Deploying website chat apps but wheels coming off?

Website chat apps - A business owner perspective

When we launched our Microsoft O365 / Cloud consulting & apps business www.complexus.co.za in 2011 we were an early adopter of Zopim Live Chat as a means to chat to our website visitors in real time. We thought this would be a great way to boost sales and up our customer experience from the very first moment people hit the site. That was the plan at least........

Offering people the opportunity to chat in real time to a real person and or to leave a message was great step forward as lets face it, how many inbound phone calls do you get these days? We learnt some lessons very early on, namely;

• Chucking up a website chat widget without someone to man it is key
• You need to give careful thought to the customer journey through your site and understand what kind of responses, engagement and outcomes you want to achieve
• Not everyone wants to engage with you when they are on your site - learn to live with rejection and how to handle it - some of it can be blunt!
• We did hit some periods where engagement seemed to peak as well as drop off, be prepared to be busy after say a big mailer, so if people want to chat, you better be online
• Analytics are important, pay attention to them and work out whats happening, working or failing and change your approach in real time - daily if needed.
• Setting up and feature activation can be a bit over whelming, especially if your new to this channel, try different configurations of the chat widget and play around with location on your site - nothing worse than your chat widget being blocked by a contact form pop-out !

So why is all this important?

• 98% of people that visit your site are either doing research or comparing information. Only 2% are ready to take action.
• Live chat has the highest satisfaction levels (73%) of any customer service channel (versus 61% for email and 44% for phone)
• Customers citing fast answers, the ability to multi-task and efficient communication as the top benefits
• Those entering a live chat are 7.5 x more likely to buy. Virgin Atlantic Airways achieved conversion rates as high as 23 %. Those customers that used its corporate live chat feature converted 3.5 times the rate of those customers who didn’t use this platform 
• 22% of customers don’t even notice that live chat is available during their visit Inappropriate positioning of live chat button is a real issue.

Top 10 Tips for website chat deployment success

I have deployed and recommended website chat widgets several times now and as a consumer and B2B buyer of other services, I have also used a variety of client chat platforms and found them a very hit and miss affairs. One of the best I have found is the Support Live Chat function of One Page CRM, they are so good are answering all your support queries and the most complete chat experience I have had to date.

Its clear that we are still in the formative days of the B2B / B2C live chat experience and some companies are implementing well, others less so. The vendors are happy to share information on how to improve the success rates of any chat deployment you may choose to instigate, so I compiled a basic check list by way of a summary here;

• Don't think the tech & passive chat chat alone (wait for visitor to click) will work
• Don't ignore analytics to improve and refine the chat offering
• If you have 1000s of visitors, can you staff this effectively, especially out of hours
• Security & privacy concerns, don't seek contact info too soon - its off putting
• Consider visitor expectations and ensure they are met IN chat and AFTER chat
• Slow service & late responses to Q&A is a killer
• Don't overuse canned messages
• Ensure the implementation of chat widget is A1 before you go live
• Train real agents with simple scripts to build trust and confidence 
• Practice real scenarios (perfect visitor Vs worst visitor) ....."stress" test your agents!

It will be interesting to see how AI and Automated Chat Bots will take this to the next level in the coming years.

If you have used a chat widget I would love to hear your expereinces (good and bad). Leave your story / experience in the comments below.

About the author

Nick has spent 20+ years in the collaboration technology sector in Europe, USA & Africa and worked in senior consulting and management positions in both Corporate, Government & Start-up environments. The main focus of his career has been complex Enterprise collaboration technology deployments and associated change projects in the B2B sector. Nick has worked with a diverse range of collaboration technologies including; Telelogic / IBM Rational, Engineering Project Assurance, Systems Development, PPM & Risk Management Microsoft SharePoint, Azure & Office 365. Nick has achieved significant success with clients seeking consulting & training solutions linked to process improvement & maturity planning. Nick holds a PhD in Analytical Science, is an APMG qualified PRINCE2 & Change Practitioner and proud owner of two rescue dogs.