Chat Functionality - Tips and Suggestions

Companies love to jump into chat — the next frontier in customer touches and service. It sounds great, but there are things to consider, such as:

• Where you put the chat button — the top? the bottom? My preference is the lower right hand corner. It’s usually the standard on most sites, so why break the trend. And, it stays out of the way of the left rail and top navigation areas.
• Training — chat is not like picking up the phone. Communicating clearly, with brevity are key aspects of chat. And, reps should be able to carry on 2-3 sessions at the same time so juggling multiple conversations is important Spend a great deal of time and money getting your reps trained… use a 3rd party training company.
• Customer service skills — chat is at it’s core customer service which helps drive sales. Your reps need to clearly be trained and compensated based on service level not sales. Goaling on sales will create aggressive reps who will push your customers away from the purchase funnel.
• Metrics — always measure the results. How many sales can you confirm were made by the chat? Customer service requests? How many no’s for help? How many never responded? You must understand if you’re getting any type of return. Don’t necessarily be concerned about sales only… cost avoidance in helping online is a benefit as well.
• Time of day — go back to your analytics and staff based on the level of traffic you’re getting during specific times of the day. 
• Geography coverage — are you ready to work with customers in different countries? Should you? Take a look at where your web traffic is coming from and staff appropriately. Plus, if you aren’t concerned about international business, limit your chat to those country’s you are interested in.
• Language — this is a big one. Do you have staff who are skilled in more than one language? If your web site is only in English I’d only use English as the language supported. If you have a translated site, then look at the traffic on those translated pages, where are your sales coming from and decide whether the investment in multi-language support is warranted.
• Privacy/Legal — ALWAYS have your legal department draft the appropriate language informing customers of their rights and of your policies. 
• Where you want to chat — put the chat button the high traffic areas, vs. your long tail pages. Staffing everywhere is inefficient and your staff is probably not going to understand all of your products, so stay where customers gather. 
• What results do you want out of chat — define what you want upfront. Sales? Customer service? This is critical as other numbers might look great - number of chat sessions are up! The time per customer is dropping! All sound great, but keep your original goals in mind to determine success/failure.
• Sales expectations — keep your expectations low. You’ll probably do more customer service type of work with chat. But you will certainly help your customers through the sales funnel by answering questions, directing them to areas on the site and most importantly help a customer in the sales checkout process.
• The creepy factor — personally, having someone abruptly and without warning open up a chat session with me creeps me out. It’s a big brother thing. Chat might actually drive customers away from your site. Measure this as well.
• Expect the craziest stuff —What are your hours? How do I get in contact with Accounting? Where’s my shipment? Your product is terrible. Will you donate to my kids baseball team?Do you know Bob in Marketing? He’s my nephew. This and more will come through your chat.
• Trial — start small. Put the chat button on just a few pages when you first start. If successful, gradually expand to other pages. This will allow you to find out how many “pages per rep” can be managed, making staffing a bit easier.
• IT — don’t make the mistake of not including your IT staff in this process. Security protocols could be impacted, your site will need to be modified and you need someone to help manage any technical malfunctions.

There’s a number of additional tips, but I’ll leave it here.

Scott