In today’s fast paced world everybody wants an instant answer to their queries; live chat is the most comprehensive solution to online customer support needs. Generally most of the queries directed by customer to online support are by emails, but because the emails may not answer the user query quickly and efficiently live chats are in great demand. They can easily fit into any type of support service weather it is sales, technical or information based support.
Live chats offer a great way of interacting with the present customers as well as the convincing the user on your site to become a customer. Live chats gives personal touch to the online support team as user can directly interact with the support person. Since this a real time conversation, operator can interact with the user regarding the type of assistance/product they are interested in and according to their needs offer the solution.
He can also inform the consumer about the incentive or special offers the company is giving at that time which can help increase the sales. Many live chats also offer ‘proactive invitation’ feature by which support operator, instead of consumer, can initiate the chat and provide help to the browsing customer.
Live support gives lots of flexibility to operators as they can simultaneously be in contact with different users and can also transfer the chat to some other operator which cuts down the customers hold times. It also has chat history by which operator can see for information on a repeating consumer or can send the chat history to the consumer if he is eager to save the information passed in the chat.
Live chats can also help the company evolve a better marketing strategy as live chat software can help you find out entry point to your site. They also help to monitor how much time the consumer spend in your site, how they navigated in your site, in which product he was interested enough to buy and which product he gave a skip.
Live chats also incorporate feedback facility by which consumer can provide their views on the product or services of the company. This helps in improving the overall satisfaction of the customer with the company and help improving the service of the company. Live chats also offer facility by which a manager can oversee the operator by remotely logging in to his computer. He can also gauge the efficiency of the operator by seeing his statistics like number of chats handled per hour or by customer feedback provided on the operator by the consumers.
With the advancement of technology methods to provide online support have also increased and evolved. Most common methods of providing online support are:
Emails: This is one of the most widely used modes of providing online support. In this the product company provides its consumers with their official mail id .Consumers can send their queries at the id. But it is seen that answer provided is not helpful enough or it takes more than expected time to reply to the query, which leads to unhappy consumers.
Instant Messaging: With instant messaging problem associated with emails can be solved .These allow the user to interact with the support executive in real-time though text messaging .Most of the instant messaging software are available free of cost and using them you can interact with the support executive with the contact id provided by the customer support.
Live chats: Live chats are same as Instant Messaging only they are more secure and offer additional facilities. Most of the live chat software provides feedback facility so that the service and the representative get immediate response to the service offered. They also provide means to analyse the site traffic, maintain the history of the customer, helps managers by allowing them to log remotely to operators’ computer.
Internet Telephony: This service allows customer to make telephone calls over the Internet.So the customer can interact with the support person like a normal telephone. Most of these software are free and can be easily downloaded from the net .After customer creates an account with the telephony service he/she can call the support executive regarding their queries.
Online Forums and Communities: Online forums and communities have been great resource of online help for many years. In these forums and communities where users interact with each other and solve problems with personal experience and knowledge .There are many companies which have their own official forum where apart from customers , experts also provide solution to some known general problems or give reply to more specific queries of the customers.
Online self help: Many companies have a separate support section in their sites with information, FAQ’s, manual, documents etc with search facility where customer can search and find the answer to their queries.
Remote login: Remote login is the facility where the support personal can log into your computer to diagnose and troubleshoot the problem remotely.