Before you set high hopes from the live chat feature on your website, think of what could go wrong that might result in bad customer experiences and a low ROI while using your your website chat software. Apart from system errors, there are a number of things that are actually manual errors and negligence on the agents’ or the businesses’ sides that cause live chats to fail.
Here are some common blunders and how you can overcome them to disaster-proof your live chat.
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Failure to link agent performance to customers’ chat experience
Unfortunately, most businesses fail to realize that their website chat software could fail due to agent performance errors and mistakes. Many people assume that the live chat feature can never bring substantial results without checking who is at fault and resolving the underlying problems.
If the agents clearly seem uninterested, send dull and short responses, beat about the bush, and/or leave chats quickly, what returns should the business expect to get? Zero, of course!
A study on the cost of poor customer service conducted by Genesys revealed that what most customers seek from businesses is “Better Human Service”. And that obviously is something that live chat agents are responsible for.
Solutions
- Ensuring that the customers get connected to the appropriate agent (based on their queries) the first time they attempt to talk.
- Not hesitating to invest in quality training for agents. The training doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive and lengthy; it could simply be all-inclusive and effective.
- Getting the live chat agents to practice empathy and designing activities that make them feel the difference between empathetic and apathetic conversations.
- Implement features that allow agents to track chat history for each chat so that the customers don’t have to retell the details every time.
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Response Delays
The term ‘live’ implies instant and real-time. And that is what should be clearly understood by you and your agents. Customers despise delayed responses or having to wait to get a reply and that is the reason they prefer live chats over emails etc. If your agents fail at attending to the help desk chats quickly, the whole purpose of using chat software for website fails.
Solutions
- Training the agents to be quick and responsive.
- Developing and implementing strategies/routes to balance the load on the website.
- Utilizing maximum chat limits to keep chats from heaping up and staying unanswered for long.
- Having a backup team ready to take over and handle the chats on days when you are expecting a heavy load such as sales or holidays.
- Prioritizing the chats based on the types of queries of the customers.
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Failure to Understand Customer Queries directed through a website chat software.
It is imperative your live chat agents are able to understand what is being asked by a customer. In situations when they can’t grasp the problem/question because it is out of their domain, they should be able to take immediate action to fix things for the customers by redirecting the chat to appropriate agents.
Solutions
- Making sure that the live chats agents are well aware of all the products, services, and policies such as return and exchanges.
- Conducting proper, detailed training sessions for the newly hired agents and communicating both the details of your company and the expectations you have bluntly.
- Introducing Quality Assurance (QA) program to monitor and manage agent performance, and guide them whenever needed.