Live chat is one of the most efficient ways to boost your customer engagement. It is easy to use, convenient, and produces quick resolutions.
However, as with any other method of customer engagement, there are certain disadvantages to using it as well.
For instance, live chats can easily be screen-capped and shared online. At the very least, it is easier for customers to share customer support issues concerning live chats compared to phone calls and emails.
There is also a live record of the conversation, so it’s easy to deny chat mistakes easily.
Fortunately, both of these potential issues can easily be prevented by avoiding the following most common live chat mistakes. We are also going to share the best solutions for each issue below.
Common Live Chat Mistakes to Avoid
1. Lack of Instant Response
Customers expect live chat to be as responsive as social media messaging. According to recent statistics, a customer’s average waiting time after initiating the chat is around two minutes and 40 seconds.
This means that most of them leave before three minutes, while others start to get irate, disappointed, or confused depending on their circumstances.
The faster that your agents get to reply, the better it will be for your company’s online reputation.
The Best Solution: Add an auto-response message. Most live chat platforms already allow this feature. With AI integration, it is even possible to input your FAQs into your chatbot to help the customer seek the solution to his issue himself. It is also a good way to inform your clients whether a live chat agent is available to support them or not.
Here are two examples of efficient pre-made responses:
● Hi, we have received your request. A live agent will support you in 3 minutes.
● Hi, we have received your request. Our live chat support hours are from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM, Monday to Friday. One of our agents will contact you via email at the soonest time possible. You may also contact us through our email, customer service hotline, or social media channels. Thank you for your patience!
2. Poor Handling of Customer Support Issues
Live chat statistics report that 9% of customers get frustrated whenever they’re required to repeat their issues themselves. To make matters worse, 57% of consumers are willing to abandon their shopping carts after a negative live chat experience.
Other common complaints are poor issue understanding and lack of interest.
The Best Solution: The best way to prevent this issue is to invest in an updated live chat support and ticketing system. It can help your agents keep track of current issues, access chat history to check the possible solutions that were already explored, and follow up on the other teams that are also involved in the issue with ease and confidence.
As a business owner, having a chat history is also great to check your chat support’s efficiency, agent performance, and quality of service. It can also help you gain insights on how you can further improve your live chat support service.
We understand that most of these advanced chat platforms require a bit of investment. Hence, make sure to include it when you’re drafting your startup marketing budget.
3. Long Waiting Time
As we have mentioned above, customers expect an instant response after their initial chat, but how about during the actual conversation? The same statistic report we’ve referenced above stated that 24% of customers are still unhappy with long waiting times, even if it’s already within the conversation.
It feels as if the company is waiting for their time, and can thus, negatively impact your brand reputation. Other instances that customers consider a waste of their time are:
● Making them wait without informing them how long the search for solutions will take
● Asking them repeatedly for details regardless if it’s to verify their account, or to address their issue
● Passing them to other support agents that can restart the support process instead of pushing it forward
The Best Solution: Your chat support service can significantly improve by providing your agents with adequate training and tools. You can refine your chat support process this way, and give your agents the skills required to deal with issues more efficiently than before.
4. Using the Wrong Tone
Here’s a question that we frequently get from our readers: what is the right tone to use for live chats? Should it be formal or informal?
The answer is neither. Your live chat tone should be friendly but professional. Thus, it shouldn’t be too formal or too informal. It shouldn’t sound robotic as well.
Apparently, 29% of customers find robotic or scripted responses to be the most annoying factor of live chat support. It can severely impact your customer retention rate as well since these negative live chat performances can drive even loyal customers away if it becomes even more prevalent.
The Best Solution: Better agent training can improve this issue as well. However, aside from that, using the real names and photos of your agents, and practices such as calling the client by their first name, can add credibility to your live chat support.
5. Poorly Constructed Sentences
Finally, don’t forget to improve the communication skills of your agents as well. Live chat responses should be clear, concise, and direct. It shouldn’t be riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. Proper capitalization and punctuations are also expected.
The Best Solution: It is ideal to hire live support agents equipped with excellent communication skills already. However, adding a spelling and grammar checker to your current chat platform can also help catch the most common errors.
To Sum up
Live chat support is a really powerful tool. When used efficiently, it can significantly improve your customer’s experience and your company’s online reputation. However, it is not perfect. If poorly handled, live chat can expose the low quality of your customer service and can even put your company in a difficult position if exposed online.
Fortunately, it is very easy to catch common live chat mistakes. By keeping the tips that we have shared with you in mind, we are confident that you will be able to provide an excellent live chat support service that will surely impress both new and loyal customers. Good luck!
