As amazing as your product or service is, your business's greatest asset is just one: customers. After all, they are the ones who buy and, when they are satisfied, they add value to the company. Therefore, communication with them needs to be efficient and tools such as a chat on your website cannot be missing. Although, when having an online chat, the treatment must also be impeccable.
But, what do you need to do to serve the public well in an online chat? As this is a frequently asked question, we decided to make this article in which we have gathered the best practices that you should follow, as well as important information. Let's go!
What is a chat service? Because it's important?
Online chat in service allows communication to take place from a platform connected to the internet so that companies and brands can exchange messages with customers in order to optimize time through processes, unlike in the past when people had to spend hours on the phone to be answered.
Chat has become one of the fundamental tools in customer service within companies. Ages ago, the telephone was the main instrument used by the public when they needed contact or support, but those times have changed.
Nowadays, the average time each person spends using the internet in the world is approximately 6 hours and 43 minutes. As Brazil has approximately 234 million smartphones (more devices than the population of the country), it is natural that many choose to seek care over the internet.
In addition, everyone also expects the service to be done in an agile way, which makes the chat a more effective means and justifies the fact that 73% of consumers say they prefer chat over email or telephone when communicating with companies.
What are the benefits of an online chat in customer service?
By adopting the online service in your business, you will find a number of benefits. We highlight the main ones below:
- time optimization: while tools like the telephone make you answer one person at a time, chat offers the possibility of talking to several people simultaneously, which optimizes time;
- data generation: every time a person searches for your company via chat and provides information such as name, email and telephone number, you will have more information about your audience;
- humanized care: one of the reasons that make people look for the chat is the humanized service provided by a real person;
- increased productivity: as chat systems allow the use of pre-prepared responses, this makes agents more productive;
- competitive advantage: if your competitors still only use channels such as phone and email, by using a chat, you stand out from the competition;
- improved communication intern: although the proposal is to contact the public and customers, the chat helps to transfer calls, in addition to inviting people to make group calls.
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What online chat service should be like in 5 tips
Let's now see what practices we recommend when adopting an online service in your organization.
1. Don't make the customer wait
To know how to provide a good experience to your audience through chat, just think about how we would like to be served and what we have already been through when requesting a company contact.
"Just a minute please." If you've heard this phrase and had to wait around 10 minutes (or even longer) for the attendant to give a position regarding the problem you had, it certainly wasn't a good experience. So our first tip is: don't make the customer wait.
In online chat services, the well-known “one minute please” has become a “place in line”. It is common for people to ask for support and come across the message “wait, you are the 34th in the service queue”. After minutes of waiting, people often just give up and close the chat.
This is bad, because, in addition to not getting a ready-made solution, people will get a bad impression of your company, report it on sites like "Reclame Aqui" or look for someone who effectively helps them like your competitor.
To prevent this from happening, try to respond to chat calls as soon as possible. The implementation of a chatbot helps to solve simple questions quickly, as well as an FAQ page that gathers the most frequently asked questions.
Chatbot programs often route calls when automatic responses are not enough. If this happens, you or the member of your company in charge of the service must pick it up as soon as possible.
2. Use templates
Regardless of your area of activity, always seeing the same questions about your offer is something very common, so it is recommended to use the chatbot for more common questions.
However, even then, they appear again frequently when talking to an attendant. If the answer is long, imagine the time it takes to write it every time people bring it in. For this reason, we recommend the use of response templates..
They are pre-made texts that answer the main questions in a way that you only need to do a “ctrl + C, ctrl + V” in the chat message space. Shall we see an example?
John: Good afternoon! I would like to know what are the payment methods.
Attendant: Hello, John! How are you? Payment can be made in cash using a credit or debit card. If you prefer payment in installments, you can do so by credit card.
This text can be a template created in advance to answer everyone who asks questions regarding payment methods for a company's product or service.
The only adjustment that the attendant needs to make is to enter the person's name. In the example, the customer is named John. Therefore, when entering his name, the service is personalized and the production time becomes longer since the templates remove the need to type all the answers from start to finish.
3. Use short and clear answers
Have you ever, when accessing social networks, come across the famous “textão” that is nothing more than a block of text, without paragraphs, which makes us too lazy to read? Well, you don't want your audience to have the same chat experience, right?
Therefore, opt for short and objective answers, focused on truly solving the problem your customer has. Let's see below a very common example in technology companies whose audience does not have technological knowledge.
Customer: My website is down. What do I do?
Attendant: I just checked that the server presented error 500, it means that the number of accesses exceeded the host's limit. We recommend waiting for the peak or upgrading to our VPS plans. If you believe that this number of sessions does not correspond to your domain, I recommend checking the possibility of DDoS attacks.
Customer: Hi???
A little confusing, isn't it? See below how this same answer can be made shorter, simpler and clearer.
Customer: My website is down. What do I do?
Attendant: I see here that he received a number of visits greater than the capacity of his plan. I suggest waiting a bit for it to come back on the air. If it doesn't come back, get back in touch so we can see plans that better serve you, fix the problem and prevent future falls.
Customer: Okay.
Ready. That way, the customer understands and knows what needs to be done. For the same to happen in your service, remember to follow this short and clear line.
4. Have a system that integrates your chat tool
When hiring a system business management, it is important to make sure that it can be integrated with other tools that are part of your daily life in order to facilitate the accomplishment of tasks.
So, instead of having to open a program to check the day's agenda, a spreadsheet to organize activities, another to execute them and the chat system, why not have them all gathered in one place?
For example: when you or a member of your company responds to a call on the website and you need to check the history of the customer you are in contact with, just check it on ERP and, at the time of signing the contract, use a service such as ZapSign.
For this integration to occur, all tools must have API open. So, make sure of that when hiring the online chat solution for your business.
5. Be careful with language
The way you and your employees express yourself in chat represents the image that the public will have of the company. Therefore, she must be very well taken care of during the service.
Too much formality can make the customer uncomfortable, while too informal language can seem inelegant. Therefore, the ideal is to balance the two and take as a basis the way your audience speaks so that it clearly understands what you and your collaborators say.
Regardless of the appropriate style, here are some points that should always be taken into account:
- avoid typing in all caps, as it gives the impression that you are shouting and this may sound offensive to people;
- pay attention to portuguese errors they can also give a bad image of the company;
- Also be careful with the score so as not to fail to convey clarity in the service, because “no, it's the right option” is totally different from “it's not the right option”, for example.
By following these tips that we present here for online chat, the service in your company will be much better.
However, we remember that organizing the tasks well is part of this work so that the service is dynamic and well executed. While we're at it, stay with us and check now the article we wrote about task organizers!
