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Live Chat Software Features You Shouldn’t Live Without – Part III

A solid live chat software with the right features can help a company instantaneously provide answers to customer queries resulting in enhanced overall customer service. In my last blog, I elaborated on some of the features of live chat software that make life easier. Now I will discuss the remaining nine features. 256-bit SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Encryption: SSL encryption ensures high-level security during chat sessions and keeps the entire chat session between the company and customers totally secured from unauthorized persons, hackers, etc. With SSL encryption, vital information that customers furnish is kept secured while at the same time, if someone accesses the chat transcripts they are in an unreadable manner as transcripts are in a fully encrypted form. Multiple Chats: With this feature, a chat operator can interact with multiple customers at once. This feature is useful at times when there is heavy chat volume and fewer operators available. Visited Web Pages: This feature provides details of different web pages that were visited by customers. Knowing which web pages were visited by customers enables companies to optimize those web pages. Saving Chat Transcripts or Sessions: This feature allows storing or saving of chat sessions which can be viewed by the operators for reference, learning, or any other useful work. These stored chat sessions or transcripts can be easily reviewed to respond in case similar situations arise during the interaction. Canned Responses: This feature allows operators to quickly respond to customers’ routine questions on pricing, products, services and more through already prepared or canned responses. Since customers are less likely to stay for more than 15 seconds on a website, these canned responses can provide quick help, more answers, and also speed up chats when handling multiple customers. Transfer Chat Session: This feature is useful when a chat session needs to be transferred to an experienced chat operator in case the customer wants more in-depth details. This feature is also helpful in learning as the new operator can also watch the live chat session. The experienced chat operator can monitor the chat session and provide crucial inputs during the chat session. More than one chat operator can interact with a customer without the customer knowing that there is more than one chat operator. Chat History: All previous chat sessions with a particular customer or operator can be viewed using this feature. This becomes helpful when the same customer returns for a chat. It is valuable to understand customer behavior and helps in training new chat operators. If chat history is visible, then a customer can be efficiently served from the inferences drawn from previous chats. Co-Browsing: Through this feature, the movement of a visitor on a website can be followed. The operators can also take control of web pages that customers are viewing and can even change the web pages being shown on a customer’s monitor. This feature is also helpful while filling out forms, check out process and much more. Reporting Tools: Reporting of operations is essential as it helps to improve business efficiency. Reports are available on chat statistics, ratings per operator, detailed history of chat invitations, most visited web pages and much more. Reports can even be generated which provide details about the referring pages through which visitors landed on a website.

Live Chat Software Features You Shouldn’t Live Without

The way companies’ conduct business has changed significantly due to the internet. Maintaining a robust online presence has become an integral part of any business activity as large numbers of consumers are shifting to online at a quick pace. According to eMarketer, the number of U.S. consumers researching or shopping online is steadily growing and will surpass the 200 million mark by 2015. With the online community growing on a similar path, the need to have live chat software to provide efficient customer service is also growing. Selecting the right live chat software needs to be done carefully. The features of the software determine the level of customer service provided by a company and can leverage possible leads to drive sales. Before making a final decision on live chat software, make sure it has the right features. Below are some of the prominent features that should be present in live chat software. Multiple Users/Operators Live Monitoring and Tracking Easy Installation and Integrating Customizable Geo Location Details Proactive Chat File Transfer Departments 256-bit SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Encryption Multiple Chats Visited Web Pages Saving Chat Transcripts or Sessions Canned Responses Transfer Chat Session Chat History Co-Browsing Reporting Tools We will discuss each of these features in our next several blogs.

What to Look for in a Live Chat Software Solution

There have been drastic changes in the business world due to technology advances. Technology has made it possible to increase collaboration internationally, promote flexible work hours, and shop online. In today’s environment there are numerous channels of communication that can be employed; more choices than ever before. Your business most likely already uses some sort of technology for teleconferencing and file sharing. Now it is time to find the right software to invest in for your live chat needs. Making the right choice of customer interaction methods and technologies is one of the most critical tasks for decision makers in businesses of all sizes. Live chat can be used internally for employees to communicate with one another, or externally to talk with customers. Investing in the right software really depends on the size of your company and the functionalities you are looking for in the software. With every business aiming to improve their online sales, it is essential to have a credible and reliable live chat software solution to cater to the online customer. There are many chat software options available in the market for your business needs. According to a survey conducted by Bold Software in 2010, 53% of online shoppers who interacted through live chat on business websites spent more than $500 online. And 56% of entire respondents showed inclination towards making a purchase if a web site offers live chat. Choosing a live chat software solution will help businesses avoid dwindling online sales and customer service experience. The right live chat software can increase the online customer base and improve conversion rates. Selecting the right live chat software solution vendor is an important process as this vendor will be involved in direct communication with customers. There are a handful of best practices that will help you make the most of your live chat implementation. The following are a few items that a business should consider when selecting a live chat software solution. Web-based Software vs. Desktop Software Chat software is everywhere. Its presence is seen in phones, in desktop computer screens and other web portals we use daily. Many of the legacy live chat software solutions have been desktop based and need to be installed on each computer separately. These softwares also come with a cap on number of times the software can be installed and require licenses for additional installations. These solutions are meant for handling low chat volume on low-traffic websites and require IT expertise to set-up, install, and maintain the software. Also, the operators are only allowed to use the machines on which the software has been installed to interact with customers. This provides for less integration while interacting with customers using mobile devices like smartphones. Web based live chat software solutions offer greater benefits than desktop software in terms of flexibility, scalability, reliability, and better integration with web browsers on mobile devices. It allows operators the flexibility to login from any web browser from any location. Web based solutions are free from firewall conflicts, upgrades, and can handle high chat volume on high traffic websites. Offline Customer Support Tracking of visitors in real time can improve sales. Chat software for websites provides the force to have client support and technical aid on a 24/7 foundation. Providing a 24/7 live chat service on a website increases the chances of making a sale and customer loyalty. Questions can be answered faster along with assistance in finding particulars for interested shoppers, supply incentives, and receiving feedback. Many web based chat solutions ensure easy integration with mobile web browsers and are compatible with any phone. This means that when an operator is not present online, a text message can be sent to the operators when they are needed. When an operator clicks this message they are directly connected to customers through a mobile web browser. Canned Responses Attracting customers to a website is one thing, getting them to buy your products and services are another. A guest will spend no more than 15 seconds to find what he or she is searching for before leaving the site. Live chat software installed on a website is an outstanding way to save time for visitors and quickly help them locate what they are looking for and turn them into customers. Canned responses can also be used by operators to step up even more responses to visitors’ questions. Canned responses can greatly increase the speed of chat and lead to higher customer satisfaction. It is important to select a live chat software solution that offers operators a quick reply to customer queries or complex questions. These solutions can store useful information from day to day operations and form a comprehensive knowledge base. This knowledge can be leveraged to prepare canned responses that can be used to speed up chats when operators are handling multiple customers. Web Analytics and Reporting Tools Apart from the basic features like canned responses, proactive chats, co-browsing, and more, live chat software solutions should also include robust reporting tools and free web analytics. The web analytics feature provides insight into visitors to the website, how many times they visited, which pages were visited most, and more. Web analytics can reveal crucial information regarding online behavior of the website visitors. A Customizable Solution Businesses have the challenge of keeping up with change. A conventional live chat software solution does not cover all the needs of change. In order to better adapt with changing situations, the solution must be customizable to keep up with business requirements. Some solutions provide a cut and paste method to easily integrate code into multiple pages of the website. The solutions should also allow for easy customization of chat buttons, chat skins, themes, customer facing interface and more. Easy customizable solutions ensure that businesses can maintain consistent brand identity across all marketing and customer centric channels. Pricing Customer service through chat is an excellent way to keep customers happy. Not only is it a relatively inexpensive way to provide the attention customers

Leveraging Online Chat for Effective Interactive Marketing

The internet has empowered businesses to extend their scope of ways to reach their customers and effectively market their products and services. Businesses can reach customers by using different mediums like email, social media, online advertisements, press releases, and more. Incorporating online chat in these mediums of online marketing can help improve interactivity with customers. Businesses can leverage online chat to escalate their communication and marketing efforts and convert visitors into customers. Step Up Your Marketing Initiatives Introducing your new online chat feature in email, social media, online advertisements, press releases and more takes your marketing initiatives to the next level and makes it interactive, personal, and increases its profitability and ROI. The customers can click on the “Chat” button and have a direct one-on-one interaction with an online chat representative. They can get instant solutions to their problems, gain product or service information, and get technical support without having to make a phone call, send email, or go to another website. This results in higher response rates to your marketing campaigns and greater conversion of leads into buyers. Make Marketing Interactive For effective marketing, a deep understanding of the customer’s needs and choices is required in delivering quality service of superior value. Using online chat in a wide variety of marketing channels like emails, press releases, advertisements, and social media establishes a two-way dialogue to ensure greater interaction. A personal one-on-one interaction through online chat helps bring the prospect more closely to finalizing the sale. Innovative software that support online chat allows customers to choose from text, audio, or video-based chat thereby making online chat a potent online marketing tool. Online chat helps move the lead generated web traffic to the business website to forge a two-way interactive dialogue between the prospective customers and chat agents. Online chat further boosts the marketing strategy of businesses as it is easy to integrate and can be customized to portray and strengthen businesses’ online branding. Contact info@etechgs.com to learn more about Etech’s online chat customer service.

Ecommerce Customer Service Make Customers Feel Valued

With many businesses taking the Ecommerce route, it is essential to provide Ecommerce customer service during and after a sale. Efficient Ecommerce customer service ensures satisfaction, customer loyalty towards the business, and increases the chances of a customer reverting or referring the services to others. Since direct conversation is less in the online environment, providing Ecommerce customer service during the sales process builds long-term relationships and credibility of the business. Absence or poor Ecommerce customer service can be detrimental to the growth of business. Efficient customer service is realized by providing the following: Accurate Purchasing Information Providing clear and precise information about purchasing a product makes the entire purchasing process easier for the customer. The customer feels more comfortable with the quality of Ecommerce customer service provided and ends up making a purchase. Providing accurate customer service on purchasing can be ensured through online chat customer service, email, or phone based support. Providing the correct information on shipping, return policy and other charges goes a long way in creating a positive customer impression. Email Communication Sending an email after the customer makes a purchase ensures that the customer builds a positive reputation about the business and feels that they have made the right purchase. Getting in touch with customers provides an opportunity to create a positive image of your business and increases the chances of making a sale. Emails notifying the customer that a product is out of stock should include recommendations about other similar products that the customer might be interested in purchasing. Sending emails containing flyers, promotional events, online sales, and discount coupons help in building customer loyalty. Provide Help Desk Facility An Ecommerce customer service fulfilling the post-sales queries of the customers helps in customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and retention. Assisting customers even after they have purchased a product makes them feel that the company cares about their customers. Providing Ecommerce customer service through online chat customer service, email, or phone based support builds a satisfied customer. Ecommerce customer service makes customers feel recognized and valued and makes them loyal to business. You might like this: Shopping Cart Abandonment: How Online Chat Can Help

Building Positive Customer Experiences through Online Chat

As more companies turn to online to carry out their business, the online chat channel has proved to be a cost-effective, fast, easy, and efficient way to provide quality chat customer service. With many advantages such as increased FCR, higher CSAT, reduced cost-per-contact and more, the online chat is being actively incorporated by businesses as a primary channel for carrying out sales and customer service interactions. Controlling customer experiences Today, customers spend more time online hovering on social networking sites or tweeting. Internet accessibility through mobile applications on smart phones and tablet PCs has further extended the scope of customers sharing their bad experiences over the Internet. Customers can easily use these places to share their bad experiences of customer service, information unavailability on a website and more. To reign in the probability of customers going viral with bad experiences, businesses can effectively leverage online chat to deliver positive experiences to customers. Proactive chat is the solution Contact centers use various predictive tools that analyze the online customer behavior to provide crucial insights. The predictive tools help to initiate a proactive customer service chat when certain parameters indicate that the consumer is likely to have a bad experience. A proactive chat at this instance provides instant redressal of customer grievances with no hold-times or long call queues. This results in customers creating a higher positive experience framework about the business. The data and information that is captured during customer interactions are crucial and reveal significant results. These analytical results and inferences from previous customer interactions can be effectively leveraged to add an element of surprise while interacting with customers. The customers can be provided with probable solutions derived from predictive tools just as they begin their interaction. Positive customer experience is further achieved through various features like push-URL, screen sharing, and co-browsing enabling early resolution of customer problems.

Shopping Cart Abandonment: How Online Chat Can Help

The Internet has changed the way business is done between companies and consumers. With large companies offering their services and products online, shopping cart abandonment is the biggest issue faced by many companies wanting to improve customer conversion and maximize revenue. According to Forrester Research, the number of website visitors abandoning the shopping cart at the payment stage stands at 88%. Online chat services enable businesses to efficiently target these customers and help them complete their online orders. It greatly increases online order conversions of borderline customers. Also, online chat services reveal crucial insights into customer behavior that can help reduce abandonment rates in the future. Get a Solid Grip on Your Potential Customers Incorporating online chat services on your website helps answer questions and ease the doubts of customers in real-time on various issues ranging from product pricing, shipping costs, exchanges, returns and more at their ease and convenience. Shopping cart abandonment can be reduced as customers facing difficulty at any stage of the purchasing process can easily click on the chat icon and get their questions answered quickly. Offering online chat services on specific pages of your website helps in prevention of shopping cart abandonment as it increases the customer experience. If customers are having trouble finding any specific product or information, experienced agents can provide them with specific information through a Push URL feature. Advanced features like co-browsing, web-alliance, or screen sharing can also be used through online chat to alleviate customer challenges. Online chat services also prove resourceful in conducting pre-sales and post-sales surveys and studies have revealed that customers show greater willingness to participate in such surveys while using online chat. A Human Touch Does the Job Customers who are purchasing online are primarily concerned with shipping costs, delivery time, promotional offers, and the return or exchange policy. When the customers look for this information during the crucial checkout stage, providing a live chat service operated by a trained agent ensures that the customer receives relevant and correct information quickly. A human touch provided over the secure, safe, and private channel of online chat solves the problem instantaneously. Online chat services streamline the entire purchasing process for the customers thereby improving the customer experience resulting in reduction of shopping cart abandonment. Shopping cart abandonment is a real problem for companies. Online customer services are a viable, cost-effective option for solving this growing issue.

Benefits of Investing in an Online Chat Sales Channel

The online behavior of the consumers is fast changing as companies continue to grow and provide services online. According to Forrester Research, the online retail sales in the U.S. will hit $250 billion by 2014. When consumers are increasingly shifting towards online shopping and business transactions, the need to have efficient customer service and support functions has emerged. This serves as the right opportunity with significant potential for companies to leverage their online presence to expand their customer base as well as provide quality customer care. Investing in establishing a robust online chat sales channel ensures greater ROI and improves customer satisfaction. Boosting Online Sales With customers taking the online route to making purchases, companies are aggressively adopting online marketing strategies to boost their online sales. To generate this revenue, companies are increasingly gearing towards the online chat sales channel as it offers direct interaction with potential customers and ensures a higher ROI and customer satisfaction. The online chat medium can effectively focus on qualified leads in the form of visitors on the website and convert these leads into sales. The entire sales process can be effectively shortened through chat by positively impacting the customer through quick resolution of queries. Shopping cart abandon rates can also be reduced by targeting such customers through proactive chat and offering assistance during the buying process. Also, a higher Average Order Value (AOV) can be witnessed due to efficient up-selling or cross-selling by agents through online chat. Ensure Higher Customer Satisfaction The online chat channel is an efficient mode of communication for providing information that is convenient, easy, and comfortable for the customer. Online chat is a dynamic medium used to promote sales and offer information in real time ranging from technical to product to service. The skilled chat representatives can provide customers with relevant responses and correct information while driving them along a sales path. This ability to solve customer queries in real-time improves the overall customer satisfaction and makes the online chat sales channel a sought after medium. Cost Reduction Reducing the overall operational costs is of great importance to companies today which is an integral part of the process to increase profitability of business. The online chat sales channel reduces the average interaction costs by speeding up the resolution process. Future calls to contact centers are also reduced significantly due to timely resolution of customer queries. Investing in an online chat program is a cost-effective option for both business owners and contact centers as less investment is required to establish infrastructure, technology and staffing of trained chat representatives. Create Robust Brand Image Online Having a solid online brand image is essential for generating web traffic and attracting qualified leads. The online chat sales channel can assist companies in creating this brand image by enhancing the customer experience. The online chat sales channel is rapidly replacing other modes of communication channels such as voice, email, and web as preferred mode of communication to provide customer service and sales growth. Investing in an online chat sales channel can help companies add value to their business.

Healthy Work-Life Balance The Etech Way

Creating a healthy work-life balance program is important for any contact center. At Etech, we’ve found that combining fun with work provides an environment which yields high productivity. Etech’s centers across the globe maintain a continuous flow of enthusiasm, and energy while remaining focused on the disciplines which drive quality customer interactions. Etech leaders use innovative activities to motivate team members and reduce stress during the work day. The company culture defines a healthy balance between the personal and professional priorities in each team members’ lives. It is the company’s philosophy that team members are most productive when all aspects of their lives are centered. By providing an environment which includes competitions, contests, celebrations, rewards and recognition programs, games, and other such activities, Etech provides much needed energy for a productive day. Competition – The Etech Way Healthy competition plays a key role in providing high energy focus to the work day. As agents are the key resource to the contact center, activities focused on motivating and reenergizing the agents is imperative to the process which drives performance. Competitive activities on the floor include dividing the campaign into two teams and competing for the most sales during a set time period. The team which ends up with fewer sales must perform some recreational activity like dancing or singing, to reward the winners. This simple activity boosts the morale of the team and prepares for good interactions with customers. Other activities include POP quizzes, games such as bingo, fun and financial contests and cash contests fire up the entire Etech campaign with enthusiasm and zeal. Continuous Improvement in Productivity – The Etech Way The benefits of implementing work-life program activities can directly be to better customer experience and exceptional service. The work-life balance programs help our agents to achieve their sales targets and tackle their workload more efficiently. When agents are in a healthy mindset, they provide quality service to customers and resolve issues. Even product knowledge improves through quizzes, games, POP quizzes, competitions, spot incentives etc. It motivates the team in a fun way as well as reinforces key learnings. The activities initiated at Etech to attain work-life balance provide a high energy and enthusiastic environment for team members to enjoy their work and meet their professional targets. These activities play a role in enabling team members to actively serve our customers. About Etech Etech is a leading provider of intelligent sales and service solutions utilizing inbound and outbound voice and web chat. We understand the importance of customer relationships. That’s why all of our solution strategies are driven by the ‘voice of the customer’. Our stringent QA process ensures an ever-improving customer experience. We also gather critical business intelligence data from each customer interaction. And we do everything with the highest integrity and quality possible. These differences allow us to provide industry-leading service, stellar CSAT scores, and high performing sales and service solutions that enable our clients to increase revenue and delight their customers.

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