20 Tips for Providing a Better Live Chat Support to Your Customers

Customer satisfaction is the key to customer retention and business sustainability. 83% of customers become loyalists when a brand prioritizes and resolves their queries. Yet, a lot of businesses are not able to deliver effective and timely customer service. Why? It is hard to set an SOP, train personnel, and deal with multiple complex customer issues.

An efficient solution that came up recently was live chat support. Live chat customer service is a real-time customer conversation that addresses their pain points and blockers. It is an online tool that enables customer interaction, recording transcripts, and sharing resources. In a nutshell, it fills all the gaps in the prevailing customer support system.

Need for a Live Chat Support System
Benefits of Live Chat Support
1. Aim for Quick Responses
2. Benefits of Live Chat Support
3. Follow Up
4. Apt Opening
5. Use Canned Responses
6. Use Web Analytics
7. Limited Hours
8. Stick to a Defined Purpose
9. Concise Solutions
10. Transition Through Channels
11. Consistent Brand Voice
12. Inclusivity (Multilingual Support)
13. Automate
14. Proper Training
15. Strategic Positioning
16. Offer Resources
17. Chat Archive
18. Provide Detailed Solution
19. Pre & Post Chat Survey
20. Limit to Certain Pages

Need for a Live Chat Support System

Live chat support can strengthen customer relations which strengthens your business goals. Customer satisfaction is a non-negotiable aspect of a business and lives chat services take businesses a step closer to that. However, there are some problems that businesses face with live chat systems such as:

1. Lack of personalization,
2. Lack of trained people,
3. Missing SOPs, and
4. Prolonged hours to resolve a complex query.

Below are some strategies that enable you to leverage live chat support to its full potential. But before that let us have a look at its benefits.

Benefits of Live Chat Support

Live chat service benefits are not confined to customer service. Not only is it crucial for customer service teams, but also the marketing and sales teams can leverage this tool. Here are 5 advantages that live chat support offers that could potentially boost your business growth by 4-8% in the market.

Insights Into Customer Pain Point

Real-time conversations with customers not only resolve their problem but also equips you with their pain points. If you receive recurring feedback or query in your inbox, you might need to look for an effective solution that handles it permanently.

For instance, you might get a lot of DMs regarding the refund policy from your shipment cart page. Then, adding more details in the same regard on the individual product pages would increase customer satisfaction. 80% of customer service teams depend upon insights and customer satisfaction reviews to improve themselves.

Build Trust and Rapport With Customers

Live chat support indicates that you prioritize customers and their needs. Every resolved query builds trust with the customers. Especially with live chat service, the conversation seems more genuine and natural. It is comparable to telephonic conversations that connect the agent with the customer and boost credibility.

Enhanced Conversion and Retention

Live chat support is timely and has a natural flow of conversation. As a result, customers trust the brand which boosts conversions and customer retention. In fact, 93% of satisfied customers go for repeated purchases from a brand.

Also, since the live chat service solves customer queries almost instantly, it leads to better conversions and reduces abandonment cart rates. The conversion goes up to 2.8x after an interaction on a live chat session.

Get Competitive Advantage

Having a robust live chat support system is a competitive advantage. How? 65% of customers switch to an alternative if the brand does not prioritize customer service. Moreover, 80% of users move to a competitor after one bad customer service experience.

Live chat service fills in the gaps of the traditional customer support system such as delays in responses and lack of effectiveness. Hence, it can give you an edge over other players in the market.

Make More Money!

Customer satisfaction means better conversion, customer retention, and competitive advantage. Eventually, real-time conversations can give incremental growth for business revenue by 15%.

68% of customers are willing to spend more on brands that offer good customer service. It comes from the fact that customers trust these brands which helps them scale in a way of word-of-mouth and repetitive purchases.

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Tips for Providing Live Chat Support

64% of customers prefer a real-time communication mode while shopping. A business that employs it efficiently can improve its NSP (Net promoter score). However, there can be several gaps while deploying this system. So, here are 20 strategies that can bring better results and cover all the loopholes.

1. Aim for Quick Responses

90% of customers want a quick response from the brand. But how much quick? 10 secs? 1 min? 5 min? 60% of customers mark quick as 10 min of wait time. Timely responses are crucial for customer support.

They are the real deal-breaker. With live chat support, accepting a chat request and finally resolving a query takes time, especially if there is a lot of traffic at the chat support. However, the agents should try and juggle a few customers at a time to reduce the waiting time.

2. Benefits of Live Chat Support

An agent can not possibly have answers to all the queries. A crucial role in timely reply is transferring the chat to the right department. The right agent would be more prompt with the replies.

Also, it enhances the relevancy of the solution offered. Hence, all the departments should cooperate to achieve customer satisfaction. After, a good customer service team also needs to collaborate with the marketing, sales, and product team to ensure 100% customer satisfaction.

3. Follow Up

Oftentimes, an agent does not have an answer. Even after transferring, the solution is still ambiguous. How to handle such a situation? Firstly, let the customer know that the solution is on the way. It might take some time. Secondly, thank them for being patient, waiting, and sharing the query.

Lastly, switch to another mode: Email, or messaging to share the resolution when available. In this case, following up is critical with the solution. It shows brand commitment and enhances brand rapport.

4. Apt Opening

Opening the conversation in an apt way influences the end result. A robotic or automated message drives away the customer. Your opening/ greeting should be natural and personalized. But how do you personalize? By tracking the user's web history. Apart from that, the trigger replies should also be more human-like. Something like:

“Hey, I saw you checking our enterprise products. Can I guide you in your journey?”

“Hey, You visited our blog section. Is there some specific topic you wish to know about?”

5. Use Canned Responses

Canned responses are crucial to save time and handle multiple customer chats simultaneously. They are templatized responses that help the agent answer FAQs promptly. However, instead of trigger-based canned responses, offer selective canned responses. In this case, the agent can select the response to send depending upon the customer’s query. It is relevant and quick.

6. Use Web Analytics

Web analytics can help you provide a relevant, personalized solution to the customer. It consists of the recent pages that the user visited on the site and helps the agent map the customer journey. As a result, the agent gets a brief history of the customer and enhances the solution offered. The agent can give a better response that fixes the query, removing unnecessary friction.

7. Limited Hours

Even though, chatbots are great at providing 24/7 customer support; live chats are better as the experience is genuine and human-like. Also, the responses are more effective. 43% of users prefer live chat support for customer services against 32% for telephonic conversation and 23% for emails.

But, you can not hire agents that work 24/7. Hence, having limited hours for live chat support that are clearly stated on the website, increases the efficiency of live chat support. It might lead to immense traffic at specific hours but your team should prepare accordingly to handle the number of customer queries.

8. Stick to a Defined Purpose

The agent should set clear expectations and a specific purpose for each chat conversation. Otherwise, it might lead to prolonged unproductive chats with a customer. You want to save agents time and resolve customer queries. Setting boundaries and understanding customer pain point makes it easier to provide solutions promptly without deviating from the core issue.

9. Concise Solutions

The solution provided should not be open-ended. You do not want your customer to roam on your website for another hour and then move to a competitor's website in search of the right solution. You should solve the query with a specific direct response that gives the user clarity.

The user should know their exact next steps and not be left ambiguous. Also, if the solution is lengthy, break it down into smaller sections that are easy to comprehend and follow.

10. Transition Through Channels

Oftentimes, the agent has to switch between the channels. The right agent knows when exactly the transition happens. Transition at the right time reduces friction, solves purpose, and enhances customer satisfaction.

For instance, if the agent does not have an answer for the query. They can simply request the user to submit the email or shift to some other channel where they can connect later.

11. Consistent Brand Voice

Be it content or customer support, having a consistent brand voice helps establish brand image and enhances brand recognition. It improves relations with the customer by distinguishing the messaging.

Also, it separates you from your competitors and optimizes your brand impression. For instance, Zomato is always seen as a brand with puns and a comical brand voice. So, sticking to a brand voice can critically impact brand reputation.

12. Inclusivity (Multilingual Support)

Inclusivity is prioritized by many brands in their product line and message. With live chat support, multilingual support is the most significant aspect of being inclusive as a customer support team. Also, understanding customer pain points and their needs is crucial. Moreover, If you are a global brand, it is critical to opt for multilingual service that improves customer relations.

13. Automate

As mentioned above, your agents can not work 24/7. Hence, taking helping hands from AI and automating processes can extend customer support hours. Also, AI enables prompt replies, saves money, and gathers more information about the user.

However, you can not totally rely on these as they would eliminate the human touch. After all, 69% of customers prefer real-time communication over chatbots. It covers up for out-of-office hours of agents and keeps customer service active at all times.

14. Proper Training

Agents play an important role in live chat support services. They are the front face and interact with the customers. Hence, giving them proper training to initiate conversation, continue the interaction, solve queries, switch channels, and close the right way gives them an edge.

Also, having agents with cross-departmental knowledge promotes self-reliance which enhances response time. You could hire personnel to give training or have short training sessions to equip agents with the right knowledge and skill set.

15. Strategic Positioning

Placing the icon for a live chat in the right place is also important. You do not want it to bury in some corner where is it not even visible. It should not be on your face that covers the entire webpage.

Place your live chat icon in the corner of the page which is visible throughout the scrolling window, which means it should not be restricted to the end of the page. Also, the working hours should be clearly stated along the icon or after the chat window pops up.

16. Offer Resources

Often the solution is not restricted to a few steps or a small conversation. In such cases, the agent needs to share relevant resources that clear user queries. Also, resources are a great way to end the conversation as the user leaves with additional information.

Another situation is when your agents face a recurring query. In such cases, you can create a dedicated resource that addresses customer pain points which can be shared as and when needed.

17. Chat Archive

Live chat support comes with an option to save the transcript and record it all into your CRM. But how does it even help? It helps in recording customer query history and helps to follow up for future conversations. Also, you can share a chat transcript with the customer if the solution was more broad and intricate. It acts as a resource itself.

18. Provide Detailed Solution

Even though it is recommended to keep conversations in a live chat concise, the agents should aim to provide a detailed solution. They should not miss any aspect which might increase friction. You should provide a comprehensive solution either in smaller chunks or via a shared resource that gives the customer clarity and satisfaction.

19. Pre & Post Chat Survey

Pre and post-chat surveys save agents time and help in measuring NPS. The pre-chat survey includes basic details about the customer and their problem. This helps in finding the right agent beforehand and reduces friction to switch between different personnel. The post-chat survey is more of a feedback form that enables you to analyze gaps and improve customer support service.

20. Limit to Certain Pages

It is advisable to place the live chat button on specific high-traffic pages to save time and effort. This directs the effort in the right direction to offer maximum value. Live chat support is a high-value customer support system that should be leveraged appropriately.

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Conclusion

73% of customers are satisfied after a live chat support session as compared to 61% for emails and 44% for phones. Live chat is appreciated and chosen by the customer. The companies need to embrace the technology and use it efficiently to bridge the gap between customer satisfaction.

These were 20 tips that increase the efficiency of your live chat support system. There are only four key aspects of successful live chat support: relevance, empathy, conciseness, and personalization. If you achieve these four goals, you will probably ace the customer service tool: live chat.

FAQs

Why is live chat important for customer service?

Live chat is essential for customer service as it helps in many aspects that can build the trust and relation between the customers and the firm. It creates a good rapport between customers and the firm and provides immediate solutions to customers' queries and many other similar things.

Does live chat increase conversion?

Yes, customers can easily get an immediate reply to their query. This immediate response can create a good impression on them and can get more chance of increased conversion.

What is customer support live chat?

Customer support live chat is the facility given by different firms to their customers to have immediate access to the answers to their queries by the means of the official website.