This is a guest post by Mark Kingston (Critchleys external marketing consultant) who meets Oxford based tech company Melu. This is part of our 'Local Business Heroes' series, where we feature Oxfordshire based businesses doing remarkable work.
Have you ever used the chat function to talk to someone on a website you are visiting?
Here's the idea: if you are on a website and have a question, it's often easier to ask someone than try and hunt down the answer yourself.
But most sites don't offer chat...yet. Which means that potential leads are lost everyday as a result.
Consider this. Oxford based web chat company Melu have found that having web chat means up to 20% of visitors start a chat, with as many as 50 - 60% of those chats becoming strong leads for the business to follow up.
So for every 1000 visitors, that could mean as many as 100 leads.
Now, "your mileage may vary" as they say, but even 10 additional leads a month could be a big deal for many businesses.
But there's a challenge: who on your team will be on hand answer the questions asked by visitors to your site? You have to be available all day and answer chat requests quickly (as people will move on quickly if you don't).
So a few months ago, Critchleys started working with Melu, who have developed a solution. They call it "Managed Live Chat".
The idea is simple: they provide the chat app for your site AND the people to answer queries. All you have to do is add some code to your site, work with the Melu team to create a script for their team to use, and then wait for new leads to come in.
It's early days, but we've already had some great leads through the Melu system. so we thought we should introduce Melu to you.
You can find out more at www.meluchat.com.