B2B benefits of 24/7 chat — Nelson Bruton IV // Interchanges

In this second episode with Nelson, we talked about the benefits of having a human behind the chatbox 24/7 for B2B business and how it builds relationships during the early phase. We also discussed the costs associated in staffing and what’s the process for dealing with site visitors who ask highly technical questions.
About the speaker

Nelson Bruton IV

Interchanges

 - Interchanges

Nelson is President at Interchanges which is is a 19 year old digital marketing agency specializing in lead generation for B2B companies.

Show Notes

Quotes

  • “Chat matters a lot to B2B businesses because it’s all about relationships. What better place to engage your visitors in a conversation than while they are on your website doing their research?” - Nelson“We provide our own chat platform. It’s as good as any of the other ones mentioned but what separates us is that we provide the people behind the chat 24/7. So we have a global center and hundreds of people where we staff the chat for our customers 24/7 in the B2B space so that’s what separates us.” - Nelson“The more intelligent you program into your bot, the better your bot will perform obviously. However, what we found and we’ve done human vs. bot tests, in the B2B space especially with a lot of our industrial customers, the humans beat the chat box every time.” - Nelson“I believe in clarity in marketing. I don’t have any data but from a clarity standpoint we absolutely should set the expectation upfront that what the customer is talking to is a bot. That way, they don’t get disappointed if they do choose to move forward.” - Nelson“I call bot the interactive ‘contact us’ forms.” - Nelson“Bots are beneficial if you have a very simple suite of offerings. If you have two or three questions or a handful of commonly asked questions, a bot is perfectly fine.” - Nelson“Let me start with the value. We’ve been doing the chat part for 17 years in the 20 years we have been in business. Every time we add our chat team to our website, we double or triple their sales leads or quote requests. It’s amazing. It converts.” - Nelson“Minimum wage, paying somebody 24/7 for 365. I did the calculation for a month. So $10/hour you’re going to pay $627 per month to have somebody full time on your site.” - Nelson“Ours is much, much more affordable when you combine it with the results we produce. We do a money-back guarantee. If you’re not happy with the results within 30 days, we’ll give your money back because we know that in 30 days you are going to see the results.” - Nelson “We are not, nor could we ever train our team to become the sales experts or technical experts. My customers manufacture very complex equipment, very customized components for other OEM manufacturers so they have a very technical sale and what we found is we don’t have to teach our team to know all the answers.” - Nelson“What happens when a visitor asks a technical question or very specific question that our team doesn’t know, we simply say, ‘Let me have one of our experts help you with that.’  Can I have your phone number and email? Boom. We get the conversion. And then we send it to the appropriate team member.” - Nelson“I think that’s the most important part here. When you’re doing B2B chat, the goal is not to answer all of the user questions in the B2B chat format. It is essentially a qualification process.” - Ben “It really talks to the preferences of people. Some people prefer to just pick up the phone and call, some people prefer to fill out a call request form, and if those are the only two options you have, you’re missing about 2% to 4% of your website visitors. That’s our data over the past 17 years.” - Nelson“I think part of it is building the relationship with the organization and understanding how responsive you are going to be. How much you’re able to make sure that they are going to get the desired outcome they want. And by actually having a human interaction albeit through chat happening early in the phase, it has to mean that people feel like, ‘this company is going to give me personalized attention and be responsive as opposed to put me in a line.” - Ben “Although we are not training our team to become sales experts or technical experts, when the chat starts coming through to our customers. They give us feedback. And of the things we get is where our clients are able to ask us certain top level qualifying questions during the conversation and that way, it makes it more meaningful to the site visitor.” - Nelson

About the speaker

Nelson Bruton IV

Interchanges

 - Interchanges

Nelson is President at Interchanges which is is a 19 year old digital marketing agency specializing in lead generation for B2B companies.

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