Want to show your customers that you really care about them? Want to transform your existing customers into evangelists for your start-up? You should try webchat. Really.
Previously on the ZaiBlog, we’ve extolled the virtues of using webchat over chat bots. (Actually, we outlined it as a boss battle that saw online live chat as the resounding winner, but you can read all about that fight yourself the-great-bot-battle-chatbots-vs-live-chat-which-comes-out-on-top.)
Today we want to tell you about the importance of using online webchat in your company, specifically within the customer success space – a common fixture in software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and IT start-ups.
What is customer success you ask?
Customer success management (as opposed to customer support or customer service) is a methodology to help you manage your customer relationships – specifically, by ensuring those customers succeed with your product or service. The customer success (CS) team can be a varied bunch consisting of support staff, sales, account managers and even your creative team.
It’s all about understanding and being part of the customer journey from the time those customers first hear about your company or product to their full adoption of your offering – and beyond. It’s also the role of the CS team to promote a customer-focused way of thinking across the organization.
For many a start-up, the customer’s success spells success for the company.
Read how we implemented our CS team at Zailab saas-best-practices-set-agile-customer-success-team.
So what makes webchat so great?
Online Webchat is a way customers can engage with a human being in real-time. It’s also pretty instantaneous, with most live chat queries attended to in under five minutes. Webchat offers that rarest of rare things – human connection – on the cold digital landscape. This makes it a great tool for any CS team.
Imagine a would-be customer browsing your website or trying out your software for the first time. Live online chat allows your customers to reach out to a real person to walk them through your product and answer any questions they may have, which is exactly what your CS team is there for. It’s more convenient and much less invasive than voice, plus the customer can continue browsing cat memes on Reddit while they wait for a response.
According to the Forrester report entitled 2018 Customer Service Trends: How Operations Become Faster, Cheaper — And Yet, More Human, customers demand fast service, anytime, anywhere which has resulted in a staggering growth trend in self-service interactions (13.6% growth in fact, with 37% of customers choosing web chat/chat bots as their preferred self-service channel). But as we know, while chatbot technology is perfect for answering rudimentary queries their ability to mimic human conversation is not quite there yet – which is were live chat agents come in. According to the report, adding a touch of human engagement to the digital experience tempers customer frustration and helps build positive customer relationships.
How to do webchat right
- Timed pop-ups usually should appear on any landing page after a minute or two after the customer lands there. It shows your team are proactive, on the ball, ready for action and a bunch of other clichés.
- Keep your response time to under five minutes. Waiting around for a support agent to respond to a live chat query is the new being on hold. Don’t leave your customers hanging.
- Make sure your team know their stuff! Agents should be trained in your product or service or preferably hail from the customer success team.
- Integrate webchat into your existing CRM to ensure you can utilize the data later. (Read our article on CRM integration here.)
- Arm your agents with scripts to ensure they’re speaking your company lingo and don’t break company etiquette. Read our advice on scripts here.
- Don’t be afraid to switch channels. Be flexible and adapt to your customer’s needs. If they’d rather chat on the phone, give them a call.
- Be available 24/7. Time zones and sleeping patterns vary. Ensure your agents work on a schedule to be sure someone is available to chat to a new demo user at 4am.
These days no one has a lot of time on their hands to try and get in touch with a company. For most people, phone calls are usually a last resort (which is actually a good thing as it’s becoming an increasingly expensive channel to service). So it’s becoming more and more important for companies to invest in other channels of engagement, and webchat really ticks all the boxes. It’s quick, it’s pretty standard on most websites these days, and it helps close queries quickly.
In short, if you’ve adopted a customer-centric approach in your business, then webchat isn’t merely a nice-to-have anymore. It’s an essential part of your customer experience.
Want to put Zailab’s support agents to the test? Get in touch with us!