Quick tips to enhance the customer chat experience

Many clients have an expectation that companies offer a chat option for their customer service. But just having a chat option isn’t enough. There are some things to keep in mind to make the chat experience ideal for your customers.

One thing you definitely want to do as a company is ensure that the chat option is easy to access. Sometimes a chat option can be difficult to navigate on a website. To improve the experience for your customers and help your business make more sales, the chat window should be readily available.

That will allow you to address questions and concerns with more immediacy, keeping customers happy and potentially increasing sales. In fact, on certain pages (especially those pages where you sell products) you should have a chat option pop up so that it may prompt customers who are debating about a product to reach out and learn more.

Your agents should be readily available as well. This can be difficult if you don’t have a large enough service department. Thankfully, outsourcing can help you provide customer service 24/7. Customers don’t want to wait a long time to be assisted on a chat. In fact, they often select chat over a phone call because they want a fast turnaround. If an agent isn’t immediately available, allow the customer into the chat window, and then give them an estimated wait time. Try to keep these wait times as short as possible by having plenty of staffing and taking added steps to make the customer service reps’ job easier.

One of the steps you can take to make chats go quicker is to have some automated text that the reps can use, such as an agent’s standard greeting. The automated text could also include some common responses that the agent regularly uses. Incorporating automated messages into chat can help the agent work faster.

Another thing that can speed up the conversation is to allow reps to see the text as the customer is typing it. That lets the rep address the issue more quickly, even before the customer hits send. It’s also a good idea to have a directory with multiple links for helpful information that addresses common concerns and questions. This allows you to share that link with a customer when more information is needed, instead of having to type a “book” to the customer in chat. The customer will appreciate this and so will the agent.

Starting the chat with a survey can be helpful too. This allows the rep to gather a little information before the chat even starts, such as what the main reason for reaching out is, their name and email address. When the agent understands the issue at hand, they can address it more efficiently.

Another thing to keep in mind is adding a survey after the chat has ended. This allows businesses to know how well their customer service agents are doing and how satisfied the customers are. You can gain some helpful feedback on possible improvements that could be made.

These are just a few ways to ensure your customer chat function is successful. There are plenty of additional ways to continue to improve customer service offerings. If you’d like to learn more, please reach out to us. (877) 922-8877.