Website support chat is an extremely cost-effective customer service channel. Using online customer chat can result in significant cost savings for a company. According to a survey by Forrester, around 44 percent of customers have stated that getting answers from a live chat agent was the most important factor in making a purchase.
Apart from improving customer satisfaction, companies can reduce the cost of customer care by implementing website chat tools. Here we will take a look at some of the key metrics that companies can use to measure the performance of web live chat application or agents.
1. Response Time for Online Customer Chat
A key website chat metrics is the customer response time. Most online visitors expect to receive assistance within ten to thirty seconds of making a query. And around 48 percent of the online visitors will leave the website if they don’t get any response from the online agents.
Make sure that the support agent provides assistance to the customers within half a minute. A longer response time could mean that the online customer chat agents lack experience or they have to handle too many requests at a time. Whatever the case, you should take action to address the problem to reduce the response time.
2. Web Chat Satisfaction
Web chat satisfaction is an important metric. Satisfaction measures whether the chat agents successfully answered the customer’s queries, directed them to the desired product, and provided courteous service. Websites with a high chat satisfaction have a greater chance of converting online visitors into customers. So, it’s important to have web live chat application and closely monitor this important customer service metric.
3. Webchat Conversion Rate
Finding out how many online visitors the online customer chat agent is able to convert is another important metric. This metric does not reflect performance efficiency of the web chat agent since their main task is to ensure customer satisfaction. However, if the agent is able to convert the online visitors in addition to keeping them happy, it will reflect positively on their on-the-job performance.
4. Average Length of Chat
Another important metric that measures the web chat agent’s efficiency is average web chat duration. You should make sure that the agents are able to quickly handle the queries of the customers. The quicker they are able to resolve the customer’s query, the more satisfied the customer. But the chat duration should also not be too short as it indicates that the agents are rushing to end the chat session.
5. Proactive Chat Offer Acceptance
Proactive chat offer acceptance can also reflect positively on the job performance appraisal of the chat agent. Webchat agents should proactively address concerns of the customers. They should find what they require and help them in making an informed purchase decision.
The above are the key web chat metrics that can help in identifying and improving online customer chat efficiency. Make sure that you set a benchmark for the agents. Also, it’s important to train the agents so that they can improve the performance and meet (and beat) the web chat performance targets.
