More and more, consumers prefer to shop online and conduct a host of other important activities online. Businesses have to maintain a robust online presence in order to tap into the growing base of online consumers. Consumers like to shop, perform hotel reservations, book travels, and conduct financial transactions at their own convenience and ease.
Providing live chat on a company website can help provide their customers with swift customer service and personalized attention. The issues and questions of customers can be solved quickly as live chat establishes a real-time direct communication link between customers and customer service representatives.
There are several major benefits of having live chat offered on your website, one of which is seeing a large increase in your agents’ efficiency. Chat agents are able to handle multiple chats at once, as compared to voice agents who can only service one customer at a time. This benefit decreases the chance of a customer having to wait on an agent for answers.
They are able to receive the instantaneous response we are all looking for. Another benefit is the decrease abandoned shopping carts on the website. Due to the fact that a large portion of shopping carts are abandoned simply because the customer became confused and could not navigate properly, the live agents are able to jump in at the right time and place and assist these customers to complete their order.
Companies should look for following points while selecting the right live chat vendor:
Offer more services than chat
Reputable live chat vendors offer value added services with their live chat software. Seek these companies out. They should be able to implement the software, maintain, and improve the software with the latest updates. Having a vendor that understands the software and best practices in the industry will provide you with the confidence that you made the right choice. A vendor with deep roots and a proven track record is the ideal vendor.
Comprehensive reporting capability
Your live chat vendor should have comprehensive reporting capabilities to provide insightful reports on the current status of campaigns, KPIs, agent performance, profitability and much more. Reporting helps to judge the effectiveness of campaigns and make adjustments or improvements wherever necessary.
Ability to grow
Chat vendors must be able to grow and offer scalable solutions to their clients. As online sales and chat volume grow, vendors must be able to offer solutions to handle such volume and routing. Vendors should offer capabilities such as customizable features like the chat window to closely match the website to ensure that brand integrity is maintained. The logo, colors, design, welcome message, button placement, and chat intelligence rules need to be customized to allow for excellent customer experience.
Training
Live chat vendors should be offering training to chat agents for their products. They need to be able to show how to implement best practices in live chat services. Along with the basic training, vendors should show they also practice continuous improvement for their agents. This helps keep agents trained with the ever changing culture we live in.
Proven Success
When searching for a live chat vendor, be looking for a successful track record of service uptime and reliability. They should have a clearly defined business strategy, delivery model, and SLA. This really is a key point. Even though some ideas and strategies may sound pretty, when choosing a live chat vendor, it is always safest to go with someone who can back up what they say and has the numbers to prove it.
Live chat helps improve online sales, customer satisfaction, and a better customer engagement. It is essential to have a solid partnership with a vendor that will provide the right help, support, and continuous improvement.
