Live chat is impressive. It gives brands the opportunity to hold real-time conversations with their customers with the added ability to get more information, share links, and even save the entire transcript for future reference. Presently, it’s among the best online service tools available for a customer who needs assistance immediately.
While starting a live chat support system is pretty simple, ensuring that it becomes an efficient part of your customer service as a whole takes a lot of effort and planning. In this post, you’ll learn all the basics of live chat as a part of your customer service support strategy:
What Is Live Chat Support?
Live chat support provides customers with the opportunity to communicate with a brand via text-based conversations with live support teams. With the use of live chat software on the company’s website, anyone can send queries to either an AI bot or a person who can respond to them immediately.
The reason we call this chat support “live” is because the conversation is real-time. In comparison to email support, where customers cannot expect an immediate response, live chat support agents are expected to provide prompt answers. There are also hybrid messaging options that use both synchronous and asynchronous convos from the same chat tool.
Live chat is not just for customer support. It may also be used for sales.
What Are the Benefits of Live Chat Support?
You may be wondering if live chat support is indeed necessary for your business. Let us tell you how – it is. It’s because customers absolutely love it. In fact, most customers prefer live chat support over other channels like email or phone. To help you understand this better, here are some of the benefits of live chat support as a channel:
It Is Highly Accessible
Live chat software can be accessed no matter what page on your website the customer is on. The live chat button is available on all pages, which means the customer doesn’t have to go through the trouble of searching for the contact page or the email address where they can reach the company. This may seem like a little thing, but it’s not. Most people would instead go somewhere else than have to spend minutes looking for contact information.
It Offers Useful Context
With live chat support, you can provide customers with a better way to explain their current situation and the reason they need help. Most live chat support software provides agents information about where the customer is in the process or what they were doing on the page before sending a message. This equips the agent better because they already have an idea of how they can help the customer from the get-go.
It Offers Timely Solutions
Be in the customer’s shoes. Wouldn’t it be better if the brand representative gets back to you in seconds or minutes instead of hours or days? This is especially important if you’re trying to solve an issue or are in a rush to make a purchase. That timeliness that live chat support can offer can be the difference between getting a sale and losing one.
Questions to Ask Before Starting Live Chat Support for Your Customers
Now that you know the benefits of live chat support, you’re probably excited to get things started, but before you do, ask yourself these questions first:
Who will you provide the live chat support to?
You don’t have to make chat an option for all customers. Some brands offer them to onboard customers only or those on their VIP list.
Where is live support going to be most valuable?
Are there parts in your sales funnel or app where you think a real-time conversation would help people either keep their momentum or move forward? You could choose to start by providing live chat support right at those points, at least at the beginning.
How are you going to manage all your support channels?
You need to consider the time and the talent you are working with presently. Do you know how many hours you can offer live chat support? Where are you going to get the people to handle it? You can turn to companies that provide live chat outsourcing in the Philippines, which might be a good idea for you if you think you are going to need a big team. This is an excellent option because most of these companies handle the training, and their agents are already equipped with the skills you’d want from live chat support agents.
How will live chat work with the existing CRM or help desk?
You can offer better service to your customers if you know them better and their history with your brand. You can select a live chat support tool that will help connect every chat support convo with information that you already know about your customer. This way, you won’t lose any helpful context.
What resources and training will you need?
Should you decide to have an in-house live chat support team, you need to make sure that they are going to do a great job. Not only will you have to check their backgrounds but also provide them with all the training they need to provide excellent service to your customers. Remember that they’re going to represent your brand.
Best Practices for Live Chat Support
If you are going to be responsible for the setup and management of your live chat support channel, here are some things that can make it a positive experience from the start:
Keep the Incoming Volume of Chats Manageable
Your customers are always looking for timely solutions. If your team finds it hard to keep up with the chats, customer experience will be affected. Always keep an eye on the volume of conversations you’re getting as well as the response time. If you find that there’s a bit of a struggle, you need to take action at once.
Do Not Overload the Agents
To be able to provide quality support, your agents should be given three to four maximum concurrent chats. If you push that they handle over five, the quality of their service might dwindle, and you’re going to be affected in the long run. Of course, this depends on the kind of questions they need to answer. If they’re pretty simple, then you can adjust the number of chats they can do at once.
Conclusion
You can genuinely improve the level of customer service support you offer with live chat. However, you need to remember that this could mean extra responsibility for you if you’re planning to create an in-house team for it. Of course, you have the option to outsource things.
CrewBloom can provide you with top-tier live chat agents at affordable rates. You can easily improve the customer service support you provide without having to go through the tedious process of screening applicants and training new talent. Get agents who are ready to do what you need to be done at once. Contact us to know more!
