Exceptional Customer Service - Live Chat

Excellent customer service is critical to building good customer relations and establishing a good reputation for your business. A business's customer service can make or break a business. Good customer service will make a customer feel important and valued. Customers who receive high-level customer service will often leave your business with positive ratings and reviews, recommend your company to friends, and become repeat customers.

Customers that receive poor customer service can go out of their way to leave your company negative ratings and reviews. They are also likely to dissuade their friends and family from doing business with your company and likely will not become return customers. Furthermore, there is a chance that they will support your competitors. Suppose they had a bad experience with your company and a good experience with one of your competitors. In that case, they are likely to hold your competitor in a positive light while contrasting this with a negative view of your company when discussing your industry or niche with their friends, family, and acquaintances. Therefore, companies must strive to provide excellent customer service.

Live chat customer support software has been a growing aspect of customer service, and many websites offer a live chat customer support option. Customers value the ease and convenience of live chat customer support, but often times companies do not implement live chat properly. This can leave customers unsatisfied and feeling as if they have wasted their time as they will need to go through one of the more traditional routes of calling or emailing to get their questions answered. Throughout this article, we will discuss how to provide exceptional customer service through live chat software in a way that meets your customer's expectations.

The aspects of live chat customer support that we will present are the following:

• Make Sure your Live Chat Option is Visible

  Some websites place their live chat option within a menu that may be hard to find on the site. When adding a live chat option to your website, it is vital to make sure it is clearly visible to your customers. This can be done by implementing contrasting colors that stand out against the background of your website. Many websites commonly place the live chat button in the bottom right or bottom left of the screen. These are good spots to place your live chat icon as many websites do this, and customers instinctively look for the live chat option in these places.

  You can additionally add the live chat to your "contact us" menu so customers who look there first can also find it. Struggling to find a way to contact a company when having an issue or wanting to make an inquiry can be a frustrating experience for a customer. Therefore, it is important to make it as easy as possible for customers to be able to contact you.

• Set Proper Expectations

  Setting the proper expectations for your live chat customer support is important in creating a satisfying live chat experience for your customers. This means informing customers what types of questions and issues can be addressed, what hours your live chat is available, and how long your customers should expect to wait in order to get in touch with a customer support agent via live chat. You will respect your customers' time and energy by setting the right expectations for your live chat support. Then, depending on the parameters you have set forth in your live chat details, customers can choose to utilize their time accordingly by either using your live chat option or opting to reach out via email or phone.

• Respond Quickly

  Quick response times are vital to effectively using a live chat customer support option on your website. Customers who wait more than a minute for a response to live chat may become frustrated and leave the page. Shortening your first response time will indicate to your customers that contacting your business through the live chat option is worth the effort and that your live chat is indeed a viable means of communicating with your company.

• Create a Dynamic Experience

  For many customers using a live chat feature can feel like a robotic experience. By implementing specific tools and having your customer support agents represent your company in a personable and friendly manner, you can humanize this experience a bit for your customers. By agents using their first names and your customers' first names, this lets your customers know they are communicating with an actual person. Agents should let customers know what they are doing if they have to access more information or implement a procedure. This way, the customer is not waiting and wondering what is happening. Using a typing indicator will let your customers know that your agents are responding to them. Sending a series of shorter replies as opposed to one longer one can reduce your customer's wait time while anticipating a response.

• Use CRM Software

  Customer relationship management software allows you to store and access customer data in one place. This can be very helpful to customer support agents as they can quickly look up email addresses, phone numbers, and any other relevant customer information they may need. By using CRM software, you can save your customers' time and your agents, allowing them to help more customers. CRM software is a useful tool that can let your agents know more about your customers and their needs, which can help build rapport and solve issues quickly.

• Be Knowledgeable and Prepared

  Equipping your customer support agents with the adequate knowledge and techniques to resolve customer inquiries in a complete and timely fashion will help ensure that your customers have a positive experience while using your live chat feature. Making sure that your agents are well versed in all aspects of your business that they will need to be will go a long way. This can reduce wait time as they will already have answers to questions that less knowledgeable agents may have to look up. In addition, customers may often have similar questions, and canned responses implemented with short code can save the agent time while engaged in a chat. Agents can also add their own personality and human touch to the conversation while typing out original responses. The combination of these two tactics can result in timely but personal interactions.

  Good customer support agents will also know how to direct a conversation while legitimately addressing the customer's concerns, stay on topic, and be able to close out a conversation. Combining knowledge about the business and products and useful conversation techniques will help produce positive live chat customer support interactions.

• Maintain a Positive Dialogue

  Depending on the individual your customer support agents may be talking to, they can be met with varying degrees of frustration. It is essential that your customer support agents must always strive to maintain a positive dialogue with your customers. This means empathizing with them and understanding their concerns while assuring them that the agent will help solve them. Excellent customer service can turn a frustrated customer with a negative situation into a happy customer with a positive experience. Customers who experience this kind of turnaround will likely recommend your company to others and become repeat customers.

By using various techniques and software and ensuring that your customer service representatives are well versed and knowledgeable about your product and company, you can create a positive live chat customer support experience for your customers. Live chat offers your customers a convenient way to contact your company and quickly resolve any issues they may be having or receive an answer to any of their questions.

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