Thursday, 3 April 2014

Industries That Can Benefit Most Out Of Live Chat – A Brief Analysis

Live chat support is basically a seamless, two way channel of communication, integrated on the website of any company in order to provide quick online customer services. The purpose of having an online chat support on the website is to enhance customer services through ensuring customer convenience and satisfaction. So far, live chat support has been successful in serving its purpose. It has been proven through various researches and surveys that live chat is in fact a credible technology which not only provides an effective channel of communication but also plays a role in increasing sales and profits. The main reason for the success of this medium is that it provides customer satisfaction-which is the key to the success of any business. However, there has been an ongoing debate about the kind of industries that can benefit the most out of the technology. Various industries are now availing the online chat support services, but are they benefiting from it? Let’s have a look:

The Retail Industry:
The retail industry includes various niches and markets, from apparel stores to bakeries, all are included in this industry. It has been estimated that the retail industry is one of those industries which are benefiting the most out of the technology. In fact, many tech gurus believe that live chat support is best suited for this industry. The reason for this is that their customers are more demanding and require a better customer service. Apart from that, it also assists in increasing sales and profits which makes live chat a wise investment for companies belonging to this industry. Good customer services provided by retail industry leads to 87-92% satisfaction rates.

Banking and Finance:

There are not many banks that are availing live chat support, but those which have incorporated this software onto their website are benefiting greatly out of it. The reason for this is that the customers from this industry require quick and instant services, which is only possible through live chat. Since banking is a complicated procedure, its customers require immediate services. Good customer services by banks lead to 85-87% customer satisfaction.

Health and Pharmacy:
Health and pharmacy is another industry in which the usage of live chat support is increasing. Through this medium, these industries provide their customers with constant advice and guidance along with making appointments easy for them. Since customers of this industry turn towards customer services, usually at the time of emergency they also require a rapid medium of connection. By providing good customer services through live chat, these industries can achieve a customer satisfaction rate of 87%.
 
Manufacturing Industry

This industry usually does not deal with consumers directly, rather it deals with other service providing companies. It has been estimated that this industry can greatly benefit from live chat. For those manufacturing companies, which are availing live chat support, the satisfaction rate of customers is 90-92%. This shows, that manufacturing industry can benefit the most out of live chat.

Apart from the above mentioned industries, the other industries that benefit from online chat support are: real estate, IT and software, tech hosting, games & gambling and entertainment industry across the globe.

Monday, 9 December 2013

Tips to Enhance Your Live Chat Operators’ Efficiency

Customer service operators are very important for the online corporations. They rely on their service providers to entice their clients and ensure quality services. Live Chat have made these services a lot better, however, there are still some things that should be done in order to get more efficient and productive results.

Any company, who gives live website support to its clients, will want to incorporate the following in its training program.

Train Them to Perfection:
If you really want get great results through your live chat system, you will have to train them properly. No one is genius enough to understand the fundamentals of any business from the get-go. Everyone needs to be trained for a reasonable amount of time before he can be taken as an expert in that field. The operators must be trained to explore their inner creativities, so that they can groom themselves and explore customer services in a wider range.

Goal Setting:
It is the duty of the manager to set achievable goals for the operators who handle live customer service chat. The tasks and the goals must be in accordance with each other. Also, the goal must be according to the ability of the operator. Pushing anyone to out of his limits is not fun; this can be hectic ad tiring for the operator. It will have direct impact on his services, he will not be able to perform well and the company will suffer some major losses because of it.

Take Charge:
The team managers and leader have to take charge of the team. If your department does not have one, it is time that you appoint one of the best employees to take the position. That single person’s job will be to encourage, motivate and push his team to work harder and perform even better. A good team leader has the ability to make things happen in a matter of seconds, he can give them an objective that can be achieved.

Note:  On the whole, it is the company that has to make decisions and is held responsible for its employees’ efficiency. It has to to provide them with the right tools that will enable them to support the clients. Just adding live chat to a website is not enough; a company will have to provide the right means and opportunities to maintain a level of performance that is required by the company and by the clients.

Thursday, 28 November 2013

A Poor Man's Guide to Outsourcing Live Support

Live chat software is now a’ must have’ part of every online company. The companies that are not using live chat suffer greatly. The new companies enter the online business with hopes of making a huge amount of money overnight. However, they do not realize that they will have to work harder to get there. Even the biggest online companies had to work from the bottom to get there.

Do you know the reason behind their success? They paid attention to their clients. They made sure their clients were getting top of the range customer service. They had live chat software, more importantly they had amazing live support for website. They hired the best operators and they trained them until they became experts in this field.

However, very few companies are that lucky. Many of the new companies will have to outsource their live chat support because just adding chat to their website is not going to be enough.

What is Outsourcing?
Outsourced companies are basically third parties that come in and take over your chat services. They handle your live chat on your behalf and ensure that it is exactly what they want. The good thing is that anyone can outsource these services; the outsourced companies cater everybody from beauty industry to real estate. As long as you have live chat software on your website, you can hire a third party to take care of it for you.

The Million Dollar Question: Should You Outsource Live Chat Support?
A new comer will always be a little confused about this decision. Of course, he will hear lots of things about these third party companies and he will be in his right to question. There are some factors that make outsourcing companies like WebGreeter the best in the market. What are those factors? Take a look.

Lucrative:
Outsourcing companies are lucrative investments. Creating your own customer service department can be expensive and a handful. Especially, for an online company, hiring some online company to handle their customer service is cheaper than making their own little department. The new companies will get the opportunity to save money on a rental space, telephone lines, equipment and work force.

Intricacy:
The outsourcing companies can handle any kind of problem. Their operators are trained and experienced in live chat support. Before they will take on your services, they will first gather information about your company and your products. Even if your clients demand technical support, they will be able to handle it without any hitch.

Time:
The outsourced companies take on all the customer service issues coaregioulsy and resolve all the problems from general to specific, in a highly professional manner. The day to day questions of your business can be handled by these people; the email support, the chat support and telephone support will be taken care of by these people whereas your staff can worry about more technical issues. In this way, you will be able to save time and work on both of these things side by side.

Warning: there are many companies who have hired freelancers to provide live support on their e-stores. Such an outsourcing can instead become a loss for you, because their support personal are usually not fully dedicated to a single company at a time. You will have to avoid such companies if you want to give high quality live support to your clients.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Live Website Support -- A Brick and Mortar Store at Your Website

You must be wondering that how a website could run like an e-store? In common people’s view, an e-store is nothing less a robotic website, where customers come, search for products on their own and either make a purchase or quit the site journey without coming into contact with retailers or sales persons. 

However, now an e-store is not just a quiet website with some contents and images; rather live website support has made it livelier by giving a feel of typical brick and mortar store where online customers can establish quick one-on-one contact with support personal.

Actually what happens is, when a potential client visits a website with live support, the online support personal greet him proactively and ask if he needs any kind of help. Using proactive approach, live support agents do not let any of their online clients go unattended or unheard.

Moreover, customers can themselves start a chat anytime during their site journey and can find right guidance at right time to complete their online purchase process. The chat agents provide immediate, real time and personalized assistance to every customers on their e-store. Providing a detailed guide to their customers, the chat personnel share images of the products to give them a more clear idea.

Enhancing the operational capabilities of live operators, live customer service chat allows them to observe all of the visitors on their website. Doing so, the chat support agents can get to know where a potential client has stuck on their e-store and needs immediate assistance. Keeping a notice of customers’ time and locations on their website, the chat operators provide them right assistance at right time by sending relevant text-based messages.

Suppose if a customer is at checkout stage on an e-store, the chat personal will send chat greetings regarding shipping, payment methods and other related tasks. This gives a feel to a customer that his all activities are being observed, same as in a typical brick and mortar store.

Undoubtedly, the presence of live website support gives a feel of traditional store to your e-shop.

Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Handling Live Chat Support during Rush Hour – Tips To Stay Focused



Online chat support needs to be exceptional. An online company cannot succeed without enhancing their live support. The mettle of a good chat support staff is frequently tested.  However, rush hours and holiday seasons are a true challenge for the chat operators. Even the most experienced chat operator can crumble under the rush hour pressure. Their one mistake or lack of judgment can ruin a sale for the company.

The live support for the website can become extraordinary and fruitful for the company if the chat operator can keep his cool during the chat session. Here are some tips that will help stay focused during a hectic chat session.

Stay Focused:
Do not be distracted and do not lose focus. It is the worst thing that you could do when you are under pressure. If you are getting flustered, look away from the screen and think about your basics. What is more important, which client is more important, what should be your next strategy, should you transfer the chat to a senior etc. Think about these things and then handle your chats accordingly.

Exploit Your Skills:
Everyone is good at one thing, at least. You need to discipline yourself into integrating your best skill within your chat during rush hour. Try not to think about how much you hate doing this or that, try to think about how you can handle the situation with the best of your abilities.

Lighten Up:
Being under pressure can make you grouchy and irritable. The sad thing is that the chat operator usually takes it out on the client, which is 100% against the rules of good customer service. A chat operator must never treat the customer badly, so calm yourself and think about something that makes you laugh or calms you down. If you are nervous, start talking about your nervousness with a fellow and you will feel better immediately.

Blank? Start Again:
Start again if your mind goes blank. Stop chatting for a minute and look at what you have done until now. First-class live customer service chat is all about giving the right answers and appeasing the client. You can come up with a new strategy by looking at what you have done so far.

When you are working under pressure, you can handle anything as long as you are staying focused and have a positive approach. Being pessimistic will not help. You just need to chin up, face things head on and keep faith in your abilities.

Friday, 11 October 2013

Bringing your eStore to Life on this Halloween with Live Chat Service

Halloween is one of those festive seasons of the year that are deemed to be the best for sales and profits. This holiday is that time of the year when an online company can actually make a lot of money, make new clients and retain the old ones for another year. However, achieving all of this is not easy at all. A company, especially an online company has a lot to do. As the market trends are changing, these companies will have to keep up with them, indulge their clients and still be true to their image.

Believe me, this is not easy. However, it is not suitable for the companies to resist the change. The online entrepreneurs have to go with the flow and stay with the market or else they will be squished like a bug by their competition. Right now, Live website support is the norm and the new trend of the market. Companies are taking the help of professional chat operators to handle their services and the clients in the best possible way.

However, that too is a challenge. The clients vehemently believe that the live chat is handled by robots or the answers are pre-installed in the software. And to be honest, in the beginning, almost every online company was doing that. Therefore, these clients have their reasons to not to trust any live chat software. Nevertheless, things have changed now. The companies realized their mistakes and changed their strategies almost instantly.

They are now adding chat to website and hiring real human operators to handle their chat services. This is all nice, but not enough. If you really want to get results this Halloween then you will have to hire experienced and professional chat greeters to manage your clients and their queries.

Now, if you try to hire them on your own then you have to be prepared for high wage demands. As this is the Halloween season, the experienced client is going to be hard to get and they will want higher rates for their services. Luckily, there are companies in the market whose sole purpose is to give the best customer service via live chat.

Why should you hire them?


•    Well, first of all, these companies are professionals. You will just have to tell them what to do and they will do that without blinking an eyelid. They are good at taking orders and doing their best.

•    They are going to handle each and every thing professionally. They know that the client can be ill-mannered and prudish at times; they will take it personally and try their best to appease their clients.

•    If something is going wrong then these people will first run it by you and even give appropriate and worthy suggestions that will help you to handle the situation.

Thursday, 3 October 2013

Live Website Support - Add Value to Your Online Business

Do you want to increase your online business worth in the market? Certainly! It is the ultimate wish of every vendor. However, in today’s competitive market you need to put extra efforts to make you known in the crowd of millions. With increasing customers’ demands and cut throat market competition, it has become a great challenge for you to make your presence felt. You need to go an extra mile to add value to your online business. This is the reason that the online business merchants are always in search of new and latest market tools and techniques through which they can  achieve their business goals in minimum time and budget.

Undoubtedly, the quality of your products has much to do in enhancing your business value but the foremost thing for which a customer admires you is your service. Providing quality service becomes more difficult when it comes to serving your online customers because here you lack a face-to-face contact. Here is where you need to deploy live website support.

See how using this online support on your website helps you enhance your business value.

Serve at your EarliestBy providing live support on your website, you can serve your customers at your earliest. Now you don’t need to rely on the emails and telephonic assistance because the customers being less tolerant than before; they don’t like to wait for hours and days.

Provide Right Assistance at Right Time
A customer is not going stay on your website for long if he/she does not find anyone to help him/her instantly. Suppose if a customer wants to purchase a product just at time he contacted you, then providing responses through emails will not work out because the long waiting time can turn him away. However, adding chat to website can provide on-the-spot assistance to all of your customers.

Personalized and Real-time Assistance
Support personal on your website provides personalized assistance to every potential customer. You can track all the activities of visitors on your site and your real support personal can provide real-time help.

Thus, providing real time, personalized and on-the-spot responses through live support, and the online business merchant makes their business standout even in the jam-packed market situation.