Digital eCare and Chat Convenience As A Service

Time is limited and scares resource. Saving customers time means reallocating time across different activities to achieve greater efficiencies. As time is finite and cannot be expanded, the value of time cannot be overvalued and is of a great importance to the customers and to the companies.

In the journey of digital transformation, organizations should pursue to digitize the service experience and create a holistic digital customer care (“eCare”) responding to consumer demand for easily accessible, highly rewarding multichannel interactions.

The major benefits of having the best eCare can be summarized as follows:

Lower costs. Decrease in call centres operational load and a consequent expenses reduction is a primary benefit.

Higher customer satisfaction. Though counterintuitive, giving your customers more digital touchpoints to resolve their issues can bring an uplift of 19 percentage points in customer satisfaction (according to McKinsey Survey).

Competitive Advantage. A high-quality eCare can deliver a “wow moment” – a truly innovative customer experience which helps to distinguish your difference to the competition.

The further evolution can be triggered prevailingly by increasing automation and using sophisticated digital channels like live chats. Handling customer issues via a live chat might seem like?a simple incremental addition to traditional call centers and retail stores. But according to the McKinsey research, digital care can become a serious lever in shifting a customer satisfaction. Live chats have already become the common source for product and service information, but important is how companies can create value for their customers through a digital channel, and chats in particular.

All business are service business to some degree. Computer manufacturers and food retailers create consumer value through a good-services mix. Service convenience facilitates the sale of goods as well as the sale of services. Fast online check-out in an online store is service convenience, as are available competent call center or chat agents who can help customers find the rights product to buy.

Factors which matter

Customers perceptions of a service convenience are usually influenced not only by the intrinsic characteristics of the service but also by individual consumer differences and company-related factors. So, when planning to offer a live chat as a part of digital customer care these factors have to be considered.

Improving chat service characteristics

Decision convenience

Understanding the problem underlying each potential chat conversation is critical to developing a chat convenience service. If a chat agent provided a clear, accessible information which helps the customer’s decision-making process, that means the service provided satisfied the dimension.

Access convenience

Originally chat as a service has the access convenience. When offered to be served with a chat application consumers expect to get information instantly and when it is needed, which sometimes means 24/7.  But though providing online support 24/7 might not be feasible, offering a detailed FAQ and proactive customer contacting during the open hours can solve the problem.

When customers chat with chat agents, they may want to store the provided information in their records and come back to it later. So providing a chat transcript after the conversation improves the access convenience and reduces the time and effort in future.

When a chat ended, how can we be sure the service was well provided and a customer got all information needed? Because if not, consumers will have to invest more time and effort to reinitiate the contact and solve the problem. Every fourth customer will give the company a second chance and finally will churn.

Transaction convenience

Waiting is especially unrewarding during the pay or check-out process. McDonald’s has determined that sales increase by 1% for every six seconds which consumers save by using the drive-throw window. When customers are stuck in a check-out process, live chats can substantially increase the conversion ratios. Though some customers won’t always initiate the conversation themselves, using proactive automated canned messages programmed to pop-up if the check-out process lasts more than usual can help solving the issue and making the sale. Transaction chats should be prioritized for the chat agents.

Benefit and post-benefit convenience

Benefit convenience of a live chat is valuable because is characterized by the time and effort which a customer invests when using the service. One simple example is when a chat window is available only on some pages and is not tied to a user session. Another example is handling the time which customers must wait before they get the information.

Researchers have defined two aspects of waiting time that influence consumers' evaluation of convenience. Objective time is continuous and metric and can be measured by clocks. When a chat agent informs the customer that the conversation will start in two minutes, this waiting time is objective. Subjective time is based on perceptions and influenced by psychological factors. Once consumers press “start chat” button and don’t see any response in the next 3-5 seconds, the subjective time of a waiting will be far longer than actual 3-5 seconds. It might even lead to an impression of a slow service and leave a negative impact on the service quality. Various studies show that consumers, on average, significantly overestimate time spent waiting especially when they are in a passive mode. In the offline environment, the presence of distractions such as music, print media or TVs can reduce the anxiety and perceived length of waiting. In online surroundings substitutions are also available and should be supported by developing the entertaining or educating functionality during waiting. Let's say, a customer asked the chat agent a question which cannot be answered in the next 4 minutes. What are the options:

1. a customer sees “please wait for the answer” on the screen without any time estimation. As failure to provide the information about the waiting time leads to more frustration, the probability of customer leaving the chat or / and the website is extremely high;
2. inform the customer about estimated 4-minutes waiting time;
3. offer to deliver the answer per e-mail or call him back - has some advantages as if the customer agrees the company gets new data and a new communication channel;
4. inform about the waiting and in the meantime, offer to watch a video or read a recent blog post related to the topic of interest.

Organisations should see the digital eCare and live chats in particular as a strong lever in decreasing internal and external efforts as energy expenditure reduction: emotional and physical effort.

Bolstering options for having consumer issues resolved entirely via digital channels and live chats in particular can help obtaining a transformative impact and creating new experiences that sustain future brand success.

#digitilization #digitalservice #livechat #transformation