I work in an Operations team for an e-commerce company, and we're considering launching a Live Chat service for our Customer Service department. Can somebody here give me advice on what to expect? Currently we handle about 2000 phone calls and about 1000 customer emails on a daily basis. If anybody has experience with launching a Live Chat service, would you say that customers use Live Chat instead of calling or emailing, or would you say it created additional contacts that normally wouldn't have happened?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Hello DN,

Live Chat is one of the best things to have happened to Customer Service. It all depends on the Management of your company if you wish to have Live Chat alone to provide customer service or if it should be one of the mediums to provide customer service.

If managed properly - I mean, if the metrics are properly managed, you can deliver high quality customer service through Live Chat. Look at it this way - not everyone feels comfortable to pick up the phone and speak to a customer service rep - it could be due to a number of reasons - like, for example, language barriers or cultural barriers.

But Live Chat overcomes all these barriers - for one, since the Customer Service Rep actually sees what the customer is trying to say, it will be easier for him/her to understand the customers problem more easily and vice-versa. They will also have a record of their discussions with the customer.

I would say it would contribute positively to creating new contacts/customers for the company.

Johnny, I haven't used Live Chat as a contact method in my teams. I am skeptical about it, based on my experience with it as a customer. But I only tried it once or twice, and didn't give it a lot of chances. I found it took too long. Part of that might have been due to the live nature of it, maybe it felt like it should have been faster. I think the LIVE conversation also allowed for misinterpretation on either side. There is a bit of "finality" to words that are left on a page. Yes, you can create ambiguity through the written word (always possible for that to happen), but there could be a sense of waiting for something to come next through the live chat, whereas with a stagnant email if something is not written utterly beautifully and you see a missing "NOT" or "form" instead of "from" - you can make the proper "connection" while reading and digesting. And of course the voice probably does the the best job at conveying information. I am coming to the discussion of this option with preconceived notions a bit, but...how would you convince me to include this option, particularly where there is not a great deal of people resources to cover? Or maybe I should ask, Who should use it and which contexts are the best?

hello ayaree,

Thank you for your comments. I wish to share one good experience with you involving Live Chat - I bought a HP laptop sometime back and then found out that they did not give the device drivers along with the laptop. I called their helpline - they gave me another number to call - when I called the second number - I found out that it was already beyond the support hours. The only option I had left was LilveChat.

So, chat I did, with a tech support person - and that agent not only registered my product, he also sent me the links to the device drivers for my laptop. It saved me about 12 hours! Else, I would have had to wait overnight in order to get the drivers and then use the laptop. Then, this agent went on to send me a transcript of the chat we had to my email id - which contained the links to those drivers - and I have that email to this day!

Especially during times of resource crunches, LiveChat would definitely be a good option because one agent can chat with more than one customer at a time.

And I would say whichever way you look at it, the agent would still need to build rapport with the customer. While we could be happy to provide support through Voice, Email or LiveChat it still depends to a large extent on the agent to convey things correctly and professionally to the customer and gain his/her satisfaction.

So, wether LiveChat should be the only option to deliver Customer Service or wether it should be One of the options to deliver Customer Service depends upon the management of the company and the kind of resources they have or wish to deploy.

But an ideal situation to provide support through LiveChat would be when some companies wish to provide 24/7 service - where the bulk of the personnel work during regular working hours. Then, when they know that during off-work hours where there is a requirement for for fewer support personnel - you can offer LiveChat support. Thats because we know that we will be getting fewer calls/requests for support and we do not need a lot of people to provide support.

On the other hand, if a company is getting too many calls for suppport - LiveChat can be one of the options because it takes the pressure off the Voice-support personnel.

Well, those were just hypothetical situations. Please feel free to share your comments.

Thank you

Thanks for the thoughts. I guess I have stayed away from Chat because it carried with an expectation that someone would necessarily be available immediately, and the type of company we are has dictated that we don't necessarily have someone available immediately via phone many times. Live response is not something I can guarantee and I don't, and in that sense it's not a very conventional call centre.

But one of the positives that I have thought of is that if someone does not get through immediately on the phone on the first try, and if they immediately resort to chat as an alternative second try to get someone, then maybe that adds one more instance where someone did get an immediate response instead of the requirement to leave a message.

I can give it some more thought.