Best Practices to Improve Your Live Chat Service & Customer Satisfaction
In today's online business environment, more and more companies come up with new ways to provide the best customer support, and with the best tools to do it.
Now that we have seen how beneficial a live chat service can be for your online business, we want to give you more value by explaining the best practices that make your live chat support more effective and improve your customer satisfaction rates.
As with any support channel, there are effective ways and less efficient ways to provide live chat to your customers.
Knowledge Base
In today's connected world, people expect accurate information from your online business. A knowledge base is a self-help resource for your clients: a collection of articles and tips that explain your products, services and any other topic they may ask about. If you do not have one yet, it is worth investing the time to build it, because it helps your customers a lot.
If you already have one, remember to keep it up to date. Your knowledge base, like your live chat tools, should always reflect the current state of your business: policies, procedures, prices and so on. Outdated information confuses customers and creates more support requests, while an up-to-date knowledge base helps your business improve and saves you time and money.
Take Advantage of Your Chat Settings
You might think that the more customers you get, the more agents you need. That is not entirely true. There are methods you can use to greatly increase the productivity of your current team. As the saying goes, "work smarter, not harder", and there is a lot of truth in it. A live chat system offers many tools that make your agents' work easier.
1. Canned Responses
Canned responses, or shortcuts, are your biggest time savers. Most online businesses get the same questions and issues again and again, such as price queries, shipping details or the type of plans. Track down those common questions and create canned responses for them: your agents answer faster and save time on every chat.
Want to know how to create a canned response? See our shortcuts guide.
2. Use Media
Social media has changed the way we share information with friends and family, and with it the way we communicate with businesses. We are used to sharing pictures, links and videos every day, so using media such as images, links and videos can be a great help when you need to explain something to your customers.
3. Track Information
Every chat tells you something about your customers. Review your chat history and statistics regularly, tag chats with labels by topic, and look at your chat ratings. You will quickly see which questions come up most often, where your customers get stuck and which answers work best, and you can use that information to improve your website, your canned responses and your knowledge base.
4. Pre-Chat Survey
When people contact a support service, they often start with a long description of their problem. A short pre-chat survey with a few key questions (for example name, email and department) lets you route each customer to the right person and know what the problem is before the customer starts typing. This way your agents are better prepared from the start.
5. Optimize Your Chat
Consider where, when and for which visitors your chat will be available. This matters, because it affects your customers' experience on your website, so think it through before you set any rules.
You can also go proactive and show automatic messages (triggers) on your visitors' screens, asking if they need any help. However, be discreet: avoid the mistake of overwhelming a visitor with messages, which can make them leave with no interest in your service.
6. Chat Appearance
There is not much to say about what your chat window should look like, but it is worth understanding the type of business you are in. Study your niche before you choose a chat theme, and make sure your chat window fits with what your website represents. Sometimes simple is enough, so if your business is a sensitive one, keep your chat window understated.
You can change the colors, texts and position of your chat widget in your dashboard, under Settings > Widget > Widget settings.
Active Writing
From active listening to active writing: let's be honest, people love customer support that is caring and trustworthy. Make sure your agents take ownership of a customer's issue and use phrases such as "I will do this for you" or "Don't worry, I can...", so customers feel that someone is personally working to resolve their issue.
Routine is something every agent faces, whether your business changes constantly or not. A dull workflow leads to passive messages, which often make customers think that their issue is not important.
So the goal is to show customers empathy and make them feel that they are being helped by people, not robots. The more active your live chat agents are, the more cared for your customers feel.
Also consider your niche. If, for instance, your website belongs to a real estate business, you will want a formal tone and messages that show respect for your customers.
That's it for now. We hope you enjoyed this article and find these practices useful.
Put them into practice and they will improve your workflow and your agents' performance, and your customers will be happier with the support they get.
And finally, make sure your agents use a live chat service that supports all of the above. Start your free trial with onWebChat today!
