Providing an excellent customer experience (CX) is critical to running a successful business. 73% of consumers say that a positive experience influences where they shop, while 32% will stop interacting with a brand after a negative experience. This is not enough to pull in new customers - instead, you need to retain existing ones and build a great reputation.
Great customer service is not only the ability to solve a problem or answer a question in good time but to provide an intuitive, enjoyable, experience. Many companies still rely entirely on call centers or in-person services, but customers want more options. Technology has transformed social interaction, giving priority to online solutions.
One way to do this is to ensure that your enterprise communications solution features a live chat support system with email and social media management. It is an invaluable tool if used properly.
Live chat software is a two-way communication tool that allows businesses to not only answer customer queries but also receive invaluable consumer feedback to improve products and services. This is often confused with chatbots, as it fulfills the same role on a site. Although chatbots are an automated service, live chat involves a dedicated agent.
Here is a detailed description of what you should and should not do with live chat.
Do
Be Quick
Customers expect faster responses to live chat. Ideally, you have to respond to customers in under a minute - the average wait time is about 48 seconds. Customers tend to turn to live chat for its clarity when it comes to live chat, so slow response times can be a major source of irritation.
If you are experiencing delays, make sure you keep customers informed. Estimating response time can go some way towards helping desperation. An automated message that says you are third in the queue increases the likelihood that they will be in the chat rather than leave in frustration. It is also worth using a typing indicator. Instead of wondering if their question has been seen and whether they are getting an answer, they can see that a response is coming
Get Personal
80% of consumers are more likely to shop after a personal experience. It is not enough to be polite and useful - you need to go one step further. Providing a personalized approach should be one of your main customer engagement strategies. Live chat support is the right place to do this.
An easy way to ensure a personalized approach is a pre-chat 'function. In this section, customers can provide their email or account details, and choose whom their query relates to. You can also provide a location for an opening message.
This ensures that they are connected to the right department. It also means that the agent can observe previous interactions and react accordingly if necessary. This personalized approach helps build trust and provide exceptional customer service.
Local Support
It is important for the customer that the person dealing with their query speaks and writes in their native language. Many e-commerce business ideas require a global market, which means they have the potential to have customers in different countries. Both language and cultural context are important for providing excellent customer service through live chat. You cannot be an agent who speaks every language, but there are agents who speak the language for every country you operate.
Automated customer service here can help direct customers to the right agents based on their location data. This avoids the initial awkwardness of knowing in which language the customer speaks and then eliminates them. Instead, you can provide multilingual customer service from the beginning.
Suggested Read: Tips To Use Live Chat Software To Power Remote Customer Service
Combine ChatBot and Human Agents
Human interaction via live chat support software is great but automated responses are also valuable. Unlike people, they can work 24/7 - meaning customers can stay in contact outside of business hours. When asked about the benefits of chatbots, 64% of US consumers said that 24-hour service is a major benefit and 55% appreciated the immediate response.
As workplace digitalization grows in popularity, more and more businesses are investing in solutions such as chatbots. However, you need to be careful. While useful for answering pricing-related questions and frequently asked questions, they can often give inaccurate responses that can upset customers and potentially harm your brand. You can reduce this by giving the agent the option to proceed if needed. If your customer experience team is available, chatbots can automatically schedule call-backs.
Chatbots should be used to support your live chat team, rather than being used to them.
Don’t
Transfer Between Multiple Agents
Try to have one agent per query. As previously mentioned, a prior chat page can act as a virtual PBX for inbound calls. By using this pre-chat data to direct live chat, you can reduce the possibility of a lot of transfers.
Of course, some questions may be too complicated for your first-class support staff and may require an escalation to a supervisor or technical expert. In this case, it is important to be clear about passing the case and ensuring their response is timely. Due to customer inactivity, we automatically close all complaints about live chat support. If you plan to transfer between agents, you must ensure that this does not happen while waiting for a response.
Be Scripted
Do not rely too much on the chat script. Allow open-ended questions for sales and take detailed follow-up in technical support. There should be a flow of conversation. This is not to say that there should not be a script that allows agents to work, just that they can go too far.
Of course, agents moving away from the script must have a clear understanding of the expected tone. Spelling and grammar are important to present a professional image as well. It is not enough to take an agent familiar with telephone or email customer service to live chat without additional training. Encourage a set style of communication rather than strictly script phrases.
Make It a Sales Pitch
Live chat support service is there to help with problems or questions. Conversations should focus on customer needs, not sales pitches. Of course, there is always room for upheaval or cross-selling, but this needs to be done cautiously.
A good example of this might be this: You are discussing the purchase of a phone system with a customer and refer to your business call recording service, asking if they want to add it to their package.
Whereas a bad example might be this: They mess up about a product that is making them disappear, and you try to sell them an upgraded version of the product.
Agents should be able to tell when it is relevant to refer to additional products or services, and when it is best to resolve the original query.
Do Not Forget To Say When You Are Available
You need to decide if your live chat support will be for office hours only or provide 24-hour service. Whatever you decide, an agent should be readily available during those times (or replaced with a chatbot). Your website should make it clear when you are available. If you are using a chatbot, be clear about it too.
However, this is not enough to provide your availability. You also need to provide options. It can use video to improve the customer experience, with the option of scheduling a call-back or a comprehensive FAQ section.
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Getting Started With Live Chat
With this in mind, it is worth implementing live chat. Whenever a bad live chat experience can drive customers away from your brand, a good brand can drive loyalty and increase your reputation. If you do not have one, it is certainly not good to provide live chat.
Be sure to promote it - through social media, your website, and other channels. The live chat app should be easy to find. This may mean that every page has at least one pop-up, or you have a dedicated section on your 'Contact Us' page.
Finally, remember that one major benefit lies in live chat: easily accessible customer data. If you do not use it to improve your business, then you are missing out. You can compile the most common questions and improve your FAQ section or see what the tutorials need the most and create e-books to answer them. By using live chat support in this way, you cannot just improve the immediate customer experience, but the long-term one.
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