Live Chat for B2B: Metrics and KPIs

Learn about b2b live chat’s essential metrics and performance indicators to track.

Using a convenient chat widget on a company’s website has become an increasingly popular way of communication in the B2C (business-to-client) segment, with more customers preferring it to traditional choices such as phone, email, or social media. According to an LTVplus study, 79% of organizations that provide live chat see favorable impacts on sales, income, and customer loyalty. Having a live chat service on a website can be quite beneficial for business-to-business companies as well, and it’s now easier than ever to set up free live chat for B2B.

However, it’s crucial to ensure that you’re leveraging your software to its full potential and maximizing B2B live chat benefits. One way to do this is by measuring key performance indicators (KPIs), which helps companies to continually improve their live chat function. In light of this, we’ve compiled a list of 7 essential live chat metrics that you should regularly measure.

Table of content

What is B2B live chat?

B2B live chat benefits

Before diving into the metrics of free live chat for B2B, let’s explore the advantages its adoption provides to a business, from increased conversion to better customer satisfaction.

• More sales. Live chat has been demonstrated to improve revenue, and significantly. Utilizing the widget may increase conversions by 3x to 5x and provide a high return on investment (ROI) for B2B companies. Since live chat allows visitors to communicate with your support or sales personnel in real time, it is an excellent tool for generating leads and closing more deals.
• Increased conversion rate. Furthermore, with a live chat widget, sales staff have more opportunities to convert employees of prospective business partners who visit a website into paying clients. According to The American Marketing Association, live chat is a potent conversion tool that may lead to a 20% boost in conversions for organizations by dealing with visitor inquiries in real time.
• Enhanced сlient satisfaction. Serving as a convenient and immediate way to contact customer support, live chat eliminates the barriers traditionally associated with sales and support channels in the B2B segment. Its ease of use, simplicity, quickness, and availability around the clock contribute to the high levels of customer satisfaction among live chat users. In B2C, live chat is already the most preferred customer communication channel, surpassed only by far more expensive phone calls, and the situation in B2C is heading in the same direction.
• Optimized sales process. Live chat automation features come of great help for B2B companies seeking to streamline their sales process. Depending on the type of live chat software, sales reps can track visitors, get analytics on their behavior and even reach out to them first. All of this data can be used to drive deals finalization and persuade prospects to buy products and services. For example, Umnico allows users to track the activity of website visitors in real time, learn about their region and what brought them to the website, and even initiate dialogues with them.
• 24/7 leads capture. Even when sales or support personnel are offline, a live chat widget allows a company to continue lead generation. Setting up offline forms in live chat is one of the most effective tactics for businesses to not miss prospects. Such a form makes it clear that the sales team will get back to a user who left an inquiry via a convenient communication method to answer questions and clarify any details.

Key live chat metrics for B2B

Let’s take a look at the B2B live chat metrics that can accurately measure employees’ work quality and be used for setting up key performance indicators.

Total number of chats

The total volume of incoming chats over a particular time frame is a great metric to understand how many chats you have overall and what is the most prevalent trend: does their number gradually increase, decrease, or remain stable? At the same time, reviewing to what category the majority of incoming chats belong helps to understand what issues and questions are most popular and require extra attention.

Chats per day

The chats per day metric breaks down the total volume number of chats into how many conversations via chat are started each day. The dynamics of such a number within a business day or week help to properly manage staffing volumes and understand when your customers or prospects are most active.

Completed chats

This figure is the number of chat inquiries resolved by the team. An informative metric as well: a large total volume of chats with only a tiny percentage of them marked as finished chats suggests there’s much to be improved in the live chat support process, while the opposite situation can be indicative of employees doing their work well.

Missed chats

The metric includes incoming inquiries via live chat that have not been responded to by the team. Keep an eye on this indicator, both on the current figure (which should be as close to zero as possible) and how it changes with time — an increasing number of unresponded chats can mean understaffing or simply poorly adjusted notifications settings.

Umnico omnichannel messaging platform helps to overcome both issues since it allows to process incoming inquiries from live chat, messaging apps and social media in a single interface, which helps employees to work faster and process more chats, and the platform also has customizable notifications, from desktop sounds to messages to an employee email or Telegram, which ensure not a single chat is going to be missed.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate can refer to two separate B2B live chat metrics. The first one means the number of website visits that resulted in live chat interactions, and the second one means the number of sales that resulted from them, e.g. sales conversion.

To identify the first metric, website-to-chat conversion, compare the number of unique visitors to a website with the number of those who started a chat session or responded to an outreach from a chatbot or a member of a team.

First response time

FRT is focused on measuring how long it takes your chat agents to respond to a customer’s initial message. The FRT metric is tightly linked to customer satisfaction. A fast response tells your customers that you value their time. On the other hand, keeping them waiting for a long time is likely to hurt your reputation.

An increasing FRT and a growing total number of chats may signal that you need more agents to handle customer inquiries, while daily fluctuation of the figure indicates that some adjustments of employees’ schedule is required to reinforce the busiest hours.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is one of the most popular metrics that measure how much a product or service meets or surpasses your customer’s expectations. A short customer satisfaction survey at the end of the live chat session is the best way to accumulate data for this metric. From simple sad and happy emojis to an elaborate questionnaire, a live chat survey at the end of a conversation can come in multiple formats. Choose the one that works best for you and strikes a sweet spot between being informative and too long, forcing customers to quit without finishing.

How to improve business to business live chat communication

If measuring the metrics described above resulted in less-than-desirable figures, there is no reason for despair — in this part of the article, we provide a collection of tips on how to improve live chat communication.

Provide personalized support

In an age of a highly saturated digital landscape of offers and companies competing for attention, people value personalization more than ever. It’s a well-known fact that the more customized your message is, the more likely it is to capture your prospect’s attention. Here, live chat presents many opportunities to make communication feel more personal. From an ability to change the appearance of a chat window, to personalized welcome messages and specific post-chat surveys. It is important to stress the importance of providing as personalized solutions to problems as possible, shying away from generic responses, and an answer ‘I don’t know’ is also a big no-no.

Keep an eye on the CSAT score

A persistent low customer satisfaction score serves as a warning that something is wrong with your business. Before creating an action plan, take the time to understand the problem entirely. Look at contact volumes, peak traffic hours, and recent business growth. Your chat staff may be doing their best to help customers but simply lack the resources to serve customers effectively.

Studying chat transcripts from successful interactions is an excellent way to improve your live chat performance. Look at how your high-performing employees are addressing common customer pain points. Once you identify these best practices, share them with the rest of your team.

Maintain short response time

In today’s fast-paced business environment, customers expect immediate responses to their queries and concerns. For B2B companies, maintaining a short response time in live chat is crucial. When a customer has a question about a product or service, being able to provide an immediate response can help to close the sale. This is especially true in B2B sales, where businesses are often making significant investments and require detailed information to make informed purchasing decisions.

First response time (FRT) is the most crucial aspect of overall response time. It is advisable to share the FRP metrics of various employees within the team to promote healthy competition, with agents who maintain the shortest response time being eligible for additional incentives.

Be prepared for various conversation scenarios

Obviously, the majority of inquiries coming via live chat for a B2B business would have many similarities in subjects. To make the communication process more effective, employ various automation solutions, such as ready-made scripts and chatbots for frequently asked questions, which will help your chat team handle objections, answer frequently asked questions, and more effectively nurture leads. However, since everyone phrases the same question differently, it is advisable to program questions with several answers — by answering such Q&As, a live chat can guide a customer towards an accurate response to their inquiry without any human interaction.

Employ omnichannel approach

As a communication tool, live chat is favored by customers, however, it is not the single effective tool for communication in B2B. With high open rates and growing popularity, instant messengers, and social media are also great ways to connect with prospects and convert them into customers, and an active presence there is a must for a company to beat the competition.

Bottom line

Live chat is becoming a crucial tool for B2B businesses looking to enhance customer service and boost sales. Thanks to its real-time communication capabilities and tailored approach, it enables businesses to interact with their consumers on a more personal level, rapidly answer their complaints, and provide them with a better overall experience. Live chat may also save expenses, increase conversion rates, and help businesses generate more leads. The free live chat software by Umnico provides a highly customizable widget with extensive features that allow a company to seamlessly integrate live chat into the existing customer communication workflow and connect it with other communication channels for a truly omnichannel experience. A free trial, available to all new users, makes it easy to test the platform commitment-free.