Are You Turning Clicks Into Clients? How Web Chat Messaging Will Help You Grow in 2024
How to add client leads to your sales funnel with web chat!
According to a survey by Pew Research, 31% of Americans prefer text messages to phone calls. This extends to their interactions with businesses too: 65% of consumers feel more favorably of businesses that offer text messaging than they do of businesses that don’t.
Have you made it possible for potential clients to chat with your agency via text? An automated text messaging feature on your home care site can help you bring in potential clients via an engaging exchange with a sales representative.
Here’s how web chat can help you turn website visitors into client leads.
What is web chat?
Web chat is a tool that visitors to your website can use to interact with a sales representative or schedule a time for a care consultation—and you can use it to add new leads to your sales funnel quickly.
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- Above is an example of a greeting from a web chat that you may see at first when visiting a site.
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- Here’s what you would see for most of your time on a site.
Having a web chat lets you automate your lead generation efforts: It’s a relatively passive way to bring new client leads into your senior care agency sales funnel, even after business hours.
It starts with a click-to-chat function on your agency’s site: The chat gathers basic information about them, like their name, phone number, and basic inquiry. Then it moves the exchange to a text message, making it more likely for you to get a response and convert that lead to a client: Roughly 90% of consumers open a text message within three minutes.
Plus, the information collected in the text exchange can be fed directly into your marketing automation tool, letting you start that lead on their customer journey immediately.
This is an example of what happens when you click on a web chat that leads to an automated text message.
Do you need staff to run the web chat all the time?
No. It’s expensive to staff customer service agents, much less to keep them on the clock 24 hours a day. But it’s 2023, and there’s no need for a costly around-the-clock call center.
The benefit of having a web chat on your site is that it can connect users to a home care rep while they’re on the clock, or schedule a time for a follow-up call if they reach out after business hours.
Such a tool gives interested leads a convenient way to interact with your agency anywhere, anytime.
Who needs a web chat feature?
Businesses that cannot afford to staff a full-time team of 24-hour-a-day can benefit from having a web chat feature on their website.
By automating lead generation with web chat, you can:
- Eliminate wait times for interested leads
- Easily gather leads’ contact information so they don’t leak out of your sales funnel
- Add client leads to your sales funnel 24/7
- Quickly schedule appointments and follow-up calls even when a customer service representative isn’t on the clock
- Increase response rates — text messages have a higher open rate than emails do, and a higher response rate too: about 45% for texts, compared to just 6% for emails
- Start building a relationship with leads right away
- Get added to potential clients’ contact lists
- Get notified when a new lead enters your funnel so your sales staff can reach out quickly and close the sale
How web chat works in senior care marketing in 3 steps
Let’s take a look at how web chat adds a lead to your sales funnel.
1. A potential client comes to your home care website. They see a chat icon at the bottom of their screen. Some include an inviting message, like Chat with a care representative Or, How can I help you today? right on the homepage.
2. The web chat then asks for their name and contact information.
To begin, please provide us with some basic information.
Name:
Phone number:
3. Once the user has provided their contact details, an agency sales representative is notified, and your team can initiate the next contact with that lead via text.
Hi Richard! This is Suzanne with Meadowlark Senior Care. I just received your message indicating that you’re interested in home care. Would you like to schedule a care consultation?
Alternatively, you can automate this exchange if your sales team isn’t immediately available or is off the clock.
If the user indicates that they do want a follow-up call—with a yes, sure, please, or any other affirmative—then your web chat can fire off another automated text message.
Great! Here’s a link to my calendar. Feel free to pick a time that works best for you. Looking forward to it!
And just like that, your new lead has slipped into your marketing automation platform, and you can initiate the first human contact to start moving that lead through your CareFunnel.
How much of web chat is automated?
The first response from your home care agency is automated, but a member of your agency staff can step in at any time to take over—it’s all up to you!
We like automation for the initial exchanges because it guarantees that your leads will get a prompt response at any time of day or night, and faster response times make it more likely to convert leads into clients.
It also makes it easier to gather contact information and add leads to your sales funnel right away, even when your agency staff is off the clock.
Give your senior care agency website an upgrade!
Our CareFunnels platform is designed to take your senior care agency to new heights with features like web chat, call tracking, detailed reporting, and more! If you want to take your agency's website to the next level, book a demo to see how we can make that happen!
