This week we focus on just one topic – live chat for customer support. Many companies look at chat support as a good middle ground between phone support and just email support. But what if live chat support is actually tougher to pull off?
Our panel looks at how effective live chat is, where it should be used, and the resources needed to do it right.
All that and more from the best team in customer support on this episode of the live Support Hangout!
Watch to the show
Show Notes and Links
- Tone and Communication
- Chatting with Customers
- Best Buy Favors Live Chat
- Live chat, the best possible use of your marketing dollars
- 5 sure ways to end crappy live support for good
This week’s shoutouts
- From Carolyn – Lindsey Stirling
- From Chase L. – Fantastical
- From Jeff – Don.na
- From Chase C. – Digg Reader
Our partner – Snappy
Most customer support apps have some kind of learning curve as you try to figure it out. With Snappy, their new interface is drop dead easy to use and lets you focus on what matters most – your customers.
They’ve got a great 30 day entirely free trial so go check them out here.
I am looking into live chat for our support team at the moment, so this is really interesting!
Currently I’m thinking about how we can schedule live chat times, so instead of being inundated with chat requests and speaking to 4 or 5 people at a time all popping up at once, the customer tells us a convenient time for us to chat them and we “call” them and they have a time slot of half hour or so.
I don’t know if anyone has ever spoke to 123-reg.co.uk via live chat, but it’s totally infuriating to see “Your agent will be available to talk in 27 minutes”. I think it’s much nicer for the support guys to say “Ok you want to talk to us! What time would be convenient for you?”
Would love to get some feedback on this idea!
Lauren
I love that idea Lauren!
I’m seeing it more and more with phone support. A half hour might be a bit long for a live chat but I guess that would just depend on the specific situation. Spacing them out in half hour segments would probably be a safe way to avoid scheduling troubles.
If you end up trying it, please let the group here know how it went!