102 - Your Virtual Front Door

Intro  0:03  
This is Episode 102 on the Live Blissed Out podcast. Did you know that 45% of US consumers will abandon a transaction if questions are not addressed quickly? Hello, action taker! Welcome to Live Blissed Out.  A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help you get the scoop on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping you achieve bliss through awareness and action. So let's get to it. In this episode, Marc Cherabie discusses the importance of treating your website or as he calls it, "your virtual front door "with the same level of importance as your physical business. Marc is the Director Of Sales for Site Staff Chat in Aurora, Colorado. A live chat company who focuses on having meaningful and empathy driven conversations with your website visitors. With a tailored approach that is created specifically for you, you'll be amazed that the new heights a competent chat solution can take your business to. Every word matters. To learn more about Site Staff Chat, visit www.sitestaffchat.com and take their 30 Day Challenge. 

Disclaimer  1:25  
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. 

Marisa Huston  1:38  
Marc, thanks for being on the show today. 

Marc Cherabie  1:41  
Thank you for having me. 

Marisa Huston  1:42  
I would love it if you could introduce our topic to our listeners, as well as share what type of information you plan to provide to help give a positive impact when it comes to their website visitors.

Marc Cherabie  1:58  
Yeah, certainly. So today, I think it's a really great idea to discuss this concept of the virtual front door, right and kind of what that means. That's what we call your website. And what we always kind of try to tell businesses and what we really want to discuss with you on this podcast is really treating the website that people come to in the same fashion and in the same manner as your actual physical location, the importance of it. I think it's really important to look at those two concepts hand in hand. And what we do is we provide a live chat service on the website. And not a lot of businesses really view it as a necessity, right? Or they don't really view it as being very important. What we want to get into is discussing a little bit of the importance of that and the effectiveness that it can have on your overall business practices. 

Marisa Huston  2:38  
Yeah, and I'm glad you said that, because this is a mindset that many businesses don't have. Because remember, when the internet started, most of the websites were really set up to be more like a landing page, almost like a brochure. You go in, you get basic information, there's no real interaction going on. You just kind of wanna know that that's a legit business and get some basic information about what it is, what they do, and how do I reach them. But in today's world, that is old school. We really need to start thinking about a website as more than that. That it really is more of your storefront. And when somebody walks into your store, and you ignore them, or you don't welcome them or offer to help them, they would feel put off. They would say, well excuse me, but I'm here looking at your wonderful items that you have to offer and nobody's even saying hello, or trying to answer any questions. Websites aren't any more different than that but I think we view them as different or we don't realize that if we're not doing it, our competition is likely doing it.

Marc Cherabie  3:46  
Exactly. And I think a really important piece of that is it's happening a lot more often on your website than it is at your physical location. I mean a lot more people are visiting. We're in a very competitive era now where technology is right at our fingertips and so many people can come onto your website, but then what? You know, maybe they're gonna have to ween through text, or maybe they're gonna have to try to figure out their questions, or they just have many inquiries that are not available or are too difficult to be able to find on the website and then they can simply just leave and nobody knows. Nobody knows who they are, what they were looking for. There's no sense of capturing it. And I think the way that you explained it's perfect, right? I mean, somebody walks into your physical location, and there's nobody there to smile at them, tell them hello, ask them if there's anything they can help them with. You walk in, there's a bunch of brochures everywhere and fill out your information here and we'll get back to you. That doesn't tell the full story, doesn't paint the full picture. And that's where we come in to be able to put all those together.

Marisa Huston  4:36  
In today's world where people are having to deal with so many restrictions, everyone's online more than ever. And usually when they're interested in your product or service, they're gonna go online to check you out first. The other factor is when somebody shows up physically to your store, you know it. But many times business owners have no idea who's visiting their site and how quickly they've left, because they're not looking at their statistics, or they're not checking the information or don't even know how. And in that case, if you're not driving traffic, and you don't know how many people are dropping off, how do you know what you're missing out on? And you're not necessarily there for them when they need you the most and that is when they come in for the first time and have that first engagement on your website.

Marc Cherabie  5:22  
That is exactly right. The first impression, that building that trust and all that is certainly missing if you don't have any kind of a solution. So you said it perfectly.

Marisa Huston  5:29  
And I also think that our experiences that way, also can impact referrals. Because if you have a good experience, and you don't go elsewhere, and you do business with that company, that entire process went so well that you're going to tell your friends, yeah, you can just go to their website, and they'll answer your questions right away when you're confused about something. And that just helps build that confidence and trust with the prospect. You never know who you're missing out on helping if you're not thinking about how you're welcoming them into your site, from the very getgo.

Marc Cherabie  6:04  
Certainly, we live in a Google review world where companies reviews on products are everything. Consumers look at those in so much depth and it really can have a very positive or negative effect on your business and you could easily receive a positive review or a negative review. If you're giving somebody a bad website experience, it could really hinder your business. And if you're giving them an ultimate customer and user experience on your website, it could be a big positive. And that could either, like you said lead to referrals or ultimately lead to people talking poorly about your business as a whole, whether it was you know with merit or without merit.

Marisa Huston  6:37  
Exactly. So the consequences could be far reaching beyond what you would even expect. Could you share a story perhaps about a business that SiteStaff has been able to help using your services?

Marc Cherabie  6:50  
Yeah, we have a ton of stories. But you know, the one that always really resonates to me, it was a senior living community, which is one of the many different industries that we serve. And you can understand that in these specific situations, when you're talking about senior living, it's not always a very easy concept to have to come to the reality to of maybe you know, you have an aging mother and aging father that needs assisted living or you know, may need memory care, it's a very difficult and emotional process. So when the adult child many of the times is searching on the internet for solutions, or things that resonate closer to their homes, they'll go on many different websites. And one story that really pops out to me is, we had a lady that was just chatting and looking for a home for her aging father. He needed memory care. And she was greeted by one of our wonderful chat hosts. And they really just began the conversation of how can I help you? What are very important factors in this journey? Give me a little bit of an understanding of what it is that you're going through, rather than actually asking for just the name or phone number or email right off the bat. Understanding that many times those visitors are coming through the chat because it's a hard concept for them to verbalize. You're kind of in a state of crisis. And it's much easier for them to go in an anonymous more of a private setting like chat is able to provide for you. They're not ready to take that next step. They're just really in the information gathering phase. Well, what our wonderful child's is able to do on this is really make them feel comfortable right off the bat. What's the most important aspect of your search for your father? Tell me a little bit about his daily activities, are they able to live independently are they not? Thank you so much for being able to share this information with you. And as you see, as the conversation began to flow, it started to be, first you can tell it was very difficult to talk about and then all of a sudden, it was like thank you so much for listening and it  almost became like a therapy session of them venting and then being very, very comfortable. What's really wonderful about it as it just became such a genuine conversation, a human to human conversation, where not only were we able to answer the questions on behalf of our client and the exact same manner that they would have, if they were to physically go to the community, if they were to pick up the phone and dial. But they were able to really focus in on what's important to you, what resonates to your current home situation, and how can we make that transition as home like as possible. What's really wonderful about it is at the end, the visitor says, Thanks so much. I really appreciate that. That's very kind of you. There's not a lot of kindness in the world today so it's refreshing to know that it still exists. When you read things like that it just really makes you feel very warm inside. You can understand how positively it would resonate on that particular community and how much easier the rest of that process will be for both the community and  potential community resident at that time.

Marisa Huston  9:24  
I love that story. Because think about it many times when we hand over a brochure or somebody just looks at a page, we always just assume, Well, my products are right there. My services are there if you need anything, pick up the phone and set up an appointment. But the decision making process doesn't happen like that. There's still a lot of questions to be answered and people need to feel comfortable with the process. There needs to be a level of trust established. Because at this point, they're aware of your business but they still don't know you. They really don't know what you do and how you can help them specifically. And so by having somebody say welcome and ask these questions and make them feel at home and know that there's somebody who's listening to their concerns before they even get to that stage is absolutely golden. I think that that is really where it all starts. Because if you don't do that, they may end up on a different website that does and that same business opportunity was lost. Could you explain how that buying journey takes place?

Marc Cherabie  10:25  
You said it perfectly. For me, I always think about it's not the physical house that makes the place at home, it's the people within the house, the love, the connection, the people that you're with that make it a home, correct? So same kind of concept when it comes to these particular communities. No senior living community or no business in general is really the same. But it's that connection, it's that build, it's that feeling that you get once you're actually engaging with that particular place of business or the community that can really make it resonate. So that's exactly what it is. It's making it feel as much like home as possible to make that transition easier. When you talk about the buying journey, the buying journey has changed immensely. Even in this last year and a half with this pandemic that we're living in, it's changed so much. I'm old enough to remember the days of going on to the white pages and if somebody looking for tires, they just, you know, go to the T section in the white page, look for a tire shop, pick up the phone call and go. But we live in a world now where everything's at our fingertips. It's so much easier for people to find your place of business, right? So there's that competitive aspect of it. But it's also easier to go from business to business to business. I can go on dozens of websites in the next hour and find what I'm looking for. And what we have seen right now is businesses are spending the most money they ever have on building the websites, on trying to drive the traffic to come to their website specifically as they should. They've even spent more money on top of that, making the website look as beautiful as possible and as high end and with as much information as they possibly can. But for whatever reason 97 to 99% of all those businesses are still leaving, and they're leaving without filling out a contact form, without picking up the phone and dialing. So the question at that point becomes, well, why is that? Is it because your particular websites not not standing out? Is it not providing with all the answers to the questions that they were hoping to find on there? So that's really how the buyer journeys changed. And that's why always having that human component, always having somebody there just like you do at your physical location on your virtual front door, to say hello, to be welcoming, and to really be able to answer questions, and not only in a much quicker way, given that we live in such a convenience and a fast paced world. But in a very detailed and understanding way. It's not just necessarily about pricing. It's about what's the recovery time like? Or what are the expectations that are going to be set. Being able to be there and answer questions about employment or insurance or whatever, it might be a very, very broad array of questions. Nothing's ever going to be able to replace the human component, the human connection. And that's where SiteStaff Chat, the live chat aspect of what we do comes into the buyer journey as a whole.

Marisa Huston  12:53  
I talk a lot about awareness. And one of the things I think that's really critical that never crossed my mind until I talked to you was the fact that there is a strong correlation between traffic to your site and chat. If we don't have visitors visiting in the first place, there's no one to talk to. But at the same time, it goes the other way. I hear about so many businesses that spend a significant amount of money on SEO, and they don't have chat. They have no one to greet the visitors when they get to their website. So essentially, they're throwing a lot of their money away. The web page is going to show up maybe in the first page, but then that doesn't necessarily correlate to the people visiting actually talking to the business and potentially becoming a prospect that will eventually become a client.

Marc Cherabie  13:42  
Exactly. It's kind of like the concept of, you know, I have a few different restaurants that I like that are very convenient for me that are right next to my home. And I view those as kind of being what SEO provides, right? That first Google Search when you're looking on the internet. That's obviously important, the fact that they're convenient, they're close to my business. But if I'm not receiving the best customer service, when I get there, or if I'm not impressed with the food or the overall service as a whole, I'll go down to another restaurant that I feel more comfortable at that I like, and I enjoy more, even if it's a little bit further away. So the convenient aspect, and the populating on the first page of Google is always a great thing, especially if it's a very targeted approach a targeted audience in your area. But that doesn't paint the full picture, right? That gets you the clicks. But it's a lot more convenient to just exit out of a web page than it is to maybe leave the actual physical location. So it's happening at a much higher rate. And it's a much higher chance that it will happen. So the SEO will get the visitors and get the people to your website but then what? And that's the big question that I think is important when discussing the virtual front door. It's the then what?

Marisa Huston  14:43  
Exactly! They really play well together, is the bottom line. And if you're missing an element, then you're basically missing out on opportunities. And so it's important to understand that correlation which I think a lot of people just don't. They miss it. Because I hear a lot about SEO. Get SEO you got to get on the front page. Yeah. But nobody really thinks about, okay. Now, when you have these people looking at your website, how are you engaging with them? I think that element is always overlooked. Everybody thinks about chat as a technical tool. If I ask somebody about a chat service, they'll say, Oh, yeah, it's just a software that I upload onto my website and it allows people to chat. But what they miss a lot of times is they don't understand the differences. There are chats that have auto responses that are basically engaged by robots and not real people. And then there's chats where you can just get something put up there and then you yourself, as the business owner, have to chat with the person when they come in. So you have to be on call, or at least know how to get the information when it comes up right away and you could miss out that way. There are businesses, for example, that like to do it internally and just get chat, but then they find that it's overwhelming because they can't handle it. And then of course, there's the full support, where you literally have people that learn your business, understand the kinds of customers that come in and are able to communicate your messaging and your brand so that they're available when your customers need them. Could you explain those differences so that our listeners can understand what the benefits are of the kind of chat that they decide to get for their own businesses?

Marc Cherabie  16:24  
You make a great point. I think the biggest thing when it comes to live chat is there's not always the best stigma. There's sometimes really bad stigmas around chat as a whole. And I think the reason for that is because chat has been treated like a extended fill form, or like maybe another lead generation type of a tool. When in reality, it's more of a conversion tool, which is one. But the big thing is with a lot of chat companies, especially ones that are very automated, where there's a very generic workflow that you can make your little tweaks to, it's really trying to say, hey, we're going to create a chat solution that is universal or an all in one fits approach. But the reality is, is that no business is the same, right? I mean, that's like saying, if somebody were to walk into your place of business, you ask them and you greet them in the same manner. And you asked the same question. Every conversation that you have with every potential client that walks in your business is going to be different. So why would you treat the chat features or the people that come into your virtual front door in the same manner? What we find is that a lot of businesses have a very basic chat service that has like auto populated answers and stuff like that. In some instances can certainly be fine. But in other instances, it can actually do the opposite of what they were hoping to achieve. It can be very counterproductive. It could just be more of a frustration, because it's like, no, that's not what I want. Like an auto machine on the phone, right? So that's really the differences with the whole buyer journey. But when you have a chat company that essentially works for you, we're an extension of your culture of care, we work alongside you to be able to make sure that we're answering questions in detail, if there's any spelling errors, if maybe they're not understanding a question, or maybe they just don't know exactly what they want. Somebody that can guide them to make to paint, a much clearer picture, you know, it's super important. It really creates what I call like a trickle down effect of goodness. So you're going to have a better user experience, which they're going to be happier, then you're going to get better leads, you're going to get more information on these leads, you're going to paint the full picture and tell the story, that's going to save a lot more time for the employees working there. Because they're not going to have to handle the chat themselves, or they're not going to have to spend a lot of their days picking up the phone and calling what they thought were leads that actually weren't leads, ultimately means, you know, a better user experience and more money for the business and more people talking positively about their business to be able to refer them out to other clients. So it's really a win win if it's done, right. But it could be a lose, lose if it's done incorrectly, just like you really pointed out with the differences of the types of chat services that there are.

Marisa Huston  18:44  
Yeah, and I think it's a extension of their business in the sense that you collaborate with them and understand the business so that as far as the customers concerned, there is no difference. Even though you're managing the chat for the business, the customer will never know that because you are speaking the language that the business would speak on their behalf. So you're really just an extension of that company. So it's very seamless to the visitors.

Marc Cherabie  19:13  
Exactly. And it's 24 seven, it's around the clock. I mean, your website never closes like your physical front door does. Your virtual front doors always open. So not only are you creating the best customer experience, at all times of the day, you're really maximizing the amount of people. Because believe it or not, there are a lot of people that are searching and on your website at all hours of the day. So it's important that they receive the same treatment as if they were to visit during the day as well. So it's really about maximizing those hard dollars that you've spent to bring them there and treating them with the respect that they deserve.

Marisa Huston  19:44  
It's a really good point. On every show, I offer the listeners something that they can do right now that will help them take a step towards what we're talking about, which is taking really good care of the people that come to visit your site and ensuring that you're welcoming, and that you're providing them with the information that they need to make the right decisions for themselves. What would you say is something they can do right now that will help them establish that if they haven't been doing it already?

Marc Cherabie  20:16  
One thing that I would always say is take our 30 Day Challenge, which is something that we're offering for all of our clients. And what that does is it challenges you to allow for us to prove our value to you. You know, we can sit here and talk all day about how our solution and live chats the best. Ultimately, words don't mean anything unless we're actually proving our point. Our website is www.sitestaffchat.com site like website, the staff on your website, and then the word chat .com. And take our 30 Day Challenge. It's completely risk free, you can try our service out for 30 days, we won't charge you, we won't collect any credit card information and we certainly won't have any kind of long term commitments. And it just allows for us to really show the difference and show the amount of engagement that we can have, that you're missing out on your website visitors and really prove to you how much more money and how much of a better user experience that we can deliver for your place of business.

Marisa Huston  20:22  
Marc, I'm so glad you pointed that out. Because I think the one key element there is people are not aware. They just don't know how many visitors are coming to their site. They don't know how many people are dropping off and how many missed opportunities. And there's just even things that go beyond that. A ripple effect of maybe you could have gotten an extra referral and you lost that opportunity simply because you don't know what is happening. Taking a 30 day challenge is a great action item that they can do because then they can have the numbers in front of them. They'll know how many people came in, what kind of engagement took place, whether or not there any conversions, comparing a before and after so that you can get more facts and realize whether or not this is a good fit for you.

Marc Cherabie  21:48  
That's exactly right. Perfect way to do it. It's really just the before and after, and having the peace of mind that you're exhausting all of your options to really maximize all the business that you're getting. But you're doing it in the proper fashion as well.

Marisa Huston  21:59  
Thank you so much for sharing this. Because it's so important that people understand and that's why I have these conversations. Most of our listeners are business people, and they want to be successful in their businesses. They can get an edge up and do something that will help them convert so that they can help their customers. And so if you're missing out on those opportunities, you're essentially dropping the ball on helping people with the services that you offer. And so chat is a great way to make that happen. Marc, thank you so much for your time. 

Marc Cherabie  22:30  
Thank you Marisa for having me. I really enjoyed it. I appreciate it. 

Marisa Huston  22:32  
That's a wrap for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Marc Cherabie for joining us on the show. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speakpipe.com/lbovm, or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show, please visit www.liveblissedout com to reach out, subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!