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Why Consider Live Chat for Your Website?

Live chat is an important part of the customer service toolkit and is utilised by a multitude of businesses. With 67% of companies in the B2C sector and 66% in the B2B sector using live chat for customer support, the adoption of this key contact channel is expected to further skyrocket, as the market’s value is projected to reach $997 million by 2023, growing at a 7.5 CADGR.

Live chat facilitates two-way communications between your customers and agents, acting as a digital portal to which customers receive support, information and answers to their queries. Unlike self-service channels like chatbots or self-service FAQs that rely on AI, live chat utilises human intelligence to answer queries, making it the perfect solution for dealing with complicated non-routine questions.

Live chat is particularly popular within customer service because it’s versatile and low-cost to run in comparison to other agent-assisted channels such as telephony that doesn’t enable multiple queries to be solved simultaneously. Live chat for your website also offers the following benefits:

• CSAT improvements
• Enhanced CX
• Agent satisfaction
• Increased lead generation
• Reduction in Average Handling Times (AHT)
• Improved first Contact Resolution (FCR)

For more on how live chat can benefit your customer service operations, click here

How Does Live Chat Work?

Live Chat’s Key Role in Customer Service

Live chat earns its place as a key player in the online customer service offering by supporting other contact channels to ensure FCR whilst presenting itself at opportune moments to boost CSAT and revenue generation.

When the AI that powers your self-service channels such as an FAQ widget or chatbot cannot handle a non-routine question, the customer is automatically escalated to live chat where an agent can deal with the complicated issue. This is facilitated through seamless integration, all taking place in the same window for optimal CX and FCR.

Live chat on your website can also be presented to your visitors in specific forms and at specific times. Trigger management settings are configured to trigger live chat when certain conditions are met, these might be based on pages visited or duration spent on your website.

Selecting Your Live Chat Vendor

When it comes to live chat for your website, the selection process might seem monotonous, but choosing an effective vendor is arguably the most critical part of live chat implementation and should therefore be done with care. It’s good practice to conduct thorough research on multiple vendors to ensure you are delivered exactly what your company needs.

Whilst something might appear to be ‘good value’ at first glance, consider that in the long run, such solutions won’t serve companies and their requirements to scale.

When choosing a live chat vendor, consider these points:

• Does the vendor meet your requirements and have they presented you with a business case? This helps you understand ROI, the payback period and whether they offer a flexible commercial model aligning to your needs.
• Does the live chat software integrate seamlessly with other key customer service and 3rd party tools? Knowledge sharing and access to AI-powered functionality improves operational efficiency – ensure the vendor can facilitate this effortlessly.
• Does it offer features that encourage agent productivity? Features such as live keypress feed, AI-predictive suggestions and chat routing promote agent efficiency and satisfaction.
• Does it offer features that contribute to CX? Trigger management, integration with other online tools and escalation capabilities help visitors get to where they need to be, enhancing CX.
• Does the live chat software include comprehensive analytics? Intelligence on agent activity, showing handling times, user feedback, login times, logoff times, active chat times and breaks is key to optimisation. Gamified user stats can also encourage healthy competition between agents.

Live Chat for Your Website: The Implementation Process

Once a vendor has been selected and the SRS has been agreed, live chat deployment – that’s being fully integrated, branded and up and running – should take a matter of days or weeks, depending on your business requirements and timeline.

The live chat implementation process will differ from company to company depending on its individual needs, but generally follows this structure:

1. Project kick-off meeting takes place: This is where key project expectations are discussed, including timelines, outcomes and functionality. It’s an opportunity for your vendor to thoroughly understand your requirements when it comes to execution.
2. Design guidelines are discussed: You want your customer-facing live chat channel to represent your brand, this is where brand and design guidelines are shared so that they can be built into your software.
3. First look designs are shared: Once they are built, the first look designs are shared with you and your team to ensure they have been properly executed. This is an opportunity to suggest any amendments if necessary.
4. Draft integration code is created and sandbox environment access is granted: Now that you’re happy with the design elements, your vendor will give you access to the sandbox environment where you can test the tool’s functionality. Again, if there are any apparent issues, this is where they can be discussed.
5. Design is signed off: Once you and your team are satisfied, the design is signed off.
6. Agent training: The account manager that has supported you throughout the implementation process will conduct the agent training. This is to ensure that your team get the most out of live chat and know how to use each feature adequately.
7. Testing: Next, thorough testing is carried out to eliminate any issues that could affect the tool’s effectiveness.
8. Final low-code integration is provided: The last step in the process is a simple one. It’s what gets live chat up and running on your website and involves one line of code. This is given to your developers by the vendor to install and you’re ready to go.

It’s good practice to discuss the implementation process with vendors in advance to manage expectations and make sure that these steps are included.

Measuring Live Chat Effectiveness

You can’t manage what you can’t measure. To continue reaping the benefits provided by live chat and ensure its constant optimisation, its effectiveness must continuously be measured. This is carried out by the frequent analysis and close monitoring of both performance and knowledge effectiveness metrics.

Performance Metrics

This group of metrics helps you to determine agent productivity, by providing you with data on each agent and their chat metrics, issues can easily be identified and resolved. These metrics include:

• Operator’s Summary: This group of metrics gives a granular insight into agent activity, including, chat capacity, handling times, durations, user feedback, login times and more.
• User Up-time: This demonstrates how your live chat teams’ time is spent throughout the day, showing data on login times, logoff times, active chat times and breaks.
• Gamified Leaderboards: Visible to agents, these visuals encourage healthy competition by highlighting agents who complete the most chats or receive the most favourable customer feedback.

Knowledge Effectiveness Metrics

It’s important to study knowledge-related metrics in order to understand if the content and knowledge articles being delivered to your customers are serving them effectively. This set of metrics include:

• Search Result: This collects data on every article, revealing how effective each is at answering customer queries. By pulling top-level effectiveness insights you can see how many queries were resolved and how many were optimisable.
• Top Queries: This set of metrics including, top queries, how many results were generated and whether it could be resolved, help to gain insight into your customers’ behaviour and current needs, it can also help to reveal where any content gaps exist.
• Triggers: Understand how well your configured triggers are performing with data that reveals where tools are being triggered on your website and which is most optimal.

Live Chat Knowledge Base Integration:
How Does It Work?

“The whole is greater than the sum of its part.”
– Aristotle

This phrase rings true when it comes to live chat knowledge base integrations; whilst each tool provides value to customer service individually, when combined, that value becomes significantly greater.

Before exploring the importance of this integration, let’s first unpack the impact that live chat and knowledge bases have individually on your wider customer service ecosystem.

Live Chat’s Role in Customer Service

In your customer service offering, live chat provides your customers with a platform whereby they can communicate with agents who will communicate back. Unlike self-service contact channels such as chatbots or self-service pages that utilise AI to solve with queries, live chat is operated and solves customer queries using human intelligence.

Live chat solutions are particularly popular due to their low-cost and versatility. Compared with other agent-assisted channels such as telephony, live chat, which allows agents to deal with multiple queries simultaneously, is significantly cheaper to run.

From a customer perspective, live chat combines the depth that is provided by agent-assisted channels with the accessibility and convenience of an online channel. According to one study , 79% of customers preferred to use live chat because it offers instant responses.

For more on the basics of live chat software, check out this article.

A Knowledge Base’s Role in Customer Service

A knowledge base’s role in your wider offering is an important one, it is the core knowledge repository and where all information is stored, collected, shared and updated. From company guidebooks to pension policies and product spec sheets to agent scripting, a knowledge base stores everything relating to your company, products and services.

The purpose of a centralised knowledge base is to provide quick, convenient access to information, to the right people at the right time. A knowledge base is versatile and can be utilised both internally and externally in the following ways:

• By employees looking for company information
• By agents searching for knowledge articles that will answer customer queries
• By customers and prospects who require information on the company, products or services

You can set up various knowledge base views to include or restrict certain articles being accessed depending on who the audience is.

This nucleus of customer service feeds all your key business and customer service tools to ensure that any information that is distributed, internally or externally is always consistent and accurate. Without knowledge bases in place, companies must deal with disorganised databases and scattered information that leads to unreliable knowledge sharing.

Why Integrate and How?

Companies with efficient and functional customer service recognise the importance and make use of the integration between live chat and knowledge base software. By connecting the two a synergy is created, greater control over knowledge is gained and the overall cohesion makes for more efficient, lower-cost operations.

The live chat knowledge base integration is popular due to its abilities to:

• Improve AHT
• Enhance CX
• Promote agent productivity
• Produce valuable analytics
• Boost ESAT and CSAT
• Reduce costs

Implementing the integration is straightforward. Providing that your software utilises low-code development, the integration can be set up and ready to use following the simple installation of code.

Live Chat Knowledge Base Integration: What Are the Benefits?

Reduce Distraction and Enhance AHT

The integration between live chat and knowledge base software encourages agent efficiency. The agent interface offers an integrated knowledge feature, otherwise known as ‘mini knowledge’, it gives agents quick access to knowledge articles in the same window as the chat console. From there, they can simply copy and paste an article straight into the chat.

The advantage here is the reduction of distraction and noise, agents no longer must open new windows to search for answers in often multiple, disorganised places. Consider the sheer volume of routine questions that agents receive on a daily basis – this process becomes cumbersome when repeatedly carried out, eating up significant, valuable agent time.

Not only does the integration between the tools reduce AHT considerably, but by providing your customers with faster answers, CSAT is impacted.

Consistency Makes for Better CX

The circulation of inconsistent, inaccurate information not only damages brand credibility but could lead to anything from a surge in customer complaints to legal action being taken against the company.

Not only does this integration make the knowledge base available to live chat agents when dealing with customers, but it also powers all self-service tools that live on your website – whether its a self-service FAQ page, chatbot or widget. This means that the same information accessed by customers via your self-service channels is the same as the information that agents send your customers via live chat.

Providing such consistency is not only important for brand but it gives customers the right answers the first time, removing the need for customers to search around for adequate resolutions after they’re served inconsistent messages.

Optimal Agent Productivity Through Integration Features

By integrating live chat with your knowledge base, a series of features that contribute to productivity are unlocked. The live keypress feature that is made available in the agent interface allows agents to see what a customer is typing in real-time before they hit “send”. This lets agents resolve issues often before the query has been sent, saving considerable time.

AI predictive suggestions features are also made available through the live chat knowledge base integration. As customers type their query, in real-time, AI predictive suggestions will recommend a series of relevant articles in the ‘mini knowledge’ section. This is hugely useful for agents who can simply copy and paste an article and send to the customer without having to search for anything or leave the current window.

Both features help to save agents significant time so they can focus on other tasks, therefore promoting productivity.

Performance and Article Metrics Are Activated

Connecting two powerful tools generates powerful results – and these should be measured. The integration provides you with detailed analytics on knowledge article insights, for example:

• Search results: analytics that demonstrate the effectiveness of articles based on resolved queries, subsequently revealing the effectiveness of your knowledge base
• Top queries: insights into not only customer behaviour and areas for improvement but also how well your team is resolving such queries and whether there is a gap that needs filling
• Triggers: showing you where live chat and other tools have been triggered on your website and which trigger is most optimal

It can also help you measure agent performance with metrics such as:

• Operator’s summary: In-depth data showing agent handling times, user feedback, login times and many more metrics
• User up-time: a holistic view of how your teams’ time of spent, including data on login and logoff times, active chat times and breaks
• Plus, gamified leaderboards to encourage healthy competition and agent progress awareness

With regular monitoring and analysis, such analytics can be the answer to continual content and operational optimisation.

Boost ESAT To Boost CSAT

The integration between live chat and knowledge base makes agents’ jobs much easier, providing them with features that simplify tasks, make knowledge articles more accessible and ultimately give them a head start on each chat they are assigned.

This relieves the pressure on agents who would otherwise be scrambling to find answers in messy, confusing databases and documents, all whilst hoping that the information they serve is up-to-date and accurate.

Instead, agents, equipped with the combined power of live chat and knowledge base features, learn how to quickly deal with routine questions and can therefore deal with larger volumes of complicated issues. This helps not only develop customer service skills but it provides agents with job satisfaction by resolving customers’ serious issues.

The integration allows routine tasks to be completed efficiently so that agents can focus on more complex issues that prove rewarding. This contributes to employee satisfaction (ESAT), which has a huge impact on the way queries are dealt with, thus CSAT.

Cost-Efficiency

As an agent-assisted contact channel, live chat is an excellent choice for your customer service offering in terms of cost-efficiency. It proves far cheaper to run in comparison with other agent-assisted channels such as telephony which unlike live chat cannot deal with customers concurrently.

But when live chat integrates with knowledge base technology there further, significant savings to be made. Features included in the integration such as integrated knowledge (‘mini knowledge base’), live keypress and AI predictive suggestions create small, incremental savings in agent time. When you consider how many agents are in a contact centre and how many customers they deal with in a day alone, this adds up to significant time savings, which of course brings your operational costs down.

Training costs are also reduced through the integration, the knowledge base itself is a training tool for new starters and gets them up to speed far quicker than costly training programmes.

An Introduction to Live Chat Software

Whilst self-service channels are effective in solving customers’ routine queries, AI cannot always replicate the sensitivity and empathetic decision-making that comes with human understanding. Which is why live chat software is the perfect solution for queries that are more complex by nature, customers get the best of both worlds: the human touch and depth of answers that come with an agent-assisted channel, blended with the convenience and flexibility of using an online tool.

Customers are always going to have complex questions, the type that does not fit into the routine category and thus cannot be solved by self-service tools. This is why providing a live chat option online is paramount to CSAT and channel efficiency.

Beyond simple customer service, live chat can also facilitate lead generation and customer engagement, serving prospects, leads, new and existing customers.

How does it work?

On the customer’s end, a live chat conversation is initiated and their query is entered. This chat is received via the agent interface, otherwise known as the chat console, where it is assigned to an available agent, perhaps by skill if appropriate.

When integrated with a wider knowledge base, the interface recognises keywords that the customer has entered, prompting AI-powered predictive suggestions in real-time and shown in a ‘mini knowledge’ in the same window that recommends articles for sending. Agents can send pre-configured canned responses to save time or transfer chats to those with more appropriate skillsets. Certain live chat software includes live key-press features that allows agents to see what a customer is typing before they hit ‘send’, giving them extra time to resolve issues. All these functions are designed to promote incremental efficiencies.

Companies understand that there will always be non-routine queries to deal with and that agent-assisted channels prove costly. The reason why live chat software is so widely utilised is because it is a fraction of the cost of telephony and email. These features that enable incremental efficiencies along with the capability to handle multiple chats simultaneously, brings operational costs down significantly.

Want to improve your live chat software? Check out these 18 tips.

Live Chat Software Use Cases

Today, live chat software is diverse and can be used across multiple departments and for a range of functions.

Check out our 2021 Live Chat Buyer’s Guide, here.

Customer Service

Live chat is perhaps most commonly known for facilitating customer service online. It provides customers with quick, easy and convenient access to company representatives who can help them.One study revealed that 79% of customers preferred live chat over other channels due to its immediacy – a key contributor when it comes to CSAT.

Whether it’s a simple but non-routine query or a serious and time-sensitive issue, live chat software assists your customers when they most need it, building strong, positive associations with your brand.

Lead Generation

Live chat does not only serve customers post-purchase, but it can also assist in increasing lead generation. Live chat software can be configured to trigger under certain conditions, for instance, if a customer visits a certain product page more than once or spends a particular amount of time on the cart page. Such conditions suggest a lead is hot or is about to convert – this is where live chat can intervene via a proactive trigger, offering additional support and consequently secure the lead or sale.

According to one report, live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate.

Customer Engagement

Live chat software can help companies build better relationships with their customers, enhance brand credibility and increase conversions – all through customer engagement. CX can be enhanced by personalising the customer journey. Agents have access to returning visitor’s preferences and transcripts and can therefore utilise this data to make the experience smoother, more efficient and more enjoyable.

Just by being present and available through live chat software, companies can reap the rewards of customer engagement. Kayako reported that 79% of businesses said that implementing live chat resulted in increased customer loyalty, sales and revenue.

Find out more about live chat deployment, here.

Benefits of Live Chat Software

For Your Company

The implementation of live chat software can reduce your company’s operational costs significantly. Agent-assisted channels such as telephony and email are particularly high cost to run, this is because there are an accumulation of staffing and operational overheads involved, not to mention the fact that only one customer can be dealt with at a time, increasing handling times by upwards of 40% for some products. So, when companies deploy live chat software, that enables agents to handle multiple chats simultaneously, your customer service operations become more efficient. Pair this with features such as AI-powered predictive suggestions, integrated mini knowledge, live key-press feed and canned responses, that are designed to incrementally boost efficiency and huge operational savings are made.

The software can also have a positive effect on agents, which in turn can promote productivity and improve quality of work. When you deploy live chat software in contact centres and customer service teams, you are empowering agents by equipping them with tools that make their jobs easier. Not only do the features allow them to work through queries quicker, helping more customers, but access to integrated knowledge lets them become experts in many relevant areas.

Further, by including live chat in your online offering and using trigger management to prompt the tool when certain conditions are met, both lead and revenue generation can increase significantly.

For Customers

For your customers that require help with issues that are not routine and fit into the complex category, live chat is the ideal contact channel. Not only do they get to speak to a human who is experienced in the area at hand, but live chat can handle their queries quickly and conveniently – allowing them to carry on with everyday tasks at the same time. This is a huge improvement from having to wait in line to speak to an agent via the phone. Not only does live chat software reduce Average Handling Time (AHT) significantly, but it makes for happier customers and this is reflected in your CSAT scores.

Live chat software also contributes to a smooth and successful CX. The role in which it plays in the holistic customer journey is key in ensuring the customer gets to where they need to be. Live chat compliments other customer service tools that specialise in self-service, if a visitor engages with a chatbot for example and the software detects it cannot answer the non-routine query, a seamless escalation to live chat takes place, within the same window for great CX. The visitor does not feel inconvenienced and having interacted with the familiar instant messaging medium that live chat provides, CSAT is enhanced.

It’s clear why so many businesses rely on live chat as an indispensable tool in the customer service kit. Acting as an intelligent portal that connects customers to agents, live chat software promotes operational efficiency whilst bringing costs down. It is also heavily relied upon by customers – as the quickest way to contact your company, live chat enhances CX and contributes positively to CSAT.