Chat is considered as one of the most effective forms of customer support, as it provides customers with real-time responses for their problems. But it can also be very challenging since you need to deliver the same level of service as phone support but through writing. Here is how you can make your chat support team better at extending a hand to your customers.
The advantages of chat for customer support.
To better understand how you should improve your chat-based customer support channel, you should know the benefits you can get from it. While some of these benefits are already obvious from the onset, you will be surprised at the others.
Convenience
With live chat, customers don’t need to dial a number and wait until an agent answers. They are immediately connected to agents most of the time. Resolutions are also handled much faster and customers don’t have to be on hold for a prolonged period.
Another great convenience that chat offers to customers is the ability to multi-task. With this, they can do something else while waiting for the agent to respond. 51% of customers use chat with this option in mind.
Cost-effective
One thing that might surprise you is that live chat is less expensive to set up than phone and email support. Whereas the two will require you to have additional resources to support them, live chat only needs the right software for you to get started. You can then use the savings you get here to further build your other customer support platforms.
Using chat for customer support also saves you a lot of time. According to recent studies, the average resolution time of most chat conversations is just around 43 seconds. That time you save lets you respond to more customer requests. Customers will also be happy that they don\’t have to wait long in line.
Long-term customer relations
While all customer support channels can build long-term relationships with your patrons, chat offers more in this regard. The idea of companies taking time to respond in writing to questions will convince customers that they are committed to helping them out. Because of this, companies often put it forth as one of their main support channels.
Live chat also plays an important role in the initial customer acquisition process. According to studies, customers who use chat for initially getting in touch with companies are 2.8 times more likely to purchase. By being ready to answer their questions, you lay the groundwork for a longer-lasting relationship.
The skills needed for providing effective live chat responses
To better engage and assist your customers through live chat, you support agents need to have the right skills. Note that not all these skills will be present in your agents in the beginning. But once they learn these, it will make a big difference in their response to customers.
Good writing skills
With chat being in written format, this should naturally be the first skill your agents should have. Here, they need to be able to write their responses clearly and concisely. This helps ensure that customers will be able to use the information they provide better.
Good grammar also plays an important role in providing chat support. Experts point out that using poor grammar can make you look less credible than competitors. By showcasing good grammar at the start of the customer engagement, you erase any negative stereotype that they might have of you. This gives you the opening to better gain their trust for future engagements.
Fast problem-solving skills
Since people expect their chat sessions with customer support to be fast, agents need to be quick-witted to analyze and resolve those issues. Here, being adept with navigating software and shortcuts will help them a lot. With that, they can easily go through the programs relevant to the customer issue and use the shortcuts to work on it faster.
This ability comes in handy when dealing with several customers at once. In these cases, the agent should also be able to work with customer relations management (CRM) software. This software will help them keep track of each customer thread and respond to each correctly.
Attentiveness
One challenge with handling customer issues through chat is that you don’t have the various non-verbal cues that will tell what the customer is feeling. This can make it hard to deliver a desirable solution for them. Being attentive to the nuances of what the customer writes helps overcome this challenge.
The agent should be able to spot whatever cues are available in the correspondence. Is the person on the other end using emojis? Or are they typing in all caps at the moment? Spotting these cues does require some practice but will have a significant impact on understanding what the customer wants exactly.
Improving your chat customer support channel
Having the right agents to provide customer support through chat is just the start of improving your channel. To help them more effectively do their jobs, you need to provide the right support that they can turn to, Here are some useful strategies your team can explore.
Creating the right scripts
Some might frown at the idea of using scripts for chat. They argue that these often feel artificial. But these scripts have their own merits. In particular, it gives agents a ready response to customer questions. This lessens the chance of them fumbling for what to say and increasing wait times.
The trick is to build the right scripts for your agents. Here, you would want to use positive scripting. This is where you design a script intended to lessen the frustrations of your customers. Some of the things to remember when developing your script are as follows.
- Don’t cram too much information: Limit the amount of information you display on a script page. This makes it easier for the agent to locate a specific response.
- Ask closed questions: By asking questions that have a specific amount of answers, the agent will be able to keep the conversation in line with the script.
- Include annotated product images: Having annotated product images beside the script will help your agent build their product knowledge and respond to product questions faster.
- Look for information gaps: Practicing the script will help agents pinpoint problems with it. Do several different scenarios to see how it fares in different situations.
- Review scripts regularly: Use the feedback coming from both your customers and agents to assess the effectiveness of the script and make the necessary changes.
By following these steps, you will be able to build a script library that your chat agents can use in different customer situations. But don’t constrain them to these scripts. Teach your agents to do adlibs if they think they can make the script better on the go. This will help in making a more flowing conversation with the customer even when using structured scripts.
Use the ELI5 strategy
When talking about complicated subjects, agents might find it hard to accurately convey information through the chat. A common problem here is their tendency to write the explanation as if it is intended for a colleague. This can end up confusing customers who are not familiar with the topic.
The ELI5 technique is a useful strategy for this situation. Short for “Explain it Like I’m Five,” this technique has you breaking down the explanation into manageable bits as if writing for a five-year-old. Read through the instructions or topics you have and decide how you will break it down into specific steps that customers would be able to follow better.
One thing that should guide you is the size of the live chat window. Since it is just a small box at the bottom of the screen, you need to deliver each point inthe same amount of space with as few words as possible. Read through this Reddit forum to better understand how to better format your chat responses under this technique.
Take advantage of chat bots
The amount of chat messages that your support team receives can often exceed their capacity. In such situations, chatbots can help a lot to reduce the load. For instance, they can take over handling basic questions so that human agents can focus on more advanced customer issues.,
To better utilize these tools, you need to effectively combine them with your human chat agents. Review your chat support process and look for gaps where chat bots can be used. You would also want to make sure that the transition from chat bots to human agents would be a seamless experience for customers.
Master chat for customer support and lend a hand to patrons
Having a good grasp of chat and its nuances can help you a lot in turning it into a formidable customer support channel. But it does require a lot of practice. Be ready to talk with customers a lot and go through plenty of conversation to further boost your chatting prowess.