Web chat or live chat is becoming an increasingly popular communication channel, especially amongst the younger generations. The up and coming platform is very favourable by many people because of the ease of use for end users, web chat isn’t just convenient for customers though, it is very simple to use for agents also.
As a customer service channel it is a perfect way to get all of the information that you need quickly and simply, and it is ideal for those that don’t like talking over the phone. If you haven’t got a web chat service on your website yet why not? Here are our top tips for using web chat within your contact centre.
Engaging Interactions
You need to make sure that you keep customers focussed on your interactions, leave a long enough silence in between messages and they might just leave you hanging. If you don’t keep a customer’s attention on your conversation it is possible that they’ll move on to doing something else, like making a cup of tea, and completely forget about the chat window that they have open. Got a whole paragraph of information to send? Don’t send it all at once. Keep your messages to one or two lines only, short but frequent messages will allow the customer to see that you are continually working on their issue. No one wants to stare at an ‘agent is typing’ status for too long.
Make it Mobile
According to Similar Web, on average 55% of internet users are using their smartphone to browse the web. Without a mobile friendly web chat system your volume of interactions is going to be impacted because a whole 55% of your users won’t even have the option to engage with you on your live chat platform. As well as making your web chat available to mobile users you need to make sure it is optimised for the mobile experience, this means easy verification processes, short text responses and if you need to send any attachments at all you should keep them small.
Intelligent Routing & Prioritisation
From start to finish everything about the web chat process and journey should be configured to deliver the best experience to your customer and to boost the productivity of your contact centre agents. Making the live chat option more prominent on key pages such as a cart or checkout page will help to maximise the level of support to customers visiting those pages. Giving interactions from such key pages higher prioritisation compared to engagements on more general pages can help to reduce cart abandonments for example, by catching customers and offering them assistance just before they think about going elsewhere.
To ensure that your agents are delivering the best support possible through the web chat channel they shouldn’t be assigned more than 3 open chats at once. Juggling multiple conversations can lead to confusion between customers and can lend itself to increasing the length of silences between agents and customers.
Take a look at how C3 can help you to integrate your web chat into your customer service platform and streamline all of your communication channels with our multi-channel solution – Contact. Contact our team on 01223 427700 to find out more.