21 Customer Service Live Chat Statistics You Need to Know
Jess served on the founding team of a successful B2B startup and has used a wide range of sales and marketing tools over the course of her 15-year career. She uses her industry knowledge to deliver the best answers to your questions about sales tools and sales management.
Bianca is a staff writer at Fit Small Business who specializes in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.
This article is part of a larger series on Customer Service.
Live chat is a crucial customer service channel because it provides real-time, immediate assistance to customers, is easy to use, and is highly accessible. Customers simply go to a business’ website and click on the live chat button, start a conversation, and wait for an agent to attend to their queries. In this article, we share 21 interesting live chat statistics about how using the channel makes a difference in your customer service strategy.
Live Chat Statistics: Market Share & Business Impact
The live chat software industry’s market share has been growing due to the increasing number of online shoppers who prefer to use live chat for product-related questions. The following statistics serve as your reference for live chat software market size, as well as its impact on customer loyalty, sales, revenue, and consumer behavior.
1. The global market for live chat software is estimated to reach $1.7 billion by 2030, up from $755.23 million in 2020.
Takeaway: Live chat software became an important tool in resolving customer issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown periods. More companies are realizing their business value and are now integrating it into their operations for more efficient customer service. If you still haven’t started using live chat for your business, this forecast indicates that this tool won’t waste your resources.
(Source: Allied Market Research)
2. 79% of businesses say offering live chat support has improved their customer loyalty, sales & revenue.
Takeaway: Effective communication is key to building strong customer relationships. Live chat can help you with this by providing an opportunity for two-way communication in real time. When businesses attend to their customers’ queries right away, they can build trust-based relationships that encourage sales and ultimately contribute to revenue growth.
(Source: Kayako)
3. 38% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from companies that offer live chat support.
Takeaway: In connection with the live chat stats mentioned above, quick responses from support agents can encourage consumers to buy from a company. Live chat support channels provide your business with an opportunity to attract new customers.
(Source: Kayako)
4. More than half (51%) of consumers make repeat purchases from companies that offer live chat support.
Takeaway: Consumers are attracted to businesses that offer an instant or quick response to queries. Offering live chat support can help encourage them to buy again from your company. However, it is important to make them feel you’re genuinely interested in addressing their concerns when attending to customer needs instead of treating it as a one-time transaction.
(Source: Kayako)
Live Chat Support Statistics: Customer Service Agent
Customer service agents’ performance is influenced by several factors, such as the number of agents working in a shift and the type of communication channels utilized by the company. The following live chat support stats show the average volume of live chats and the impact of first response time on customer satisfaction (CSAT) rates.
5. A customer service agent handles an average of 18.2 chats per day.
Takeaway: According to this research, it is best if an agent handles a maximum of five chats simultaneously. Take a look at the average number of cases that your company handles daily. Then, you can use this metric to determine the number of agents you need for your business.
(Source: LiveChat)
6. A support agent has an average first response time of 40 seconds.
Takeaway: First response time is crucial because it shows how much time it takes an agent to respond to a customer’s first message. You can avoid challenging customers’ patience by keeping this time as short as possible. This can be done by using canned responses and deploying the right number of agents on live chat.
(Source: LiveChat)
7. The average customer satisfaction rate of each rated chat is 72.8%.
Takeaway: Customer satisfaction can be influenced by a lot of factors. These could include the speed of customer service, the way the agent talks, and whether the issue was resolved or not. Compare your business’ results with these metrics and other entities similar to yours to see if your customers are happy with your service.
(Source: LiveChat)
8. Customer satisfaction rate is at the highest (84.7%) when the first response time is 5 to 10 seconds.
Takeaway: Based on this research, customer satisfaction rate goes down to 72.4% when the first response time is 30 to 60 seconds. It further drops to 60% when the first response time is over two minutes. Customers are happy when agents respond quickly to them and maintain constant communication. They would also appreciate receiving updates about the progress of their case if the solution takes a long time.
(Source: LiveChat)
Pro tip: Customer service programs like Zoho Desk allow you to generate reports on activities and performance of both your team and individual agents. Use its dashboards to view patterns, monitor negative feedback, and track customer happiness ratings.
Zoho Desk’s ticket overview with customer service metrics (Source: Zoho Desk)
Live Chat Statistics: Customer Service Manager
Customer service team managers are responsible for monitoring the activities and performance of their team and individual agents. The following metrics below are essential when planning your agents’ live chat work and in your efforts to improve overall customer service in your company.
9. The average availability of a business is 16 hours per day.
Takeaway: While businesses aim to make their customer service team available on chat as long as possible, limitations in resources could impede this goal. Chatbots can help you handle common inquiries for you outside of work hours and even 24/7 when there are no agents on duty.
(Source: LiveChat)
10. 91.4% of customers chat with businesses using a mobile device, while 8.6% use desktop or laptop computers.
Takeaway: A huge chunk of customers are now using their phones to reach support. But it doesn’t mean that we should neglect desktop users altogether. It is important to understand where the majority of your traffic comes from. To further tailor your sales and marketing strategy, you also have to examine the conversion rates from both mobile and desktop groups.
(Source: LiveChat)
11. The average queue waiting time is 3 minutes, 28 seconds.
Takeaway: Queues cannot be avoided entirely, especially when you have a large number of customers. However, you can keep the queue time as short as possible through proper scheduling of agents’ shifts. You could also increase the number of chats that more advanced agents can handle simultaneously.
(Source: LiveChat)
12. The average queue dropout rate is 24.8%.
Takeaway: Queue dropout rate refers to the percentage of customers that dropped out of a call queue because there weren’t agents available to help them with their issue. Use this metric as a basis for comparison for your own numbers and for your efforts to keep this number low.
(Source: LiveChat)
Pro tip: Use a live chat software like LiveChat to monitor your team’s customer queue. It allows you to generate reports on customers’ wait time, queue conversion, and queue abandonment.
Live Chat Statistics: Chatbots
Integrating chatbots into customer service can help your agents focus on more complicated issues and at the same time, allows you to provide instant customer support. The statistics below show the average customer satisfaction rate of chatbot conversations, as well as the volume of chats handled with and without chatbots.
13. Chatbot conversations have an average customer satisfaction rate of 65.7%.
Takeaway: Chatbots help improve customer satisfaction rates by providing instant answers to customer queries. While chatbots and live agents complement each other, it is worth noting that they each deal with different cases. Chatbots deal with common questions, while agents face more complex ones. Still, it is best to use both of them to ensure that your customers get the best answers to their questions.
(Source: LiveChat)
14. Over 21M cases were handled with the help of chatbots vs over 62.5M without chatbots.
Takeaway: There are companies that still rely solely on live agents without any help from a chatbot. However, if you are receiving more support requests than your average, it is best to consider adding chatbots to provide quicker support. Combining artificial intelligence (AI) with your agents’ human expertise helps make your customer service more efficient.
(Source: LiveChat)
Pro tip: You can expedite case resolutions by automating answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs). HubSpot offers a free chatbot builder to automate customer conversations on your website.
Live Chat Statistics: Customer Experience & Preferences
The majority of customers prefer live chat over other support channels. However, many of them are still frustrated with the quality of support they receive. Read the stats below to learn more about customers’ preferred support channels, what businesses think about customer preferences, customers’ frustrations with live chat, and what customers value most.
15. Live chat still tops (41%) the support channel customers prefer, followed by phone (32%), email (23%) & social media (3%).
Takeaway: Despite the rising popularity of social media support, live chat still remains customers’ top preferred support channel. Live chats provide immediate answers to most customers—without needing to listen to call-hold background music that takes a long time to finish.
(Source: Kayako)
16. 42% of businesses think customers prefer phone support, while 35% believe consumers prefer live chat.
Takeaway: There is a disconnect between what businesses do and what customers want. Looking at these live chat support statistics, we could say that a lot of companies may be overstaffing phone support. Routing more agents to live chat support can help them improve customer satisfaction.
(Source: Kayako)
17. 38% of customers are frustrated by poor user experience with live chat support & 43% of businesses are aware of this.
Takeaway: Customers’ frustrations on live chat stem from different reasons. Sometimes, live chat is displayed as available, but they cannot reach support, or they get disconnected during a session. Some are frustrated with the effort required to fill up pre-chat forms before they can start a live chat. Businesses can use these details as references for their efforts to improve and streamline user experience.
(Source: Kayako)
18. 95% of consumers value the quality of support over speed.
Takeaway: While consumers want an instant resolution to their issues, they would prefer to receive slower support with higher quality. This means that agents should not cut corners just to finish dealing with a customer issue. They should strive to deliver high-quality and personalized support to every customer.
(Source: Kayako)
Pro tip: If you’re utilizing a live chat service on your website, make sure you have enough agents to handle the number of queries your business typically receives. Do this by looking at the average number of tickets you process a month and the average wait time of your customers. Customer service software providers such as Freshdesk show these kinds of data.
Freshdesk’s default Omnichannel dashboard gives you an overview of the daily volume of inquiries, customer happiness, agent availability, and agent performance. (Source: Freshdesk)
Live Chat Statistics: Industry Breakdown
Every industry has a different set of live chat metrics, such as positive customer satisfaction rate, percentage of live chats on mobile, and wait time. Read the statistics below and use them as a benchmark for your own customer service performance.
19. The real estate (97.7%) & insurance (92.9%) industries have the highest positive customer satisfaction rates.
Takeaway: Among 16 industries included in this 2022 study, real estate and insurance ranked at the top for customer satisfaction in live chat support. They are followed by wholesale services (87.9%), nonprofits (87.3%), business-to-consumer (B2C) ecommerce (87.1%), and health (87.1%) industries. You can use this report as a benchmark for your efforts to maintain or improve your customer service practices.
(Source: Comm100)
20. The entertainment industry has the highest (90.3%) percentage of live chat support conversations via mobile devices.
Takeaway: There is a big gap between the mobile live chat usage of the entertainment industry and hospitality, which ranks second at 59.6%. This is followed by nonprofits (59.3%), health (50.2%), and telecommunications (50.1%). Meanwhile, real estate (5.2%) is at the bottom of this list.
(Source: Comm100)
21. Industries with the shortest wait time are entertainment (40.2 seconds), real estate (44.9 seconds) & insurance (49.8 seconds).
Takeaway: Meanwhile, the industries with the longest wait time are consumer services (139.9 seconds), transportation (139.3 seconds), and wholesale (105.5 seconds). If you want to reduce your wait time, you can make your service more efficient with the help of canned messaging, automated agent routing, and AI chatbots.
(Source: Comm100)
Bottom Line
While live chat provides remarkable benefits to a business’ customer service strategy, it requires a commitment to maintaining the channel to maximize its benefits. To be able to make the channel work for you, make sure that you have the proper team and resources in place. Use these live chat statistics as a benchmark on how to maximize the use of the platform to improve your customers’ service experience.
