Smiling Over Live Chat

The one tip I really stress to new Call Center agents here at 24-7 INtouch is to remember to “smile” over the phone. Of course, no one on the other end can actually see the agent smiling, but they really can hear it in the tone of voice.

Which brings us to Live Chat. Almost every perspective client inevitably questions the human touch aspect of it. They’re right to ask. The truth is it’s much harder to communicate effectively via a written medium than it is verbally. Professor Albert Mehrabian theorized that in a face-to-face conversation, only 7% of the actual communication happening comes from the words.

So how do your create the right tone over Live Chat? These are some tips I offer to agents:

• Convey warmth by being extra polite throughout. Add a “please” or “thank-you” wherever possible to create the proper a tone.
• Always try to personalize pre-written or “canned” answers to make them feel spontaneous and to make the customer feel like you are talking to them. Stating the customer's name a few times during the chat might help.
• Pay close attention to the customer’s questions, ensure that they are not having to repeat themselves as this gives a highly impersonal feel.
• Skim the text you are about to send and avoid using statements that may be misunderstood or interpreted more than one way. Expressions or one-liners that may work in person or over the phone often fall into this category.

These are the ways we can “smile” over chat in the same way we “smile” on the phone. Well done Live Chat can be an extremely powerful tool in customer communications. It has emerged as what will probably be the future of website support and it has a number of advantages that a well organized contact center company could help you achieve.

-Jeff Fettes

Comments

[Steve B]

Just found your blog. I'm a business analyst for one of the customer care centres in my company. (not just phones, we handle email but don't have a web-chat feature yet).
Is a live chat option cost effective -- I expect that the handle time of the contact with the member would be longer than with voice, spending additional time 'smiling' in your chat must add even more time.

[Jeff Fettes]

Live chat can be very cost effective. Typically, contact center agents can manage more than one chat at a time, something which is not possible with phone. Since a large percentage of the cost of customer service is the labor, handling 2 or 3 chats simultaneously can cut the cost proportionally. In addition, a live chat agent can instantly push a customer to an appropriate page of prepared information on your website, which is often much quicker than trying to describe something in detail over the phone. Most importantly, this younger generation of customers coming up now who were not raised on phone calls seem to really like live chat. In the end, it depends on your business model and the demographics of your customers but I can say that chat, along with e-mail, is one of the fasting growing segments of our industry.

[Jeremy]

Another important thing for chat agents to do is proofread. Not to sound condescending, but this blog could use a little as well. :) I want to share this blog with my chat employees, but they will pick it apart if some of the grammatical errors are left there. Just wanted to point this out to the poster. Thanks!

[Jeff Fettes]

Is my grammar really that poor? I can spot a few things that aren't 'technically' correct but I would attribute them to the conversational tone I'm going for (sort of like how you said "Just wanted" instead of "I just wanted" in your post).

Still, by all means fire away with corrections. No reason I can't make them now. Thanks.

[Jeremy]

Sorry Jeff - I just realized that you responded. I like the conversational tone and I'm not a grammar stickler, but here are three things I picked out:
"perspective client" should be "prospective client"
"create the proper a tone" has an extra "a"
"how do your" should be "how do you"

I don't think your grammar is poor, just a few typos. Thanks for your reply!