Ways To Find If Your Chat Solution Is Really Meeting The Customer Needs

Most decent E-Commerce businesses these days use Chat Solutions of one kind or another to make customer engagement more effective and interactive. Like all things in life, the trick is to know if our own solution is the right one for what we are doing.

In this article Steve Conway gives some great suggestions on what we should be thinking about when choosing and implementing our chat solutions


Chat solutions are very fast becoming one of the main channels when it comes to customer service. In fact, in a research done by Eptica, it was found that while only 7% of businesses used chat services in 2013, whereby nowadays 44% of brands use chat solutions and advertise it on their websites.

Moreover, mirroring these above-stated statistics in a survey done on contact centers by Contact Babel it was also revealed that 83% of customer service providing companies expect that chat usage is going to increase over the next 12 months, which is also the highest growth predicted across support channels so far.

Now, these findings are not at all surprising since chat benefits both the consumers and the brands in this digital marketplace.

This is because chat support not only boosts online sales by converting prospective customers that may have otherwise abandoned sales but it also helps companies to boost the upsell of their other relevant products during the chat conversion online.
Hence chat-based support increases productivity by maximizing agent’s time as it allows them to handle multiple chat sessions at once, which implies being more effective while still providing superior service to all the customers. 

Additionally chat services also reduce cost, whereby research done by Contact Babel shows that the cost of chat-oriented support services is below all other channels like email, social media, and even phone calls.

Now for these reasons, while the adoption of chat services has increased, so have the expectations of the customers.

Therefore while early adopters and users of chats have seen this technology as a novelty, in the present time consumers want chat services to deliver fast and comprehensive answers to their questions, that to 24 hours a day.

Hence in another survey done by Eptica, it has been found that just 15% of the modern consumers are happy with the services they receive via chat, since the most common complains in chat services is lack of resources, inadequate access to information and knowledge-base on the part of the chat agents, and poor personalization.

This happened because, despite the importance of chat, and the feeling that it should be considered as the first channel for customer service when resources are stretched, more than 26% of businesses that claim to offer chat does not implement it after getting it tested.

So what should brands look for when choosing a chat solution for supporting their customer care services?

Hence, as one of the most popular vendors of easy to use CRM software, here we have list five areas that brands should focus on before choosing the right chat software technology for their business:

Easy to use

Thanks to the growth in messaging apps, consumers nowadays are well-versed with chat-styled communications, and so they presently expect the same ease of use when it comes to chatting on company websites.

What they want is that it should be simple to access, straightforward to use, with features that have the ability to share screens and have information built-in inside the software.

For agents, chat software solutions has to be equally easy to use since many will be expected to manage several chat conversations at once.

Additionally, by minimizing the requirements for specialized chat training, businesses will be able to divert agents from other channels when required, which in turn will help boost resources and thereby aid in meeting needs during times of increasing demands.

Integrates well           

Chat is just another channel within customer service, and so it needs to be integrated into your overall technological stacks and the easyto use CRM that you use for your business, which will enable agents to access wider information, such as pages on your website that your consumers may have browsed, and the records of your customers, in order to deliver a joined-up experience.

Additionally, chat agents in the same instance should be able to find admission to your centralized knowledge-base to make sure that they provide accurate and consistent answers to questions raised by the consumers.

Lastly, in case you consumers move from one channel to another such as voice or email, your chat software needs to provide seamless service, without requiring them to re-enter information or repeat their queries.

Covers proactive and reactive

As according to Forrester, it has been observed that more than 44% of online consumers say that having their questions answered by a live person during any online purchases is one the most required features that a web-based seller can offer, hence reactive chat initiated by the consumers, delivers real benefits as it allows the prospects to ask questions when they require instantly.

Now proactive chat takes us a step further as in this you can trigger the software with pre-set rules, which will allow brands to provide help to the consumers even before they actually ask for the answer.
For example, if a prospect lands on the checkout page for a certain amount of time without taking any action or moving forward and appears to get stuck on a particular step in the journey, then a proactive chat can offer help automatically which can make all the difference.
This is not only going to increase sales but also benefit prospective consumers by turning more browsers into buyers of your offerings.

Embraces AI to improve the experience

AI (Artificial Intelligence) and text analytics can help further to deliver a faster and more personalized service on chat as it can easily analyze incoming questions automatically, and thereafter use the information to route the chat session (if required) to the most relevant support representatives based on factors like skills and knowledge, language, and can also provide the reps references to recommended relevant answers stored in the system’s knowledge-base.

Integrating AI with chat will definitely ensure that your consumers receive more informed and consistent responses while also maximizing the productivity factor and speed of your agents.

Provides total analysis of what is being said, along with outcomes

In order to continuously improve and meet the demands of the consumers, businesses need to listen to their consumers and act on the insights provided by the users of their offerings.
Hence ensure that your chat solution has the ability to analyze questions, store conversations, and find out when in the customer journey they are asked questions by the consumers.
This can be easily done by integrating chat software with businessgrowth technology solutions like an easy to use CRM.

For example, if the system finds that there is a large number of incoming questions about a particular step in the buyer journey, or in a process, which requires additional help, the system can ask for reviewed and improved information on that issue in order to boost confidence and outgrow any barriers leading to a purchase.

Conclusion

In the present time even though most companies have adopted some form of chat technology for business growth, but given its dominating importance to CX, as one of the most popular CRM vendors for small and medium businesses we feel now is the right time that brands should take a step to move back and make sure that their chat solutions match the needs of their customers if they want to boost engagements, increase sales and raise the bar on their agent’s productivity.

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