Companies Turn To Click-To-Chat To Reduce Operating Expense And Enhance Customer Service

Before adding Chat Call Center’s arsenal, it’s important to recognize some of the most common errors businesses make with this technology:

Hiring the wrong agents: Chat agents and voice agents have distinct personalities and skill sets, and they shouldn’t be expected to perform each other’s jobs. Proper recruitment, training and supervision are critical. Voice agents prefer social interaction and enjoy talking on the phone; chat agents are the opposite, preferring written communication.

Leaving customers waiting too long for a response: Like a frustrated radio listener who switches to another station when there is “dead air,” an online customer will often terminate a Chat session when too much time elapses between questions and answers. Well-designed Chat solutions are staffed with trained agents and employ automatic system interventions that shorten customer wait time and reduce abandonment of the Chat session. For example, an agent can “push” to the customer pre-programmed Chat snippets such as: “Your customer service agent is researching your question and will be right back with your answer. Thanks for your patience.”

Making Chat icons difficult to locate: Strategic placement of the Click-to-Chat button on a company’s website can turn shoppers into buyers, enable faster resolution of customer service issues, and strengthen brand loyalty. Chat entry points placed on logical pages, such as those containing billing or statement information, often lead to faster resolution of questions and more satisfied customers. Conversely, hunting for a Chat icon leads to a poor customer service outcome.

Overusing Chat solutions: Web pages containing links to frequently asked questions can prompt customers to locate information without using either a Chat or voice agent. Companies often overlook opportunities to place informational links in multiple locations on their website for customers to self-educate and self-serve, thereby diverting a Chat or inbound call. Or they miss opportunities in a Chat session to gently instruct customers on how to locate information or serve themselves in the future. Both of these tactics reduce operating costs.

Submitted by Connextions

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