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You Purchased Live Chat Software, Now What? Take the Time to Train Your Team

by Jeff Mason, Vice President of Marketing, Velaro - March 25, 2013

You Purchased Live Chat Software, Now What? Take the Time to Train Your Team

Jeff Mason, Vice President of Marketing, Velaro

By purchasing live chat software, you have made a smart investment that will benefit your organization tremendously. In today’s highly competitive e-commerce environment, live chat is essential in converting website visitors into buying customers. It can get you more return from new visitors to your website, it gives visitors a variety of ways to communicate with you, and it allows support staff to work more efficiently, which all goes a long way in reducing shopping cart abandonment.

But purchasing live chat software is just the first step. In order to fully leverage the software, and make customer service a true priority, it is crucial that you properly train your customer service team. Without the proper training, a call center representative will not be able to effectively use live chat to provide high-quality service and your customers will know it from the very first typo.

Here is an essential list of training tips to help your company keeps existing loyal customers and make new ones:

· Empower customer service teams to make decisions. A customer service representative should not have to run to a supervisor every time a customer wants something even slightly out of the ordinary. By empowering your customer service team, they have the power to immediately solve any request or question, which makes customers know they are a priority.

· The kinds of questions you ask are important. Asking the right questions is crucial to maintaining efficiency in any live chat environment. Customer service representatives can use live chat to efficiently gather any details needed to resolve an issue and make the decisions that will lead to a satisfactory resolution for the customer. Listening skills go hand and hand with this. This way customer service representatives stay in control of the conversation so they can ask the right questions, and get the right results.

· Good writing is important. Communication with customers through live chat is much different than handling queries over the phone. While a customer service representative might be an outstanding conversationalist, if he or she can’t write well, they could actually become a liability to your business. Make sure the people providing the live chat services are trained in spelling and grammar. Customers will absolutely judge a company based on spelling and grammar mistakes.

· Be able to identify an angry customer. While it’s easy to identify an angry caller on the phone, it is more challenging to recognize frustration or sarcasm on a live chat. Take the time to train customer service representative on the signs of an unhappy customer and provide them with the tips on how to handle the situation without losing their cool.

· Fast typing is crucial. Talking to a hunt-and-peck typist in a live chat environment can be very frustrating for the customer. Solid keyboarding skills and technical proficiency will make the difference between closing a sale or losing one. Train customer service representatives to quickly research answers, host multiple chats at once and leverage all the tools at their disposal to ensure a successful experience.

It is also vital to consider that, while many organizations invest in live chat software, they don’t fully leverage the software. Live chat can provide a tremendous level of return-on-investment, especially when support staffs are fully trained.

As some of the key elements of using live chat involve strong writing and typing skills, some organizations should even consider using a dedicated staff only for live chat. These professionals are highly trained on both how to effectively use the software, but also in writing and typing. As not every support staff possesses all the unique qualities of solid customer support – from effective verbal communications to strong grammar – it often makes sense to segment out call center staff based on their natural skill sets.

The benefits of live chat are tremendous and often over looked. It can reduce the cost per interaction and average response times, as well as enhance the ability to provide excellent customer service. Live chat will help any organization establish a level of unprecedented customer service, especially if all support staff are properly trained.

About the Author:

Jeff Mason is the Vice President of Marketing, for Velaro, a leading provider of live chat software. Visit velaro.com to learn more.



 
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