A number of companies are experimenting with providing an option for real-time chat with an agent. Like click-to-call, the hope is that you can raise the conversion rate of browsers into buyers and/or lower the abandonment rate. Advantages over click-to-call is that (in theory at least) an agent can handle multiple chat conversations at the same time, thus making a chat cheaper than a phone call.
The problem is escalation
The problem with the theory is that chat session often have to escalate to a phone call, either by user choice or because of policy reasons. As I mentioned in a previous post, hand-off between channels is a critical issue.
Smooth hand-off is critical
If you don’t have a way to do a smooth hand-off from chat to voice, you may lose all the gains. We have been working on a solution to this problem at Fonolo. So if your company currently has a real-time chat solution in place and you would like to tackle this problem, give us a ring!
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