Episode Description:
In this episode we discuss the critical importance of having a live chat, but we don’t shy away from discussing the pitfalls, dangers, and mistakes some businesses make. Eric Kades is the founder of textchat.com. His innovative new chat to text platform makes it easy for businesses to be incredibly responsive and close deals faster, boost average order values, and provide an incredible customer experience.
Connect with Eric Kades
Website: https://www.textchat.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickades/
Action you can take right now:
The goal of this podcast is to provide marketing and service insights, but also to provide actionable items that can occur right away without much thought. This episode explores utilizing live chat as a component in your overall marketing strategy.
- If you have a website – you can set yourself apart from 90% of businesses by having a live chat!
- Investigate live chat platforms, keeping in mind the pitfalls mentioned in the episode – consider a trial of textchat.com to see how easy it is.
- Ensure you have the coverage and ability to respond promptly prior to starting the trial (i.e. don’t install textchat than go on vacation for two weeks)
After-Show Thoughts:
My only thought after listening to the episode was “Why are we even having this conversation in 2021?”. Why doesn’t a company want to be responsive to their customers needs? In 2002 that idea of being able to walk a customer through a sale or answer question on demand in real-time was a pipe-dream. Now the dream exists, is extremely affordable, and 90% of businesses don’t leverage live chat. Is it laziness? Is it fear? I’d love to know – reach out with your thoughts!
Episode 21 Transcript:
Justin: [00:00:00] Imagine if there was something 90% of businesses are failing to do that, you could do right now that costs nearly nothing will help you close deals, boost average order values, and gets you in on the ground floor for what consumers are demanding now. And we’ll see skyrocketing demand over the next few years, Eric.
[00:00:22] Owner of text chat.com is here to tell us what it is and how to get in that. And more coming up on the marketing and service.com podcast. [00:00:41] Hey Justin, Varuzzo from marketing and service.com podcast. The podcast to help you build your business by creating incredible customer relationships. If you find value in this episode, please take a moment to follow or subscribe. And if you want to do me a huge personal favor, leave a five star review. [00:00:59] It means a lot to me. And it’s what keeps me motivated. I’d love to hear from you. So hit me up on the marketing and service.com Facebook page. Email me, justin@marketingandservice.com, but I would love to know what are your business challenges? What would you love to learn more about? Keep me in the loop. [00:01:15] Let me know. And I want to make more compelling episodes just for you. Today’s guest. Eric Kades is the founder of text chat.com in innovative new live chat tool. That makes it easy to answer live. Anywhere Eric started selling candy in his basement 40 years ago. And then he built a 2200 employee company in the service sector, which he then sold. [00:01:39] Eric has since gone on to find other service companies, including text chat.com, which is going to be the focus of today’s episode. And without any further ado, I want to welcome Eric to the show. Eric, welcome to the show. I’m so happy to have you here today. Justin. [00:01:54] Eric Kades: [00:01:54] Thanks for having me. We share a lot of the same interests and passions, so it’s [00:01:59] Justin: [00:01:59] great to be here. [00:02:00] So you’ve, you’ve got quite a background and I was super excited to have you on here today because I, I know that you have a company that deals with, uh, text to chat, right? [00:02:12] Eric Kades: [00:02:12] Yeah. It’s essentially a live chat tool, but it makes it super easy to answer. Getting a text message notification that brings you right into the live chat conversation with your website [00:02:23] Justin: [00:02:23] visitor. [00:02:24] Yeah, that is really awesome. So for people who don’t know about live chat, I mean, obviously everyone knows what live chat is. Um, but for people who, who don’t know or don’t have a live chat, why is having live chat on your website so important? [00:02:41] Eric Kades: [00:02:41] Looked at, uh, the contact center world, which I’ve been part of for the better part of 20 years, about a decade ago, and was like, all of these companies are running all of these digital ads and spending all this money on digital to bring people to their website and they have a contact form there. [00:03:04] And then if you look at the statistics. Getting someone back on the phone after they fill out your contact form, the chances of connecting with that person dropped by a hundred times in 30 minutes. Wow. It was like a no brainer. Why wouldn’t you have a live person there to when the website visitor is on your website, it’s already come down the funnel. [00:03:31] They’re either in shopping or buying mode. Why wouldn’t you want to be there right then and there to answer. I haven’t been in the call center business for a long time and sorry. Clients over to live chat and quickly realized that it became their number one, converting lead [00:03:49] Justin: [00:03:49] source. That’s amazing. I actually, I dug up some stats that, that you might have similar stats or maybe different stats, but, uh, uh, as of 2021, uh, 41 X, 41% of consumers expect a company that they deal with to have a live chat system. [00:04:08] Uh, but less than 10% of companies. Actually have it, period. Uh, so it’s a huge competitive advantage for small businesses to have a live chat, because it’s still something that so many companies can’t get no doubt about it. You know, [00:04:23] Eric Kades: [00:04:23] we work with, I have two different businesses. One is an omni-channel contact center, and then we have our tech shack product for smaller companies that can’t sit in front of their computer all day long to answer live chat, but we made it super easy for them to be able to answer it. [00:04:39] And to this day, a decade. It’s still their number one, converting [00:04:44] Justin: [00:04:44] leads. That is great. And I know that one of the biggest problems, uh, you know, obviously there there’s a lot of live chat solutions out there, uh, and, and I’ve used quite a few of them and some of the big ones. Uh, and I think anyone who’s used live chat as a business has experienced this and probably just anyone who’s ever engaged with a live chat has probably experienced this scenario where you just. [00:05:09] You get the support you think you’re going to get? Uh, so you go to the website, it says, click here for live chat. You click it. And either it always says, sorry, no one’s here. Or it says getting someone and then you just wait forever and then realize no one’s ever coming. And of course from the business side of this, you install, live chat on your website and then for one reason or another, you don’t get the notification. [00:05:27] You step away from your desk to eat lunch and now live chats are coming in and you miss them all. And this has a profoundly name. Effect on a lot of businesses, because another stat that I found is that one in five consumers will stop using a product or service from a business that has a bad life. [00:05:45] Eric Kades: [00:05:45] It’s so true. [00:05:47] And you know, it’s awful. What these live Jack companies, aren’t telling you, they’re pushing this product that you have to have supposedly, but they’re not making it easy to answer. And that’s really what I focused on. We had our own problem. Small business, not being able to answer our own live chats. And that’s why we created text chat to make it easy. [00:06:11] And I think that’s why you brought it up. You are, if you have live chat and you don’t answer it, you’re hurting your business big time. You’re, you’re hurting your brand. You’re disappointing your customers. You’re losing hustlers. They’re not coming back when you don’t answer it. We, uh, as part of our marketing go through websites that have live chat, that don’t answer it. [00:06:33] We visited over 5,000 Shopify stores that have live chat and over 80% of them don’t answer. So that chat is broken. It’s not even live at all. It’s [00:06:46] Justin: [00:06:46] dead. And like, and like you said, it’s. Then just not having it at all, if you’re going to have it and not man, it, because it’s almost akin to like answering the phone and saying, Hey, I’m really busy right now. [00:06:57] I can’t take this and then hang up on a customer, which you would never, ever do. But in essence, that’s exactly what people are doing when they don’t properly execute their live chat strategy. I, I like [00:07:08] Eric Kades: [00:07:08] it to someone walks into your physical store. They were ringing your bell and you go and run in the back and hot, [00:07:16] Justin: [00:07:16] crazy, crazy stuff. [00:07:17] But you have developed something very, very cool. That will help overcome a lot of these challenges, especially the small businesses have when they try to integrate a live chat system into their website. Right? [00:07:32] Eric Kades: [00:07:32] Yeah, absolutely. You know, we had the problem ourselves. Looks for all the different solutions that were out there. [00:07:39] And there’s a hundred different companies that offer live chat. They’re all either desktop or laptop based solutions or that mobile apps. But the problem is you don’t get those mobile app notifications until after the customer has left. Yes, it might come in. I mean the Erie, but for whatever reason, you don’t notice it. [00:08:01] And what I figured out. We see our text messages all the time, even when we’re on podcasts. Um, we, you know, you see the text message. We shoot it out to, if there’s one or two or three people on your team, everyone gets the same text message. There’s a link in the text message. You click on it. And whoever picks it up for our sins, chatting with the website, visitor and you know, the testimonials and the stories that we get from our customers. [00:08:31] How they’re making, we had a guides as a quick example, two weeks before this past super bowl, 10 30 at night. He’s a ticket broker. He’s laying in bed, watching his Netflix. And a check comes in. It’s the CEO of a fortune 500 company that wants to buy a sweep to the super bowl. He was the only one who picked up his life. [00:08:52] Jack. He made a $375,000 sale right then and there, the money in his wallet, into his account for Monday morning. He was the [00:09:01] Justin: [00:09:01] only guy that picked up incredible, incredible. Sometimes it’s easy for businesses to underestimate. Uh, you know, I know as a consumer, uh, you get that idea in your head that, Hey, I’m going to buy this thing today. [00:09:13] Uh, and you call the first store and I know, sorry. We don’t have any, yeah. Then he called the next one. You call the next and you just start going down the list because you’ve already got in your head. I have the day off today. I want to play with my new iPad. I got to get this thing today. I have to have, so now you’re calling apple stores. [00:09:28] You’re calling all the different best buys and now it’s, it almost becomes price insensitive. You start to become obsessed and you’re like, I don’t care what the thing costs. I just want it now. And I want. Now, uh, and obviously that live chat gives a huge benefit because like you said, whoever really gets there first and answers the question and acknowledges, yeah, I have this here and it’s ready to go. [00:09:47] They’re the ones that are going to win the business. [00:09:49] Eric Kades: [00:09:49] 78% of consumers buy from the first company they [00:09:52] Justin: [00:09:52] talked to. There you go. Yeah, that is an unbelievable, uh, and it is so it’s so shocking to me that 90% of businesses in this country have yet to integrate a live chat into their systems. It’s really wild. [00:10:07] One other stat that I saw that I thought was pretty interesting is that, uh, Forrester reports that the average order value for sites that have it. Active and successful live chat, see a 10% increase. Uh, just because now that chat has the opportunity to upsell, cross sell, uh, make sure you have the appropriate accessories if you’re buying a product, right. [00:10:30] Or if you’re buying a service, you might have add on opportunities that you can do right. At the point of checkout. [00:10:36] Eric Kades: [00:10:36] Absolutely. You know, people, when we’re buying something, we have anxiety about making that purchase. And now I think if you’re a smaller upstart e-commerce business and no one knows who you are compared to the gap or something that we know, and you’re really worried, like, is this thing really going to get shipped to me? [00:10:57] I need it right away. When’s it going to get sheriffs, you know, does this common, extra, extra, large, whatever it may be. And that’s an anxiety that we all go through, right. And will you solve that anxiety? You close the deal. You know, it’s, there’s something I want to get into with Justin, because this is where I am now. [00:11:21] Why people don’t answer their live chats and why they lose out on this opportunity. It’s because human nature and human nature. We don’t want to have to respond the media. It’s not the way we messaged today when we’re texting or on Facebook messenger or WhatsApp or whatever it may be. We respond when we want to. [00:11:45] So if it’s an immediate thing from your wife or your girlfriend and you need to get right back to him, you get right back to them. If it’s a business thing that can wait. You wait 10 minutes. If it’s know something that can wait a day, you wait a day to get back to that person, but that is the competitive advantage. [00:12:02] No, one’s doing that because human behavior says we don’t want to respond to media, but when you do respond to media where you went, so that’s our challenge. As a business, convincing people. If they need to respond to media. [00:12:16] Justin: [00:12:16] Right, right. Yeah. That, that is so, so important. Uh, like you said, whoever gets there first is usually the one that’s going to close the deal. [00:12:23] You had mentioned that, uh, the education sector is one where you’ve seen a lot of success with your text chat system. [00:12:33] Eric Kades: [00:12:33] Text chat is more e-commerce education sectors, where we’re seeing a lot of success with live chat in general, what we have 50 plus clients, colleges and universities around the country and our other business jet spring that I went to them 10 years ago and said, look, you’re spending all this money to bring people to your website. [00:12:57] Try this, and then they tried it and it’s still to this day, their number one, converting lead source because. Looking at a college it’s, it’s an expensive thing that you’re about to invest in. You have questions to my credit transfer, this, that the other thing. So, you know, they have a lot of volumes, so if it’s beyond them answering it themselves, and we also answer it 24 by seven for them. [00:13:21] So middle of the night, people from around the world come in that would have never gone to their college. And when they look at the data, the people that shattered from chat to enroll. Is higher than any other communication channel form, whatever it may be. And it’s, you know, education is difficult. FASFA figuring out your financial aid is difficult. [00:13:46] Justin: [00:13:46] So it sure isn’t and the reason I brought that specifically up is because I, you know, it kind of took me aback when I heard that. Uh, because you think about how. Big a decision of, uh, you know, what school you want to attend. Right? So sometimes kids have these ideas for years of, of schools. They want to go to, uh, and the fact that even in that sector, when there’s that much money at stake, and I guess you could look at it either way and say, because there’s that much money at stake. [00:14:12] Uh, but the. Not having those questions answered right away can even have an effect on a student who could potentially be spending a hundred thousand dollars or more on an education. And because they don’t get a couple of quick answers right away, they’re going to say I’m just going to move on to the next school and look at that one. [00:14:30] That’s [00:14:31] Eric Kades: [00:14:31] it it’s been a game changer for every [00:14:32] Justin: [00:14:32] client that does it. Yeah. That is really, really wild. Uh, so you can imagine that I’m sure that translates to every industry and every business, both business to consumer and business to business. Uh, it’s just important, more like B to [00:14:45] Eric Kades: [00:14:45] B has more live chat than B to C than B to C it’s even ahead of you comments. [00:14:52] Yeah. They’re big transactions and people want those leads. And you know, it boggles my mind that people can’t figure out that responding to your website, visitors when they’re on your website and shopping or buying boat is [00:15:08] Justin: [00:15:08] difficult to do. That is wild. One, one other stat that you had mentioned to me that really blew me away. [00:15:15] Uh, you had mentioned about the drop-off rates, uh, between, uh, not getting a response within a day. Versus five minutes versus an hour. Why now? [00:15:25] Eric Kades: [00:15:25] That’s from 30 seconds to five minutes is a hundred times. And it just goes further down from there. I can’t remember the exact numbers right now, but you can just draw a line and just on a diagonal down. [00:15:40] And it’s just that great because you know, good luck getting that person [00:15:44] Justin: [00:15:44] back. Yeah. Right. Once they leave, they leave, they’ve gone on to the next store and, uh, unfortunately they’re not covered. Right. Yeah. Same example with that iPad. I go to best buy. I go to target. Whoever has got it. By the time I get a call back the next day, it’s like, Hey, sorry that that’s good that you have it, but you didn’t answer. [00:16:02] And I didn’t know. And I wasn’t gonna waste my time. [00:16:03] Eric Kades: [00:16:03] Yeah. Look, my underlying passion in life is to save people time. Both our customers and their customers. I lost my mom at a young age and time. Is obviously more valuable than money. It’s the only thing we can’t renew. Right. So for businesses, any business that wastes my time, I’m never going to use them. [00:16:29] So think about the businesses that make it efficient for you. You’re going to go back and back and back and back again. I’ll tell you an interesting story. We all know zappos.com most successful shoe store bought by Amazon. When you go to Zappos website in the top left corner, where every other business has 15% off, 20% off, 50% off, we all, you know, I’m a gap customer. [00:16:56] So I get an email every day with the new 50% off Zappos doesn’t have any discounts. They say, call us 24 by seven at one 800. Right. And that’s why they win and choose because they’re there for you. You can call them anytime and they’re going to answer your questions and you go back to them and you’d rather pay five or $10 more. [00:17:18] So instead of everyone cutting their prices, they’re able to keep their apprentices high. And oh my God. So revolutionize actually offer customer support. Can you imagine what [00:17:29] Justin: [00:17:29] a crazy idea? Yeah. Uh, yeah, that, I mean, obviously that’s the whole basis of my podcast is creating great and longterm and powerful. [00:17:39] Relationships with customers. Uh, and obviously, uh, a chat system is a great way to do that when it’s done. Right. And it is just absolutely awesome that you’re providing those tools that small businesses can use to make that a easy solution that won’t be missed and won’t suffer the consequences of implementing it poorly. [00:18:00] Absolutely. [00:18:01] Eric Kades: [00:18:01] You know, it’s, it’s my mission in life to make it easy. For any visits, the one person business, to be able to answer their live chats on time. I still answer my live chats on our own website. You know, I have, uh, over a hundred employees in both my companies and it’s that easy. It’s just having the desire. [00:18:25] To serve immediate way to save that person time. And then nine times out of 10, they end up becoming customer cause like, oh my God, these guys actually answered the live chat, [00:18:35] Justin: [00:18:35] especially for like solo preneurs, the very small businesses, uh, that ability. You know, when you, if you have a customer service staff member that goes home at five o’clock, uh, that ability for you to have the flexibility, to get those texts at seven o’clock at night, 10 o’clock at night, or if you just happen to be up at two in the morning, making your plan for the next day. [00:18:52] And one of those times, you know, when you give that instant response, especially when it’s off hours, I mean, people freak out and think it is the coolest, like most incredible level of service you could possibly get. [00:19:04] Eric Kades: [00:19:04] Yeah. It’s really interesting. The people that we look every day, who’s answering their live chats and who’s not answering their live chats. [00:19:11] What’s going on there. And it’s really more often than not the very successful solopreneur, the ticket guy that made the $375,000 sale from bed that answers the chance. And that’s why they win. And that’s why he makes a couple million dollars a year out of his business. He’s willing to do whatever it takes and you know, if you’re not that’s great. [00:19:40] But you’re not going to be as successful as you want a [00:19:42] Justin: [00:19:42] bit. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I do, I got to ask you, you, you, uh, uh, you know, you started selling candy in your basement 40 years ago, yet at 2200 employee company, which was sold, uh, you’re a dad of three kids. You’re running this new business with the text chat. [00:19:58] Uh, what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made. I imagine there had to be some mistakes along the way. Uh, but what’s the biggest mistake you had that really served as a learning lesson as you moved. [00:20:09] Eric Kades: [00:20:09] It’s fine. I make mistakes every day. We haven’t figured out how to sell tech shack perfectly yet. Um, so many things we’ve done wrong in digital ads, but I’ll tell you one thing now that I’m about to be 52 years old, that has stuck with me. [00:20:25] And I finally had gotten it right. Is choosing the wrong people to work with. That is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made and what that comes down to. You need to work with people that share the same values as you, because if you share the same values, forget about business. If you share the same overall values, you’re going to get through anything together, you know, cause there’s going to be challenges every day. [00:20:54] There’s a new hurdle in business, but if you do not share the same values, that’s going to end up in friction. And I’ve, you know, when I was in my twenties, I had a business that went on, but it lost a lot of money. And because my partner and I, we did not share the same [00:21:09] Justin: [00:21:09] values at all. Yeah. So that’s such a common story you hear with partnerships, uh, having that struggle and, and, uh, debates and friendships ruined, and it’s, it’s definitely a difficult road to navigate. [00:21:21] Eric Kades: [00:21:21] Yeah. And you really have to like talk about things outside of business to see like, are our ideals aligned, um, you know, in the way we look at the world, those things. Incredibly important. Some people just want to make money. Some people want to give back to the world. Well, if you put the, I only want to make money with the give back to the world home person, you know, there’s going to be conflicts that are going to end up destroying the business. [00:21:50] Justin: [00:21:50] Right? So building that team is always super, super important. Now that’s, that’s a great thing for people to hear, right? What is the, uh, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten? The one [00:22:00] Eric Kades: [00:22:00] person who really taught me how to be successful. Was he really instilled upon me patience and persistence. [00:22:09] And I was in a prior life at commercial real estate broker who went from making $12,000 in a year and a half to $600,000 in my next six months. And he just instilled upon me to stay with. Stay with it, stay with it. You’re going to have challenges, just stay with it. They were pure. I was living on someone’s more at that time. [00:22:39] And I had nights when I cried, when I literally, you know, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t, um, persists and I’ve watched so many people on the brink of failure that have persisted that right around the corner. I, you know, I won’t mention any names, but I know someone who. One year was on the verge of bankruptcy in my house in tears. [00:23:07] And a year later he sold his company for $2.2 billion. Wow. So had that person given up, they would have been backgrounds by biting and tweaking and pivoting and figuring it out and persist. [00:23:24] Justin: [00:23:24] Yeah, I love that. Actually. I literally just read a Brian Tracy book, uh, that had a whole chapter devoted to how many people give up the moment before they were about to succeed. [00:23:35] Uh, you know, they get like 99% of the way, and they’re at that final 1% and they say, it’s not working and they give it up. And if they just stuck with it another day, another hour, another minute, There at differentiation between failure and success. [00:23:51] Eric Kades: [00:23:51] So, you know, just a little bit of a pivot too, sometimes like I’m realizing with tech stack that we have a struggle with human nature. [00:24:00] Human nature is not to respond to immediately, which is why only 10% of companies have live chat. So, you know, we’re pivoting a little bit to make it even easier to answer when you’re not available. Uh, and still close that customer. Th there are just things that are going to be along your path that you need to stay. [00:24:24] Open-minded stay persistent and yes, you may need to pivot a little bit, but it couldn’t be that one pivot. That is the game changer. If you don’t put me in a chair. You’re destined for failure. [00:24:36] Justin: [00:24:36] Right. Very, very, very great, great, great, great stuff. Uh, so for the businesses that want to get in touch with you now, and they want to check this out, what is the best way for them to, uh, to touch base with you and learn more about text chat? [00:24:49] It’s super [00:24:49] Eric Kades: [00:24:49] easy. You can just go to our website@techstack.com set up a demo. Um, right there, you can book an appointment for a demo. And, uh, one of our sales people will walk you through how to use it. You do a 14 day free trial. Um, if it’s something, if it’s not for you, then it doesn’t cost you anything. [00:25:08] And, uh, once you start causing in sales, you’ll become a customer for life. [00:25:13] Justin: [00:25:13] Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. So 14 days you’ve got nothing to lose. Give this a shot. If you don’t have a live chat, uh, if you’ve used some type of chat system that has not worked out in the past. Definitely check out this text chat because it really is a powerful tool to have. [00:25:30] And, uh, Eric, I want to thank you so much for being here today. Uh it’s it’s been, uh, it’s, it’s been so enlightening hearing about this and sharing this time with you because I do think it’s super important and I, my whole, my whole world is. Improving customer service, improving the customer experience and just really creating incredible customer journeys. [00:25:49] Uh, and that I know is like, even though it’s been around, like you said forever, I know that in the next 10 years, that’s going to be like the thing that you just have to have. Uh, and the fact that only 10% of businesses are using it now is just it’s mind blowing to me. So hopefully you will see incredible success and hopefully my listeners will come and check out what you’ve got going. [00:26:10] Well, I appreciate [00:26:11] Eric Kades: [00:26:11] you giving me the opportunity and yes, we speak the same language, you know, it’s like, we both realized that when you give that immediate attention to your customers, [00:26:22] Justin: [00:26:22] you know, when yeah. So great. Thank you so much for being here and have a good one. We’ll, uh, I’ll put some links in the show notes to how people get in touch with you. [00:26:29] Uh, so if you want to learn more, you can definitely check out the marketing and service.com website. Uh, and I will have that all in the episode notes. Wow, what a great guest Eric gave us so much insight as to the importance of live chat and how to really integrate it in a way that it will be effective for your business and not be something that will turn customers off. [00:26:52] You should definitely check out text chat.com. I’m sure Eric will be happy to walk you through and hook you up with a trial. If that’s something you want to get set up, but it is an awesome, awesome service and an awesome comment. If you’ve never used live chat before, then you should definitely jump in on this and experience why it’s so great. [00:27:11] If you already have a live chat on your website, then you already know the challenges of keeping up with that live chat because of all the technological limitations. By having these texts go directly to your phone, it makes your life so much easier and it lets you close those deals at any hour that you want and gives you a direct connection to the consumers that are seeking your product or service. [00:27:35] This is the future. I promise you that. I hope you enjoyed this episode again, if you love the show, please like, and subscribe, share with your friends, tell one person, just share it with one person and let someone know that you got some value from this show and they should check it out again. Join me on the Facebook page and marketing and service.com. [00:27:54] Of course, the website marketing and service.com. I’m Justin, Varuzzo. I can be reached@justinatmarketingandservice.com. And I want to hear from you. Thanks so much and have a great day. .