Customer service is a tough profession to opt for. Being a customer support agent is quite challenging owing to the diversity of customers to be served every day. Of all the skills that a customer service representative needs to possessive, it’s a necessity to embrace a positive attitude towards your customers to serve them even better. Here’s how you can do that!
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Are you an e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a live chat software for your website? Are you muddled as to how long you should be available on chat? If yes, you’ve landed up at the right place. Your availability on live chat should be decided based upon a number of factors:
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You won’t ever have a magic wand that can make your customers happy. Customer satisfaction requires dedicated efforts and a few smart tactics. Yes! Tactics to meet, in fact, exceed customer expectations so that they love your business. Read on to know the best of those strategies:
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Live chat has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for providing an exceptional customer service. However, just putting up a live chat feature on your website is not enough, you need to do much more than this. Here’s how you can make it far more effective and add to its power so as to make your customers happy like never before.
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In call centers’ context, ITS stands for issue tracking system. It is also known as trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system. An ITS is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues, as needed by an organization and is used in its customer support center. They are basically used to create, update, and resolve reported customer issues, or even issues reported by that organization’s other employees. As a matter of fact, support ticket should include vital information for the account involved and the issue encountered.
In most cases, an issue tracking system also contains a knowledge base containing information on each customer, resolutions to common problems, and other relevant data. An ITS is similar to a “bug tracker”, and often, a software company will sell both. In fact, some bug trackers are capable of being used as an issue tracking system, and vice versa. Consistent use of an issue or bug tracking system is considered one of the “hallmarks of a good software team” as it enhances the quality of customer service.
A ticket element, within an issue tracking system, refers to a running report on a particular problem, its status, and other relevant data. They almost always have a unique reference number, also known as a case, issue or call log number which is used to allow the user or help staff to quickly locate, add to or communicate the status of the user’s issue or request. Also, they are commonly created in a help desk or call center environment
As far as issues are concerned, they can have several aspects to them. An urgency value may be assigned to each issue in the system, based on the overall importance of that issue. Of all the issues, low or zero urgency issues are minor and should be resolved as time permits. Other details of issues include the customer experiencing the issue (whether external or internal), date of submission, detailed descriptions of the problem being experienced, attempted solutions or workarounds, and other such information.
Average handle time (AHT) refers to a call center metric that calculates the average duration of contact between a customer and an agent. It includes both hold time and talk time.
The formula for calculating AHT is:
Average Handling Time = (Total Talk Time + Total Hold Time + Total Wrap-up Time) /Number of Calls Handled
Therefore, a low AHT indicates good performance, while a high AHT signifies that call handling technique needs improvement. Here are some tips that can be considered in order to reduca the average handle time:
1. Set up regular training sessions for customer support agents:
Customer support agents should have a thorough knowledge of company’s products and services so that they are able to contribute efficiently towards conversions and are also able to resolve customers’ queries at the earliest. They should be trained at frequent intervals in order to help them reduce AHT. All the agents should be aware about the usage of the contact center software and tools such as CRM and chat to ensure that the call is answered in the lowest time possible leaving the customer satisfied. They should also know whom to contact in case of any doubt and from where to extract any relevant information.
2. Record all inbound and outbound calls:
Recording every inbound and outbound call makes it easier to assess the productivity of an agent and other issues that might affect his or her output. Moreover in cases where managers are not able to review calls in real time, they can always refer to the recorded version and get the desired insights. Apart from this, coaching the customer support agents with the help of call recordings is the best way to improve their performance. Making them listen good examples of calls wherein the customer’s problem was resolved and the handling time was less can help them learn the valuable tactics of reducing call handling time.
3. Automate agents’ manual tasks:
One of the best strategy to reduce AHT is tailoring agent’s workflow and processes in order to optimize their productivity. For this purpose managers should work hard so that inefficiencies can be spotted and eliminated thereafter. AHT can also be reduced by automating all their manual tasks which would minimize their busy time to a great extent.
Co-browsing, in context of web browsing refers to joint navigation through the world wide web by two/ more people accessing the same web pages at same time. Complete co-browsing supports automatic synchronization of the browsers’ state and content, including frames, portlets, or even content of the form fields and controls. Various tools are employed for this purpose some of which can even identify complex media objects such as audio and video players and offer capability of synchronous playback with start/pause/stop functionality.
Co browsing is a short form of collaborative browsing. It is a software-enabled technique that allows someone in an enterprise contact center to interact with a customer by using the customer’s web browser to show them something. In case of a B2B scenario, it can actually be used ease out the complex purchasing process for the customers. For instance, a B2B customer facing difficulty placing an order could call a customer service representative who could then show the customer how to use the ordering pages by sharing screen on the desktop or whatever device is being used. Collaborative browsing may include e-mail, fax, regular telephone, and internet phone contact as part of an interaction.
Co-browsing has so far evolved to support a full user web experience. It has come up as a great tool for customer service and support teams. You need to keep the following points in your mind while considering a co- browsing solution for your business:
i) co-browsing solutions must be offered in a seamless manner irrespective of the communication channel the customer initiates the conversation from.
ii) solutions that cannot share critical information that exists outside of the browser will inhibit the experience your customers expect.
iii) co-browsing technology that mandates tagging each and every page that a customer may want to share may be a technical challenge and, in many cases, not feasible.
iv) co-browse solutions that share a browser experience may help with simple web page based content but are not capable of extending to view the rich content on every web page, so make sure that all viewers are seeing the same and synchronized content
1. Review your live chat agents’ performance:
Make it a point to review your live chat agents. Their training should include mock chats, secret evaluation and much more. Apart from that, distribute customer success manuals amongst your agents where all important tips and techniques of online customer support have been mentioned in written format. This will help them to go through the important tips whenever they have any doubts.
2. Inculcate tech support along with live chat:
In order to create a power-packed support environment make use of live chat features such as canned messages and links, the ability to push files and screen sharing and co-browsing. Also, train your agents to go slow and ask short, simple questions to get to the root of problems and to make solving them easier and faster. More important than training your agents to provide tech support is ensuring they have the resources they need readily available. Ensure your tech support agents are provided with canned links for knowledge based articles, how-to tutorials, videos and other resources they need to help customers resolve issues or problems instantly. Make sure the agents know how to find the resources quickly and then send them to the respective customers whenever they need them.
3. Help them to be platform experts:
LIve chat agents need to have thorough knowledge of the platform they are working on and the tools they are dealing in. When chat agents are familiar with the tools they are utilizing while assisting customers, they perform tasks with a higher level of confidence. Task your agents providing both a customer and organization friendly experience when chatting. It’s important to be fully trained on all customer and agent facing platform features. For this purpose, customers might be presented with a pre-chat survey while initiating a chat request, which gives the ability to choose the reason for wanting to communicate.
Live chat has become a turning point in a customer’s shopping ride and while making purchase decisions. It really gratifies the customer to such an extent that just having a live chat icon at your website boosts the confidence of the customer. He is happy that just like in a real store front, here at the website also there is some one “live” to help him out, in a fix.
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