You’ve probably already heard that communication between a company and its clients is the key to success. Now, Jivochat makes it easy for us by offering an online chat that connects several communication channels, so you save time and improve the communication with your customers!

We’ve had the awesome opportunity to interview Paulo Andraus, Jivochat SEO manager for both Spanish and Brazilian markets, so if you would like to know more about Jivochat, keep reading!

What is Jivochat?

JivoChat is a communication application for online business owners to increase customer retention, conversion rates and customer satisfaction on the web, by expanding their coverage, replying faster to their customers anywhere they are on the internet and building a stronger relationship with the visitors/fans/clients through more accessible and personal communication channels.

That’s why Jivo is much more than just a live chat, you can connect Facebook pages, Telegram accounts, Viber groups and even setup a phone line so your customers can click one phone button and get a call from your agents in 20 seconds.

What’s the story behind the brand?

We started back in 2012 with just a free WordPress theme, a 3-week developed product and two people, the CEO Timur Valishev and the Co-founder Nick Ivannikov, both graduated in Computer Science. The Russian market was a big victory for us since at that time there wasn’t any live chat software available in Russian. We were growing more than 300% per year just in Russia, once we launched the international version of our product we started growing even faster. Getting a lot of installations and great feedback from all over the world was what turned an unpretentious small project into the fastest growing company in the segment.

How does Jivochat improves the client’s experience?

It makes it easier and more convenient for them to contact the company. If they don’t want to have a call, they can go straight to the company’s website and talk to them through the Live Chat, if they don’t want to use the live chat option they can send a message in Telegram, Viber or on the company’s Facebook page and their team will be there to reply to your messages. We all went through terrible communication experiences with some companies during our lives, I’m sure of it, and most of them were because either there was a lot of bureaucracy in the process, not enough different communication options or the people were just not very efficient. We want to avoid that and make sure the communication between company and client is personal, fast and accessible.

Talking about client’s experience, a topic you are experts on, which aspects do you think a good communication strategy must have?

This will depend on the type of communication we’re referring to. A Social Media communication strategy could be totally different from the strategy for the Support or Sales teams when answering clients. Here are some suggestions for handling incoming calls/messages:

Increase Coverage: Your customers are using several different channels on the web and you must provide a good service wherever they are. Give them more and more possibilities: Phone, Social Media, Messengers, E-mail and Live Chat.

Be fast: People have a lot of things to do, they want to solve their problems with your company as soon as possible. That’s why many apps like Seamless are getting popular in the world. Be committed to your customers and everything will work better

Be personal (to a certain level): Have real human responses. Don’t use too many automated messages (or at least try to adapt these messages for every specific client). Robots aren’t that clever yet when it comes to solving problems and interacting in a personal level with real human beings. Although getting personal and creating a especial bond with your customers is very powerful and great in the long run, it’s extremely important to measure things right, some people may not feel very comfortable depending on how you build your conversation with them.

Monitor and Prepare your team: You have to make sure that your team is on the same page as you and your strategy. Having a well-trained team to answer your customers and monitoring their work to efficiently correct problems is key.

Be flexible: Don’t build several barriers between you and your clients, you should make their life easier, not complicate it even more. Be honest, fair an always go the extra mile for them.

Well, these are some suggestions and Jivo will help your online business with all of that.

Your blog has plenty of articles about email marketing and newsletter; what do you love the most about these direct marketing techniques?

We can automate a lot of procedures and explore our userbase the right way to generate value. A great Email communication with your customers is top priority for any online business. If you’re not taking advantage of your email list then you’re leaving money on the table, after all you probably already spent a lot to get these people to sign up, like, share and interact with your product, company and content.

How do you implement email marketing in your company?

We try to make it simple, efficient and relevant. We mostly use our emails to talk and inform users about our blog posts, social media channels, promotions, new features launch, new especial discounts, etc. Of course, we also make sure the sign-up process and sales funnel are working correctly. We also keep track of every opening, CTR, spam rates and conversions we get on every single email that we send (automatic or just a regular campaign), analytics are very important for any business to understand what can be improved with time.

To finish this short interview, from your point of view, how do you think digital communication will be in the future?

I believe we’re walking to a more globalized, fast-paced, mobile and informal world. Social messengers are definitely going to be one of the most common ways for contacting companies and for companies to contact and interact with their clients, until we get so much spam that this communication channel might not work efficiently after some time as well. All I know is that we’ll continue to develop new technologies, new channels will pop up with lots of benefits and disadvantages, and companies will work harder to create a strong relationship with their clients. I’ll still be praying for online entrepreneurs to forget the idea of having bots to help their clients online and answer their doubts, although I also think that robots are going to be part of the future of online communication, I’m definitely not a fan though.