Live chat is widely considered to be the superior manner in which customer service can be provided, but the fact of the matter is that it is still an imperfect science.
Hence, there are a lot of live chat mistakes that are commonly made, many of them being rather easy to correct all in all. Listed below are some live chat mistakes that are common in the industry, you can use this list to improve your customer support services.
Low Quality Software
A lot of companies tend to focus on automation and the like by using customer support software that would help optimize the live chat feature that customers are provided with. While this is a smart move, it often leads to problems because of the fact that a lot of the software out there, indeed most software, is exceedingly bad. You need to go for a software like Kayako to truly get the sort of results you’re looking for, these results being top notch efficiency without the burden of lowering the quality of the service that is being provided.
Not Enough Automation
If you have a live chat feature, the whole purpose of the thing is to make it so that you don’t have to worry about hiring too many CSRs. This is because of the fact that a few CSRs can handle multiple chats, and besides this most live chats are supposed to be ran by automated chat bots anyway. If you are not automating the process of live chat completely, you are doing an enormous disservice to your customer base because you are not providing them with enough responses in the shortest possible period of time.
Lack of Efficiency
Live chats are famous for being efficient. However, a lot of companies waste a lot of time. Your CSRs need to have multiple chat windows open because live chats require a lot less effort than a phone call that your CSR would have to attend. There are a lot of ways in which you lose efficiency when it comes to live chat service provision, another way is if your CSRs are not logging complaints and building a database because you would have to use this to help improve your products and services overall as well.
Requiring Installation
A lot of companies make a very dire mistake when they are offering customer support through a live chat feature, and this is mistake is that they require their customers to install something before they end up giving them the live chat option. Your customer has a complaint, they want that complaint resolved quickly. They don’t want to have to install anything at all, such a thing would in fact cause a lot of problems for them in the long run because they would have to wait for installation to complete before they can even begin to get their complaints addressed. Such a thing can really drive customer satisfaction down.
Improper CSR Training
Just because you have a live chat feature that has a customer support software to help it function at optimal capacity does not mean that you can skimp out on your CSRs and the training they are going to receive. This is import because of the fact that sometimes your customers are going to want a bit of a personal touch, one that would enable them to get their problem across a little more specifically. Live chat saves a lot of time, but the fact of the matter is that phone operators are still very important in this day and age.
