Improving the customer experience is one of the best ways to maintain a competitive edge in today’s technology-driven society. Years ago, customers only had a few ways to interact with their favorite brands. From the times of walk-ins and phone calls, today’s businesses can connect with their customers in new and innovative ways.
Even emails and support tickets are becoming an outdated strategy to enhance the customer experience. In a point-and-click society where customers want immediate responses, these forms of communication are becoming less popular by the minute. Live chat is the most popular solution for today’s most successful brands in the constantly evolving digital age. So, how can those new to the game create a compelling customer experience with live chat? Let’s discuss!
Improving the Customer Experience with Live Chat
Live chat is a fast, convenient, and responsive way for your customers to connect with your business. The primary benefit of live chat is its ability to produce an immediate response for your customers. Live chat results in happier clients, increased customer satisfaction, and enhanced business growth when done right. Studies show that more than 40% of customers expect to see the live chat option on your website.
One of the most significant hesitations for brands new to the live chat feature is staffing. How can you add this feature to our website if you’re already stretched thin? Do you need to hire a dedicated employee to monitor the chat feature? Will someone need to be available 24/7 to answer incoming messages?
Before the panic sets in, it’s essential to know that you don’t need to have someone on hand to answer a chat message immediately. That’s where automation comes in. These innovative features allow you to create an automated system that notifies your customer when someone is available. Even better, you can set up bots to automatically answer the most common questions you see and help consumers fix their problems themselves.
Nearly all live chat widgets come with the ability to answer commonly asked questions. These widgets automatically deal with customer questions and help them find solutions to their problems. If your customer still needs assistance, they’ll be transferred to a live agent at that point. This means faster solutions, less pressure, and increased productivity and effectiveness. Plus, a whole lot of happy customers!
The main downfall of these live chat features comes from user error. Unfortunately, many companies don’t know how to implement the live chat experience correctly. This doesn’t just reduce the effectiveness of these fantastic tools, but it can also lead to a poor brand reputation. So, how do you successfully integrate the live chat feature into your website and use it to enhance the customer experience?
Tips to Creating an Effective Live Chat Customer Experience
If you want to take advantage of the benefits of live chat, you need to be sure you implement it in an ideal way. So, what separates a quality live chat from an ineffective one? These tips can help you create the ultimate live chat experience to enhance your brand reputation.
1. Offer Quick Answers
Since the primary advantage of live chat is convenience, you need to be sure you can offer quick answers to your customers. One of the most common reasons customers use live chat is to get immediate answers to their questions. While live chat does offer a way to strengthen customer relationships through personal connection, delayed responses can negatively impact your business.
When customers reach out, make sure there is some sort of immediate response available. If you can’t have a live agent available for real-time messaging, use an automated response to keep customers informed about the average wait time. Chatbots are also a great way to provide customers with answers to commonly asked questions.
2. Leverage Pre-Chat Information Forms
Pre-chat forms are one of the most beneficial tools your business can use to improve the live chat experience. With pre-chat forms, customers can explain their issues to a chatbot who directs them to the right agent. Leveraging these forms allows you to resolve problems quickly and effectively.
For larger businesses, automated systems can be used to direct customers to different teams based on need. For example, if customers have a billing question, they will be directed towards the billing department, and if they have a technical question, they will be directed to the technical support team. By immediately referring customers to the right agent, you lower wait times, reduce errors, and increase client satisfaction.
When it comes to pre-chat information forms, be sure to stick to the basics. You don’t want to ask for too much information upfront. Customer name, email address, an alternate form of contact, and a brief explanation of the problem typically provide plenty of information to streamline the process.
3. Make the Live Chat Experience On-Brand
Another way to transform the customer experience with live chats is to create something that matches your brand personality. While it’s vital to focus on something easy to use and effective, you also want to ensure that your live chat is something your customers associate with your brand.
Today, there are so many options regarding how your live chat window looks and feels. Why not adjust the appearance to suit your brand? You can choose specific colors to match your logo and website color scheme, tweak button shapes, and even change the font of your chat windows.
For example, look how we incorporate our fonts, color schemes, and even our language into the live chat feature on BragDeal’s website. We’ve helped countless customers do the same.
Working brand-specific design elements into the live chat experience creates a sense of trust and authority. Customers know that your live chat is connected to your brand, and they feel comfortable contacting you through the live chat system. In addition to the look, you should also consider your tone. If you typically talk to your customers using informal language, stick to that trend.
Giving your customers confidence when using your live chat feature is critical. You can even incorporate your typical language into automated responses and train your support team on-brand tone of voice. This helps support agents connect with your customers on a more personal level and strengthen your customer connections.
4. Consider Your Audience
Speaking of language, you should also consider your audience when it comes to your live chat features. One of the biggest issues companies find with the live chat experience is their failure to offer a system that supports all languages. If you sell products worldwide, you need to make sure your live chat can effectively communicate with your customers worldwide.
Many live chat widgets will automatically translate languages when your agents are speaking with foreign customers. If your development team creates a live chat feature from scratch, you’ll need to ensure the suitable languages are supported. You can also add a drop-down menu that allows customers to choose their preferred language. This further enhances the customer experience for bi-lingual consumers.
In addition to language, you’ll also need to make sure your customers can reach you from wherever they are. Your chat feature will need to be responsive on all devices. Most widgets automatically work on mobile phones and tablets, but you’ll need to make sure this is the case. If your live chat only works on the desktop version of your website, mobile customers will be unhappy.
Whether you’re adding a live chat through your mobile responsive website or integrating a chat section into your mobile app, you need to ensure your live chat creates an intuitive experience for your audience. Meet your customers where they are by providing your live chat is responsive and formatted for all devices.
5. Follow Up with Customer Feedback
Just as pre-chat forms are a great asset to your live chat feature, gathering customer feedback helps you perfect your system. You can set up a post-chat survey with a few simple questions that give you insight into your customers’ experience. If customers encounter a genuine problem during their experience, you’ll be able to use that information to improve the overall experience. Customer feedback is an excellent way to enhance your service and your brand.
Immediately asking for customer feedback after a live chat session is a practical approach. Not only does it provide you with an easy way to measure customer satisfaction and enhance communication strategies, but it also shows your customers that you care about what they have to say. Post-chat surveys build customer loyalty and allow you to provide the most exceptional customer experience in the future.
Implementing or enhancing your live chat can drastically improve the user experience. However, you need a quality web developer to deliver the live chat feature most effectively. If you want to enhance the customer experience, increase client satisfaction, and improve your overall web presence, reach out to our team at BragDeal.
