How Live Chat Improves the Digital Customer Experience

87% of senior business leaders see customer experience as their top growth engine, and yet only one in three feel prepared to address this.  

Although this level of uncertainty is worrisome, the first step towards improving customer experience (CX) is far simpler than many realize. To begin the journey towards improving CX, organizations must offer live chat – and in this blog we will explain why. 

Response speed 

Among the many reasons for live chat’s popularity, speed is king. Compared to other support methods, live chat offers features that other channels simply can’t provide, leading to a faster response time (and so higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) too.) 

Unlike phone support, live chat lets support agents handle multiple concurrent conversations. With this increased capacity, live agents can respond more quickly to customers instead of leaving them waiting on hold. Comm100 Live Chat consolidates chats for agents, meaning there’s no need to move between open windows when chatting with multiple customers. Keyboard shortcuts can be established for switching between ongoing chats, further reducing delays for agents. 

Live chat’s other features are just as important in reducing delays, including the ability to send canned messages. Comm100’s canned messages can be set as public or private, allowing access for all agents or individual use. This feature provides the dual benefits of keeping agent responses accurate and professional while also cutting down on response time. By setting up personal messages, agents can have the benefits of immediate response while maintaining the individuality and personality in their responses. 

If chat volumes become too high for agents to keep up with, live chat also supports the introduction of a chatbot. Chatbots improve speed and support for customers in several ways. By responding immediately, chatbots eliminate wait times and can be used to start collecting necessary information from customers. If agent intervention is necessary, a live agent can step into the conversation with all the information at hand. 

Unlike live chat agents, chatbots can handle unlimited chats, often without any live agent intervention. With repetitive and simple inquiries out of the way, agents are freed up to respond to more challenging customer issues. With the features provided by live chat and chat bots, speed doesn’t come at the expense of customer experience. 

Personalized conversations 

Anyone who’s spent time in sales or support knows how important personalized service is for the customer experience. Providing remote support introduces unique challenges, but with live chat it also creates unique opportunities. Comm100 Live Chat stores previous conversations from every one of your channels together (and connects it with your CRM – more on this in the next point), so that your agents always have the customer info they need at hand. 

By understanding who your visitors are, where they’re coming from, and how you’ve helped them in the past, you can make stronger connections and provide better overall support. A frequent visitor expects that they won’t need to repeat themselves, and live chat bridges the gap between digital technology and personalized interactions. 

Live chat also supports features that help agents to provide exceptional, individualized support. Comm100’s multi-language support provides instant two-way chat translation, allowing visitors to speak to an agent in their preferred language. These language capabilities extend to the visitor interface, which can be translated into any language needed for visitors. If you have a website available in multiple languages, the chat interface can be customized to create a smooth experience for your customers depending on how they reach you. 

Live chat’s ability to help you understand your visitors can lead to support improvements in not only how your customers reach out, but how you support them. With chat routing, you can make sure that your best people are supporting your most important returning customers. This segmentation can be extended to customer types or even geographic regions, meaning that customers get the right help every time. 

Read More: 3 Ways to do More with Customer Experience Personalization 

CRM integration

Following up on personalized support, Comm100’s ability to integrate with your CRM enables powerful insights and strengthens your entire support ecosystem. Whether live chat is used to drive sales or provide support, CRM integration provides live agents with data to drastically improve the digital customer experience. 

Comm100 integrates with Salesforce CRM and Dynamics 365 CRM to streamline the management of lead creation when agents are chatting with new customers. When agents are supporting returning customers, CRM integration provides additional context to understand past interactions, providing improved consistency from agents across support teams. 

With CRM integration in place, agents can update customer contacts and create new tasks without ever leaving the chat console. Easy access to CRM fields means that returning customers can be automatically routed to their account manager for truly personalized service. 

Read More: Comm100 Live Chat Integrations 

Connected alternative channels (Omnichannel) 

Sometimes when a customer reaches out, the conversation is best handled through a different channel. You might need to email a customer more information or send an SMS to verify identify. On these occasions, agents need to be able to seamlessly move the conversation from one channel to another. Only a connected omnichannel platform enables this. 

Digital omnichannel platforms like Comm100 allow information to move between channels to create a smooth experience for customers and agents. Whether customers reach out via website, social media, SMS, or email, every channel is connected together so the customer gets a quick response and the same great service. Having ready access to messages on all platforms also means that service delivery is less expensive, with support agents able to respond across all platforms. 

The benefits of omnichannel support are an extension of the personalized conversations that we’ve already looked at. Supporting customers on their preferred platforms becomes as important as understanding their past interactions. Customer history tells one part of the story but understanding how your customers are reaching you completes the picture. As we’ll look at more in the next point, understanding the customer journey from one platform to the next is valuable for more than just support. 

Data insights

With all these integration and deployment possibilities for live chat, the opportunity to learn from your customers becomes invaluable. Live chat software collects all this data and compiles it into visuals and graphs that reveal where improvements must be made, areas that need attention, and interesting behavioral insights. All of these can contribute to crucial decision-making and changes that ultimately enhance live chat operations and output. 

Insights provided by live chat features like Comm100 Live Chat reports can help the wider organization understand what customers are saying, thinking, and asking for. From a support perspective, these reports can be used to analyze agent performance, help with agent scheduling, and understand customer satisfaction. When it comes to introducing new services or creating engagement campaigns, live chat data can let you know where to spend money. 

In a sales environment, live chat reports can be used to track conversions from chats. Insights pulled from these reports include agent performance, performance during different time periods, and comparisons between conversion actions. With CRM integration in place, live chat becomes a vital part of the customer experience and the sales cycle.

Wrap Up

With all these benefits for customers and businesses, it’s not surprising that live chat has exploded in popularity in recent years. To see how Comm100 can grow your organization’s support capabilities, provide invaluable data insights, and improve the digital customer experience, contact us to book a live chat demo today.