Live Chat Introduction
Chat is a great way to offer instant 1 to 1 engagement with your customers who need help fast, and can not only be used for customer support, but also to proactively drive new sales! Customers needing help on check-out page before purchasing, or confirming if a style is in stock can be responded to quickly, driving great outcomes for customer and your business alike.
A standard chat badge feature which will put a customer in touch with a chat agent immediately can be deployed easily on any website, a better choice might be deploying a widget. A widget can give your business the capability to deliver an experience of your choice giving the best outcome for the customer needs.
For example, a question such as "what time is your store open until" may be best answered using a suggested article, while a question about an in-stock item may be best answered using an AI powered BOTs. More complex or specific questions may be best answered using a chat agent or via a live video.
Considerations on selecting a good human chat agent
Chat agents need to have special powers! They need to be able to provide answers fast, so a accurate and fast typing speed is desirable. A chat agent will also need access to a good selection of chat shortcuts to cover all the standard responses at speed. From a response style perspective, Chat agents tend to need less formality with their responses, offering a good personalised experience.
Remember that chat can sometimes be stressful for agents, as customers demand speedy responses. Make sure you provide them with lots of support and breaks so they can continue to smash out great responses when they are online. If your chat agent(s) doesn't have capacity to quickly respond, your customers are going to be frustrated.
How a Web Widget works
The Web Widget offers a number of great features to support your customer service strategies. If you are utilising self-service help articles, a Web Widget embeds these articles and can suggest solutions even before they get to chat.
On top of that, an AI Bot offers a nice relaxed customer engagement options, actively searching and helping for answers, while always allowing the customer to talk to a human if it isn't working for them. Here is an example of how it looks...
As you can see, a Bot can ask politely how it can help and then based on your question, searches articles for answers. Those articles offered as solutions can be clicked into with everything displayed in the modal. What this means is that customers can find answers to their questions whilst still looking at your product pages - exactly where you want them.
If the article offered doesn't answer the customer question, the customer can then select "No, I need help" (see screenshot below)...
The customer can then be offered to chat with Customer Service or Leave a Message. It is worth noting that if there are no chat agents online or it is after business hours, a Web Widget shouldn't offer chat at this juncture. That's quite a nice capability!
From an agent perspective, both chats and messages will come in as a ticket and the agent can respond accordingly. The agent workspace can provide a very engaging and informative environment to the agent without having to click into side-bars and other functionality. The customer profile is displayed on the right hand side, with all their interactions from your website! The agent has great context with a 360 degree view in order to answer the customer enquiry quickly and effectively!
So go on! Treat your customers with chat and drive your business to greater successes!