subject: How To Start Using Live Chat Software For Your Business [print this page] Adding a chat feature to your website can improve your business's brand and leads to better sales and improved customer service. However, if you're considering live chat software for your business, it's important to plan carefully.
New live chat software can be difficult to handle at first, as your customer service department will need to learn a new way of interacting with customers. The process will be much simpler if you choose a good chat program and if you know how to use its features before it goes live on your website.
Choose An Appropriate Chat Program
Consider your business's size when looking for live chat software. If your website gets several hundred unique page views a week, you can assume that you'll get a few dozen chat requests, but if you see more or less traffic, your chat software will need to be flexible enough to meet your needs.
Good live chat software for business will have queuing capabilities to handle large amounts of traffic, and since adding software to your website will probably cause some degree of growth in your business's sales and traffic, you should look for software that will adapt as your business grows. It should be easy to add new customer service accounts to the program, for instance, and the live chat software's reporting features should be able to track important metrics like average chat time and customer satisfaction ratings.
You can easily find basic chat software that will allow your customer service representatives to chat with customers through a web portal, but make sure that your software has relevant additional features if you want to see the best possible return on investment.
Make Essential Preparations
Once you've found chat software that will work for your business, you'll have to show your employees how to use it and make sure that they're prepared to use canned responses and other tools to deal with chats effectively.
There are always going to be a few hiccups when you introduce a major site feature like live chat. However, you can make sure that the process goes as smoothly as possibly by regularly monitoring chat logs. Some chat programs will even automatically flag logs that contain certain words, and if you're handling a large number of chats right off of the bat, you can use this feature to make sure that your employees are handling customers appropriately.
You should also make sure that your chat software looks natural and professional from your web visitors' point of view. This will be much easier if your business software has a good customer support team, as they'll be able to help you match the design and colors of the chat program to the look of your website.
Keep An Eye On Reports
After you've installed your live chat feature, check its reports regularly. You'll be able to see how effective the software is at keeping customers on your website and you may be able to change your approach to adapt to your customers' needs. For instance, if customers are shopping around on your web store for quite a while after each chat completes, you could encourage your customer service department to send direct links to certain products through the chat program to help increase sales.
If you select good chat software to begin with and take the time to understand its features, you should have no trouble improving your business with a
live chat software for business. The most important thing to remember is that a little preparation will go a long ways towards ensuring a worry-free transition.
