Why Businesses Are Using Instant Messaging To Stay

Having an online business can mean those who own them are somewhat removed from their customer base.  They can provide email addresses and online contact forms to enable their customers to get in touch with queries and so on, as well as a phone number.But while online contact forms are often useful, they don’t provide a two way form of communication.  What is required is a real time form of communication – and while the phone does provide this, it isn’t the best way of achieving it.This is where instant messaging comes in.  The key phrase to remember with instant messaging of any kind is that it occurs in real time.  If you trawl the web nowadays, it shouldn’t take you too long to find at least one website which has incorporated messaging into its design.How does it work?  Perhaps not surprisingly, it has distinct benefits for both customer and business owner.  Let’s suppose the customer arrives on the website and has one or two questions about a specific product that need answering.  Before instant messaging came along in this context, they would have had several other choices.Firstly they could have picked up the phone and been held in a queue for some length of time before an operator finally got round to serving them.  If they didn’t like that option they would have had to email the website and wait for a reply before considering whether or not to go ahead with their purchase.But thanks to instant messaging the world of internet marketing has become even more efficient.  Let’s say that same customer arrives on that same website and has the same queries.  But instead of scrabbling around trying to find an email address, or hanging on the phone for ages, they notice there is a live help facility on the site.So they click on that and a box comes up on their computer screen.  And within minutes they are having a real time conversation with an employee of that company, which gives them all the answers they need.  And the great thing is that even if they are kept waiting for a couple of minutes, it isn’t costing them anything – and they can carry on with other tasks at the same time.This has clear benefits for the business as well as the customer though.  It is a great way of keeping a line of communication open to use, and it also cuts down on the number of calls and emails they need to wade through.  Recent times have seen more and more of these instant messaging facilities popping up on websites of all kinds.  There is no reason to suppose this won’t continue into the future as well.Some businesses are also using the technology to keep in touch within the business itself.  With bigger businesses – those that deal in offline as well as online marketing for example – being able to contact colleagues in this way can save even more time.It’s clear to see how instant messaging is so beneficial to everyone who uses it.