Alan Moore 1 March 2019
With Live Chat now becoming the leading customer service channel, with 80 per cent of consumers preferring live chat over other service choices. How can we utilise and analyse this tool? Chat insights can help you create an educational strategy to build a true customer experience.
There are numerous ways to analyse the insights from chat with most businesses only looking at the volumetric data; number of chats received, average time taken to answer, chat type, and customer satisfaction. This type of standard reporting that only shows chat types as a percentage does not give you an actual impression of the issues. The real benefit, however, is derived by reading the chat transcripts.
Reading through and “chatting in the eyes of the customer” gives an insight into the true customer experience. It’s important to supplement this into daily operating procedures along with volumetric reporting methods to deeper understand the issues customers may be facing when interacting with your service. Whether that be identifying price margins or noting gaps in website details, by gathering insights from chat it’s apparent that you can influence the customer experience and hence increase revenue by acting on the pain points of the customer.
For example, in RANDEM’s recent work with Mega Office Supplies - an office equipment and stationary business - it was identified through chat that there was limited product imagery on the website. This was resulting in 40 per cent of chats along the theme of product appearance, ultimately preventing sales – metrics showed a 5 per cent sales conversion from customers chatting on this topic. By surveying the same customers it was found that the limited imagery created a lack of trust.
By working with the client to learn from these insights and ensuring complete availability of product images, the chat topics shifted from product appearance to functions and dimensions – which then saw a 20 per cent conversion after chat. The client saw an overall uplift in conversion once this was implemented, illustrating how central the “chat of the customer” issue is to the overall chat strategy.
So how do these insights compare to phone or website interactions?
They are just as insightful, however chat tends to address the issue in more depth. On the telephone the responses are immediate, whereas chat can “pause” and think/research the issue appropriately. In call centres time pressures and the requirement to have to stay on hold are key frustrations with customers – with chat this is reversed and the customer manages the hold time as much as the chat advisor. Many customers feel more understood via chat and are more likely to share their feelings – this comes down to increased trust.
Want to find out more about how Online Chat can enable your business goals? Let’s Chat.
