/ Live chat: explanation, tips & tricks
Alexander Wijninga
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8 min
A live chat has become an indispensable tool on your website. At a time when all the information you look for appears in the blink of an eye, there is less and less patience for waiting on an answer from customer service. That is why having such a chat is of great importance; with fast answers you raise your customer satisfaction immediately. In this blog we describe what a live chat involves exactly, how live chat software differs from a custom-built live chat, the pros and cons of the function and how you implement it.
A live chat is a tool with which you answer your customers' questions in real time. You can place this customer service software on your website, but also in an app or platform. When (potential) customers get stuck somewhere or want to report something, they have the possibility of sending a message. When someone starts a conversation, a member of staff gets a notification and the conversation begins. An advantage of this is that people do not have to keep an eye on their email for a long time waiting for an answer and therefore do not lose their focus on the subject.
When you do not have enough capacity within your company, or you want to be sure the customer gets a fast answer, you can also extend your live chat software with a software chatbot. This chatbot takes over part of the communication from you: the chatbot talks to the customer first, which removes the waiting time and leaves you more time for other work. Should it not have an answer to the question asked, the live chat with a human agent starts after all.
The customer can find you easily when they are looking at your website and have questions. This way you can work as customer-centrically as possible;
You can answer extremely quickly. Because website visitors no longer have to wait for an answer, you get a far more dynamic conversation that runs more smoothly.
You offer the customer personal contact. Because you see customer details in your system, you deal with the customer personally. You also answer their specific questions precisely.
You gain new insights into which things are unclear on your website. When people indicate that they are getting stuck somewhere, you know something has to change.
Someone always has to watch the live chat inbox. When a message comes in, the idea is that someone answers as fast as possible.
It is very time-consuming to be available at every moment of the day to answer questions.
The disadvantages above can be solved by bringing in a chatbot. The chatbot answers immediately and is available to your customers day and night. Should the chatbot not know the answer, the bot can also let the customer know that they will be contacted as soon as possible once the human colleagues are back. That way you do not leave the customer's question unanswered. This saves manpower and raises customer satisfaction.
There are several ways to implement a live chat on your website. You can program it yourself (custom built), or use software. Both options have their pros and cons. We explain them below!
Organisations can have various reasons for choosing custom-built software. It may be, for example, that the software has to work together with an application already in use. Sometimes organisations are also convinced that it is necessary to have software made to measure, simply because the situation is too complex to apply ‘one-size-fits-all’ software to.
The disadvantage of custom-built software is that it can become a complex job that costs a lot of time. On top of that, a development team is involved because a lot of knowledge and expertise is needed. That makes the costs mount up quickly. A tight implementation and a maintenance plan are crucial in the case of custom-built chat software.
The alternative? There is a lot of software on the market that you can easily implement for your organisation. This lets you skip the building part, and no development team is needed. That saves costs. On top of that, the party whose software you use is on hand for questions, problems or updates. Thanks to the rapid technological developments of recent years, this software can often be applied in more complex organisations too.
When you want to add a live chat to your website in an easy way, you can opt for software. You skip the programming and coding entirely and have your own live chat online in a simple way.
There are various ways to add the software to your website. One is by means of a live chat plugin. A plugin is a simple way to add a piece of functionality to your website. You can download a plugin easily, you activate it in your website environment and the live chat automatically becomes visible on your site. Another way to place a live chat on your website is by putting the HTML code in the body or head of your website. You can do this yourself, or have your website administrator do it. The advantage of placing the code yourself is that you can determine the loading speed and the position on the website.
Both ways result in a chat icon appearing on your website. Through this icon you open the live chat. Besides the fact that live chat software is easy to place on your website, this software also makes sure your conversations are saved. Most software is cloud-based, which lets you view and analyse your conversations easily. Using software also means your chat can be visible on several channels. By means of an API your live chat software can communicate with platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. That way you can live chat with your customers from a single platform.
Implementing a live chat plugin on your website is one thing; the work that comes with live chat is another. Your customer service team also has to be trained, and know how to use the software. Most companies in 2021 already have a support team for customer service, largely concerned with telephony, email, and perhaps social media too. Live chat needs a slightly different approach. Below we therefore describe 8 tips for handling live chat effectively.
Website visitors who use your live chat have no appetite for bells and whistles. Research by Harvard Business Review shows that customer loyalty does not lie so much in exceeding customer service expectations as in the company solving problems simply and quickly. The two biggest customer service problems the customer claims to experience are: having to make contact several times and having to ask the same question several times. Fast, efficient and clear, that is what the customer expects from live chat.
With the term ‘live chat’ the customer expects a member of the company's staff to be sitting ‘live’ on the other side of the screen, ready to answer their question. If a customer gets in touch via the live chat, you can therefore assume they want to be helped quickly. Within a chat conversation that simply means customers do not want to read endless stories in a chat window, but short instructions or explanations. So break up your chat bubbles regularly for readability.
Within a live chat you cannot read body language or observe facial expressions. Body language and facial expressions do, however, give off certain signals that show you are engaged with your customer. Saying ‘okay’ now and then during a lengthy story on the phone confirms to the customer that you are still there and listening properly. So with a live chat, let them know you are still on the other side of the screen as well. It is therefore not odd to type something now and then while the customer is explaining. Think of words such as: Ah, I see, okay or understood.
A chat can quickly sound impersonal. You can laugh out loud at your customer's joke, but only your colleagues will hear you. Those are signals that make the customer feel heard, though, and they contribute to a pleasant experience. So make use of the personal approach. Has the customer given a name? Then use it! You can also simply use humour or let the customer know that their joke made you laugh. ‘Haha’ does the job fine here ;-). In research by consultancy Lopes Slot it was found that 86% of customers are likely to do business with a company again if they have a positive emotional bond with the person helping them. It can be a friendly remark or an empathetic gesture towards solving a problem.
Many customer service staff feel unsure about using emoji in their conversations. But that is unnecessary! Emoji are the perfect replacement for facial expressions, and so they give a human touch to the conversation. Why does that matter so much? The human brain is (unfortunately) built to assume the negative when in doubt. We call that negative bias. In a chat conversation, without visible or audible emotion, you as a customer service agent are extra vulnerable to it. If the customer asks: “Are you still there?” And you only respond with: “Yes I am”. Then the average customer will read that in an unfriendly tone. So rather respond with: “Yes, I'm still here 😊”. Do you notice the difference?
This sounds obvious to many, but always ask whether the customer has been helped properly. You should never assume the customer is finished with the conversation once you have answered their question. Perhaps they are not happy with the answer or still have a question about another subject. So always close the conversation with: “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Should customer service staff make typos in a chat conversation or not? Opinions online are divided on that. Preferably not, of course: typos suggest sloppiness and a lack of knowledge. But to prevent them you have to read back and correct every sentence you type. That costs a lot of time and can be frustrating. That slowness is of course not appreciated by your customer either. The occasional spelling mistake makes you human, so try not to be perfect. You are, after all, not a chatbot but a person. Your customers really will understand that.
Being available 24/7 via live chat can be a challenge. We often get a response from our customers along the lines of ‘we are not big enough for a 24/7 customer contact centre’. We know the issues that come with a 24-hour economy by now, but a lack of availability and long queues are still often number one as a factor in poor customer service in the Netherlands. However friendly and empathetic you are during office hours, today's consumer wants above all speed and convenience when they want it. The younger generation in particular is used to being able to sort things out quickly and easily. No hassle, but a solution straight away, wherever and whenever you want.
Watermelon's customer service software includes a chatbot platform on which you build your chatbot yourself without programming knowledge.
Read on in our whitepaper: "Benefits of chatbots".
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