How to Improve Your Customer Live Chat Experience

Can you still remember the time when the only way you could reach a company’s customer service was through a phone call or an email?  

The problem with this kind of service was all the waiting involved.  

If you send an email, you have no idea when you’ll get a response. If you call their hotline, you end up getting placed on hold. What’s even more frustrating is that even after your ninth attempt at reaching them, you still end up getting placed on hold!

Fortunately, a new solution has been introduced to the customer support world: Live chat.  

The live chat software is relatively new, but most website designs in West Palm Beach already have them. It has caught on like wildfire, most probably because consumers have ranked live chat as their most preferred method of contact.  

However, a survey shows that 38% of respondents received a poor live chat experience, while 56% said that they don’t remember getting an exceptional live chat experience. 84% of consumers have given up on live chat due to annoyance at slow replies or poor responses.

The data above only shows that although customers love live chat, in theory, businesses aren't meeting their expectations in reality.  

Then again, it’s never too late to get your live chat support right. In this article, we will share with you five tips you can use to improve your customer support experience through effective live chat strategies.  

Without further ado, let’s get started!

How to Improve Customer Experience with Live Chat

1. Tell Customers What to Expect

Setting customer expectations or benchmarking is a popular psychological tool that helps consumers assess the quality of your customer service.  

If you haven’t noticed, your customers rely on the expectations you’ve set when evaluating your customer support. For example, when you say that you typically respond to all messages within 24 hours, that’s the basis your customers will measure against you.  

If you don't set the expectation from the beginning, they will find their own reference points. This could be your competitor’s customer service or previous experiences they’ve had.  

It’s so important to set the right expectations because it makes it easier for your customers to make an informed decision - whether or not they should engage with you in the first place.  

Setting a strategic starting point where they can compare their actual experience can also be the key to exceeding their expectations.  

Let’s say you tell your customers that your response time is within 24 hours, but then you reply within a couple of hours. This will make them think that your service is great.

Some of the most important expectations you should set when it comes to living chat support are:

• Set expectations on what time slot your live chat support is available.
• Let users know what your first response times are.
• Let your site visitors know if they’re talking to a human or bot.
• Set which topics your live chat support can handle. For example, if you don’t do refunds through live chat support, then let users know right off the bat.

2. Reduce Your First Response Time

First response time or FRT refers to the number of minutes, hours, or days that go by before your customer service team responds to a customer query.  

A long, uncertain waiting time can leave your customers frustrated. Unfortunately, the average time it takes for a company to respond to customer service emails is 12 hours and 10 minutes.  

To make it even more disappointing, 62% of businesses do not respond to these emails at all. No wonder a lot of customers are unhappy!  

In 2020, Zendesk asked their respondents what matters most to them when they want to resolve a customer service issue with a business. 72.5% of consumers said that they expect businesses to resolve their customer service issues right away. 58.9% expect companies to respond quickly.  

Without a doubt, speed is one of the most important factors when it comes to customer satisfaction. Fortunately, you can now respond to customer queries right away through live chat.  

However, handling multiple queries at a time can get vexing, especially for small, overburdened support teams. So, here are some tips you can take to reduce your first response times:

• Manage all of your support conversations in one place - whether it’s email, social, or live chat conversations. This helps keep things organized and allows your team to stay on top of support requests.
• Set up notifications specific to real-time support so you can prioritize them over other support channels.

• Train your agents so they know your products and services inside and out, including company policies and customer support best practices.

3. Empower Your Support Team with Customer Information

Providing a helpful response is one of the biggest challenges to a great live chat experience.  

For your team to come up with the right solution, they must first get an accurate picture of the customer problem. They need to have context.  

Typically, support representatives ask a lot of questions to try to unearth the situation and to get an idea of what they’re dealing with. However, by the time they begin to offer a solution, the customer already feels frustrated and may be unwilling to cooperate.  

To prevent this from happening, you need to use a customer relationship management tool.  

CRM technology allows you to store customer and prospect information and record customer service issues. You can use this information to provide a seamless, faster, and better customer support experience.  

4. Use a Relatable Brand Voice in Your Live Chat

Your overall brand sets a standard that customers expect you to carry over across all your interactions with them, including live chat support interactions.

Using a relatable brand voice in your live chat is a great way to connect with users or customers on your site. On top of this, your support team should also go out of their way to make users feel comfortable interacting with them by welcoming them and really listening to what they have to say.  

Personalizing your customers' live chat experiences by adding your brand's personal touch allows you to create a more unified, stellar support experience for your customers.  

Here are a few tips you can use to keep your brand voice relatable and consistent during the live chat:

• Create scripts in your brand’s voice.
• Train your support team on how to use your brand voice appropriately.

• Encourage your support team to connect with customers on a deeper level.

5. Always Ask for Feedback

To determine if you’re doing a good job at meeting the expectations of your customers in terms of customer support, you need to ask for their feedback.  

Cold, hard customer feedback can do so much to improve the kind of customer service you provide your customers. It gives you an opportunity to identify areas you need to work on and excel at, allowing you to continue doing what you do best and improve in areas you suck at.  

By ending each conversation with a survey, you can tell if you're serving your customers the way they want to be served. It provides an idea of where your live chat experience currently stands, and it provides your support team with a definitive path on how they can improve.  

However, since not all customers are willing to give their feedback unless their experience was very bad, you need to incentivize customers who are leaving honest feedback regarding their live chat customer service. That way, you’ll motivate them to share their thoughts openly.  

If possible, incorporate your feedback form into your website design in West Palm Beach. If they can answer within the chatbox without having to be redirected to another page, the better.  

Below are some tips to create a feedback form your customers will actually use:

• Write questions in your brand voice.

• Keep your questions short (five questions max).
• Use a star interview response technique.
• Make sure it’s mobile-friendly.
• Notify customers once their answers have been submitted and thank them.

Looking for a Website Design in West Palm Beach That Can Help Boost Your Live Chat Experience Today?

The reality of how businesses implement live chat shows that customers aren't getting the kind of service they expect to receive. However, with the help of our tips, you can definitely get live chat right.  

Did you know that 86% of consumers are willing to spend more on a company that has a better customer experience, but only 1% of customer support expectations are being met consistently?  

This tells you that there's a huge opportunity for your business to excel and outrank your competitors by getting your live chat experience right. It’s high time you prioritize the kind of live chat customer experience you provide users!  

At Digital Resource, we offer live chat services that will not only put you ahead of your competition, but also help you get more leads and make more sales. Contact us today to know more about how our live chat service can add value to your business.  

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