There is no denying that having a live chat widget is a sure way to improve customer service and website conversions. It is, however, sad that millions of businesses are not tapping into this powerful interactive feature to drive sales. This would have been an excuse if it was very expensive to implement live chat features, but since it is not, there isn’t any justifiable reason why you wouldn’t have a chat widget on your site. For those with the intention of implementing livechat service on a website or social media, here is a look at 10 easy steps to help you out.
Define a baseline
In order for you to understand the full impact of a sales chat support system for your business and website, you need to identify a baseline that will be guided by your key service performance metrics. There are various key service performance metrics available so you can use such a system to track user activities, and since you want the best results and experience from the livechat service, your concern should be to concentrate only on essential metrics to start. Therefore, the first step toward implementing a chat service is to define a baseline for exactly what you need within your chat system. Do you require SMS notifications, bilingual or multilingual service, 24/7 service to handle emergencies, late evening and early morning inquiries, a call-transfer feature to direct users from livechat to your phone line, URL tracking via Google Analytics, CRM integration, or any other features?
Single out the type of issues you can solve through live chats
Businesses are unique and they have various ways to respond to customer queries. When you implement a live chat widget on your website, it is possible that all kinds of inquiries will come through. Some may be standard inquiries that our reps will be able to answer, while others may touch on post sales services. If you want to have great results and give your customers a good experience, it is imperative that you know the kinds of matters that will be tended to via the live chat system, and that you share as much of your knowledge with us so that we can train our reps on how to best serve your customers. This is to maintain focus and to ensure that the chat staff doesn’t waste any time attempting to handle matters that they aren’t capable to respond to, and to be able to effectively respond to the maximum amount of inquiries.
Know where to promote the chat
Being a new system, and one which is yet to be implemented by millions of websites across the internet, the successful implementation of a chat widget will always attract a lot of attention. However, you should never let such excitement and attention divert you from advertising the chat service in the right place. Naturally, the right people who should know about the chat service are those who come to your website, and those who are customers or have shown interest in your products or service. Therefore, carefully choose where you spread the news regarding the implementation so that you don’t bother the chat operators with unnecessary requests.
Know who will be handling the chat conversations
Choosing your chat staff is another component of the implementation, which you ought to take very seriously. If you plan to handle some or all of the chats internally, you must designate select individuals within your business who are available to handle chats immediately, as soon as they come in, who will be responsible for all incoming chat conversations. Such individuals must be able to offer appropriate responses and direction. You may choose to hire from your existing staff, or train a new employee to handle this part of your business if there is enough volume to justify this, or hire virtual assistants and train them on the operations of your business. Irrespective of the option you take, be sure they are individuals who understand and are passionate about what you do, and have knowledge on how to deal with clients. Alternatively, you can employ a third party service such as echat123, to handle chats for your you 24/7 in multiple languages, offering the possibility to transfer chat leads to your phone line when applicable.
Create personalized responses
Personalization goes a long way in massaging your visitors’ ego and demonstrating to them that you really care about them, and this is one thing you need to have in mind when considering website chat services. If they are returning visitors whose names you already have, or if they had started sessions and you previously collected their details, be sure to salute and address them appropriately.
Consider implementing chatbots or automating certain responses
It is possible that your chat staff will not be online all the time to attend to all incoming chat requests. But this should not mean that the chat will go offline and be back when the staff report to work. With the advancement of the website sales chat, you can easily set up chatbots to give responses to specific inquiries that may come in when your staff is offline. This implies that you must have a very good idea of the common questions normally asked via the chat system, and then craft automated responses so that your users will still be tended to when your staff is not around.
Define a new process and train
Consider the standard phone processes when thinking about acquiring the best live chat software or when designing one from scratch. When creating the process, borrow ideas from intelligent call routing concepts so that you can easily identify when an agent has to come in and respond, how long the agent should wait before jumping on the chat, what should be done when the customer is not responding, and when the agent should trigger automatic responses during the chat.
Consider integration with other systems
It is always a good idea to integrate the live chat widget with the systems you already have in your service desk management. This will help your support staff in a number of ways, especially in ensuring that no two agents are tending to the same client, which in most cases, may lead to confusion between the agents and the customer.
Consider the KPIs and do regular reviews
Whether you are using the best chat software or you are designing a sales chat from start, you should ensure that you don’t lose track of the key performance indicators to help you understand the effectiveness of the implementation, as well as the overall impact the system has on the business. This will help you refine processes and improve the chat experience for both the operators and the staff.
Keep on improving
There are no guarantees that the first live chat widget or livechat service you implement will work best for you. It is important that you keep tweaking the process to conform to the demands of your business, and to the nature of applications to which it is subjected. This may take time, but will ultimately ensure that you have a very solid chat support system for your clients.
