Are you implementing a proactive live chat strategy for your website? Looking for advice on creating live chat welcome messages that prompt visitors to start chatting?
You know, I keep coming seeing these two statistics whenever I look for advice on proactive chatting:
- 33 percent of proactive chats receive a response.
- 48 percent of consumers favor companies with proactive support. (41 percent are neutral about it; only 11 percent do not have a favorable view).
Incredible, right?
But proactive live chat is also something many of our customers seem to struggle with. Their biggest problem seems to be creating a live chat welcome message to start the conversation with people who visit the website.
In this post, I’ll show you exactly how to solve this problem. You’ll learn the best practices to craft a great welcome message. What’s more, you’ll also find a few examples that you can copy to boost visitor to chat conversions.
Excited? Well, let’s take it from the top, then.
What Is a Live Chat Welcome Message?
A live chat welcome message is the initial message you send to a website visitor through the live chat widget.
This chat message can have many purposes, from enticing them to start a conversation with you to direct visitors to a specific page, making an announcement, or enticing them to buy a product.
Welcome messages in proactive vs. reactive live chat
You can send a welcome message either before a visitor talks to you (proactive) or after a visitor sends their query (reactive).
- Proactive welcome message: This message makes the visitors aware of the live chat widget and the live chat agents who’re ready to guide if needed. There are many more benefits of a proactive welcome message, as you’ll discover further.
- Reactive welcome message: You send this message after the visitor initiates the conversation. It’s the typical “Thanks for visiting us! Give me a minute while I look at your query” type message.
Because proactive welcome messages lead to more chats, I’ll focus more on messages that’ll help you initiate a conversation or get more conversions. However, you can use most of the tips in the reactive setting as well.
Why You Should Perfect The Welcome Message
If you are initiating a chat, the first message is like an email or ad headline.
To quote David Ogilvy – the father of advertising, “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. So when you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
Meaning, if your welcome message is on-point:
- More visitors will chat with you: The “33 percent of proactive chats receive a response” applies only if your welcome message is compelling. For example, an excitement-filled message like “Hey, welcome to [Store_Name]! Did you know you can get 20% off on your favorite [Popular_Category]? Ask me how!” will get more visitors to chat than some generic message.
- You will get more leads: Sending a welcome message makes the visitor aware of the chatbox. If your live chat team is offline, visitors are likely to leave their queries alongside their names and emails. If the team is online, the agent can convince the visitor to start the free trial or give their email address for an exclusive coupon. Besides, 42% of people prefer giving contact information through live chat.
- You will sell more: The more you converse, the better the visitor gets to know your services and products, making them more inclined to buy from you than your competitor.
- Finally, a great welcome message will help you provide a better customer experience: Whether you entice them to chat with the customer support or give an exclusive coupon through the live chat widget, the tone of the welcome message adds to the customer experience.
But how do you create a welcome message for a live chat?
Well, to understand it, let’s first look at what makes a perfect welcome message.
7 Elements Of a High-Converting Welcome Message
A great welcome message is the one that gets read and responded to. These are the elements that make for an ideal, high-converting live chat welcome message (it includes tips for crafting the message + creating the ideal surrounding for the message):
1. Perfect timing
Sending the welcome message at the right time is beyond critical. Send right away, and the visitor will close the chat widget without a second thought. Send too early, on the other hand, and you distract the visitor from exploring by themselves. And if you send it too late… Well, the person might have left already.
Therefore, put yourself in the visitors’ shoes and A/B test your way to finding the ideal time for sending the welcome message. Here are a few tips to start with:
- If your landing page is short, trigger the message after 15 seconds of the visitor scrolling through the page. [We use a 15-second delay on our integration pages]
- If the visitor’s reading the blog, you send a “subscribe to the blog” message when they’re halfway through it (i.e., scroll depth = 50%).
- You can set an exit-intent live chat trigger to keep visitors from leaving.
Note: I’ve discussed more such triggers in the “10 Live Chat Triggers That Will Boost Visitor Engagement” article.
2. Clarity
So, you’ve timed the message. Great. Now the visitor will read the message. But if they don’t understand your gobbledygook, there’s no chance they’ll reply or take action — if anything, they’ll ask you to clarify. Therefore, clarify right from the beginning.
You need to do two things to create a clear welcome message:
- Skip the jargon: Jargons are words that you and people from your profession might understand, but your visitors don’t. For example, if you are an SEO professional: the visitor doesn’t want to understand how you’ll edit their robot.txt file; they just care about ranking higher on Google and how much it’ll cost them.
- Provide more details: Something that’s obvious to you might not be apparent to the visitor. Giving additional details will help you achieve clarity. For example: Instead of “we’re offline right now; we’ll get back to you during business hours,” use “We operate between 9 AM and 5 PM EST. Please leave a message – we’ll try to reply ASAP :)” because the visitor probably doesn’t know your business hours or time zone.
3. Conciseness
Kevin Malone of The Office is correct, but proper grammar and punctuation are must-follow live chat etiquette.
Conciseness is about sharing all the information in as few words as possible. Especially in a live chat window, you can’t share more than a couple of lines because it’ll look cramped, leading to fewer people reading it.
Here are some tips that’ll help you craft a concise message:
- Eliminate redundancy: Instead of “each and every,” use “every.”
- Reduce prepositional phrases where possible: Instead of “the reason why Social Intents is the best…,” use “Social Intents is best because…”
- Remove qualifiers: Instead of “Social Intents is good.,” use “Social Intents is fantastic!”
- Reduce passive voice: Instead of “The live chat on our site is powered by Social Intents,” use “We use Social Intents for our site’s live chat.”
Of course, sometimes qualifiers help emphasize a point or a passive voice sentence makes it sound good. But the tips mentioned above stand true in most cases.
4. Visual appeal
Your welcome message should be a treat to visitors’ eyes. And the elements surrounding it will determine how good it looks.
Firstly, the live chat widget should feature your brand’s colors and identity. Secondly, use good quality graphics (logo, agent’s photo, etc.). Plus, if you can differentiate your welcome message from others, even better.
For example, compare this live chat form…
To this one by Ruffwear:
See the brand colors used, the dog photos instead of agents’ photos, the “please don’t hesitate to bark!” message? That’s what I mean.
5. Personalization
A report by SmarterHQ showed 72% of consumers only engage with customized marketing messages. Therefore, personalizing your welcome message is essential.
Here are a few ways to personalize your welcome messages:
- Keep visitor’s needs in mind: What is the visitor looking for? What can you offer that can make visitors happy and help you achieve your business goal? For example, if a visitor added something to the cart and didn’t buy it, it’s possible they discovered the shipping costs and didn’t like it. In such a case, offer free shipping if possible.
- Send message based on page: Each page on your site serves a different purpose. For example, if the visitor looks at the pricing page, they’re likely looking to purchase a product/service you sell. Similarly, if they are scrolling through the knowledge base, they are looking for some answers.
- Send message based on the number of visits: If someone is a repeat visitor, they are likely aware of your brand and the solutions you provide. So skip all the brand awareness messages like the “Did you know you can use Social Intents to chat from MS Teams?” Yes, they do!
- Greet based on location: You can auto-greet visitors with “Good Morning,” “Namaste,” etc., depending on their location.
6. Human touch
You want the visitor to chat, right? Well, be human, then. If the visitors don’t know there’s a friendly human ready to talk or is typing from the other side, they will be less likely to engage in a conversation. Instead, they will assume it’s a bot or some salesperson using formal language.
Here’s how you can add a human touch to your welcome message:
- Use the live chat support representative’s real photos & names when sending a message. Like this:
- Use emojis & GIFs as people use in chat.
- Perhaps share a little joke like Ruffwear does with “please don’t hesitate to bark!”
7. Strategically-placed CTAs
You can — and should — place compelling CTAs (Call To Action buttons) to help visitors navigate or motivate them to take action. For example, if someone visits the Support page, adding a “Visit FAQs” CTA would take some workload off the support agent.
These are some of the commonly used CTAs you can add to your live chat alongside your welcome message:
- Start chatting
- Visit FAQs
- Start 14-day free trial
- Add to Chrome
- Pricing Plans
- Comparisons
18 Best Live Chat Welcome Message Examples
Now that you know how to craft a compelling live chat welcome message let’s look at all elements in action.
A quick note: I included mostly generic examples on purpose. This way, you can tweak them and use them to engage website visitors on your site.
General welcome messages
- Hello, thank you for visiting. Can I help you in any way?
- Hi there! Welcome to Social Intents! I am right here if you need help 🙂
Special offer welcome message
- Hey, thanks for visiting 🙂 We wanted to let you know about our 10% site-wide discount. Need help choosing a product?
- Hey, you can add [Product 2] and get [Product 3] for free. Click here to add to the cart.
Welcome message to generate leads
- Hi! If you have any queries, please leave your message, name, and email. Our support team will reach out soon 🙂
- *Blog scroll depth: 50%* Subscribe to the newsletter for more exciting articles on [Current Article Category]!
- Hi there! Want a free sample of [Product]?
- Did you know you can use Social Intents for 14-days without entering your credit card details? *CTA: Try today! *
- Woof Woof! What am I? Guess the correct answer and get 10% off on selected items. *Option-1: Cat; Option-2: Dog.*
Welcome message for pricing page
- Hi there. I see you’re looking at our prices 👀. Please leave your name and email address if you’d like us to help you pick the best plan.
- Hey! Did you know we offer a 14-day free trial? No credit card required!
- Hey, check out our coupons page to get up to a 20% discount. Enjoy!
Welcome message for Support/FAQ page
- Need help? Drop a Hi! *CTA: Hi👋*
- What can we help you with today?
Welcome message for the repeat visitor
- Welcome back! I am here to help, as always.
- Happy to see you back 🙂 Looking for any specific information?
Welcome message for special occasions
- Hi, good to have you here. How can I help you? Please be aware that it can take up to 3 minutes to answer you due to these festive times.🙏
- Hey, Merry Christmas🎄How can we make it merrier for you?
The Two Ways To Respond If a Visitor Starts To Chat
The visitor responded to your welcome message or began a (reactive) chat? Great! That’s what you wanted — now what?
- If it’s out-of-office hours, let them know by when they’ll receive a response. Collect name, email, and message.
- If your agents are ready, ensure visitor stays. For example, you can use a message like “You’re X in the queue…our agent will join in a minute.” Then, the professional agent can handle the rest.
Tip: Use Social Intents and handle live chat in real-time from Slack or MS Team – whichever you use for internal communication. It’ll help your agents manage chats better and communicate faster, leading to team and visitor satisfaction.
Conclusión
A great live chat welcome message can do wonders for your online business. It can lead to more conversations, more leads, more sales, and consequently, more profits.
Hopefully, this article guided you through all your doubts about creating a high-converting welcome message. Now it’s your turn to A/B test the text and visuals of welcome messages to see what works for you.
Buena suerte.