- December 24, 2021
- by Last expert
- Blogs, Chat Support, Non Voice Support
- 0 Comments
Online chat assistance has shown to be one of the most effective resolution methods among the numerous customer service channels. It has advantages for both organisations and customers, such as increased customer satisfaction and conversion and sales. It is critical for your organisation to have a seamless and reliable online chat support system. Because it has the potential to reinvent customer service, it has the potential to make or ruin your brand. Keep in mind that poor customer service can result in unhappy customers.
Do’s and Don’ts in chat support
Always Introduce Yourself To A Client
First impression is the best impression. As the saying goes it is applicable in chat support also. It takes only seven seconds to form an opinion and a tenth of a second to determine personality traits like trustworthiness. Introduce yourself to the customer and start the conversation, it leaves a lasting impression.
Hi [customer’s name]! It’s [your name] from [company name]. How can I assist you today?
Creating a personal bond with customers is most important to cultivate trust in customers. Only when the customer trusts you, they will be willing to exchange data and information.
Each chat solution comes with different offers and plans. Furthermore, the pricing differs based on the number of customers
Listen Carefully To What’s Being Said
60% of problems between customers and businesses arise from poor communication. To provide the right solution to the customer, it is important to identify the customer problem this can be achieved only if the chat agent can actively listen to a customer problem.
It’s imperative for customer service agents to:
listen and focus on what a customer is saying,
listen and refrain from criticism,
listen and don’t interrupt.
If you have a website or online store built on WordPress, have a look at our comparison of some of the best live chat plugins for WordPress.
Be Patient, Polite And Professional
As in most cases, the customer reaches out to a customer service team to complain about the purchase or faulty deliverable. The customer emotions are true, they will be upset or angry emotions, which should be looked at from the customer perspective. All these built-up emotions they will throw up on you.
To deal with these customers, you need to take a sympathetic and full-of-empathy approach. Use the following phrases:
I’m sorry to hear about…
I understand how frustrating it must be for you to…
Thank you for your understanding…
Tip No.4
Watch Out For Spelling Mistakes
Customers have high expectations so they will be looking out for the smallest errors. The more mistakes you make the customer will lose trust in your company. You cant justify yourself saying the usage of writing tempo.
Instead, buy a language tool that underlines errors in red and makes it easier to correct them with just one click. Here are some best grammar and spell checker programs:
Grammarly. AI powered writing software that corrects grammatical and punctuation mistakes on social media, emailing platforms and other sites (e.g. Slack, Salesforce, Jira).
ProWritingAid. An online checker that fixes grammatical and punctuation errors, and corrects sentence structures.
Focus On One-on-One Interaction With A Client
When clients call upon you to criticise or ask for more product information or to report a bug, never turn them down, Use those as a source for your business continuous improvement.
By listening to the customer, you are ensuring the customer that you are giving all your attention to the customer and their problems.
Ask For Feedback To Improve The Service
Feedback forms are the instruments to understand your customers view on your products, service or shopping experience, following metrics help in measuring customer satisfaction:
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT),
Customer Effort Score (CES),
Net Promoter Score (NPS),
traditional surveys
and make your business grow again. It’s quick and costs nothing.
Explain Complicated Vocabulary
Not everyone understands technical jargon, so keep it simple in laymen language. You don’t differentiate your customer in terms of language. So avoid using technical terms and allow them to keep on wondering. Why would a customer spend time where he is alienated by language.
What you should do to prevent buyers from leaving your store (or leaving negative feedback on a website), is to:
use simple vocabulary,
avoid terminology and jargon,
explain complicated technical terms in brackets.
End On A High Note
If you have to deliver bad news, do it at the beginning of the chat. If not you are leading the customer into giving false hope, after a long conversation all you have to give is a negative answer, which is waste of time for either party.
Remember, it’s not about how you start, but how you finish. Don’t offer your clients empty promises. Tell them the truth and give a happy ending.
Use Canned Responses For A Faster Interaction
At times customer service agents may be flooded with customer queries, in such a situation using canned responses can speed up the conversation. You never know which lead will turn up into a productive customer.
Hi! My name is Micheal. How can I help you?
We ship free of charge within Europe, except for France and Germany.
You’ll certainly receive a refund provided the goods have been unopened and left in the original packaging.
Automated customer service allows to juggle several chat sessions by delivering query responses simultaneously. For even greater effectiveness, consider using chatbots.
Avoid Going Off Topic
There may be a situation wherein you will have to sound funny and make some small jokes to calm down the customer, but live chat isn’t the right place to hold them. Keep your focus to resolve the customer issue in one single contact.
If the customer deviates from the topic, try to bring them back in a polite manner without offending their feelings.
Going back to…
As I was saying…
Moving forward…
Add A Personal Touch To The Chat
The customer likes to interact with real people, if the responses you give to the customer are short text messages with minimal information, it gives a cold impression in the mind of the customer.
For the customer to feel that they are interacting with real people on the other end, try to bond with visitors by customizing the design of the live chatbox.
add a profile picture,
feature company logo,
send an introductory welcome message.
Sending a virtual welcome message is like greeting customers with friendly “Hello!” in real life. For buyers, it’s the first interaction they have with a brand, so you better make it a good one! Try Tidio to greet customers with a friendly chatbot message and make a great first impression.
Keep Customers Updated
The customer service agent should keep the customer informed while working out his plan to resolve the issue, if the customer fails to do so, the customer may misunderstand the chat agent to have left without a note and this leaves a bad impression on your organisation.
If you want customers to wait, don’t forget to communicate your intentions:
I’ve to check a few more things. Would you mind waiting for a moment?
I’m looking into your case right now. Could you hold?
Let me see what I can do for you. Please wait, I will get back to you in a minute.
Never Keep Customers Waiting
60% of customers expect an immediate reply to a query (under 10 minutes). The average wait-time in most companies is 16 minutes.
Customers are looking for a quicker response the more delay in addressing their query, the more damage it will cause to customer satisfaction. Live chat comes as a relief in this case. A “live typing” option allows agents to prepare answers in advance, even before clients have hit the send button. Use it.
If, however, the number of incoming questions overwhelms your support team, try to automate customer service with chatbots. They’ll free up the operators from less demanding work.
Never Leave Questions Unanswered
The chat agent doesn’t need to know all the answers to the queries, what if a customer comes up with a complicated problem, the solution lies in how to handle the situation without panicking.
Instead, use one out of the two chat etiquette tips:
ask for more time to go through the details once again,
redirect the client to a team member.
It’s better to make customers wait a little longer rather than to leave the question unanswered and ignore buyers completely.
Allow chatbots to handle incoming consumer inquiries if the volume overwhelms you. They’ll respond to the most pressing questions, leaving you more time to deal with the more difficult ones.
Don’t Patronize Customers
Empathy can be a boon or ban, as per a study empathy is a decisive factor for customers, which either draws or pushes them away from the brand. Why? Because no one likes to be looked down on.
Try to be positive and affirmative while conversing. Avoid negative statements.
Dos And Don’ts Of Chat Etiquette For Customers
For a smooth conversation with CS agents, consider the following examples.
Always Listen To The Operator
The customer isn’t short of responsibilities, while reaching to the customer agent there are certain things to be kept in mind. An operator is there to help you. The customer is trying to help you by providing you instruction, if you fail to follow it the interaction will be a failure.
Therefore keeping TV, text messages or external stimuli at bay during a call will help you to be on track.
Prepare Documents And Questions Beforehand
Customer agents will have to verify the customer, they may require your voucher number or ID etc, so searching for the documents after connecting to the customer agent may lead to frustration, instead be prepared and keeping documents and important paperwork ready to hand will save you time.
Early preparation is the key to a successful service, so take a few minutes before you contact live customer service and:
gather the documents,
think about the problem you’d like to discuss,
write down specific questions you’d like to receive answers to,
take a piece of paper to make notes.
Ask For Clarification If Needed
Customers may not be well versed in all the areas of the companies business. Whether it is technical terms or its fast writing speed, customers may be overwhelmed by the information overload.
Remember, the customer is king, so you hold all the rights to ask for repetition of instructions if you have difficulty in understanding it. As a customer, you are not bound to know all the answers to the questions, if you are not sure how to politely interrupt a conversation, just use one question below.
I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you meant by […]. Can you clarify?
Sorry, I’m not sure whether I understand what you’ve just said. Can you rephrase it?
Tip No.19
Don’t Take Out Your Anger On The CS Team
When your three-month-old washing machine leaks water all over the floor, it’s easy to lose your cool. However, before you call a customer support hotline and start a disturbance, keep in mind that agents aren’t accountable for damage or defective merchandise.
The ultimate goal of customer service is to meet customers’ expectations and make sure the company’s clientele is satisfied with the received services.
Customer service’s ultimate purpose is to exceed customers’ expectations and ensure that the company’s clients are happy with the services they have gotten.
What does customer service mean to you
Next time you’ll think about yelling at the only person competent to handle the situation, remember:
not to say anything you could regret later,
not to get into unnecessary discussions,
to keep your voice down,
to take deep breaths.
Don’t Overuse Emojis And Abbreviations
While reaching to chat service agent, avoid using emoticons, abbreviations, and misspelt
Words. You may be used to casual chats in personal communication, but it doesn’t work in the same way in a formal communication channel.
Instead, help live chat operators deliver interaction in the best possible way by:
minimizing the number of emojis to the bare minimum,
avoiding emojis with ambiguous meaning,
not overusing exclamation and question marks,
not writing sentences in capital letters.
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