Tips for Working with Live Chat Support Teams
Live Chat support combines the immediacy of a call center with the written format of tickets. Follow the suggestions below to set your team members up for success and ensure customers receive the quickest, most effective responses to their real-time questions. Preparing Your Teams for Live Chat SupportMinimizing agent response time is critical to providing fast and convenient customer service. Take a look at a few of our suggestions below to help you prepare for live chat support. Create chat-specific saved repliesCreate a list of saved replies for the most common chat-related scenarios so agents can respond faster than they can type. Agents can also create their own personal saved replies. Examples include:Introductions:For positive or neutral customers: "Hi *customer name*, thanks for contacting *your business name*, how can I help you?"For frustrated customers: "Hi *customer name*, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I’d be happy to help you with this issue."Closing statements: For positive or neutral customers: "Happy to help! If you need anything else, feel free to contact us again."For frustrated customers: "Thank you for taking the time to write to us. If there's anything else we can assist you with, please let us know."Investigating:Requesting more information: "Please let me know a little bit more about *the issue* so I can better understand."Needing more time: "We're looking into this issue, please wait a few moments."Escalating in chat: "I see the issue you’re referring to. I’m having someone from the relevant team look into this, please wait a moment."Escalating offline: "Our team will need to take a closer look. I've forwarded your issue to the *relative department name* who will update you via email. We apologize for the inconvenience."No customer response: "We haven't heard from you for a while. Feel free to reply in this chat if you still need help."Tips:Automatically greet your customers by name by adding dynamic placeholders to saved replies.Begin each chat-related saved reply name with "Chat" so they're easily discernible from other saved replies. Utilize Chat ViewsEnsure your customers' questions get to the right agents. You can create chat views that filter your chats by label, assigned agents, custom fields and more. Then have specialized agents focus on answering chats from their assigned chat view. For example, Billing agents could answer chats from a 'Billing' chat view displaying conversations from a widget on your customers' Billing page. To select a chat view:Click the All Chats tab.Click Edit / Change View.Select a chat view from the list.Tip: Click Edit next to a chat view to modify its filters. Create internal escalation proceduresThere will likely come a time when an agent can't solve a customer's problem on the spot. Be proactive by creating internal processes for escalating issues. Example escalation procedure for chat agents:Chat your customer to let them know you'll need to escalate the issue offline with the relevant department, which will follow up via email.Click End Chat and change the ticket status to Investigating.Create and send a new ticket to your customer letting them know they'll receive another email once the issue is resolved. Add an internal note to the ticket referencing the chat ticket. Change the ticket status to Investigating. Once the issue is resolved or if further information is needed, an agent can reply and resolve the ticket. Minimizing Response TimeWith Live Chat, customers expect immediate responses to their questions. Fulfill these expectations by making sure your team monitors the Chat List and replies to conversations quickly. Respond with saved repliesYour team members should familiarize themselves with the chat-related saved replies you create in your account to ensure quick responses to common scenarios. Agents can further customize their own replies by creating personal saved replies. Tip: Type # and your reply shortcut, then select a saved reply to insert. Respond quickly to Waiting chatsYou'll see a notification on the Waiting Chats icon to indicate the number of chats waiting for a participant to join. Be sure to have agents respond with friendly opening saved replies to let customers know they're available to help. Tips: Click Edit / Change View and select a chat view to filter the chats you see.View how long each customer has waited for a participant to join to the right of each chat preview.View the webpage your customer is chatting fromKnowing which page your customer is chatting with you from can help you understand what they're chatting about. In the Info panel at the top right, you can view, copy, and go to the URL (webpage address) your customer is currently viewing. To view the URL your customer is chatting from:Hover over the website name in the Info panel at the top right. Choose an option:Copy URL: Hover over the URL and select Click to copy. Go to URL: Click Go to URL to open the webpage in a new tab. Notes: If your customer is no longer viewing the webpage they're chatting from, Away last seen at displays before the website name. If your customer has closed the webpage they were chatting from, Offline displays in place of the website name. Replying to the chat sends an email to your customer.Respond periodically to your Active chatsFrom the My Chats tab, you'll see a notification on the Active Chats icon to indicate a customer has responded to a conversation you've joined. Check in with customers frequently, even if it's to let them know you need more time to work on a solution. Tip: View a timestamp to the right of each chat preview to see when a customer last replied. Ending non-responsive chatsWhen a customer hasn't replied after a reasonable amount of time, an agent should let them know they're ending the chat. The agent can then end the chat, which places it in the Completed tab. If your customer responds later, the chat appears in the Waiting tab.Tip: You'll see a pop-up message appear over the user panel on the right to let you know when your customer has closed the chat or gone offline. Transfer to other agentsIf an agent needs to end their shift or cannot finish a chat, they can transfer the conversation to another agent.To transfer your chat to another agent:Contact an agent offline to let them know you need to transfer.Click the Assign ticket icon from the footer menu.Type the name or email address of the team member and select them from the list.Note: The agent receives an Answers notification once they've been assigned to the chat.Once they've joined, click the drop-down next to End Call.Note: Your customer can see another agent has joined in the header of their chat widget. Select Leave Chat.
