Once you’ve added live chat to your websites, don’t stop looking for ways to improve the customer experience. While there is no magic formula you can use to make everything about your business’ online presence perfect, here are some ways you can improve the efficiency of your company’s live web chat services.
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Establish Chat Priority :
Establish a system that allows chats to be answered right away. That system should also have some kind of survey or a brief set of questions for customers to answer to ensure their chats are routed to the right agents. Chat agents that handle multiple chats should be able to establish priority to ensure that each one is handled efficiently and properly.
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Minimize Chat Times :
Your agents may occasionally get a customer who has concerns that require them to engage longer than usual, but that doesn’t mean that all chats should take a long time to resolve. Implement measures to help your agents to minimize the amount of time it takes for them to address and resolve customers issues. Minimizing chat times can decrease response times and prevent long wait times.
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Live Web Chat Training is Important :
The best chat agents are those who undergo regular training and are always looking for ways to improve. In your quest to achieve the perfect balance between live chat agent productivity and efficiency, you need to invest in your agents’ skills by providing training and support. Don’t expect them to automatically know what to do and how to respond to different types of customer scenarios. Doing so can be counterproductive to them and your organization. Train your agents to enhance their soft skills and you’ll see an improvement in their responses to customers and reduce the amount of time it takes them to resolve customer concerns.
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Integrate Web Chat into Your CRM :
Your online chat team can become more efficient if you train them to capture customer information and update it as needed in your CRM. This makes it much easier for them to cater to the needs of your customers when they return at a later date for service or assistance.
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Canned Responses :
Even if your agents are required to be able to type 100 wpm, canned responses can greatly reduce their response times. One of your goals may be to provide customers with a more personable experience, but it certainly doesn’t hurt for your agents to use canned responses. In fact, these responses can provide your agents with additional time to provide customers with the resolutions they seek.
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Workstation Setup :
All of the shortcuts and canned responses in the world cannot reduce response time and increase agent productivity like having a dual monitor setup for each workstation. It’s easier on your agents’ eyes, their hands and facilitates a more immediate acknowledgment of customers to improve the overall efficiency of your organization’s live chat services.
While the key to improving chat efficiency isn’t rocket science, it does require you to have a good chat solution. Etech Global Services recommends for you to periodically evaluate the tools, processes and agents you have in place so you can better determine their effectiveness and make improvements as needed.
This blog was first published on LinkedIN
