Customers are the most important part of any business. And accordingly, so is the customer service team. Whether at the store, on the phone, or live chat, they are the first point of contact for your customers. After undergoing good customer service training, the basics of how to treat customers in the best way are there. But is this enough for the team’s productivity and for customer satisfaction?
With practice, it can happen that the agents are getting too used to their work processes, and dealing with customers becomes more of an automatic process. Their attention to the customers may drop. This should not be the case if you would like to provide a top customer service experience.
To avoid this, we have prepared some very nice and easily applicable tips to increase your chat team’s productivity. In this way, you will make sure your customers’ queries are handled in a fresh and professional way.
Provide Fast Responses
Nowadays it’s crucial to be fast. Nobody wants to waste their time finding the information they need. And providing your customers with the answers they are looking for in a fast way, is very important.
This can be achieved by having your agents have the notifications of the chat software always on. This way, when a new chat comes in, the agent can hear and see that it’s there. So, they will quickly click to go to the chat and reply. The customer will not need to wait longer than 30 seconds to receive the first message from the agent.
Send Short Messages
People don’t like to read too much nowadays. And the attention span seems to be getting lower. A study in 2000 showed that the average attention span is 12 seconds. And that even got to 8 seconds in 2013! For a quick comparison – the attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.
So to grab peoples’ attention and make sure they understand what your agents mean – teach your chat team to send short messages. Sending short messages will guarantee that the customer will read more. So, to be on the safe side – ask your chat operators to just send small pieces of information that are easily readable.
Use Quick Replies
Quick replies help a lot with your agent’s productivity. With them, they will not only reply fast, but it will be with the best quality since they are pre-written. And if you create them shorter, it will be even better. Just small chunks of the most important information.
Your agents will be fast, effective and your customers will be amazed by the speed and quality. Keep in mind, though, that agents need to double-check and adjust the reply according to the customer’s question if needed. Not all questions are exactly the same, after all.
Be up to Date
Chat features aside, a big part of a chat operator’s job is to have a good knowledge of your product and services. And they also need to have information about all the processes and the way things are dealt with. They are the ones that transfer this information to your customers, so they need to know things well.
In order for the information to be correctly communicated to the customer, you need to make sure not only to provide good extensive training. But you also need to update them with every change that has occurred. Change of a policy, change in price, a new promotion, a new feature – let them know! It’s a must! Good communication is key to better performance. This will keep them efficient and productive.
Feedback Sessions
Another good way to keep up the level of your chat operators is by giving them regular feedback. You can have someone doing quality assurance on their chats. How are they performing, what do they need to improve, and what they do best. This all needs to be communicated to your chat operators.
You can even think of small prices for the best ones. This will motivate your team to perform much better. All these and many more are important to keep productivity on track. Not only will they know what they need to work on, but they will know you care. So they will care too. This will bring amazing results to the team’s performance and will, hence, raise customer satisfaction.
Combining the chat software features with good on-going training and regular feedback is the best combination for the better productivity of your customer service team. Having a happy team will always lead to happy customers.
To provide the best tool for better productivity of your chat operators, start with Conversation24 today!
