Live Chat Best Practices

Would appreciate feedback regarding Live Chat best practices. We're building basic training for our new Chat agents and would like to comply with industry standards of etiquette, do's & don'ts, and educate agents around the importance of call abandon avoidance. Many thanks for any/all assist.

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Permalink Reply by John Ragsdale on February 25, 2010 at 2:11pm: Hi Susan;
I somehow missed this post (?), but here is some info. We added chat to the benchmark in the last overhaul, but with our large B2B population, chat adoption has been slow compared to consumer markets. I haven't published any best practices in formal SSPA/TSIA research but have some blog posts and OnDemand webcasts with some good info:

Blog posts:
Web chat finds growing adoption for tech support:
Member and Partner FAQs on Web Chat
Proactive Chat Proves Hot Topic: Audience Questions from Webcast

For OnDemand webcasts, I highly recommend this one:
Live Chat: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly; Best Practices for Mak...

My guest speaker on the webcast is Barry Lamm from LivePerson, and he offered tons of great best practices about skills for chat agents, multi-session usage, customer satisfaction, etc.

Other than that, the best advice I can give is to be sure your chat agents are trained on how to quickly and easily escalate to phone if necessary. One of the biggest customer complaints about chat is when the issue becomes too complex to resolve via chat, the chat agent tells them they don't have a phone on their desk, or they aren't allowed to call customers. Whatever your process is, whether the chat agent picks up the phone and calls the customer, or does a warm transfer to a phone agent, make sure it is painless for the customer.

Hope that helps; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Susan Rich on February 26, 2010 at 5:42am: Hi John:

Many thanks - the blog posts you reference below are very helpful. Appreciate your reply.

John Ragsdale said:
Hi Susan;
I somehow missed this post (?), but here is some info. We added chat to the benchmark in the last overhaul, but with our large B2B population, chat adoption has been slow compared to consumer markets. I haven't published any best practices in formal SSPA/TSIA research but have some blog posts and OnDemand webcasts with some good info:

Blog posts:
Web chat finds growing adoption for tech support:
Member and Partner FAQs on Web Chat
Proactive Chat Proves Hot Topic: Audience Questions from Webcast

For OnDemand webcasts, I highly recommend this one:
Live Chat: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly; Best Practices for Mak...

My guest speaker on the webcast is Barry Lamm from LivePerson, and he offered tons of great best practices about skills for chat agents, multi-session usage, customer satisfaction, etc.

Other than that, the best advice I can give is to be sure your chat agents are trained on how to quickly and easily escalate to phone if necessary. One of the biggest customer complaints about chat is when the issue becomes too complex to resolve via chat, the chat agent tells them they don't have a phone on their desk, or they aren't allowed to call customers. Whatever your process is, whether the chat agent picks up the phone and calls the customer, or does a warm transfer to a phone agent, make sure it is painless for the customer.

Hope that helps; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jody Pellerin on March 1, 2010 at 6:20pm: I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Susan Rich on March 2, 2010 at 5:27am: Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jody Pellerin on March 2, 2010 at 8:06am: I will publish the link as soon as I have it.

Susan Rich said:
Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Lowy on March 3, 2010 at 12:17pm

Susan,

I have attached a short PDF that I created for some presentations on this subject. The contents include:

* Hiring
* Testing
* Training
* Monitoring
* Coaching
* Tone

Hope this gives you food for thought.

Full disclosure: I represent a chat vendor :)

Attachments:

Chat Agent Skills.pdf, 362 KB

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Permalink Reply by Susan Rich on March 3, 2010 at 1:22pm: David Lowy said:
Susan,

I have attached a short PDF that I created for some presentations on this subject. The contents include:

* Hiring
* Testing
* Training
* Monitoring
* Coaching
* Tone

Hope this gives you food for thought.

Full disclosure: I represent a chat vendor :); ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Susan Rich on March 3, 2010 at 1:23pm: David:

Many thanks - appreciate your content....and full disclosure!

Susan; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jody Pellerin on March 3, 2010 at 7:06pm: Hi Susan.
Here is the link:

Give Customers the Gift of Chat

Jody Pellerin said:
I will publish the link as soon as I have it.

Susan Rich said:
Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Lowy on March 3, 2010 at 7:14pm: Jody, is this available for all? The link you have requires a login.

Thanks!

Jody Pellerin said:
Hi Susan.
Here is the link:

Give Customers the Gift of Chat

Jody Pellerin said:
I will publish the link as soon as I have it.

Susan Rich said:
Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jody Pellerin on March 3, 2010 at 7:16pm

Sorry about that. Sometimes I hate content management systems. Here is the PDF:

David Lowy said:

Jody, is this available for all? The link you have requires a login.

Thanks!

Jody Pellerin said:
Hi Susan.
Here is the link:

Give Customers the Gift of Chat

Jody Pellerin said:
I will publish the link as soon as I have it.

Susan Rich said:
Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?

Attachments:

Give Customers the Gift of Chat.pdf, 534 KB

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Permalink Reply by Jody Pellerin on March 3, 2010 at 7:21pm: OK it's fixed. You can either use the link, no log-in required, or you can open the attached PDF file.

Jody Pellerin said:
Sorry about that. Sometimes I hate content management systems. Here is the PDF:

David Lowy said:
Jody, is this available for all? The link you have requires a login.

Thanks!

Jody Pellerin said:
Hi Susan.
Here is the link:

Give Customers the Gift of Chat

Jody Pellerin said:
I will publish the link as soon as I have it.

Susan Rich said:
Absolutely - will look forward to it! Will you post here? Many thanks

Jody Pellerin said:
I just completed a white paper about Live Chat best practices. Once it is finalized, would you care for a copy?; ▶ Reply to This