5 Powerful Live Chat, Live Support Best Practices & How To Implement Them
Live chats have been around for a while, but they’re more powerful than ever.
With the right live chat best practices and strategies, your business can engage with customers in real-time to improve customer satisfaction, boost live chat leads and increase sales. In this blog, you’ll find five powerful customer service chat for website practices every business should follow.
Table of Contents
- 5 Powerful Live Chat, Live Support Best Practices & How To Implement Them
- Live chat best practice #1: Avoid long wait times
- Live chat best practice #2: Use a departmental or team chat strategy
- Live chat best practice #3: Engage your visitors with proactive chat messaging
- Live chat best practice #4: Provide a good experience on mobile and desktop
- Live chat best practice #5: Monitor live chats to train and improve agents
Live chat best practice #1: Avoid long wait times
One of the most important aspects of live chat best practices is to avoid long wait times. Customers expect instant answers when using your customer service chat software, and if they have to wait several minutes before hearing back from a company representative, they will likely give up and move on to another website or service.
You should always ensure you have enough agents available when answering chats to respond quickly and efficiently. Another way companies can improve their live chat experience is by providing a way for customers to contact them if they need help outside the scope of what can be handled through live chatting (such as an order problem or account issue).
Providing this option allows for more flexibility in your customer service strategy without sacrificing speed or convenience for customers who prefer using it over phone calls or email support tickets.
💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Quick response and flexibility are key to successful live chat customer service. Avoid long wait times by having enough agents available and provide alternative options for complex issues to enhance the customer experience.
Live chat best practice #2: Use a departmental or team chat strategy
Chats are often viewed as individual tasks, but they should be considered in their entirety and the context of the entire business. That means that all members of your support staff need to be on the same page regarding how they handle chats and their goals for each one.
This is where a departmental or team chat strategy comes in handy: by setting guidelines for how everyone contributes to chats, you can make sure that everyone is working toward the same goals and making use of their collective knowledge base (and, if necessary, delegating responsibilities).
Use a chat strategy that works for your business. Just as there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to live chat software tools or platforms themselves, support teams need different things from different tools depending on their needs. There isn’t one single approach that will work across the board either.
You have to take stock of what you want out of live chats with each client before committing fully so that you keep control over how those conversations play out or spend too much time trying new things without seeing results first-hand.
💡KEY TAKEAWAY: A team-based approach improves live chat efficiency. Implement a departmental or team chat strategy with clear guidelines to ensure consistent handling and alignment of goals, utilising the collective knowledge base.
Live chat best practice #3: Engage your visitors with proactive chat messaging
Live chat is a powerful tool for customers, but it can be even more powerful if you use it to engage your visitors with proactive chat messaging.
Proactive messaging is when a business provides information to its visitors that they might need before they even ask for it. This type of live chat helps businesses provide better customer service because the user won’t have to ask questions in the first place, which saves time and effort on both sides.
It’s important that proactive messages are personalised and relevant to each visitor who receives them. That way, their experience will be more positive than if they had received generic messages that weren’t relevant. Relevance also ensures that these messages don’t waste people’s time or make them feel frustrated about not getting answers fast enough at all times.
💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Engage visitors by proactively providing relevant information, saving time and creating a positive user experience.
Live chat best practice #4: Provide a good experience on mobile and desktop
Mobile and desktop user experiences are very different. Your live chat window should be responsive and provide a good experience on both mobile and desktop.
When designing your live chat, you need to consider everyone who will use it, including people using mobile devices like smartphones or tablets. You can use a responsive design, so your site changes the layout based on what device is used to access it. This way, users won’t have to scroll horizontally over an unbearably long screen just because they’re using a smaller screen size than usual.
💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Ensure a seamless experience for all users by designing a responsive live chat that provides a good experience on both mobile and desktop devices.
Live chat best practice #5: Monitor live chats to train and improve agents
Use live chat software to monitor chats, so you can see what your agents are doing as they’re doing it. Use the information from these sessions to train your team and help them understand how to improve their performance. You can also use this data for feedback or even annual reviews if you want to give your team a little extra motivation.
💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Improve agent performance through live chat monitoring. Utilise live chat software to monitor chats, gather data, and provide training opportunities and feedback to agents.
Live chats are more powerful tools than ever for businesses today
Live chats are more powerful tools than ever for businesses today. They help you engage customers, increase sales and improve customer satisfaction. You can also save money by reducing call centre costs and improve loyalty by keeping your customers happy.
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This blog shares with you five of the many ways you can use live chat to get more out of your customers.
At Greechat, we offer a comprehensive live chat solution that helps increase leads and sales.