Customer support has greatly changed with the popularization of the Internet. Companies have gone through phases of switching from regular phones to VoIP service providers. Furthermore, they have also included email customer support, as a means of free communication with customers. With the advancement in technology, the better, more reliable and cheaper the customer support service became.

The latest revolution that changed the way people perceive customer support includes the development and implementation of live chat software. According to a survey performed by Maruedr in 2015, a third of consumers decide to go for live chat customer support, and 73% of them deem it the best customer support channel.

It is crystal clear that live chat is an effective customer support tool, but what do customers actually expect from this communications channel?

Quick issue resolution

A majority of consumers want the products they have paid for to work. This is a sensible thought, but some things are more complex and can require assistance from the company that sold the product.

When customers want a customer service agent, they want to have their issue resolved in a short period of time. This is what many companies get wrong and believe that it is enough to simply resolve an issue, without speeding things up. However, this is a crucial metric that directly impacts customer satisfaction rates. Your customer support agents should know how to utilize all live chat features in order to offer a quick fix for the customer. The quicker it can be done, the better.

To make sure that things go smoothly, it is essential to make your customer support agents understand that they need to be alert at all times. The sooner they reply to the initial customer contact, the better the whole business is going to be perceived. This will also open doors to the problem resolution faster, thus keeping everyone happy.

One time visit

The big problem with email customer support hid behind the fact that it took a lot of time to resolve a ticket. This was not only caused by the slow medium of communication, but by not providing enough details in every mail. This led to emails going back and forth between the business and customer, making it impossible to resolve an issue on the first contact.

Luckily, live chat is much better at providing this to the customer. If your support agents are well trained, they are going to be capable of easily resolving an issue during the customer’s first visit.

Not being able to deliver efficient first contact resolutions is going to make customers move to another brand, as nobody wants to waste time on communicating with customer support agents. Therefore, make sure that your agents take all the necessary steps to have the issue resolved immediately. Watch those FCR rates and always work on improving them.

Highly capable agent

No matter the reason why people need the support, they want to communicate with a person who is well versed, and knows how to identify the issue in a short period of time. Meeting this criteria requires you to hire the best live chat customer support agents you can. They need to be able to learn and adapt to new products and information that accompanies them. Doing this will allow them to flawlessly handle every single customer support request.

If the product or service you are offering is complex, it is necessary to segment your live chat customer support. In that case, every group of support agents needs to know every single detail about the part of the service or product they are responsible for. This is the best way to build an effective team of customer support personnel who are knowledgeable and can easily help a client.

Therefore, invest time to prepare your agent before he or she sits behind their desk. It is the only way to achieve positive customer feedback.

Personalized approach

When someone gets in touch with your company via live chat, they are expecting a certain kind of treatment. This makes the customer feel respected and it shows that your business cares about them.

Even though you should avoid using bots in live chat, taking steps like pre-made template messages are going to help your agents become faster. It is crucial though that the agent remains polite throughout the whole conversation. Being formal is a must, but when a customer is writing in a more relaxed tone, you can do the same to establish a better connection with them.

Personalization greatly improves over time. If you have integrated your live chat with a CRM tool, after the first contact, details about the customer are recorded and the whole chat history as well. This is useful for building personal relationships with clients, as your agent has an abundance of data they can use to show how familiar they are with the customer.

If the customer is working with an agent that only uses template messages, they will certainly leave the conversation and seek a better solution to their problem. If this repeats itself, it is very likely that a client will cease buying from your company or work with your company. Therefore, make sure that your customer support agents are always respectful, formal, and good communicators. It pays off significantly in the long run.

Conclusion

These are the most expected behaviors your customers are looking from your live chat customer support. Over time, follow your customer behavior analytics to better understand their needs. Constantly improving your customer support is going to allow you to establish better customer satisfaction rates. This will bring more people to your business, and that is the ultimate goal.