Do you offer a live chat feature on your business website?
If you answered no, you’re leaving money on the table. Over 50 percent of online customers now prefer live chat. Only about 16 percent prefer email or social media.
Clearly, we’re living in the age of instant everything. If you’re looking to offer a chat service or you already do, it’s essential to ensure you’re offering the best chat experience. A customer (potential or existing) isn’t going to stick around if your chat service is terrible.
In this article, we’re telling you how you can improve your customer service chat.
Ensure the Live Chat Feature Is Quickly Accessible
Have you ever visited a website and looked for the live chat tool only to spend forever trying to locate it? Or perhaps you didn’t find it at all.
That was a bad experience, right?
As a business owner, you don’t want to make such a mistake. The live chat tool should be easily and quickly accessible.
Don’t just assume that placing it in the bottom right corner of your website automatically makes it quickly accessible. If its design doesn’t stand out from the overall design of the website, it’s likely that the user might have a difficult time locating it.
You have probably visited a website where the live chat feature sprung up from nowhere, covering the entire page. Is this a good thing?
While you want your live chat tool to be quickly accessible, this doesn’t mean you let it get in the way of the user’s browsing experience. You might want to deactivate those automatic pop-ups.
Quick Response Times
While live chat means texting with someone in real-time, there’s the initial wait time that the user has to endure. What’s your business’s average wait time?
The average wait time is about 119 seconds, but this doesn’t mean your business shouldn’t offer shorter wait times. If you want to improve the live chat experience for the customer, you should be responding to customers in 10 seconds or less.
There are a couple of measures you can take to shorten wait times. First, ensure the server system or service powering your website and the live chat feature is fast and reliable. If the server is offline, the live chat feature won’t be useful.
Second, hire a full-time rep to man customer service on live chat. If you’re receiving a high volume of live chat requests, hire more representatives or agents.
Personalize the Live Chat Tool
Live chat personalization is all about the design of the tool. Do the colors match with that of your brand?
What about the avatar? Is it a generic image or something unique and consistent with your brand? You can use this avatar creator to make a custom avatar or use the rep’s image.
A Great Chat Experience Is Key to Increased Customer Satisfaction
The modern customer no longer wants to call in or send an email. They want to live chat on your website. Use these tips to ensure your business offers a great chat experience.
Are you looking for more business tips and advice? Keep reading our blog.
