Live agent chat and its escalation-to-voice problem

As the multi-channel call center gets more and more common, implementations of click-to-chat get more common. Like click-to-call, the goal with chat is that you can raise the conversion rate of browsers into buyers and/or lower the abandonment rate.

Hand-off problems

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 with the theory is that chat session often have to escalate to a phone call, either by user choice or because of policy reasons. This is a recurring challenge for multi-channel client care – hand-off between channels. For more, see the post “The Multi-channel challenge”.

Let’s talk

If your company has installed click-to-chat or is planning to, we’d love to talk to you about how you’re addressing this challenge. It’s possible that, without a smooth hand-off from chat to voice, the gains may all be wiped out. We have been working on a solution (still in beta) to this problem at Fonolo and we’d love to talk to you about it.