Tag Archives: live-chat

10 Trends That Will Disrupt Customer Service in 2018 [White Paper]

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10 Trends That Will Disrupt Customer Service in 2018“I feel the need, the need for speed!”

In Top Gun, the 1986 classic, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s famous phrase effectively summed up the future of customer service (CS). While it wasn’t intended to evoke the relationship between business and consumer, over 30 years later, it speaks directly to the state of CS today.

Speed is arguably the most significant benchmark for every single customer service interaction today.  Businesses can never be too fast to reply, react, or resolve an issue. As channel choices continue to stack up, and consumers navigate through them with swift precision, the expectation to be ‘ready and waiting’ at all times of the day is now the gold standard in customer service.

Despite this, recent reports reveal that the average time to handle a customer service request is 15 hours and 17 minutes – a far cry from first-class service expectations. But of the 12 industries that improved customer satisfaction in 2016, nine of them had something in common: They each sped up First Response Time (FRT). When issues are resolved in the initial five minutes of first contact, the average customer satisfaction score is 90 (on a 100-point scale). If resolved in six to 10 minutes, the satisfaction rating drops seven points to 83, and continues dropping steadily as additional time passes. Therefore, responding quickly will help to stave off declining satisfaction.

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How to Master Chat in 5 Simple Steps

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How to Master Chat in 5 Simple StepsLive chat is an essential tool for contact centers aiming to improve customer engagement with an active online presence. Chat has been around for over a decade, but only in the last few years have companies realized its true potential. According to Econsultancy, live chat has the highest satisfaction levels for any customer service channel – chat was rated at 73%, compared to 61% for email and 44% for phone. Having live chat is now a standard feature for most companies looking to talk to customers in real-time.

However, providing great live chat support isn’t particularly easy. Chat is a conversational tool and performed in real-time, but it also requires strong writing skills. This means, agents need to encompass both phone and email skills simultaneously in order to be successful at chat.

So, as companies embrace live chat can we confidently say that contact centers have become masters at it yet? A little bit of help never hurt! Here are 5 simple steps you need to be cautious of when trying to be successful at chat support. Continue reading →

Contact Centers and Social Media – It’s Complicated

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Contact Centers and Social Media – It's Complicated

Is social media a net plus for the contact center industry? That question is turning out to be quite complicated. In my last post I talked about the enormous pressure social media has placed on call centers and speculated that the result has not been the best use of resources. I claimed that many of the interactions between a company’s “tweet response team” and customers were shallow and cursory and almost robotic (in some cases, actually robotic). And I speculated the investment in those teams (software + staff + management time) crowded out other, more urgent, innovation in the contact center.

Well, I certainly got a lot of feedback on that one! As you might expect, people involved in social media disagreed. But others said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking that for a while, but no one was said it out loud!”

The conversation continued during our analyst panel discussion last month and our recent call center manager panel discussion last week. As a result, I’m now certain that …well… it’s complicated!

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How to Create the Best Experience for Holiday Shoppers

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How to Create the Best Experience for Holiday ShoppersWhen shopping for the holiday season, consumers often have one thought in mind: “Where can I find the best deal?” This statement rings true regardless of the product/service, however value isn’t the only thing holiday shoppers are looking for. Customer service and the overall customer experience are still very important elements of the buying process – even during a time of chaos.

Sadly, consumers know how bad service can be during the holiday rush. In fact, 50% feel that customer service is worse during this season. Here are some proactive approaches you can take to better the service experience for your shoppers. Continue reading →

Chat-Based Customer Service at its Best and Worst

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Chat-Based Customer Service at its Best and WorstThe use of text-based chat for customer service has exploded in recent years. According to a recent report from Forrester, its use increased 43% between 2009 and 2012. Contact centers are drawn to live chat because a single agent can handle multiple simultaneous chats, as opposed to only one simultaneous voice call (which leads to lower average cost-per-call or cost-per-contact).

Another reason live chat has been so popular is that it aligns well with the new communication habits of consumers, especially younger ones. In terms of new channels for customer service, the rise of live chat can really be seen as parallel to the rising popularity of social media.  Both are text-based and asynchronous modes of interaction. Chat is private and one-to-one, while Twitter and Facebook are public and one-to-many. Continue reading →

Hangout with Dell, Zendesk, and More Today – 2:00 PM EDT!

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Google-HangoutFonolo is thrilled to be hosting today’s Google Hangout on Social Customer Service. The marketing industry quickly embraced social media as a new channel and extension of their digital platforms. Now, more and more organizations are recognizing the benefits of adopting social networks as a support tool for their service teams. Ultimately, consumers and company representatives are flocking to social media before the sale, to enhance marketing initiatives, and after the sale, to create the well-rounded brand experience.

However, 56% of customers’ tweets are being ignored! Clearly there’s still much to be learned about using social networks as a service channel. Fonolo reached out to social media savvy experts and invited them to participate in a live discussion.

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Social Media as a Strategy for Customer Service: A Live Conversation

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Social Media as a stretegy for customer serviceUsing social media as a customer service tool is a tactic that more and more organizations are utilizing.  In 2012, Aberdeen reported that of 174 organizations, 41% indicated their customer service teams were using social tools – a whopping 23% spike from 2011! Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are commonly used as two-way communication tools for consumers who have questions or issues about your brand.

Purchasers make decisions every day based on social media news feeds and interactions. Brands that participate are not only praised, but reap the benefits of increased revenue and customer loyalty. Customers who communicated with a contact center through social media and then received subsequent follow-up rated their final satisfaction nearly 20% higher than those who received no follow-up and were 15% more likely to recommend that company. Social media is here to stay. Ignoring social customer service can quickly lead to negative word-of-mouth and poor brand perception.

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What is a Google Hangout?

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With the realm of social media options, chat platforms, online meetings, and more – we’ve yet to see something as intuitive and interactive as a Google Hangout.

Google+ Hangouts is a free video chat service.  In addition to one-on-one chats, it also focuses on “face-to-face-to-face” group interactions where speakers have the ability to “Hangout on Air”, and publish a live video broadcast online.

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2013 Call Center Trends: A Live Conversation with Top Industry Analysts

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As we begin to wrap up 2012 we can’t help but think “What does 2013 hold for the call center and customer service industry?”

Let’s fast forward and start the conversation!

Subscribe to our YouTube channel and Join us LIVE on November 29th at 2:00 pm ET as we discuss the 2013 emerging trends that will dominate the call center.  We’ve secured notable industry analysts, Dave Michels, Jon Arnold, and Dan Miller to be a part of this event.  Continue reading →

Implementing Live Chat on your site? A strategy for escalation-to-voice is critical

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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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