Being competitive is not only about providing your customers with a unique product or service. Competitiveness stretches far beyond the product/service itself. Once the purchase phase is over, the next really important stage that comes is the customer service.
Exceptional customer service is the thing that really sets your company a part from its competitors. It is something that improves the customer experience and sets a base for customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
It’s all about maintaining high customer happiness. Customers should see that it’s easy to contact you and that your staff is well-trained. They should feel they are treated with respect and understanding. And when they think so, you can proudly say that you deliver excellent customer service.
So, what is the definition of customer service?
We’ve talked in some of our previous articles about the importance of the customer-centric approach and how important it is to offer even a little more than what customers are expecting of your company.
Quick problem-solving, quality products and services, fast shipping – all that means going the extra mile to provide great customer service for your company supporters.
Customer service is the interaction between a company and the people who buy the company’s products or services. Customer service is the way a company cares for its customers.
As customers are in the core of each business – the happier the customers are with your company’s product and services – the more money they will spend on them. Fast and helpful communication is the root leading to success for each business’s customer service efforts.
Does live chat improve the support experience for customers?
The short answer is sounding – YES! In the last decade, many businesses began to concentrate their efforts on improving the customer support they offer. Though companies usually use a combination of different channels to achieve that improvement: , phone support, live chat, emails, and social media the most effective ones remain the phone support and live chat support.
So how does live chat customer support result in better experience for customers? It is because of the light-hearted nature of live chat – in most of the cases informal, quick and conversational. Customers share their concerns and issues and they get an immediate answer. They value their time and you as a company should value it too. Quick problem solutions – more happy customers.
Truth to be told, customers want to be heard. And it is not something that is unexpected or out of the ordinary. When you are having an issue with a product or service that you use, you contact the company you bought it from. You expect them to hear what issues you are facing and to help you resolve them. The faster they do that – the bigger your satisfaction with that company is, sounds about right yes?
The well-trained live chat agents are offering not only solutions to the support-related questions they receive, they also offer empathy and become your friend in need. Which has its benefits for the business – as Lee Resource Inc. report – 95% of the customers who get their problems resolved quickly will do business with you again.
The studies by the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, tells us that happy customers that have their problems resolved will tell 4-6 people on average about their positive experience with the brand. So, having a live chat software on your website can really improve the customer support experience, resulting in more happy and loyal customers.
Does live chat help with customer acquisition and onboarding?
Live chat can help your company in its customer acquisition journey. Strategically placed live chat buttons on specific landing pages or even in emails that you send to prospects can make a big difference. Most of the time even having a live chat software on your website can lead visitors to think that you are trustworthy as they can get in touch with you easily if there is a need.
Furthermore, when customers have pre-purchase queries regarding some product or service that they plan to buy, or they need support for making an online transaction, they can quickly get an answer from one of the chat agents. In those cases, live chat customer service is a great help for customers to make the right buying decision. Having live chat agents who are available 24/7 means that your business is not losing sales.
Does live chat software help your chat agents to build rapport with customers?
Experienced chat agents are able to quickly build rapport with customers. They know exactly how to handle cases and quickly put themselves in the shoes of the customer. Showing empathy, mirroring the customer’s language and being positive will surely make each customer feel heard and understood. Creating a friendly atmosphere is crucial, after all people won’t be engaging in chat conversations with your agents if they do not have a concern or problem that needs resolution.
Does live chat reduce repetition for your customers?
We won’t be mistaken if we say that no one likes to explain the same issue over and over again. This applies to customers also. Just think how annoying it would be for them to explain the same problem every time they contact your company. When that happens, it is a really easy decision on their side – just ditch that company and use the competitor’s product and service.
To avoid such unwanted situations, a great option is to use live chat customer history information. In a matter of a fact, more than 2/3 of customers expect you to have their product and support information available when they contact you. Having those options in their disposal, chat agents can quickly access the customer history and offer much quicker resolution to repeating issues and concerns.
Can live chat boost the productivity of your chat service team?
In differentiation to phone calls and emails, where customer service agents can handle one at a time, live chat customer service offers the opportunity for multitasking, meaning that agents can handle more cases at once. Experienced agents are usually able to work with 4-6 customers at the same time.
We have to mention that the number of cases handled in one go depends on their complexity and the need for additional research or reporting to other departments. Those factors can reduce the number of inquiries handled. But most of the time general questions are answered instantly (when the agent is knowledgeable) and the agent can move to the next customer.
The fast resolutions offered by live chat not only boost the productivity levels of your customer service agents but also increase customer satisfaction. There are many different live chat solutions on the market, it is important to choose the one with features that fit the best business operations.
Is 24/7 customer support possible with live chat?
With thoughtful planning it is not something impossible to achieve, quite the opposite. If you provide your customers with 24/7 chat support that can trim down to minimum the cases where your customers can’t reach you when they need your help. 24/7 customer support is something that most of the big companies consider and have already implemented as they have international customers, each in different time zones.
If you are unable to provide the 24/7 chat support, a great tip is to add some of the most common questions and answers from your live chat to your FAQ or knowledge base. Many customers are perfectly fine with helping themselves when the information is available on your website.
Does live chat increase customer engagement?
The implementation of live chat software will surely bring an increase in customer engagement. It is only natural as different customers have different preferences – some like to call you, some like to write an email and some prefer quick chat.
Note that, it is recommended that customers can see the chat agent’s name and picture where possible. As one of the biggest downfalls of live chat is the peculiar feeling that customers get when they are not sure if there is a real person on the other end of the chat window. This is a reality because of the overuse of chatbots in the past (and it still continues). After all, quality customer engagement is all about the live conversation and interaction between a company and its customers.
Having motivated and well-trained chat agents can really boost your company’s image in the eyes of your customer. Not only can it lead to more sales but it can exponentially increase customer loyalty.
Good quality live chat – one step ahead of the competition
As we’ve mentioned a few times already, the quality of the live chat customer service is also quite important as is the presence of the service itself. The base of the quality are the chat agents and their motivation and knowledge to solve customer issues.
It is self-explanatory that when the quality of the support you offer is low, it doesn’t really matter whether it is phone call, live chat or email – it will definitely lead to customer dissatisfaction. Statistics show that 90% of the customers that are dissatisfied with your company’s problem handling will never do business with you again in the future. So, at the end they will switch to your competitors because they offer better live chat customer service.
The decision to invest in chat agent training is vital, as they are your company’s face in front of the customers. The good chat agents will not only help customers but will also convert website visitors to customers and engaged users.
Data gathered by live chat software can help you improve your products and services.
Depending on the live chat software that you choose to use for your business, there are different kinds of useful data that you can store about your customer preferences regarding the products or services you offer.
Customer expectations are higher than ever and we are not talking about unreasonable ones, we are talking about what customers really expect from your company – quality products, fast problem solving, promo codes, freebies etc.
Live chat customer service is great for identifying customer pain points. It is no wonder that some of the biggest and most successful companies are the ones that are using the customer-centric approach – putting their customer’s needs in front of everything. That is the pinnacle of customer service.
The best option is to have your product, marketing and support teams collaborate with each other. With the gathered data from the support team, the product team can make changes to products and services so they better suit the needs of the customer. Then the marketing team can outline those changes or new features and re-engage customers with new offers and promotions.
In Conclusion
With a market filled with competition, it is now easier than ever for customers to switch one company with another. Companies who “just go with the flow” usually find themselves lost after a certain time. But those who strive to be better and more competitive continuously improve their business processes.
We could say that live chat customer service is a great addition to each business’s website. Increased customer engagement and better customer support are just some of the benefits that come with the proper implementation of live chat software.
A word of advice: it is good to not stay fixated only on one customer communication channel. Different customers – different preferences. Some will like to call you, some will like to chat with you and some will choose to leave a comment on your social media pages. Finding the perfect balance isn’t an easy task for sure, but when you have the opportunity you should use a combination of different channels. Phone calls and live chat are competitors in the market if we talk about customer service, but the truth to be told they can also work perfectly fine together. To find more about live chat alternative solutions and how to use them to greatly benefit your business, read more here.
