Category: Best Practice

10 best practices for handling live chat as an agent

10 best practices for handling live chat as an agent

Live chat has become one of the most widely used tools for customer service today. 75% of customers find live chat the most satisfying way to communicate with a business. While using live chat customers can multitask and get assistance without wasting their time waiting in a queue for phone support. On the other side, live chat agents can also multitask, handle several customers concurrently and this way assist faster and more efficiently. Both website visitors and businesses benefit from using this tool. However, for customer service agents it is important not only to reply promptly but also to stay professional, use positive language, and possess certain customer service skills. In this blog post, we prepared 10 best practices for handling live chat as an agent. Our recommendations are based on the rich experience of our customer service team and the experience shared by our customers who use Provide Support live chat software on their websites.

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10 examples of greetings which should be added to your canned responses By using canned responses, you can significantly streamline the communication with customers. However, canned responses should be used wisely, as otherwise the customer service will lose its personal touch and will seem robotic. Modern customers are fed up with chat bots and seek personalized experience while interacting with a business. One of the keys for creating a great customer relationship is the content you use to communicate with customers. In this blog post we will talk about the canned responses and will provide 10 examples of greetings which you can add to them to make your communication more customer focused and friendly. What are canned responses used for? Canned messages are basically pre-written answers that are there to assist your employees in addressing customer questions promptly. They can be either ready-made responses which should be just sent with a click to a customer or can contain some useful information such as links which should be inserted to a chat message. Though canned responses are convenient you should not forget that they are not personalized and when using them too often your chats will look robotic and the quality of your customer service will significantly drop. How to use canned responses on live chat? Creating canned responses is very easy. There are several ways agents and live chat managers can create canned responses with Provide Support live chat: 1. Agents can convert chat messages to canned responses while communicating with customers. 2. Agents can create predefined responses directly from their agent apps. 3. Live chat managers can import canned responses from a spreadsheet and make them available to all departments and agents, to specific departments or agents. 4. Live chat managers can create canned responses manually in the account Control Panel on three levels: company, department and operator. While chatting with customers agents can select canned responses in the right panel on their agent apps. They can also use the following hot keys to navigate through responses, select them and send in chat: Ctrl+R Open Canned Responses window, the focus jumps to the list of canned responses in the sidebar Ctrl+Shift+R The focus jumps to the search field in the list of canned responses in the sidebar Ctrl+Shift+I Insert selected canned response to the message input field Ctrl+Shift+M Send selected canned response to the chat What are the main benefits of using canned responses? There many advantages of using predefined responses on live chat. Let me break them down and highlight the main ones. • Time-efficiency. Canned responses empower customer service teams to zip through common queries without compromising accuracy. While using predefined answers to address common issues, they can concentrate on more challenging interactions with customers. • Positive customer experience. Even though your customers get predefined responses while asking common questions, they will appreciate timely assistance and will perceive your brand positively. • Better quality. Humans can make errors, especially while working under pressure. However, canned responses can be the rescue in such situations. They are meticulously crafted and there is no need to re-read them twice to ensure everything is correct. • Training and onboarding. New employees can learn faster with the help of canned responses. They will familiarize themselves with routine customer queries and will align with your communication standards. • Consistency. Consistency in customer communication is your secret key that strengthens relationship with them. Canned responses bring your communication to a new level when you can provide high standard of service, give accurate information, show your professionalism and stand out from the crowd. 10 examples of greetings for canned responses Here are examples of common canned responses which you can use as greetings or create your own templates based on them: 1. 'Good morning! My name is [ NAME] how may I help you?' 2. 'Good afternoon, I'm [NAME, POSITSION]. How can I help you today?' 3. 'Good morning / afternoon! Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. My name is [NAME]. How may I help you today?' 4. ‘Thank you for reaching out. I’m [NAME], and I’ll assist you today. How can I help?’ 5. ‘We appreciate you visiting us today! How can we make your day even better? 6. ‘We are so excited to have you here! Maybe there is something we can help you with?’ 7. ‘Hi! Welcome to [COMPANY NAME]. Ask me anything anytime. I’m here for you!’ 8. ‘Thanks for reaching out! We will look into your query within 24 hours. In the meantime, please feel free to check out our knowledge base.’ 9. ‘Welcome back! If you need my assistance to make the right decision, I am here to help.’ 10. ‘We're delighted you're here with us! Let's make sure you find exactly what you're looking for.’ Conclusion Meticulously crafted canned responses open the door to effectiveness and efficiency in your customer service operations. You can avoid human errors and improve customer relationship. By setting up live chat greetings you can automate a big part of your job and focus on more important and complicated things. The whole reason for using canned responses is to save time. We at Provide Support made canned responses a powerful and convenient tool for customer service agents.

10 examples of greetings which should be added to your canned responses

By using canned responses, you can significantly streamline the communication with customers. However, such responses should be used wisely, as otherwise the customer service will lose its personal touch and will seem robotic. Modern customers are fed up with chat bots and seek personalized experience while interacting with a business. One of the keys for creating a great customer relationship is the content you use to communicate with customers. In this blog post we will talk about the canned responses and will provide 10 examples of greetings which you can add to them to make your communication more customer focused and friendly.

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How many customer support agents do I need for live chat

How many customer support agents do I need on live chat?

Finding the right balance in staffing a live chat customer service team is the challenge many companies face today. If a company is customer-oriented and focused on excellent service and experience the main issue they need to solve is to find out how many customer support agents they need on live chat. It is not just about answering all chats fast and efficiently. It’s also about finding the right balance between operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. I.e. the number of agents should be enough to provide excellent service and their time should be spent with maximal efficiency. In this blog post we will answer the most frequently asked questions which arise when companies face live chat agents hiring challenge. We will also provide useful recommendations based on our experience and feedback from our customers who have been using our live chat software for more than 20 years.

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Getting started with affiliate marketing

Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing: Tips for Beginners

Affiliate marketing is a great low-cost way to earn money without any investments and risk. Lots of online content creators partner with businesses, promote them and in return earn commission for each sale. This is how the affiliate marketing works. However, the main challenge for beginners in affiliate marketing is the cost and effort involved in building their website and audience. In this blog post we will share useful tips for beginners in affiliate marketing and will describe how to start affiliate marketing business for free. Click here to start earning affiliate commission with Provide Support Before we start it is necessary to understand what affiliate marketing is and how it works.

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Benefits of in-house data storage

Data security problem has recently become of the highest priority for business owners all over the globe. No matter whether your business is big or small, all issues related to data protection have become number one concern. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found that the average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million and moving in an upward trend. Thus, all measures for keeping company information safe should be taken. In this blog post we will discuss pros and cons of in-house data storage vs commercial clouds. Pros and cons of in-house data storage Self-hosting means installing, running and maintaining all the hardware locally, while cloud-hosting is about renting this service from a SaaS provider. Though hosting on-premise sounds scaring, there are a lot of advantages of the in-house data storage:

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Best tools for the effective remote teamwork

Best tools for the effective remote teamwork

Today virtual offices became the necessity rather than an additional way of organizing the workflow. Lots of businesses have started hiring remote teams recently. However, Covid-19 pandemic significantly sped up this process and forced many businesses to move to virtual working environment. The necessity to transfer to remote offices made this process quite chaotic with various inconveniences both for employees and employers. In this blog post we will recommend the tools for effective remote teamwork to facilitate your remote office setup or improve the workflow of an existing one. However, before we start let us highlight the most important features for the successful remote teamwork:

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5 Reasons your Customer Service isn’t Human Enough

5 Reasons your Customer Service isn’t Human Enough

Digital customer service becomes more and more popular among businesses. And the reasons for switching to other than phone customer service channels are more than obvious: More cost saving customer service budgets; Faster customer response time; Lower load on customer service agents. At the same time with increased efficiency and profitability customer service loses its humanity that many customers are carving. Thus, to get higher satisfaction rates for customer service quality you should offer human touch and personalization. In this blog post we highlighted several reasons why your customer service isn’t human enough.

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customer education, educational customer experience

How to Provide Educational Customer Experience

Modern customer service is not a simple process of answering customer questions and solving their issues. First of all it is an essential part of any business operations that can make or break a business. Statistics shows that for 86% of consumers good customer service turns one-time clients into long-term brand champions. Providing a comprehensive customer education with your products or services while assisting your customers can help your company improve your customer service and bring it to the next level. When your customers have enough knowledge, they feel confident and do not bother your team with multiple questions. Thus it is important not only to provide good self service options, but also to train your customer service team to educate your customers while assisting them.

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3 Tips for Running a Successful Online Business in 2022

3 Tips for Running a Successful Online Business in 2022

The revenue potential for online businesses continues to grow. In 2020, eCommerce accounted for 18% of global retail sales. That number is expected to grow to close to 22% by 2024. Still, maybe your business isn’t seeing the growth you would like. No matter how hard you try, you are likely missing out on potential sales, revenue, and profits. There are some steps you can take to make your online business as successful and profitable as possible. You don’t need to be a marketing genius. You just need to take advantage of some tools that are already available. Whether it is about choosing the right marketing software, adding live chat, or organizing everything around your brand, just making some minor adjustments can make a massive difference.

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empathy in customer service

Empathy in Customer Service. What Do Experts Say?

Empathy is often lauded as a critical key to successful customer service. But how does it work? What role does empathy play in helping create customers for life and not mere customers for now? And, what about the flip side: what’s the damage done by lack of empathy? After all, we’ve all heard stories and experienced firsthand the horror of dealing with a “service” representative who is anything, but nice. A Korean study in the healthcare sector found that empathy improves patient satisfaction and compliance. Five hundred and fifty outpatients at a large university hospital participated in the study. The results of this study showed that the physician’s empathic communication skills significantly and substantially influenced patient satisfaction and patient compliance.

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