How to increase speed and efficiency of your support service through Live Chat?

Improving your customer service skills from good to exceptionally good rather excellent is very easy and simple –Just speed up the process. But the trick is how to expedite the process without losing control over it and jeopardizing everything.

It’s all about how to get to your desired level of service in the first place. (Remember this level should also be expected and accepted by the customer at the same time). Once you have achieved your goal all you need to do is to stay focused and remain on the same course with all the other customers that you are handling at the same time. They should receive the same optimum level of support from you which the others are receiving as well.

By this you can even save more time which can be further used to serve more customers in a more appropriate manner.

Increase your productivity

One of the best things about live chat is your increased productivity; one call center agent can engage only one person at a time whereas one live chat agent can engage multiple customers at the same time. If we do the math this increases the productivity level 2 to 3 times. We are not just saying it we have actually done the math and our homework to prove it. We have calculated the work hours during which the representatives were present on their respective shifts, on average with an 8 hours shift with 6 days a week; total working hours come to 192 hours in a period of 30 days. With normal work load conditions an agent working for live chat agent can engage 3 customers at the same time, keeping in mind that total working hours out of an 8 hours shift are 6 so considering all these factors a live chat representative works for approximately 12 hours in 8 hour shift as compared to a voice support agent who can work for maximum of 7 hours in same shift. Now, if we do the simple math a live chat agent works for approximately 432 Chatting Hours which is 2.5 times more than any other support agent.

The Big Question: How?

How is it achieved? How is it done? The answer is simple; be attentive. When we say attentive it does not mean to be just attentive and do nothing, there is a lot to it just from being attentive. You need to be responsive to the customer; you need to provide the correct solution/information at the right time in the right manner etc. Below are few tips that can help you improve your communication skills and boost your productivity.

Be Precise – Be Simple:

You do not need to get into long discussion with the customer; he is there to get his issue resolved not to get into a chit chat with some random guy over the internet. You need to be precise in your answers, avoid long sentences as they tend to bore the customer. But if there is an extreme need to give out every single bit of detail then try and split it into short pieces that will make it easy for you type it and it will also help the customer understand the procedure instead of reading through large portions of boring text and to look for the exact information that he needs at that time.

If there is some information that is optional you can always skip it to make your reply a bit short, but you need to remember one basic rule “Do not exclude the basic information which is required to resolve the issue.” You need to be PRECISE and ACCURATE at the same time. You cannot take a short cut just to save time at that particular moment you need to provide the perfect solution as well.

Learn How To Prioritize:

You need to learn to prioritize your customer depending upon the nature of their problem. If you are handling multiple customers and one of them is facing a serious technical issue then he needs to be dealt with on a priority rather than a customer who is just there to gather some information. Having said this – you cannot just simply ignore the other ones they needs to catered properly as well. You need to look for their queue time as well if a customer is in queue for a long time regardless of whatever concern he has, he should be your number 1 priority. So, prioritizing is not as simple as it may seem.

Learn shortcuts and Canned Responses:

The very first rule of survival in any environment is to know the terrain. Same rule applies to the live chat industry if you are not familiar with the application that you are going to use for interaction then you can never speed up your work. You need to learn the ins and outs of the application by heart; along with these you also need to learn the canned responses which are already present in the system. You can also make your custom canned responses if the system allows you to do so. This will help you a lot in speeding up the process and will eventually lower the chat handle time which will ultimately result in higher productivity.

Learn from Customer:

Every question has its answer hidden in it all you need to do is to look for it. You need to learn to identify the keywords and key phrases in the customer’s statements. Once you have learned how to identify these markers you are already half way to your destination. Customers may tell you a different name for the same thing you do not need to ask the customer again if you have understood the idea behind their question. For instance if there is a Winter Promotion going on and the customer is asking you for any sort of Winter Sale or Special Discount you should know what he is referring to instead of explaining that you do not have what they are asking for but you have Winter Promotion. That will not only make you sound stupid but unprofessional as well. 

After you have enhanced your communication skills and learned how to speed up the work you will know that you have lots of spare time to do extra work like handle emails/tickets and resolve other support related issues. But there is one basic rule to remember that this improvement is a never ending journey the moment you think that you have achieved your target or you have reached the point where you are THE BEST, that is the exact moment where you are doomed. Keep in mind that there is always room for improvement and new modus operandi are always in market to set the bench mark a bit higher.