holiday sales grew 4% in 2019 to reach $729.1 billion. On average, holiday sales during the last two months of the year represent almost 19% of most retailer’s annual sales. For retailers, the holiday season is their time to shine.

Shopping Online During the Pandemic Holiday Season

But this year, retailers are dealing with an entirely different reality. Consumers still want to buy -- in fact, research shows that 73% of consumers will maintain or increase spending this year -- but lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing measures and fears of infection are keeping them away from the brick and mortar stores that traditionally supply holiday gifts. This means that online sales are their best -- and perhaps only -- way to purchase gifts for their loved ones this year.

According to Forester, online sales will grow by 18.5% this year. This means that retailers who want to cash-in on this year’s holiday sales will need to find and adopt new ways of selling their wares over the internet. But building an ecommerce website and advertising on Google will only get you so far. With so many other retailers from around the world competing for eyeballs, retailers need to find a way to stand out from the crowd.

Combining a delightful customer experience with shopping online

Delivering a superior online shopping customer experience that mimics the one they provide in their brick and mortar stores is one way they can do just that. Retailers  should start thinking about how they can inject more of a personal, human aspect within an otherwise cold, techy online interaction. Even when they’re doing their shopping online, consumers still want to enjoy a pleasurable shopping experience. 

Luckily for us, the latest communication technologies empower retailers to engage their customers directly from their website, while consumers are in a ‘buying mood’. High-quality, easy to use video chat technologies take the online shopping experience to a new level. The more advanced among these live chat platforms deploy powerful collaboration tools that simplify the entire purchasing experience for both buyers and sellers. 

In the 2020 holiday season, the retailers who learn how to leverage video chat in the most effective way will come out on top.

Video chat to the rescue ‍

Live chat, or video chat, functionality embedded within a retail website add significant capabilities to any online sales arsenal. Video chat makes it easy for your potential customers to kick off a live, personal chat with a salesperson to get the answers they need to find the perfect holiday gift for their loved ones. What’s more, it also gives brands the opportunity to connect their online business to actual people. That way, instead of deeming your online store as just another ecommerce website, customers will more easily be able to associate it with a real person. This face-to-face, humanizing effect on the online shopping experience is extremely powerful.  

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Consolto -- Connecting businesses to people 

Consolto’s leading video chat solution makes it easy to level up your website with live chat capabilities. A powerful suite of communication and collaboration features built from the ground up for the needs of online retailers in mind helps to simplify, organize and enhance every single customer interaction. 

Digitally showcase your products. Consolto’s live video chat solution makes it possible for you to show off all of your products to potential buyers. While your visitors may have come because of a specific product you have, the one-on-one nature of video chat communication gives you the perfect stage to upsell additional products -- just like you did back in the good old, pre-pandemic days. Once you’re video chatting, you can use the time to show off new products launched specifically for the holiday season or steer your visitors towards the right gift for their budget.

Be available with live chat. While it may have started in the States, by now the shopping frenzy around the holiday season has become a worldwide phenomenon. Consolto’s video chat solution is always on, so that you never miss a chance to sell. If you’re not set up for 24/7 sales, you can configure working hours into Consolto so that visitors know when they’ll be able speak with you live, directly on your website. What’s more, you can choose to enable Consolto’s advanced scheduling capabilities so that visitors can proactively set up an appointment with you. There’s no better feeling than waking up to see that overnight, your day was magically filled with lucrative sales meetings.

Multiple agents. Support for multiple agents makes it easy to transition a larger sales team to online selling via video chat. Choose to have a dedicated salesperson manning your widget on the different pages of your website, or empower 24/7 availability by implementing shift-based work. Consolto’s multi-agent capabilities gives you seats for as many salespeople as you like, and enables you to track the performance of each one.

Consolto plugin for Wordpress and Shopify. If your website was built on Shopify or Wordpress, you can use Consolto through our dedicated plugins for the website platform giants.

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