The goal of the live chat tool is to increase your conversion rate on your official website and to lead new customers to book. How could you optimize your live chat and convince a maximum of visitors?

What is the profile of visitors ?

• Undecided visitors

47% of requests have no clear objectives or relate to information already available (HDB chat statistics)

Contrary to what you might think, what customers are looking for through a live chat, it is not necessarily answers to practical questions, but rather a confirmation of the quality of the experience within your hotel. They seek emotional reassurance and need to establish human contact.

• Demanding visitors who want to check specific characteristics

Other visitors of course also seek to verify certain important information to them. It can be about check-in, breakfast or parking.

How to persuade them to book?

1.          By responding quickly

A visitor spends only 2min30 on a hotel site. It is estimated that your request for assistance must be answered in less than 30 seconds.

Live chat is a way to get information faster, and this promise should not be denied! Speed is an essential element that can tip a reservation, one way or the other!

If you want to outsource this process, HDB offers professional salesperson who can answer for you 24 hours a day.

2.           By responding with relevance

This is also a waste of time for the client if the answer is not relevant. To get there, the key word is organization. To answer quickly and well, we advise you to have files summarizing the key information to answer questions. You can keep an Excel workbook up to date with all the questions asked, so that you can identify when a question is new and complete the files accordingly.

The interpersonal skills are also extremely important. As we have seen, the majority of customers want to be reassured about the quality of your service. The people who will manage the chat will therefore have to be trained, have a sense of listening and a lot of patience.

In addition, we can never say it enough, having an impeccable spelling is essential to be taken seriously during a written relationship!

HDB salespeople are all trained in customer relations and have complete files created with you and updated as and when they are exchanged.

3.           Booking assistance

Your customers may need to be reassured when booking. It is a stressful moment, when we are afraid of making a mistake on the dates, the type of room, or of clicking on a « bad » button when we are less comfortable with the computer tool. . You can then support them by indicating the procedure to follow or by offering a telephone reservation.

4 .          By customizing the offer

It is this point that will allow you to really make a difference and shine with your sense of service. Following a discussion with a traveler, make a spontaneous proposal in connection with his previous requests. For instance, if a person asks if animals are accepted in your hotel, after having responded to his request, you can also offer him your dog-sitting service.

It is with this type of proposal that the client feels understood and listened to. However, this requires a keen sense of customer relations to make relevant proposals and not to pass for a promoter trying to sell his products at all costs.

Analyze your results

To do an analysis, you need data. For that, it is necessary to keep up to date a database including the questions asked classified by type of questions, the different prepared answers you have, the identity of the person who answered, and of course, if following the discussion, the no one reserved or not. You can also have a chat satisfaction rate, general website traffic and chat traffic.

This allows you to better understand your customers, what they like and dislike, and what they expect.