Live chat is rapidly becoming one of the most popular ways for consumers to contact a business.
But while there are so many options for things like chatbots, integrations with areas of the website and other whizzy tech – the reality is that most people who start a chat with your organisation just want to speak to a human.
With that in mind, we explore how to keep live chat simple to delight your customers.
Set your live chat strategy
By putting together goals and guidelines for your live chat you can ensure that not only will it benefit your customers, but it will also help to improve your business.
What is the purpose of having live chat on your website? Is it to deal with customer service enquiries? To aid your sales team? To take some burden from other people within the business?
Most companies consider live chat for several reasons. Potential cost savings, enhanced customer satisfaction and improving the customer journey for sales. Consider what hard numbers you want to put against your reasons so that you know what success looks like.
Understand the most commonly asked questions
It’s likely the same questions will be asked time and again on live chat. So put together a list of your most received enquiries and then think about how you would like your chat to answer them.
This is a great opportunity to exceed the expectations of your customers, and even upsell. For example, if you are often asked “what are the opening hours of your restaurant, your team could provide the answer and then offer to book the client a table.
Empower your chat resource
When your customers come to live chat, they want their issue to be solved as quickly and painlessly as possible. By empowering your chat to resolve common customer problems without the need for getting authorisation you will help to improve the image of your business.
Have clear lines of communication
When implementing live chat, it’s really important to have clear guidelines and strategy and share this with your chat operators. Consider what can be resolved there and then, what needs to be passed onto someone specifically within the business, and where a customer can be signposted to online content.
Know your values and tone of voice
Knowing exactly who you help as a business and why should be at the forefront of how your live chat is managed.
Often there can be a disconnect between things like the copy on your website and then how someone on live chat “speaks”. So set out clear tone of voice guidelines for your chat team.
Think about what words you do/don’t want them to use. Consider excluding some overused phrases and how your chat team can convey “bad news” while still being empathetic to the user.
However you want to use live chat in your business, keeping it simple will help you to get all of the benefits without any of the hassle.
If you haven't yet looked into a 24/7 managed live chat service, or you'd just like to know more about the options available to you, don’t hesitate to get in touch, we would be happy to chat.
