Nobody likes waiting. When your website visitors have questions, they want them addressed urgently. On the phone, you cannot talk to two or more customers at the same time, but on live chat support you can. Here is a guide on how to handle simultaneous chats without making mistakes.
On your website’s chat you can talk to several people simultaneously. Some advanced operators can enter up to four dialogs at the same time. We doubt that such communication can be effective, but sometimes this situation happens. More often operators have to handle two simultaneous chats, and this alone can cause troubles.
The most challenging part of chatting with two clients is providing timely replies. Follow these simple rules to manage it:
- Pay attention at the chat tabs. The show when a visitor is typing, and they blink when a new message is received.
- When two messages are received at the same time, answer the easiest first, and then switch to the more time consuming one.
- If there is a common questions asked, use a canned reply. Canned replies will save your time on typing.
- Do not be afraid to ask a visitor to wait. Use such phrases as “Do you mind waiting for a minute? I will check that for you” or “Please wait for a minute, I will check that for you”. Remember to thank visitors for patience when you are back.
- If you fail to reply quickly, apologize before you answer the question. Use such phrases as “I am sorry to make you wait”, “I am sorry for the delay”, etc.
- Do not tell customers that you are on two chats. If you are slow with answers, they may feel that the other customer is more important for you, which is not good for your business.
Another big challenge with several chats is following the track of conversations. With two chats it is not that hard, you can even keep both conversations in mind. But since it is a live cha support system, not a phone conversation, you not even need to remember anything, you can always scroll up to catch up the discussion. You only need to make sure that you send replies to the right conversation. When you are on several chats, double check that you are on the right tab before you send anything.
The situations when you need to chat with two visitors at the same time happen quite often. You need to know your product and be good at typing to manage them successfully. For practice you can enter multiple chats with your friends, and see what skills need improvement. Good luck.
