In this day of rapidly growing technology, it’s no surprise that businesses have to learn to advance just as quickly as the technology comes out. Customers want businesses who can satisfy their immediate gratification for their consumer needs. Over the course of the decade, many companies have decided to implement instant messaging on their websites. With a click of a button, a customer who is looking for answers can speak with a customer service representative online through the company’s chat service. In many cases, the convenience is great and not as time consuming as waiting on the other end of the phone going through an automated system. However, there are some faux pas moves that businesses make when it comes to chatting with a customer. The following are simple guidelines companies can follow when using their instant messaging service in dealing with customer issues.
Test Your IM Service Weekly
Whether your company’s instant messaging service is in-house or through a third party company, it would be wise to test your service on a weekly basis to make sure the system is working appropriately. We all know technology can go awry at times, but you may not know if you are having issues with your chat service unless you receive customer complaints. Because of the convenience IM brings to your customers, you want to make sure complaints about your IM feature is brought to a minimum. Testing your IM feature frequently will give you the assurance that your customers are able to chat with your customer service representative with little to no issues. One thing you should test for is how quickly a customer can connect to a representative as well as how long it takes for both parties to receive a message. If the latency is longer than a few seconds, you might want to check with your IM provider to make sure everything is running appropriately.
Chat Should Be Live, Not Bot
Some businesses, especially those who are wanting to save a little money, decide to have a bot program running their chat sessions with their customers. This means when a customer asks a question, the bot responds with a generalized answer that might relate to the issue at hand. If it doesn’t, or if the customer asks a question that the bot does not recognize, it will tell the customer to call for further assistance. Not only does this become annoying to customers, but it also defeats the purpose of the convenience that business chat solutions provide. On a personal level, people expect there to be an actual person on the other side of the computer talking to them as if they were face-to-face. If you take the personal level out of customer service, you are ruining your chances of trust from your customer. Using a live customer service representative as a chat operator will bring that personal effect into your customer service chat sessions. It gives your customer the convenience of having an issue solved quickly and gives your business the opportunity to win over the customer’s loyalty.
Live Chat Without Distractions
Would you allow your customer service representatives talk to two customers at one time on the phone? Of course you wouldn’t. So why would it be acceptable to allow your representatives to talk to a customer over the phone while they are talking to another customer through your live chat? From a customer’s standpoint, you expect for the representative to have your undivided attention about the situation at hand. From the business aspect, you should have your representatives practice good customer service skills and allow for them to give their undivided attention to the customer regardless if the service is over the phone or through chat. As a customer, it can be annoying waiting ten minutes for an answer to what you thought was a simple question simply because the representative is dealing with more than one issue at a time.
If your business hasn’t already adapted to the new trends in customer service, it isn’t a bad idea to go ahead and incorporate live chat to enhance the quality and effectiveness of your company. However, keep in mind a customer deserves just as much respect and attention through your chat service as you would give them over the phone. Since the customer uses live chat for immediate gratification, you should teach your representatives to use live chat for immediate satisfaction.