How to Provide Fast and Personal Customer Support in a World that Cannot Wait
Unfamiliar with the concept of waiting, customers want their problems solved now with minimum effort from their side. They don’t want to be put on hold, transferred to another support agent or requested to explain their issue over and over again. In fact, three-quarters of online customers expect help within five minutes. These growing customer expectations of superior service continue to drive companies’ efforts to look for advanced digital solutions to meet customer demands
Live chat and co-browsing are two such solutions when used in combination can enable good and well-trained support agents to deliver the fast and personal support customers are looking for. The accessibility and convenience of the live chat platform combined with the user-friendliness of co-browsing will allow any team to effortlessly figure out what’s going on at the other end of the screen. Instead of wasting precious time asking what went wrong, agents will have the tools to help and guide customers right away. Here is how.
See it for yourself
When a customer opens up a chat, he expects immediate help. In fact, 79% of customers who prefer live chat said they did so because of the speed at which their questions are answered. However, oftentimes, it’s hard for the customer service agent to figure out the problem. They lack context. As a result, most of the chat time is wasted in identifying the issue instead of assisting the customer. Live chat in combination with co-browsing, allows agents to instantly gain access to the customer’s screen with just a click of a button from their live chat platform. Agents will be able to see what the customer sees and will be able to start working on the issue immediately.
Show, don’t tell
“Do you see that green button at the top right of your screen?”, would an agent ask a customer in a desperate need to help them out. And the answer to that most often is a clear “No!”. With the help of live chat and co-browsing, agents can now chat with and navigate customers through the necessary steps to fix their problems. Agents can click, scroll, write or draw for them. When necessary the agent can take full control over the customer’s screen. Sometimes, while setting up and configuring a solution might take a few minutes to a tech-savvy person, it could turn out to be a tedious and time-consuming process for a non-tech user. In such cases, the ability to show and guide customers throughout the process will save time and nerves on both ends.
Goodbye back-and-forth
Often, a user inquiry cannot be solved in one session or it turns out the issue is a product defect. In those cases more often than not the support agent becomes the mediator between the customer and the dev team — communicating back and forth till he gathers all the details necessary for the dev team to solve the problem. With the help of a co-browsing solution, agents can save themselves the hassle. Some co-browsing solutions allow recording each of the support sessions so you can later forward it for further investigation to the dev team. With session replay, the support and dev teams will be able to watch a video of everything that happened to the customer. The dev team can easily reproduce the steps that led to it removing the unnecessary back-and-forth. On top of that, some co-browsing solutions can also show technical information such as crashes and network delays which speeds up the resolution time.
Regardless of the technology companies employ to serve customers, they should always strive to answer customers’ requests quickly without compromising on quality. Even though the majority (66%) of adults feel that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do to provide them with good online customer experience, it’s the quality of the service, the experiences and the customer satisfaction companies provide that will delight their customers.
Originally published at https://hyken.com on December 6, 2019.
