It’s time to implement live chat for your business
Live chat has finally come of age.
A retailer recently asked whether they should consider live chat as a way of securing sales. My immediate reaction was to ask why they hadn’t already implemented chat or at least piloted.
For today’s businesses live chat is a great way to engage with customers. Whether its to close a sale or offer aftersales support it’s an effective way to drive revenue and keep customers. Chat also offers a more cost effective solution when it comes to customer support. The average agent can handle up to 5 chats at the same time. That’s impossible over the phone and oddly difficult using email.
There’s a growing body of evidence that shows customers prefer chat to the hassle of calling. Up to 45% of consumers in the US and the UK admitted in a recent survey to being more likely to make a purchase following a positive live chat experience.
So where should my business install live chat?
It depends on the type of business but let’s take a retailer as an example. There are many use case scenarios to think of. The first is sales. Imagine a customer re-visiting the same product page over and over again but failing to buy. You could set thresholds that once breached trigger an automatic live chat. You could then encourage the customer to ask more questions. It’s an opportunity for the business to give more product information and hopefully seal the deal.
Some brands are even offering video chat as part of their sales offer. Retailers such as footwear store Schuh in the UK are leaders in this space.
For support consider launching chat when customers are busy hovering over an FAQ page or are searching multiple support pages. It’s a great way to help customers who might be stuck for answers. Again you can set certain business rules in place to optimise the usage of chat.
But how do I ensure we aren’t overwhelmed?
The great thing about chat is how dynamic it is.
It doesn’t need to be live or active all the time. You can switch it on or off. You can dial it up or dial it down. Chat is the best optimised service channel. If you find your phone lines are struggling it’s a great time to activate chat. If you find customers aren’t struggling with support it might be time to dial down your chat support offering.
Do I have the right skill set amongst my team?
Yes you probably do. Your typical agents will also be great for handling chat. You may need to retrain some to help with the written communication required for chat. Young people are great as live chat agents given their adoption of the technology in their own lives.
How do I measure live chat performance?
The primary measure needs to be a customer metric. Satisfaction will help you determine how well chat is performing from the customer’s perspective. An example benchmark is around 85% for those who’ve engaged in a live chat interaction.
Consider chat duration but avoid managing the metric like average call handling time. AHT isn’t culturally a great metric and tends to drive negative behaviours among agents. Try and measure chat duration but only for training purposes. Some benchmarks show that chats can last up to 15 minutes especially for sales and complex support chats.
Think about measuring waiting time. Once a chat is requested or initiated customers expect engagement and answers rapidly. By measuring wait time you can optimise resourcing and triggers effectively. This is important during busy periods such as Christmas if you’re a retailer or summer if an airline.
It’s important to track the number of chats per month together with the number broken down by agent. Again this will help with training but also for business case development. One of the benefits of chat is that agents can handle many chats simultaneously. There may come a time when management wants to cut back on chat. The data you’ll have will show how it outperforms email and phone on a time and cost basis. Trust me, that time will come and you’ll be grateful for the data to help make your case.
But do customers expect it?
Yes they do. More and more customers will start to comment on those businesses that lack this type of support. Few customers want to navigate an IVR and many have experienced successful chat elsewhere. If you have long call waiting times and don’t offer chat you should expect satisfaction to dip.
There’s lots to consider with chat but hopefully this has given you a good start on thinking.
To learn more about how live chat can revolutionise your business for the better get in touch with us at www.strategyactivist.com
