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If you’re already using live chat to satisfy customer expectations, then you’re already ahead of many of your competitors. But with so many companies now embracing live chat features on their sites, making sure your service exceeds your competitors should be top of mind.
Beyond being a go-to channel for your customers, live chat can also impact your bottom line. For example, adding live chat to your website can spike your conversions by 12% and boost your revenue by 48% per chat hour.
From using canned responses for quick response times to making sure questions are routed to the right team members, there are several ways you can delight visitors with your live chat experience. Read on for eight of our top live chat tips to optimize your offering.
1. Make Your Chat Widget Easy to Find
How will your customers chat with you if they don’t know you’re there? Making your site’s chat widget prominent and easily clickable is the first step in letting customers know you’re available to help them.
State the hours when your chat is available for easy reference. If you’re not using an after-hours chatbot, consider hiding the widget when you’re offline to avoid creating customer confusion and frustration.
2. Respond Quickly
Customers hate to wait -- don’t you? According to a Statista study, a customer's average time to wait for a chat is 113 seconds -- just under two minutes.
Once you’re engaged with your customers, keep the ball rolling. Predefined or “canned” live chat responses, which you can set up ahead of time, can instantly provide customers with answers to some of your most frequently asked questions.
These responses can be pre-written and delivered with a single click by your customer support team. Predefined responses cut down on wait times for your customers and reduce the workload for busy service reps.
3. Supplement Your Live Chats With Chatbots
Unless your business is open 24/7, there will be times when your team isn’t available to field questions or solve problems. Chatbots to the rescue!
Chatbots are perfect for handling routine questions and can supplement live chat, freeing agents to deal with more complicated issues. In addition, chatbots reduce support tickets while increasing customer satisfaction and engagement.
Unnecessary chats add extra work for your team. List relevant topics on your chat widget’s welcome page that establish which subjects warrant a chat conversation. Use chatbots or direct customers to FAQ pages or other helpful resources for all other issues.
Read Chatbot vs. Live Chat: Which is Right For You?
4. Solve Problems Faster by Using Customer Data
There’s nothing more annoying than being transferred from agent to agent while you wait for your issue to be handled. Being re-connected repeatedly is one of the things that irritate people the most when dealing with customer support problems. In fact, 54% of people would take a day spent in wet socks over having to repeat themselves.
Ensure your reps have the customer data they need as soon as they start a chat. When you use a customer service solution like Mobile Service Cloud, all relevant information is displayed next to the conversation for your reps to review.
This data includes all previous conversations from any channel, the customer’s purchase history, and information on any previously visited pages. In essence, Mobile Service Cloud offers your team a complete customer profile that can guide conversations and boost customer satisfaction rates.
5. Send Customers To the Right Agents With Skills-Based Routing
Take the pressure off your customer service agents with skills-based routing. You can use skills-based routing to ensure that agents are matched to customer conversations based on their talents, expertise, and availability.
With advanced skills-based routing, you can also match customers to agents based on language, brand, store, or channel.
With skills-based routing, people are automatically connected to the agent that can best help them, offering the best customer experience possible.
6. Keep it Conversational (and Professional)
Be a human, not a robot. While chatbots can be helpful in gathering information and answering simple questions, once you’ve gone live, make sure the person on the other end knows it.
Live chat agents should be eager to help, offering assistance and expressing empathy to customers experiencing product or service challenges. However, while reps should strive to be cordial, they must also strike a balance between being professional and overly friendly.
7. Make Live Chats Personal
Sometimes it’s the simple things that are the most impactful. For example, call people by their name, and use it throughout your chat session. Going beyond pleasantries and striving to make your customers feel seen and understood builds customer relationships and adds value to your brand.
8. Ask For Feedback
How do you know how your company is doing if you don’t get customer feedback? Customers know what they want and would be happy to tell you if you only asked.
Getting feedback is one of the most effective ways to improve your products and services, predict future opportunities, and respond to problems before they happen.
If you conduct a post-chat survey, remember the following:
Keep surveys short - five questions at most
Ask multiple-choice questions for ease and speed
Consider closing with an open-ended question in a text box so customers can respond in their own words
Upgrade Your Customer Service Chat With Mobile Service Cloud
Live chat is becoming increasingly popular with customers and prospects looking for answers and solutions. Live chat is a convenient solution for many people and businesses, from fast response times to eliminating talking to someone over the phone.
But with more companies discovering the value of live chat in terms of customer satisfaction and conversion rates, you can stay a cut above by implementing these tips for an enjoyable, seamless customer service experience.
Ready to level up your live chat offering?
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