The benefits of proactive chat

In the world of customer support, live chat is a crucial player in creating customer satisfaction. There’s nothing not to love about an on-demand customer service tool that lowers costs and increases customer satisfaction. And as it turns out, there’s even more to chat than meets the eye. Even if your company has recently deployed live chat as a support channel, you may not be fully achieving its potential.

Unlike email or phone support, which are typically reactive (they depend upon a customer to initiate a conversation), online chat is often most powerful as a proactive support channel. Reactive live chat is an option too, but done well, proactive chat can be the difference between a customer browsing your site and leaving empty-handed or making a decision and checking out with a purchase. A shift from reactive to proactive customer support is a change that can yield dramatic results for your company.

What is proactive chat

The name of the customer service game these days is knowing what your customers need before they ask. For this, proactive chat is an essential tool. The truth is, we humans are notoriously bad at asking for help. We may need assistance, but unless it’s easy to find, many of us simply won’t raise our hand. With proactive live chat, agents can jump in as a resource at just the right moment, turning a potentially fruitless online experience into a win-win.

Consider this common enough scenario: a potential customer visits a website in search of a new hairdryer. After browsing and reading reviews for a while, she begins clicking back and forth between two similar items, unsure which one to buy. Proactive chat allows a customer service agent to open a chat discussion at that moment and offer assistance. A simple dialogue box query such as “May I help you?” establishes the connection. At that point, the customer can ask a question or decline to respond.

Why empowering agents works

Putting proactive customer service to work can benefit any company, because consumers tend to appreciate personalisation. 44% of US online consumers said they liked getting a live chat invitation during research or a purchase. With Zendesk Chat, an admin can set up triggers that will initiate an online chat based on, say, a specified amount of time. This can keep a website visitor from bouncing. Offering proactive chat can change your support team’s workload, so it’s critical to monitor any shifts and be prepared to adjust resources to your chat support team accordingly. With, say, analytics.

How chat analytics help

Simply put, proactive chat extends the immense power of online chat as a customer support tool. The more live chat interactions your team initiates, the more customers you’ve touched, and the more information you can mine about what your customers are thinking and experiencing. With chat analytics that data quickly becomes the basis for improvements to your site or your products, to better suit customer needs.

Proactive chat records provide valuable insight into what may be holding a customer back from completing a purchase. When and what agents and customers chat about–navigation issues, delivery concerns, product details–highlight the information your customers crave.

With research indicating that 55 per cent of online shoppers will abandon a purchase if they can’t find an answer to a question quickly, live chat’s mission is clear. The opportunity to move beyond on-demand support and offer proactive customer support via live chat is icing on the cake.