Tag Archives: Customer service

What Is Customer Lifecycle Management? 2024 Guide

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What Is Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) is the process of tracking and managing each phase of a customer’s interaction with a business.

It starts from awareness and continues through to purchase and loyalty.

Businesses assign metrics to each stage and analyze these metrics to measure performance.

This helps them understand how well they are meeting customer needs.

Key Stages of CLM

  1. Awareness: Customers first become aware of a product or service.
  2. Consideration: Customers evaluate options and compare solutions.
  3. Purchase: Customers decide to buy a product or service.
  4. Retention: Ensuring customers remain satisfied and continue to use the service.
  5. Loyalty: Building a strong, ongoing relationship with customers.

Benefits of CLM

  • Improved Customer Retention: By understanding each stage, businesses can better meet customer needs, leading to higher customer retention rates.
  • Increased Revenue: Tracking and optimizing each stage can lead to more successful sales and marketing strategies.
  • Data-Driven Decisions: Businesses can make informed decisions based on metrics collected throughout the lifecycle.

Tools for CLM

  • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: CRM tools help manage interactions with current and potential customers. For a detailed guide on CRM systems, visit HubSpot’s CRM Guide.
  • Marketing Automation Software: These tools streamline marketing efforts, making it easier to target customers at different lifecycle stages.

Many companies use customer lifecycle marketing to personalize their approach and enhance customer experiences. This integration helps create a seamless journey from discovery to loyalty.

How Can Customer Lifecycle Management Improve Your Online Store Metrics?

Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) can significantly impact your online store performance by improving key metrics such as conversion rates and customer retention. Implementing effective strategies can lead to increased revenue and business growth.

What Metrics Should You Focus On?

Conversion Rate: This metric measures the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase. By tracking the customer lifecycle from awareness to loyalty, you can optimize each stage of the sales funnel.

Customer Retention: Keeping existing customers can be more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Focus on retention metrics to maximize lifetime value (CLV) and enhance profitability.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): Measure the effectiveness of your ads and email campaigns. A high CTR can indicate that your marketing strategy resonates with your target audience.

How Do You Implement Effective Strategies?

Developing effective CLM strategies involves a mix of target audience analysis, relevant content creation, and leveraging technology. Use social media platforms and SEO to boost your online presence.

Target Audience Analysis: Understand the needs and behaviors of your ideal customer. This can help tailor your marketing message to meet their specific goals and incentives, leading to more effective ad campaigns and promotions.

Technology: Employing tools like customer lifecycle management software can streamline your efforts. Tools such as EngageBay are useful for CRM, email marketing, and lead generation.

Content Creation: Produce relevant content that engages different stages of the customer lifecycle. This can improve retention and loyalty metrics by continuously providing value.

By focusing on these key metrics and strategies, businesses can effectively enhance their online store performance and ensure sustainable growth.

What Are The Key Stages In Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer lifecycle management includes several crucial stages that help businesses build strong relationships with their customers. These stages ensure that a customer’s journey is smooth, from initial contact to retention and advocacy.

What Is The Acquisition Stage?

The acquisition stage focuses on attracting new customers. This involves creating awareness about the brand through marketing efforts such as advertisements, social media campaigns, and referral programs. Businesses aim to reach potential customers and persuade them to make their first purchase. Effective acquisition strategies can significantly enhance customer lifetime value.

During this stage, companies analyze data to understand what attracts customers. They use this information to optimize their marketing campaigns. An important metric to track in this phase is the cost per acquisition (CPA), which helps businesses measure the efficiency of their marketing spend.

What Is The Retention Stage?

The retention stage is about keeping existing customers engaged and satisfied. After the initial purchase, businesses aim to build loyalty through exceptional service, loyalty programs, and consistent communication. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers, increasing their lifetime value and contributing to long-term success.

Customer satisfaction and loyalty are key metrics in this stage. Tools such as customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) and customer retention rates help businesses assess their performance. Implementing feedback loops allows for continuous improvement and ensures that customers feel valued and heard. By focusing on retention, companies can reduce churn and foster brand loyalty.

How To Analyze Customer Behavior?

Analyzing customer behavior involves using various tools and focusing on key data points to understand how customers interact with a business. It’s essential for improving customer experience and making informed business decisions.

What Tools Should You Use?

To analyze customer behavior, businesses should employ a combination of analytics platforms, CRM systems, and customer feedback tools.

Analytics platforms such as Google Analytics track website interactions, giving insights into how visitors navigate and what content holds their interest. CRM systems gather data from various touchpoints, creating detailed customer profiles and tracking engagement across the customer journey. Customer feedback tools, like surveys and online reviews, provide direct insights into customer experiences and expectations.

Using these tools collaboratively can help businesses create a comprehensive customer journey map, highlighting pain points and opportunities for improvement. They facilitate personalized recommendations and targeted marketing efforts, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Which Data Points Are Most Important?

When analyzing customer behavior, several data points are crucial for gaining valuable insights.

Demographic information helps in segmenting customers and tailoring personalized marketing strategies. Behavioral data, such as pages visited, time spent on the website, and products viewed, provides insights into customer interests and desires. Transaction history reveals purchasing patterns and preferences, guiding inventory management and product recommendations.

Customer feedback is vital for understanding customer satisfaction and identifying areas needing improvement. Engagement metrics, including email open rates and social media interactions, show how well marketing efforts resonate with the audience.

Customer journey maps help visualize all interactions and events, recognizing key touchpoints and stages in the customer lifecycle map. By analyzing these data points, businesses can make well-informed decisions to meet and exceed customer expectations, resulting in a better overall customer experience.

What Are Common Mistakes To Avoid In Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer lifecycle management involves tracking customer interactions and improving their experience. Avoiding common mistakes can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

What Are Examples Of Ineffective Strategies?

One major mistake is neglecting to use proactive customer service. Relying solely on reactive measures can lead to customer churn. Instead, businesses should anticipate issues and offer solutions before customers face problems.

Failing to personalize customer interactions is another error. Using generic messages instead of tailored recommendations can alienate loyal customers. Companies should leverage data to provide relevant content and exclusive offers.

Ignoring self-service tools is also a common pitfall. Many customers prefer to resolve issues on their own using FAQs, tutorials, or live chat support. Not offering these options can frustrate customers and increase support costs.

How Do You Identify And Rectify Mistakes?

Identifying mistakes involves regularly analyzing customer feedback and interaction data. Tools like surveys and support tickets can reveal pain points. Monitoring these metrics helps pinpoint areas needing improvement.

Rectifying these errors requires implementing best practices. For instance, introducing proactive support efforts or enhancing self-service tools can mitigate issues. Offering exclusive offers and personalized discounts can also improve customer relationships.

Engaging in consistent competitor analysis ensures that your strategies remain competitive. Observing how competitors handle customer lifecycle management can provide insights into effective practices and areas of improvement.

Frequently Asked Questions

This section addresses common inquiries about Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM), outlining key differences with CRM, stages involved, practical examples of implementation, and importance for strategy.

How does customer lifecycle management differ from customer relationship management?

Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) focuses on the entire journey of the customer, from awareness to advocacy. Unlike Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which mainly handles the ongoing relationship and interactions, CLM tracks and optimizes each stage of the customer journey to improve satisfaction and retention. For more details, visit Customer Lifecycle Management.

What are the primary stages involved in the customer lifecycle?

The customer lifecycle usually includes five stages: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Advocacy. Each stage represents a different phase of the customer’s interaction with a business. Managing these stages effectively can help in increasing customer loyalty and encouraging repeat business.

Can you provide examples of how businesses implement customer lifecycle management?

Businesses implement CLM using various strategies like personalized marketing campaigns, automated email sequences, and customer feedback systems. For instance, a company might use customer lifecycle software to automate and track interactions, making it easier to provide tailored experiences at each stage.

Why is understanding the customer lifecycle important for business strategy?

Understanding the customer lifecycle allows businesses to tailor their marketing, sales, and support strategies to better meet customer needs at each stage. This comprehensive approach can lead to higher customer satisfaction and increased loyalty, which is crucial for long-term success.

What strategies are effective for managing customers throughout their lifecycle?

Effective strategies for managing the customer lifecycle include personalized communication, targeted promotions, and data-driven insights. Offering excellent customer service at each touchpoint and regularly evaluating the effectiveness of strategies can significantly enhance customer experience and retention.

How is customer lifecycle management adapted for the banking industry?

In the banking industry, CLM involves personalized financial advice, tailored loan offerings, and proactive support services. Banks may use customer lifecycle management to track customer interactions and provide timely, relevant services to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Improving Customer Service with Group Chat

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You’ve probably noticed how customer expectations keep rising. People want quick responses and personalized service. Meeting these demands can feel overwhelming, especially when juggling multiple inquiries.

One way to tackle this challenge is through group chat for customer service. It’s an efficient tool that helps you manage real-time conversations with multiple participants.

Let’s dive into how group chat can transform your customer service operations.

What is Group Chat for Customer Service?

Imagine having a live messaging platform where multiple participants can engage in real-time conversations. That’s what group chat is all about. It allows customer service teams to interact with several customers simultaneously, significantly speeding up response times and boosting overall efficiency. To understand more about the fundamentals, check out what is live chat.

You may wonder how this works. In a group chat, customers start a session with a support representative who can then bring in other team members or experts to join the conversation. This ensures that customers get accurate and comprehensive answers quickly. Everyone involved can see and respond to messages in real-time, making communication seamless and effective.

Using group chat, you can streamline your customer service processes and offer faster, more efficient support. It’s particularly useful for tackling complex issues that require multiple team members’ input, and it helps manage high inquiry volumes without leaving any customer waiting for a response.

Benefits of Using Group Chat for Customer Service

Faster Response Times

Group chat allows your team to handle multiple customer inquiries simultaneously. This setup reduces wait times and ensures that customers receive prompt responses. When several team members can participate in a conversation, issues get resolved quickly. Customers appreciate the swift attention, which enhances their overall experience. 

Improved Collaboration

Group chat fosters better collaboration among your customer service team. When a representative encounters a complex issue, they can quickly bring in other team members or experts to provide input. This collaborative approach ensures that customers receive accurate and comprehensive answers. It also helps train new team members, as they can observe and learn from experienced colleagues in real-time. 

Increased Customer Satisfaction

When customers receive quick, accurate responses, their satisfaction levels rise. Group chat enables your team to address multiple concerns at once, reducing the chances of errors or miscommunication. The ability to involve various experts in a single conversation ensures that customers get well-rounded support. This leads to higher satisfaction rates and fosters customer loyalty. See why live chat is a customer service game-changer.

Cost-Effective Solution

Implementing group chat can be a cost-effective way to enhance your customer service while increasing customer engagement. It reduces the need for multiple one-on-one interactions, allowing your team to handle more inquiries with the same resources. This efficiency can lower operational costs while maintaining high service standards. Additionally, group chat platforms often have features that streamline workflows, reducing the time and effort required to manage customer support.

How Does Group Chat Work in Customer Service?

Understanding how group chat functions can help you grasp its benefits. Customers initiate a dynamic and interactive support experience when they start a chat session. Discover how live chat can increase lead conversion.

Once the chat begins, the representative can invite other team members or experts to join the conversation. This feature is particularly useful for resolving complex issues that require specialized knowledge. Bringing in the right people ensures that customers receive accurate and comprehensive answers quickly.

All participants in the group chat can view and respond to messages in real-time. This setup creates a seamless flow of information, allowing for immediate feedback and collaboration. Everyone involved can see the entire conversation history, which helps them understand the context and provide relevant solutions.

The real-time nature of group chat means that responses are swift, reducing customers’ wait time. It also allows for a more interactive and engaging support experience, as multiple team members can contribute their expertise simultaneously. This collaborative approach speeds up issue resolution and enhances the quality of support provided.

Types of Group Chat Platforms for Customer Service

You might be wondering which group chat platform is best for your needs. Let’s break down the options:

Standalone Chat Applications

Standalone chat applications are dedicated tools designed specifically for real-time communication. These platforms offer robust features tailored for customer service, such as message tagging, file sharing, and conversation history. They operate independently and do not require integration with other systems. This makes them easy to deploy and use. Popular examples include Slack and Microsoft Teams. These applications allow your team to manage customer inquiries efficiently by providing a centralized communication hub. They also support various customization options, enabling you to tailor the interface and functionalities to suit your specific needs. Check out the best live chat for business.

Integrated Chat Solutions

Integrated chat solutions are built to work seamlessly with your existing systems, such as CRM, helpdesk, and e-commerce platforms. These solutions enhance customer service by providing a unified view of customer interactions across channels. For instance, when a customer initiates a chat, the representative can access their purchase history, previous interactions, and other relevant data without switching between applications. This integration streamlines workflows and improves response times. Zendesk Chat and Intercom are examples of integrated chat solutions. They offer features like automated ticket creation, customer segmentation, and analytics, which help you manage and optimize your support operations.

When considering types of group chat platforms for customer service, embedded chats stand out for their seamless integration into your website or app, providing a more cohesive user experience. Arena Chat is a good option in this category, offering a fully customizable and easily embedded chat solution that enhances real-time customer interactions.

AI-Powered Chatbots

AI-powered chatbots use artificial intelligence to handle customer inquiries automatically. These chatbots can answer common questions, guide users through troubleshooting steps, and even escalate issues to human agents when necessary. They operate 24/7, providing instant support to customers regardless of time zones. AI chatbots learn from interactions, improving their responses over time. They can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, reducing the workload on your human agents. Platforms like Drift and Chatfuel offer AI-powered chatbots that integrate with your existing systems, providing a seamless customer service experience. These chatbots also collect valuable data on customer interactions, helping you identify trends and areas for improvement. 

How to Implement Group Chat for Your Customer Service Team

You might be excited about the benefits but concerned about the implementation. Don’t worry; the process can be straightforward if you follow these steps:

Choose the Right Platform

Selecting the right group chat platform is the first step. Evaluate your business needs and consider scalability, ease of use, and integration capabilities. Look for platforms that offer features such as real-time messaging, file sharing, and the ability to invite multiple participants. Ensure the platform integrates well with your existing CRM and helpdesk software, to streamline workflows. Assess the security measures in place to protect customer data. Platforms that provide analytics and reporting tools can help you track performance and identify areas for improvement. 

Train Your Team

Once you have chosen a platform, training your team is crucial. Start with a comprehensive onboarding session to familiarize them with the platform’s features and functionalities. Provide hands-on training sessions where team members can practice using the platform in real-time scenarios. Create training materials for ongoing reference, such as guides and video tutorials. Encourage team members to ask questions and share feedback during the training process. Regularly update training materials to reflect any changes or new features in the platform. Continuous training ensures that your team remains proficient and can handle customer inquiries efficiently.

Set Clear Guidelines

Establish clear guidelines for using group chat in customer service. Define the roles and responsibilities of each team member during a chat session. Outline the process for inviting additional participants and escalating issues. Set expectations for response times and communication etiquette. Create templates for common responses to ensure consistency and speed. Implement protocols for handling sensitive information to maintain customer privacy. Regularly review and update these guidelines to ensure they remain relevant and practical. Clear guidelines help your team provide consistent and high-quality support.

Monitor and Analyze Performance

Monitoring and analyzing performance is key to improving your group chat operations. Use the analytics tools provided by your platform to track metrics such as response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores. Identify trends and patterns in customer inquiries to address recurring issues proactively. Conduct regular performance reviews with your team to discuss their strengths and areas for improvement. Use customer feedback to refine your support strategies and enhance the customer experience. Implement changes based on your analysis and track their impact over time. Continuous monitoring and analysis help optimize your group chat operations and deliver better customer service. 

Best Practices for Managing Group Chats in Customer Service

Running a group chat effectively requires more than just setting it up. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Assign Roles and Responsibilities

Effective group chat management starts with clear role assignments. Each team member should know their specific duties during a chat session. For instance, designate a primary responder to handle initial inquiries. Assign subject matter experts who can be brought into the conversation as needed. This structure ensures that each participant knows their part, reducing confusion and improving efficiency. Additionally, having a team leader oversee the chat can help manage the flow of conversation and ensure that all customer queries are addressed promptly.

Use Canned Responses

Canned responses are pre-written replies to common questions. They save time and ensure consistency in communication. Create a library of these responses for frequently asked questions or standard procedures. This allows your team to provide quick, accurate answers without typing the same information repeatedly. However, it’s important to personalize these responses when necessary to avoid sounding robotic. Tailor the message to fit the specific context of the customer’s inquiry, which helps maintain a human touch in your interactions.

Prioritize Urgent Issues

Not all customer inquiries are equal. Some require immediate attention, while others can wait. Implement a system to prioritize urgent issues. Use tags or flags to mark high-priority conversations. Train your team to recognize and escalate these issues quickly. This approach ensures that critical problems are addressed first, improving customer satisfaction. Additionally, having a clear emergency protocol helps your team stay organized and responsive under pressure.

Provide Personalized Experiences

Personalization enhances customer satisfaction. Use the customer’s name and reference their previous interactions with your company. Tailor your responses based on their history and preferences. This shows you value them as individuals, not just ticket numbers. Personalization can also involve suggesting products or services based on their past behavior. You build stronger relationships and foster loyalty by making the customer feel understood and valued. Learn why you should add live chat to your customer service strategy.

How Can Group Chat Improve Customer Satisfaction?

You might still be skeptical about how group chat can directly impact customer satisfaction. Let’s break it down:

Faster Issue Resolution

Group chat enables your team to address customer issues quickly. Multiple team members can join the conversation when a customer initiates a chat. This collaborative approach ensures that the right expertise is available immediately. As a result, problems get solved faster, reducing wait times and improving the customer experience. The ability to resolve issues promptly keeps customers happy and reduces the likelihood of frustration.

Personalized Support

Personalized support is another key benefit of group chat. Each customer interaction can be tailored based on their previous interactions and specific needs. Your team can access customer history and preferences in real-time, allowing them to provide relevant and customized responses. This level of personalization makes customers feel valued and understood, fostering a stronger connection with your brand. Personalized support not only resolves issues more effectively but also enhances customer loyalty. Learn how to improve customer experience with personalized support.

Seamless Communication

Seamless communication is vital for a smooth customer service experience. Group chat allows all participants to see and respond to messages in real-time. This transparency ensures everyone is on the same page, preventing miscommunication and ensuring the customer receives consistent information. The ability to involve multiple team members in a single conversation streamlines the support process, making it more efficient and effective. Seamless communication helps build trust and confidence in your customer service, leading to higher satisfaction levels. 

Take Your Customer Service to the Next Level with Arena

Improving customer service with group chat has always been challenging. Arena offers a comprehensive digital communication platform with robust group chat features designed to enhance real-time customer interactions. Our platform enables your team to collaborate seamlessly, respond faster, and provide personalized support, all leading to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Integrating Arena’s live chat and AI-powered tools allows you to streamline your customer service operations and handle multiple inquiries efficiently. Take advantage of the opportunity to elevate your customer service experience.

Sign up now to explore our pricing plans and see how Arena can transform customer interactions. Visit Arena Pricing to get started today. 

Live Chat Metrics And KPIs to Improve Customer Service

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Want better customer satisfaction and loyalty? Use these ten metrics to optimize your live chat support experience.

Monitoring and optimizing the following ten live chat metrics is an important step to improve your live chat performance. Use these customer support metrics to identify opportunities to improve the quantity and quality of your customer service.

How Live Chat Increases Opportunities

When customers land on your website, they probably have questions and concerns about doing business with you. When a question or worry pops into potential customers’ minds, you can connect with the potential buyer. While static website content like product descriptions and other pages lay a great foundation, there’s no replacement for having a conversation.

Once those conversations start flowing, measuring live chat performance is crucial. Also known as live chat performance metrics, metrics are essential for management. Regularly reviewing metrics will tell you where additional training or resources are needed to reach your goals.

With Live Chat, your employees can easily interact with your customers at scale while providing a personalized experience. That means you get greater customer loyalty. A high customer satisfaction rate means more return buyers and a positive impact on sales.

Two Ways To Use Generative AI To Improve Live Chat Effectiveness

Traditional methods to improve live chat KPIs or metrics are the foundation of your success. Agents need the right tools and training to carry out their work. Management needs good data to support their teams. After you have that foundation, generative AI tools (think chatGPT but business focused) can help.

1. Answer routine questions based on a knowledge base.

Do you have a knowledge base or a section of your website with frequently asked questions (FAQ)?

If so, generative AI tech can use that resource to provide company-specific responses to customers. This type of focused generative AI is developing, so now is a great time to investigate it for your business.

2. Provide product recommendations

Your live chat KPIs might emphasize customer support metrics. What if you could use live chat to improve revenue directly? That’s an exciting possibility with generative AI.

For example, add a live chat window to a product page and use it to provide specific product recommendations. This capability works well with products with straightforward, easy-to-describe differences (e.g., different types of TV have different sizes, resolution, and other features).

Arena AI Concierge for Publishers, Content & Affiliate Commerce is here. Request early access.

Ten Live Chat Metrics To Watch & How To Improve Each One!

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Live chat metrics are only meaningful if they support your business goals. For example, you may aim to improve the effectiveness of your customer service agents by decreasing the average wait time by equipping your team with canned responses to common questions.

When you first start offering live chat, pick a few metrics to measure your performance. After those initial metrics are well integrated into your team, you can continue developing your systems by adding additional metrics to realize your chat strategy.

1. First Response Time (FRT) Live Chat Metric

The first live chat metric focuses on measuring the response speed. In brief, you measure how long your chat agents take to respond to a customer’s first message.

The FRP metric is critically important to impact your customers positively. A fast response tells your customers that you value their time. On the other hand, keeping a customer waiting for a long time is likely to hurt customer loyalty and word of mouth.

The first response time metric is also helpful for management. If FRT responsiveness decreases over time, it may signal that you need more chat agents. It may also indicate that your chat support teams need more support in the form of playbooks, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and other resources.

The average First Time Response is 15 minutes so you can use this timing as a starting point for your organization. In general, the lower this number, the better the customers’ satisfaction with the service. If the response takes more than the average, it will likely cause frustration and negative referrals.

Ways To Improve The FRP Metric

Tracking live chat key metrics becomes truly valuable when you use this data to improve performance. Use these tips to improve your live chat performance over time.

  • Share FRP Metric Widely

Empower your employees by sharing FRP metrics widely and discussing them at each chat team meeting. Sharing live chat performance metrics with your team will help them become more innovative in improving the customer experience.

  • Investigate FRP Metric Changes With An Open Mind

The FRP metric is helpful, but it has limitations. Like other chat customer service metrics, this measure doesn’t show the root cause of problems. Start by investigating technology problems that are interfering with service standards. In addition, chat responsiveness may suffer during periods of high volumes.

2. Total Number Of Chat Sessions Live Chat Metric

This live chat performance indicator is a volume measurement. It shows the number of live chat sessions that have been launched. Compared to other metrics for live chat, it is also relatively easy to track automatically. Tracking this metric is helpful over time; it shows the popularity of live chat for service vs. other customer service options like phone and email.

Ways To Improve The Total Volume of Chat Sessions Metric

Use the following metrics to get business value from this live chat metric.

  • Look For Sharp, Sudden Drops In This Metric

A significant drop in the live metric is a warning sign that something is going wrong with your systems. That’s why we suggest monitoring this metric daily in normal conditions. You may want to track it hourly during times of peak usage.

  • Ask For Feedback From Your Chat Agents. 

The raw volume of chat conversations only tells you part of the picture. It is crucial to touch base with your live chat staff regularly. Ask them about the most common questions they face. Look for patterns in the questions you face so that you can create better answers and solutions for your chat agents to use.

3. Average Resolution Time (ART) Live Chat Metric

This live chat metric is adapted from the world of customer service call centers, unlike the first few live chat metrics. It is focused on the quality of your staff’s customer service.

It is not enough to provide a quick answer: ideally, the goal is to fully resolve a customer’s concern as efficiently as possible.

You generally want your average resolution time metric to be as low as possible. There is a risk of pressuring customer service staff to work too quickly. It is vital to ensure all of a customer’s concerns and questions are fully resolved and avoid cutting off the session simply to boost your chat performance metrics.

The ART metric is typically measured in minutes for most situations. Your ART metric might be days in some highly complex customer service cases.

Tips To Use The ART Metric Effectively

Use the following tips to interpret the ART metric effectively.

  • Examine ART Metric Outliers

You can expect outliers to the ART metric. Consider cases where agents take much longer than average to resolve the question. For example, new customer support employees might take longer to resolve issues. In that case, the higher ART time is understandable and will likely decline.

On the other hand, keep an eye on the chat load that your experienced chat operators have. If your experienced staff have an excessive workload, customers are more likely to have a bad experience.

  • Validate ART With Other Customer Service Channels

Your company probably has multiple customer service channels like phone calls, email, and in-person locations. If live chat ART data looks great, comparing it to your other support options, like the phone center, is helpful. Ideally, you want to see consistent levels of customer service resolution across your critical channels.

4. Chat to Conversion Rate Live Chat Metric

To become a chat leader, it’s essential to convert chat participants into buyers. According to our research, 38% of customers who participate in a live chat session ultimately decide to purchase after receiving excellent support front the customer service team.

This chat experience metric may be the most valuable metric we have covered. It tells you how effectively the chat channel produces revenue or leads. Now, let’s look at ways you can help the customer service team convert more chat participants into leads and customers.

Tips To Raise Your Chat To Conversation Rate Live Chat Metric

  • Use Analytics To Find What’s Working

Not all chat requests are created equal. For example, compare a chat that starts on your home page with a chat on the checkout page. Generally, converting a website visitor to a buyer on certain pages (e.g., a product page) is easier.

When you connect your chat platform to a customer data platform, for example, your chat team leaders may find out that one individual agent has an above-average score when it comes to converting visitors to buyers. In that case, reach out to that person and find out what they are doing. Based on what you learn, develop additional training for your staff.

  • Improve The Customer Experience With Technology

Additional training is not the only way to enhance the chat experience. For example, take a critical look at your chat software. Your current software may not be able to handle the number of inbound chats you are receiving. Or your software may not load in an acceptable time. Switching to a faster chat tool like Arena Live Chat can improve your customer experience almost overnight.

5. First Contact Resolution Rate (FCR) Live Chat Metric

The FCR rate is a critical quality metric. Your customer’s concerns in a single chat session in ideal conditions. It is unrealistic to expect that you will be able to solve 100% of customer complaints or questions on the first attempt. Setting a high bar for this metric is wise to maintain customer happiness.

To calculate the First Contact Response rate, you must track the number of interactions in a case and the proportion of one-touch resolutions. Track this data for at least one month before attempting to improve.

Traditionally, contact centers aim for a 70% FCR rate. Reaching this level of success is easier when your chat team has access to extensive resources like proper answers to commonly asked customer questions. If your first contact resolution rate is lower right now, use the following tips to work with chat team staff to improve.

Tips To Improve Your First Contact Resolution Rate

  • Send A Customer Survey After The Chat Session

Sending a short customer survey with a few simple questions is a great way to gather feedback from your customer base. For example, ask your customers to rate their satisfaction level on a scale of 0 to 10. If the score is below 5, ask a follow-up question about it.

  • Assess Your Chat Queue Data

When customers have to wait a long time, they may be more upset when the chat session starts. As a result, a long chat queue can make it more challenging to solve customer questions quickly. Better training and a high-performance chat system can help here.

6. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Live Chat Metric

The CSAT is one of the most popular ways to develop a customer satisfaction rating for customer support. A customer satisfaction score (CSAT) measures how much your product or service meets or surpasses your customer’s expectations. A short customer satisfaction survey at the end of the live chat session is all you need to achieve this metric.

How To Improve The CSAT Score

There are a few popular ways to improve. Use these tips to boost your chat quality assurance efforts.

  • Find High Chat Satisfaction Cases

Studying chat transcripts from successful interactions is an excellent way to improve your performance. Look at how your high-performing employees are addressing common customer pain points. Once you identify these best practices, share them with the rest of your team.

  • Identify Patterns In Low CSAT Scores

Persistent low CSAT scores warn that something is wrong in your business. Before creating an action plan, take the time to understand the problem entirely. Look at contact volumes, peak traffic hours, and recent business growth. Your chat staff may be doing their best to help customers but simply lack the resources to serve customers effectively.

7. Net Promoter Score (NPS) Live Chat Metric

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NPS might be one of the best pieces of information to evaluate customer satisfaction metrics. This metric measures overall customer loyalty, not just the chat experience.

The NPS process is simple. You gather consistent customer feedback by asking them a single question: On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company to other people you know?

The NPS methodology breaks down scores into three categories:

  • The Detractors (0 – 6)
  • The Passives (7 and 8)
  • The Promoters (9 and 10)

Ideally, you want to maximize promoters and minimize the other two categories as much as possible. Use the tips covered elsewhere in this guide to improve your customer experience. Remember that customers can respond negatively to an NPS question for several reasons (e.g., upset with product delivery, pricing, etc.) that have nothing to do with the quality of their chat interaction.

8. Average Wait Time Live Chat Metric

Think about the last time you contacted a company with a question. Did you enjoy waiting for an answer? Even loyal customers hate waiting. That’s why monitoring your average wait time is a crucial metric.

The average chat wait time is usually less than a few minutes. Of course, this metric may look different during your busiest hours when you have a high volume of incoming chats.

There are a few options to improve the average time it takes to respond to customers. Start with examining the resources your chat agents have. Equipping your staff with canned answers, detailed product information, shipping details, and related resources can make a big difference.

While prewritten responses are helpful, they have limitations. You don’t want your customers to feel ignored simply because your chat staff feels pressured to achieve better chat performance benchmarks. This chat metric must be interpreted alongside other metrics, such as the NPS and FCR rate.

9. Website Visitors To Chats Metric

Increasing the number of chats per month generated from your website is a worthwhile goal to pursue. Most of the time, more chat sessions lead to more sales and more satisfied customers.

Keeping track of this metric is easy because you can easily track the data required. As a starting point, aim for a 1% conversion rate. If your website has 100,000 visitors per month, you should expect to have 1,000 chat sessions per month.

This metric is more valuable when read in the context of other metrics. For example, it is crucial to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction (e.g., high NPS rates, high first contact resolution rates, etc.) even as you lift.

Ways To Improve This Metric

There are a few techniques you can use to improve this metric.

  • Use A Better Chat Tool

The right chat technology has an important role in lifting this metric. For example, Arena Live Chat is built for speed and usability. Arena can also support a large volume of chat sessions simultaneously.

  • Optimize Your Chat Session Prompt

Chat windows usually start with a message or a question. Experimenting with different questions (e.g., “Do you have any questions?” vs. “Do you have a question about our Black Friday sale?”) can increase the number of website visitors who start a chat session.

10. Missed Chats Live Chat Metric

The missed live chat metric gives insight into whether your chat team can keep up with incoming chat requests.

A single experienced live chat agent can handle approximately 6 to 7 simultaneous conversations if they are relatively simple. Once your chat team hits capacity, missed chats will become a problem.

It’s not just a question of workload influencing this metric. You may also face a mismatch between working hours and staff availability. Your website is open 24/7 for business, but your chat support team is only available between 9 am to 5 pm.

Therefore, the raw volume of missed chats is only part of the story. It is also essential to track when missed chat requests occur. If missed chat sessions occur during regular working hours, use the other techniques mentioned in other parts of this situation.

Ways To Improve The Missed Chats Live Metric

Improving your performance on this live chat metric can be relatively challenging.

  • Manage Expectations For Non-Business Hours Service

When you have a significant chat volume outside your usual work hours, give your customers other options. For example, show your customer service email address and invite customers to message your team.

  • Extend Chat Service Hours At Peak Periods 

Chat handling time and chat volume will likely increase when you run sales. In those cases, average response time and missed chat measures may suffer. To avoid this problem, ask more employees to work as customer support agents to handle the demand. ‍

How To Go Beyond Standard Customer Service Chat

You may already have a chat app in place for day-to-day needs. But, what about events like live shopping, livestreams and other virtual events? These events are an exciting way to launch products and bring your community together. In these situations, a different chat solution is needed.

Arena Live Chat is the perfect solution for digital events because your customers can message each other, ask support questions and build trust with your brand. Learn more about Arena’s capabilities today.

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History of Online Chat: 1973-2023

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Online chat and chat rooms have come a long way in recent decades. In this quick guide to the history of online chat, you’ll find out where online chat started and how that history informed Arena Live Chat, AI and today’s chat experiences.

The Origins of Online Chat, 1970-1990

The first email was sent in 1971, and chat followed soon after. It was limited to universities, researchers, and governments. We see the first online chat emerge. 

1973: Talkomatic for PLATO system

Developed at the University of Illinois in 1960, this early computer network included chat rooms, email, screen sharing, and other networked features. The key development form PLATO was the launch of Talkomatic in 1973. Talkomatic supported multi-user chat interactions. The technology was limited compared to today’s tools – the application had a maximum of six rooms and a limit of five participants per chat room.

1978: Bulletin Board System (BBS)

Bulletin board systems (BBS) can be seen as social media before the Internet. The first BBS was invented in 1978 in Chicago. BBS users mainly used dial-up modems to connect to a BBS, post messages, and download files. By one estimate, there were thousands of active BBS systems active in the 1980s and 1990s before the Internet, as we know it, took over in popularity.

1980: CompuServe CB Simulator

The 1980s saw a significant leap forward, with online chat becoming more widespread. Compuserve, a critical early Internet service provider, launched CB simulator in 1980. This online chat service made history as the first chat service available to the public. 

1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC)

The launch of IRC pushed the adoption of online chat much further. Internet Relay Chat – along with email – is one of the few Internet communication apps from before 1990 that remain in use today. IRC made history when it was used to report Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. While IRC is still online, it has declined in popularity due to the launch of social media platforms.

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The popularity of online chat exploded in the 1990s as more user-friendly technology, marketing, and innovation made the Internet available to millions of people.

Online Chat In The 1990s

In the 1990s, web browsers became popular, bringing millions of people online. However, many people still had slower connection speeds, so text chat was the perfect solution. Chat messages are easy to transmit, which allows near real-time conversations. 

In the 1990s, chat rooms boomed, so it’s difficult to discuss them in depth. Instead, let’s look at some of the most influential services.

AOL Chat Rooms and AOL Messenger

In the 1990s, America Online (AOL) was a prominent Internet service provider. The company also became known for its popular chat rooms. The company offered unlimited access to its chat rooms to its subscribers. In 1998, the company made its instant messenger service – AIM – available to non-AOL subscribers.

MSN Messenger (1999-2014)

Released in 1999, MSN Messenger was another popular chat service. The chat app was widely perceived as a competitor to AOL’ AIM app. The app blended 1 on 1 messaging with some social networking functionality.   

ICQ

Launched in 1996, ICQ quickly acquired millions of chat users. The chat service was notable because it was available on multiple operating systems – Windows, Apple, and Unix. Text messaging between individual users formed the core of the app. At its peak in 2001, the app had an estimated 100 million users.

Customer Service Chat, Chatbots, and Arena: Today’s Online Chat 

As social media platforms grew in popularity in the 2000s, instant messaging apps lost some of their users. Despite that loss, chat and messaging remained popular features. One-on-one messaging (also known as private messaging) remained a key feature on Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites.

Three trends emerged over the past decade that shaped online chat as we know it today.

Customer Service Chat 

Online chat services started to move away from purely social and recreational uses with the rise of customer service chat. This chat service took off by promising greater speed than phone or email customer service. Chat service is also cheaper to provide – about 15-33% cheaper than phone support, according to one estimate. The cost savings is driven by the fact that it is possible for one rep to participate in multiple chat sessions in succession.

Streaming Chat Experiences

Chat and online experiences came together with streaming chat experiences in the 2010s. Across multiple platforms like Discord, Twitch, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live, users could come together and share their thoughts in text chat. These experiences often involved a shared video experience, such as watching a live stream. 

With tools like Chat Analyzer, brands can see how their organization and products are being discussed by users in Twitch chats.

Chatbots

The success of delivering customer service through online chat prompted a question: could computers do more of the work? The rise of chatbots – a kind of automation that relied on scripts and simple automation – provided the answer. These automated chat experiences show that many repetitive questions (e.g., what’s the status of my order?) could be handled through automation.

Using scripts to handle routine questions, chatbots helped companies redirect customer service staff to address complex issues. 

Arena Live Chat

The launch of Arena in 2017 took the history of chat in a new direction. Arena’s live chat brought the social experience of chat rooms back in a new way. 

Brands and publishers can now engage their customers directly on their websites. Social media platforms increasingly struggle with disinformation and toxic content, so people are hungry for alternative ways to connect online. Arena also made live chat more accessible since it is a lightweight application that can run on almost any website.

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What Is The Future of Online Chat?

Artificial intelligence and the need to connect with others beyond social media are two significant trends for the future. Large language models like chatGPT show that chat-style interactions with AI have exciting potential. In some ways, chatGPT brings together a search engine experience with chat.

AI chat experiences are powerful. These technologies are in their early days, so it’s difficult to know how they will used. For example, AI chat tools may be useful in facilitating brandsafe discussions and moderating conversations. AI chat may also play a role in growing online communities and easing the burden of community management. 

Connecting with other people is the core of online chat. The first chat platforms succeeded because they offered group and 1-on-1 messaging. The social need to connect through chat isn’t going anywhere. Instead, we will see the growth of online chat experiences on many different websites.  We look forward to sharing more insights exploring how AI and people can come together to offer exciting digital experiences.

Harnessing The Power of Chat For Your Website

The history of chat has seen many technologies come and go. What hasn’t changed is the desire to connect with other people. Brands seeking higher customer engagement are vital to give your audience a place to connect. Find out how to grow a digital community on your website with Arena.

Customer Engagement Explained: Definition, Strategies & More

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Customer engagement is the new way to think about building trusting relationships with customers. It’s broader than related concepts like customer loyalty. Encouraging customer engagement makes your company more valuable for the long term. 

What Is Customer Engagement?

Customer engagement is how your customers interact with your brand over time. A high level of engagement means customers are interested in new products, online events, and content that you release. Highly engaged customers likely spend significant time visiting your website and interacting with you online.

At its highest level, customer engagement means you have fans who eagerly introduce other people to your brand. This level of passionate engagement makes marketing more efficient because word-of-mouth efforts enhance your campaigns.

Customer engagement is also closely related to other ways of relating to your customers: customer experience and customer satisfaction. Let’s explore how these concepts connect further below.

Comparing Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Satisfaction

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Customer engagement and customer satisfaction partly overlap. It’s unlikely that a brand can achieve high customer engagement levels if satisfaction falls. The scope is a crucial point of difference between engagement and satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction often focuses on rating a purchase experience or customer service interaction. For instance, a customer satisfaction survey may ask buyers if their concern was thoroughly addressed when they asked for help.

In contrast, customer engagement goes beyond purchases and interactions with company staff. Customer engagement also considers if a person is acting as a brand ambassador. In addition, customer engagement examines how a person interacts with your online content and experiences.

Customer Engagement Vs. Customer Experience

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Customer experience and customer engagement are also related. Both can reinforce each other to increase revenue, reduce service expenses and lift a brand’s long-term prospects. Perspective and emphasis are key differences between these two concepts.

Customer engagement assumes that the customer is an active participant. Moment by moment, the customer decides how much time and money they want to spend with your brand. 

Customer experience, in comparison, brings together the company’s departments and capabilities to design a consistent, integrated experience. For instance, robust customer experience ensures offline and online interactions are aligned in copy, offers, and strategy. 

A robust customer experience journey makes it far more likely that customer engagement will stay high. The opposite is also true. A dysfunctional customer experience will likely cripple efforts to foster ongoing customer engagement. 

3 Ways Customer Engagement Boosts The Bottom Line

Building and sustaining a customer engagement program takes effort and resources. So, it’s reasonable to ask what return you should expect. The return on investment from strong customer engagement takes a few different forms.

1.Improves Marketing Effectiveness

A highly engaged customer base makes it easier to boost the effectiveness of your marketing in a few ways. Engaged customers are more likely to refer other customers – a growth channel that is free for you. In addition, highly engaged customers are more likely to share a steady stream of data about themselves and their preferences. This stream of first-party data makes it far easier to create personalized marketing campaigns which are proven to deliver excellent results.

2. Improves Product Development

Changing or launching an existing product takes time and effort. Fortunately, customer engagement can reduce the risk of product development missteps. 

For example, you can ask your best customers for feedback on features and prototypes before launching them in large campaigns. In addition, early customer feedback can yield reviews, feedback, and other forms of social proof, which make it far easier to launch something new to the market.

3. Reduces Customer Service Costs

Highly engaged customers are often willing to provide help to other customers. For example, take a look at the forums dedicated to software. 

It’s common to see experienced users provide tips and advice to other users on social websites like Stack Overflow. One should not expect customers to take on all customer service responsibilities, but every bit helps to ease the burden of customer service.

Customer engagement has the potential to boost profitability. It’s important to know whether or not your program is trending in the right direction.

7 Signs Of Healthy Customer Engagement

How do you know if your customer engagement efforts are working? The best way is to build a strategy and develop custom measures associated with that strategy. As a starting point, the following indicators will tell you if your customer engagement program is on the right track.

1. Your Loyalty Program Is Thriving And Growing

High levels of participation in loyalty programs are an excellent sign of customer engagement. If customers take the extra step to register in your program, activate offers, and so forth, they are engaged with your offers.

However, relying too heavily on a customer loyalty program can be misleading. A brand offering unusually lucrative rewards may see a short-term increase in loyalty program engagement. To provide a more balanced view, look at some of the other signs below.

2. Your Online Events Pull In Excited Participants

Look at the attendance numbers and quality of engagement in your digital events and experiences. It’s a good sign if you have a cadre of loyal customers who consistently join your events month in and month out. 

You might measure the number of people who take action during live events (e.g., the number of clicks on your conversion cards using Arena Live Chat).

3. You Receive Positive Reviews

Positive reviews written directly by customers indicate that your customers like your product. In addition, a steady stream of positive reviews is an even better sign of a highly engaged customer base.

4. Customers Submit Feature Requests, Ideas & More

When customers reach out to ask for changes, such as feature requests in software or different colors in apparel, that is an excellent sign. Your brand can also encourage this type of engagement by seeking feedback in surveys, live chat sessions, and other venues.

5. You Recover Effectively From Most Complaints

This signal of effective customer engagement is associated with customer service. Simply put, it’s challenging to eliminate all customer complaints. However, a company that effectively responds to complaints promptly is more likely to retain content customers.

6. You Have An Active And Growing Referral Program

While this measure of engagement has drawbacks, it is an excellent sign of engagement. If you see consistent referral volume, that is an excellent sign of engagement.

7. Customers Are Interacting With Your Online Content

This sign of customer engagement is essential for publishers. A paying subscriber who never visits your website, downloads a podcast, or views a video is at a heightened risk of disengaging and leaving your community.

For non-publishers, interacting with your online content is also essential to track. A high level of engagement tells you that your content program is on the right track. In addition, interactions with your content are an excellent opportunity to generate first-party data.

Customer Engagement In Practice: The Customer Engagement Lifecycle

Lasting customer engagement is a lifecycle process leading to continuous improvement. Every time you go through the process, you can deepen customer relationships and trust.

1. Gather Data From Your Customers

Data gathered directly from your customers, also known as first-party data, is the foundation of customer engagement. When designing programs and initiatives for your customers, measuring your efforts and collecting feedback are vital. 

The way you gather data from your customers also matters. Email and website analytics can automate some of this to see which pages and content drive opens, clicks, and user attention. In other cases, using surveys and other direct approaches to solicit feedback is wise.

2. Analyze Your Customer Data

Arena Personas (Beta) makes it easier to get a clear picture of your customer engagement across multiple channels like email, website, and chat interactions. Gathering all of that data in one place is the starting point. Your next step is to analyze the customer data. Use the following questions to get started:

  • What customer engagement patterns are we seeing (e.g., the highest-value customers tend to attend webinars and other live experiences)?
  • Are there any gaps or quality issues in the customer data (for example, do you need data from your customer relationship management app)?
  • Does this data help us make better predictions about purchases, referrals, and other valuable actions?

3. Develop Customer Engagement Tests

Reviewing customer engagement data is interesting. However, the data on its own will not drive growth. It’s crucial to take some well-thought-out risks using customer engagement data. 

The tests could be small in scope, like creating a test around marketing copy that succeeded with your website audience and rolling it out on display ads. Or it might be more involved, like adjusting incentives to encourage past customers to return and make more purchases.

4. Observe The Results And Iterate

Once you have a few marketing tests in mind, allow some time to pass to gather meaningful data. Unless you have an extensive customer base, thirty days are usually enough time to pass. 

Once you have the new customer engagement data in, review your test. Ask yourself whether your assumptions are correct or need to be changed. Once you have gleaned whatever insights you can, iterate on the process and start the lifecycle process again. 

Customer Engagement Strategies

There are several proven strategies that drive higher customer engagement. To boost (or launch) your customer engagement program, pick some strategies to delight your customers.

1. Launch (Or Enhance) Your Loyalty Program

A loyalty program is among the best ways to encourage ongoing customer engagement. Retailers, airlines, and other companies have proven the value of these programs for years. Yet, you don’t have to build a complex program to get started. 

Your initial program could start by offering premium content or products to members first. Another approach is to offer a discount or another incentive to registered members.

2. Encourage The Right Behavior In Your Online Community

Customer engagement is ultimately built up through individuals interacting with your brand positively over time. When your online community starts, setting expectations with your audience is essential. 

Executing this strategy will generally have two elements: positive and negative. The positive element is to look for highly engaged customers and praise their actions (e.g., like their comments, send thank you messages, and so forth). This praise will help to encourage your customers to keep up the excellent work. 

The negative element is to have a set of ground rules and live up to them on your standard. For example, a brand may have a strict policy against hate speech, profanity, and other “not safe for work” content. If a community participant runs afoul of these rules, take appropriate action, such as sending them a private message to stop the behavior or potentially banning the person from your community if the negative behavior continues.

3. Invite Engagement Through Online Experiences

Creating the right environment is another way to boost customer engagement. Your website can potentially be the center of your brand’s online community. With Arena Live Chat, you can run live events from your website efficiently.

Offering a live chat experience to your customers is one of the best ways to grow relationships at scale and, what’s more, this kind of experience tends to be very popular with Gen Z… You might already have a chat in place for customer service. While helpful in solving problems, one-on-one customer service chat interactions do little to grow your community.

Instead, looking for ways to boost your community through live events where like-minded people can come together is more powerful. For example, you might invite your customers to join an “Ask me anything” online event with your CEO to bring a more human touch to your brand.

The Easiest Way To Lift Customer Engagement On Your Website

Customer engagement is good for the bottom line, makes marketing easier, and gives your customers a social experience. To bring your customer engagement strategy to life, it’s crucial to have the right technology. 

Installing Arena Live Chat on your website only takes a few minutes. Discover more about building your online community with Arena.

What is Customer Service | Arena

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Customer service gives companies an edge over their competition. It is one of the most powerful ways to retain customers. At the same time, customer expectations are rising. They expect faster answers to questions and concerns. If they don’t get those answers, you might not get another chance to win that customer’s loyalty.

To help you succeed in today’s competitive environment, use this guide to build and develop your customer service department.

Bookmark this page so you can come back to it as needed to achieve your business goals.

What is Customer Service?

Modern customer service is crucial for a few reasons. First, high-quality customer service directly contributes to customer loyalty. Second, strong customer service keeps your company safe from social media criticism. Third, robust customer service gives you insights into the concerns and needs of customers.

Customer Service Definition

Customer service means answering questions, responding to complaints, helping your customers use your products, and services and creating a memorable customer experience. 

How To Set Your Customer Service Strategy

Your business goals are fundamental to making customer service decisions. For example, a company focused on growing word of mouth referrals and high lifetime customer value should invest heavily in customer happiness. On the other hand, a company with low customer lifetime value may decide to keep its annual support costs to a minimum.

Step 1: Set Your Business Goals For Customer Service

Let’s assume that your business goals include growing your Customer Satisfaction Score. This goal will inform the types of customer service you provide. Through customer feedback and discussions with your team, you may find that customers want longer service hours, faster answers to their questions, and the ability to speak with somebody on the phone when they have a problem. 

Step 2: Choose Your Customer Service Channels

In this situation, your customer service strategy should probably include the following options: phone support and customer service live chat. To manage your operating costs, you might limit phone service to standard business hours and offer live chat until 9 pm. This combination means that you can offer more service to customers.

Step 3: Create Your Customer Service Metrics

In addition, your plan should include objectives for customer service quality. It is not good enough to say that you want to meet customer expectations. To manage customer queries effectively, you need specific numbers and metrics. To get you started, see our guide to the top 10 live chat metrics. These measures will help you to determine if your customer service agents are responding to customers with prompt, high-quality service.

Your metrics should a variety of scenarios including proactive and reactive customer service. Reactive customer service means quickly responding to the customer when they pose a question to you. Proactive customer service means improving your company’s processes to solve common problems. For example, you might notice that customers have problems entering their payment details. Instead of manually solving this problem repeatedly by issuing a service ticket, ask your IT colleagues to develop a lasting solution.

Step 4: Apply Continuous Improvement To Your Customer Service

Few companies have fully optimized their customer service capabilities. There is almost always an opportunity to enhance the quantity and quality of the service you provide to customers. If you are not yet delivering customer delight, use these two strategies. By using these strategies, you will also find it far easier to keep your loyal customers.

1) Offer more customer service 

While basic, it’s important to start here. Start by comparing your typical customer service hours of operation with customer needs. For example, a company located in California may have a significant number of customers on the east coast. In this situation, you may have a mismatch because 9 am to 5 pm Pacific is equivalent to 12 pm to 8 pm Eastern time. As a result, frustrated customers may have to wait all morning for your customer service to open. This means many customers will have a negative experience due to long response times. Adding customer service reps on the east coast (i.e. increasing the quantity of customer service) can solve to solve this problem.

By the way, your approach to customer service should offer multiple options. For example, you might have the following customer support channels: live chat, phone support, and a knowledge base. Some of your customers might prefer to interact with your agents digitally while others might prefer the human interaction available through calls.

2) Improve customer service quality 

When consumers walk away from their customer service interactions with all of their questions answered, it becomes easy to grow relationships with customers. By reducing the number of bad experiences, customer retention will also get easier.

Each company will have its own approach to customer service training. Some organizations emphasize scripts while others offer a comprehensive knowledge base. Equipping customer service professionals with training and knowledge is essential to raising the quality of service. Without a knowledge base and other support documents, customer support agents will struggle to effectively solve problems or answer questions.

The 6 Key Barriers To Delivering Excellent Service

Now that you have established your customer service strategy, channels and metrics, it’s time to face the challenges. Delivering stellar customer service in today’s environment is tough! Customers have been conditioned to expect instant gratification thanks to ecommerce and other advances. 

Consider the following significant customer service challenges and discuss them with your managers and reps. If you find that your company is experiencing multiple difficulties, you’re not alone. Few companies have solved all of these problems. However, making progress on these challenges is well worth the effort because you can gain a competitive advantage.

  1. 33% of customers are most frustrated by having to wait on hold. (HubSpot Research)
  2. 53% of shoppers believe their feedback doesn’t go to anyone who can actually act on it. (Microsoft)
  3. Over 70% of consumers believe that companies should collaborate on their behalf so that they don’t have to repeat information to different representatives. (Zendesk)
  4. For 33% of consumers, the most important aspect of a good customer service experience is getting their issue resolved in a single interaction. (Microsoft)
  5. Over 40% of customers consider having to deal with automated systems that make it hard to reach a human agent a frustrating experience.
  6. Over 40% of customers are frustrated at having to repeat information  multiple times.

Solving these causes of poor customer service is well worth the effort. Research indicates that 82% of customers will spend more money on companies that deliver great online service. 

Preventing these issues requires multiple strategies including equipping your staff with effective training and encouraging collaboration between customer service. Finally, the right customer service technologies are also critical. For example, a customer service agent should be able to enter a customer’s details into a service ticket into a customer relationship management platform. If a customer has to repeat themselves, call back or contract multiple people to solve a problem, that is a sign that your customer service processes are not working well. 

Five Key Traits & Skills Your Customer Service Team Must Have

Human interaction is at the heart of strong customer service. Therefore, getting clear on the specific traits and customer service skills your customer service reps must have is vital. Keep these capabilities and traits in mind when recruiting new customer service representatives, developing training, and coaching your reps.

1) Communication skills

Communication is the key skill of customer service. It starts with active listening and the ability to express yourself are crucial skills in customer service. This skill set is so important that it is worth testing candidates on their communication skills during the recruiting process. 

For even greater results, it is helpful to break down communication skills into different sub-skills like listening, speaking, reading, and writing. For example, a customer service agent may need the ability to answer phone calls in the morning and then switch to answering live chat questions in the afternoon.

Customer service managers should regularly coach their employees on communication skills as well. Our ability to interact effectively with other people, especially when there are problems, is a crucial business skill. To help your reps deliver a consistent experience, make sure your customer service training covers communication skills in detail, especially listening skills.

2) Company and product knowledge

New hires may join your company with strong communication skills. However, few people will have the right level of company and product information when they join your customer service team. Even if your staff has good technical skills, you still need to train them on how to apply your organization’s customer service standards. That means spending significant onboarding time on company and product training.

There are three popular ways to help new customer service representatives acquire product knowledge. Start by developing a structured training program or handbook covering the most common support questions. New representatives should be equipped to answer common questions before they start interacting with customers. After newly hired customer service representatives have a basic understanding of your products and company policies, you can move to the next phase.

The next phase of developing customer service representatives is to use a job shadowing process. This is a simple way to build relationships between staff and encourage knowledge sharing. Pair your new customer support reps with an experienced rep. Let me listen in as the experienced employee works with customers. After a few interactions switch roles (i.e. let the new person interact with the customers and have the experienced person listen in). Through this process, customer service representatives will learn more about how to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Finally, recognize that all customer support teams need access to ongoing training. Your company will continue to come up with new products, company policies, and change processes. Equip employees to thrive through these changes by giving them access to a knowledge base. This is a common resource where customer support staff can ask questions and share solutions to problems.

3) Problem-solving

Problem-solving skills are critically important when serving difficult customers. Extensive training on your company’s processes will help your customer service staff to solve many problems. However, do not expect training to cover every situation. Therefore, it is crucial to recruit employees who have a track record of solving problems with people.

4) Empathy

Logical problem-solving skills will only take you so far in the customer service world. It’s also vital to have empathy – to listen and understand a customer’s feelings. Finding common ground with customers goes a long way to creating a human connection with the customer.

For example, a customer might be angry if an important Christmas present did not arrive on time. Immediately attempting to solve the problem without acknowledging the customer’s feelings is unlikely to be productive. Instead, acknowledge the customer’s feelings and how this delay may have ruined their day. Instead, it is more effective to spend some time listening to the customer and understanding their disappointment. Only after the customer feels heard will they be open to a solution (e.g. a refund, discount on a future purchase, or something else).

5) Patience

Patience is another vital customer service trait that matters. In a customer support role, you will often interact with frustrated customers. Without the patience to calmly listen to the customer’s comments, a customer service representative may anger a customer even more!

It is challenging to develop patience if you do not already have this trait. Therefore, it is especially important to ask about a person’s customer service experiences during the hiring process. For example, if a customer service representative has had jobs in retail, restaurants, or hospitality in the past, there is a good chance that they have developed patience.

How Excellent Customer Service Boosts Sales

Delivering outstanding customer service is also crucial to lifting sales. When your sales reps have a happy customer base, it is far easier to ask for referrals. High customer satisfaction levels also make it easier to upsell customers on additional products and services.

Offering customer service via live chat is especially valuable as a way of lifting sales. After the interaction is complete, spend some time reviewing the most common customer requests. For example, a software company might find that its customers want hands-on implementation support. Offering that package to customers during the sales process can bring new revenue to your company and ease pressure on customer service.

Lifting sales and customer service becomes easier when you give options to customers. Industry research shows that 41% of customers prefer live chat as a way to interact with companies. With Arena Live Chat, you can meet serve customers quickly and efficiently through your website. Sign up for a free trial of Arena.

What is Live Chat?

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Live chat software is a popular way to deliver better customer service, fantastic online events and get more leads for the sales team. There are multiple live chat apps on the market and each one is suited for different needs. You’re about to learn how live chat works, the key features of live chat, and the key benefits of online live chat for companies.

What is Live Chat?

In simple terms, live chat provides a chat window where people can interact in real-time. It is a type of messaging software that lets two or more people interact by entering text. For example, customers can ask questions about a product they are interested in or check on the status of their report. The tool is particularly popular for live chat for customer support and sales teams, but it can also be used to increase audience engagement on online events, video live streaming and live blogs.

The specific benefits of live chat software depend on the type of technology you use and the features you select. The best chat messaging apps are lightweight and run quickly on your website. For example, some live chat apps have chat feed management tools which come in handy when you have a chat room with many participants.

To really understand how live chat technology works, it is helpful to understand the two main types of chat technology. One type uses automated chat agents to handle simple questions while the other is focused on building human relationships. Both types of chat apps have their role to play.

The two types of chat technology

The world of chat services can be summarized into two broad categories: automated services that use automatic responses and actual live chats with human-to-human interactions.

Automated Chatbots

Also known as automated chatbots or messenger chatbots, these services are helpful in cases where there are standard questions and answers (e.g. what is the status of my order). Artificial intelligence is often able to manage these types of basic customer conversations effectively. For example, many of your customers may call to ask about store hours, the status of a shipment and other basic questions. With canned responses, it is easy to use chatbots to respond to these questions. Use these tools to deliver standardized conversations at scale with customers. While this category of chat tools is helpful, it is important to recognize its limitations.

Automated chatbots are usually not effective at complex real-time chat support. In addition, the lack of a real chat operator means there is a lack of human touch that might be necessary in many scenarios. If a customer is upset or displeased, relying on automatic responses is not enough. Your business systems need to have the flexibility to use a chat app staffed by real people.

Live Chat

Cloud-based live chat software like Arena takes a different approach. Instead of restricting people to interact with automated chat agents, the Arena chat solution is focused on bringing groups together. For example, Rogers Media uses Arena Live Chat to bring sports fans together. In addition, Arena Live Chat makes communication between individuals easier.

The downside to live chat software that focuses on people instead of bots is the staffing effort. Take the use case of an online event where you plan to announce a new product to your audience. You may have a MC to act as the host of the event and a few influencer guests to drive excitement. In addition, you might also have a small support team to handle technical or product questions when running larger events.

While AI-powered chatbots have their value, there is another type of chat platform you need. Chat services like Arena are designed to offer an engaging experience for customers. They are designed to bring together a group of people – like sports fans supporting their favorite team in a major competition.

Benefits of Live Chat

Adding real-time chat to your website benefits your company in many powerful ways. Here, we have highlighted the four most important benefits of adding a live chat software into your business’ strategy.

1. Deliver real-time customer support

Customers hate to wait for support when they have a problem, and the days of making customers’ way in phone queues are over. Online chat support for your clients allows chat agents to quickly ask a few questions and solve the majority of customer problems in no time.

For even greater efficiency, some managers review live chat transcripts to find out the most common questions. Mining live chat data for insights means you can develop better answers and scripts to help your customer support staff provide even better support.

2. Increase sales and conversions

A live chat solution can boost the bottom line directly! For example, you can present a chat window to customers when they visit certain pages or take certain actions (e.g. viewing multiple product description pages). By converting more of your online visitors into leads, your sales lead will have more opportunities to spend their time with warm leads.

3. Boost customer loyalty

Delivering faster high-quality support to customers is one of the keys to unlocking higher customer lifetime value. When your customers are able to get their questions answered and problems solved, they are more likely to keep buying from your company.

4. Increase advertising revenue

The way to raise ad revenue with live chat is simple. You need a way to convince your website visitors to stay on your website longer. Regularly offering engaging online events is a great way to keep visitors engaged for an hour or more at a time. The longer visitors stay on your website, the more ads you can display.

As you host more online events with Arena Live Chat, you can use the customer data platform to find out which content and experiences your audience likes the most. Use these insights to create even better events in the future.

As you implement live chat more thoroughly, there are even more benefits available. Find out more in our comprehensive guide: Top 40 Live Chat Benefits You Need to Know.

Why is Live Chat Fundamental to Build a Strong Online Community

Live chat is essential for building a community on your website as it fosters real-time interaction and engagement. By offering immediate responses to visitors’ inquiries, live chat creates a more personalized and responsive experience. This instant communication helps build trust and rapport with users, making them feel valued and heard. As users interact more frequently with live chat, they are likely to return to your website, participate in discussions, and contribute to a vibrant community atmosphere.

Furthermore, live chat can facilitate deeper connections among community members by enabling group chats, forums, and discussions. These interactions allow users to share experiences, exchange knowledge, and support one another, fostering a sense of belonging. By integrating live chat into your website, you not only enhance customer support but also cultivate a loyal and engaged community that can drive sustained growth and user retention.

Live chat core features

Sorting through all of the chat app options on the market is tough. To save you time, here are some of the most important chat features most companies consider essential. The specific chat capabilities you need will vary depending on a few factors including your company size and whether online events are an important part of your business model.

Easy To Use Chat User Interface

To maintain high customer satisfaction, the chat vendor must provide a simple and easy chat experience. At a minimum, the real-time chat user interface should be fast and run in most web browsers. Without a fast and lightweight user interface, the real-time conversation will slow down and become less interesting.

The best way to assess if a chat platform is easy to use is to take the platform for a spin! Click here to test Arena for free. As a starting point, you may want to hold a question and answer session with your management team and your employees. This type of chat event is a good way to take live chat for a test drive.

Chat Widgets

Support for chat widgets is critical! Chat widgets mean that the website can be installed on your website using a chat plugin. By making your chat accessible to all of your online visitors, it will be easier to get people using the chat app to interact with you. Chat widgets on a website are powerful because the end-user does not have to install anything – there is no app to download.

Chat Analytics

When you add a chat to your business model, it should be easy to gather data. For example, you may want to measure customer satisfaction or engagement. Some chat providers like Arena also offer a customer data platform (CDP) which gives you advanced analytics capabilities.

Chat Feed Management

As more users join a chat window, keeping up with the chat feed gets more difficult. The best chat website software, like Arena, has features to help users navigate conversations using threads, private messages, and 1:1 messages.

Without these chat capabilities, it may be impossible to host large online events with your chat app. The chat feed can easily become overwhelming when you have hundreds or thousands of people in the chat room. With one-on-one messaging and Q&A support, it is far easier to keep the session focused.

Chat Emojis

Emojis are a popular way to add fun and variety to chat interactions. As emojis have increased in popularity, support for emojis is an important feature in chat apps. Without this feature, your audience may become disengaged as they are used to using this feature on social media platforms. Arena Live Chat includes support for emojis so you can keep your audience fully engaged.

Chat Transcript Support

The ability to export a chat transcript (or conversation history) is a valuable chat option. In terms of customer experience, your customer may want the option to review details (e.g. verify a charge has been removed from their credit card) of the discussion.

From a company standpoint, reviewing a chat transcript is a valuable training and development tool. For example, your customer service agents may struggle to answer a certain type of question like questions about out-of-stock products or customization requests. Regularly reviewing the top questions in chat sessions means you can keep your finger on the pulse of your customers. Reviewing chat in combination with call recordings is a powerful way to empower managers to deliver better coaching to their employees.

Moderation Features

What happens when you have a large number of people in your chat channel? If the chat channel is open to the public, you may face struggles with profanity and other unacceptable comments. To solve this problem, Arena Chat has moderation functionalities includes a profanity feature and the ability to quietly remove disruptive users.

Integration With Existing Business Systems

Adding chat conversations to your business should be easy. You can add Arena chat software to your website in less than 10 minutes. Also, Arena is built to integrate with popular platforms like WordPress. That means you can set up fast and start your first online chat easily.

Flexible Plans For Chat Pricing

Flexible plans are the final important feature to consider in a chat vendor. Many chat vendors offer standardized plans like a business plan or enterprise plan. Also, you can sometimes find a free limited plan like Arena. Finally, check to see if the chat service offers custom plans which are helpful if you have a large volume of chat users and need advanced features.

The top live chat use cases

Knowing the most popular chat software trends and use cases gives you a starting point to develop your chat team and chat strategy.

Live Chat For Customer Support

Thousands of companies are using live chat for support instead of customer service email. In this use case, customers ask their questions directly to a chat operator. As a communication channel, there are a lot of benefits of live chat for customer service, because you don’t have to worry about critical information (e.g. order number, account number, address, etc) being misunderstood. By reducing the potential for confusion, your chat support agents will have more capacity to focus on solving the customer’s main problem.

Chat staffing can become a challenge in some cases. For example, some retailers face a large number of chat requests during the holiday season. This challenge can be mitigated by developing scripts with canned responses to the most common questions. Of course, canned responses are just one part of delivering great customer service. You may also want to consider scheduling regular lunch & learn sessions to share best practices internally in chat support.

Fundamentally, modern customer service needs to offer multiple digital channels. Equipping customer service teams with live chat, an email address, and a phone number has become table stakes for many companies.

While chat customer service is a well-known way to use live chat, it is just one of the use cases that companies are leveraging today. Learn about 14 ways that Arena’s Live Chat is a customer service game-changer in our article.

Live Chat For Sales and Marketing

Don’t forget about your sales team! With the right technology and design, a sales chat window can fill the sales funnel. For example, you might set up your website to display a chat box when a customer visits certain pages like a checkout page. To provide the best response time, many companies use pre-chat forms to gather basic information like name, contact information, and an overview of the problem.

For sales reps, capturing leads through live chat is an effective way to grow leads. Incoming chats are usually a good sign that the person is very interested in learning more. If the chat volume becomes too high, you may need to divert some chat app users to other channels like calling your sales team instead.

Live Chat For Events

To gain a competitive edge, you need to give your prospects and online visitors a reason to keep coming back to your website. That’s where organizing virtual events with live gives you an edge to stand out. In virtual events and hybrid events, a chat window gives your audience the chance to have a real-time conversation without disrupting the flow of the event.

Adding a live chat app to your events is a smart way to deepen your engagement. For example, colleges and universities like Coventry University in the UK and California State University, Northridge have used live chat to engage new students, deepen relationships and grow admissions. Live chat is a key part of offering personalized services to students in higher education.

It’s not just colleges and universities that are turning to online events either. Companies are turning to online events like online events for internal meetings to lift employee engagement and online events for hiring to attract talent.

Live Chat Is Your Path To More Engaged Customers

Adding live chat to your company’s website used to be solely as a strategy to improve customer service. Today’s live chat solutions are much more powerful. You can use Arena Live Chat to power online events which means more opportunities for conversions. For publishers focused on advertising, live chat is powerful because keeping your audience on your website longer.

To see for yourself how Live Chat works, take Arena for a test drive. You can test Arena for free for two weeks to see if it helps you get more customers. Installing Arena Live Chat usually takes less than thirty minutes – often less time than that – so you can easily get the app installed and deepen engagement with your customers.

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How to boost user engagement with Live Chat

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Beloved brands like Apple and Playstation have used Live Chat to inform and engage customers. Read on to learn how this tool can transform the relationship with your audience.

If you are looking to harness real-time interactions between your brand and its customers, you have probably heard of live chats before. Often seen as a tool for customer support, Live Chat is a popular alternative to email and phone support channels, as it allows instant discussions to resolve simple queries.

Most customers already prefer Live Chat to other support channels. Around 46% of consumers prefer live chat over email and social media, for example.

Besides, Live Chat applications allow brands to communicate with website visitors automatically via chatbots, or through live customer service teams, helping to drive conversions and build longer-lasting relationships.

That is vital in the age of omnichannel experiences. Customers expect every touchpoint with companies to provide them with a consistent experience, otherwise, they won’t come back for more.

Live Chat materializes the cliché that brands should “send customers the right messages at the right time.” In your website, users are just a few clicks away from becoming actual customers, so why not use Live Chat to guide them through the browsing experience?

With Live Chat, you can engage customers in the best time to reach your business goals.

In this post, we will explore:

  • Reasons to use Live Chat
  • Live Chat triggers that can boost engagement in your website
  • Live Chat examples from global brands
  • Basic steps to creating engagement with Live Chat

Reasons to incorporate Live Chat into your strategy

Boost your brand awareness

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to attract new customers. If you offer great customer support through Live Chat and delight users with it, you can bet they will tell their peers about it.

A study from Kayako found out that 29% of consumers have told friends or colleagues about a positive live chat experience. Live Chat allows your brand to create a loyal customer base and build awareness.

However, make sure your Live Chat is well implemented and that you have well-trained agents behind it since a bad Live Chat experience can work against your brand. According to the same study,  20% of consumers have spread negative impressions after poor live chat experiences.

It’s the same old story: it takes years to build a company’s image, but just a single customer’s bad experience to take it down.

Understand customers’ behavior and have real-time feedback

Great companies are always trying to find new ways to spot customers’ pain points and improve their customer experience.

With Live Chat, you can have access to real-time customer feedback and spot gaps in the customer experience, which can make customer service, product, and marketing improvement cycles much quicker. Instead of running long surveys, you can get relevant insights just by asking questions to customers.

Besides, many Live Chat platforms offer analytics tools to help you analyze customer service both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Strengthen relationship with your customers

Social media and messaging apps have made customers get used to instant gratification in every aspect of life. In that context, Live Chat gives them reactivity and personalization in a way no other support channel could.

By sending targeted and real-time messages with Live Chat, you can make your customer service more personal and show customers their specific requests matter. No more standard emails that take days to solve simple queries.

Having Live Chat portrays your brand as more approachable, helpful, and customer-centric than the ones that don’t offer it.

Increase conversion rates

Even before a customer buys from you, the support channels available can have a big impact on the likelihood of conversion. According to CrazyEgg, 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company if they offer Live Chat Support.  

Plus, Live Chat is a great way to bring visitors back to your website. An Emarketer study shows that 63% of customers were more likely to return to a website that offers Live Chat.

Boosting customer loyalty

Think of the brands you’ve bought from more than once. They probably offer more than great products, right? More often than not, customers are loyal to companies that once provided them with great customer service.

According to Kayako, 51% of consumers are more likely to stay with or buy again from a company if they offer live chat support.

Using Live Chat triggers to drive user engagement

You can use Live Chat reactively or proactively. In the reactive approach, your company will talk to customers via chat only if requested. In the proactive approach, you can send automated messages throughout the customer navigation journey.

The proactive approach represents a significant way to engage visitors. Many brands have used Live Chat triggers on their websites to send the right message at the right time to the right users.

Here are a few examples of Live Chat triggers you can use:

  • Welcome messages: you can use Live Chat to send specific welcome messages to users, present the company, or offer welcome discounts
  • Content subscription: if your company offers proprietary content, such as a newsletter or blog, you can remind the user of these content channels or make suggestions of content they could enjoy
  • Repeat buyer: Since Live Chat can be integrated into CRM and other data management platforms, you can use it to identify repeat customers and offer them discounts
  • Targeted discount: you can also dig into customer data to offer discounts based on demographic criteria (localization, gender, etc)
  • Category: a great way of using proactive Live Chat is by suggesting new products within the category the user is browsing
  • Inactive user: send a message to users that have been inactive on your website after a few minutes
  • Checkout: let’s say your customers frequently get lost in the checkout process. You can set up your greeting in Live Chat and offer help before they give up on their purchase. Or, you can offer an upsell proposition based on users’ choice, for example.

How brands are using live chat to improve engagement and generate more revenue

Live Chat is one of the best tools to respond to customers’ urge for real-time interactions. No wonder some of the most beloved brands in the digital landscape have used Live Chat to enhance their websites.

Having trouble visualizing Live Chat? Let’s see how successful digital platforms and retailers are using it.

Playstation Live Chat

The famous Sony brand PlayStation has different Live Chat rooms where gamers can talk to its support agents. The chat rooms are linked to PlayStation’s webpage where customers can make requests and queries about account access, game purchases, and charge refunds.

Apple Live Chat

Apple, which is known for its great customer experience, also placed a real-time customer support team on Live Chat. Through the chat, customers talk to an Apple expert who specializes in their exact question. Everything happens within Apple’s website, so the customer doesn’t have to worry about sending messages to other support channels and waiting for emails and phone calls.

Groupon Live Chat

Groupon also allows customers to reach out for support through Live Chat. Customers can be routed to specific departments and support agents according to frequent topics:

  • Change My Order
  • Order Never Arrived
  • Refund My Order
  • Update Account Info
  • Voucher Code Won’t Work

If the request is not related to any of those topics, then the customer can talk to a general agent. According to Groupon, more than 1.7 million users have used Live Chat to contact customer support in the last 18 months.

Walmart Live Chat

The world’s major retailer, Walmart, offers a Live Chat window along with an FAQ page. If the customer can’t solve their problem after browsing frequently asked questions, then they can contact Walmart’s Help Center through an automated support assistant.

Other Live Chat formats

Live Video and Voice Chat

As great as Live Chat might be, brands are aware that modern communication goes way beyond texting. Customers have become used to interacting with pictures, videos, and voice messages, so why couldn’t Live Chat incorporate other messaging formats?

Some companies are adding Vídeo and Voice Chat to their Live Chat experience. Such formats make resolutions quicker and make interactions more dynamic since customers’ requests sometimes can be complex or take too long to explain by text.

With voice and video chat, customers can easily solve queries related to physical products and services, for instance.

One of the brands testing video chat is IKEA, who are using it in Sweden as part of the customer support, sales, and shopper consulting services. According to Rickard Mansson, a Customer Experience Business Developer at IKEA Sweden, the company decided to test video to streamline customer support.

4 basic steps to create a proactive engagement strategy with Live Chat

  1. Know your audience

There is no use having a good Live Chat tool if you don’t know the specifics about the audience you would like to engage within your website. It’s important to set up audience criteria to give you more control over the type of language you’ll use in the Live Chat, your priority customers, etc.

  1. Consider timing

When shaping your Live Chat strategy, make sure to consider time-based targeting options if your idea is to have proactive Live Chat.  You should be able to send messages in real-time or delay messages until visitors are more engaged with your page or website – just so they are more likely to interact.

If you are more prone to adopting reactive Live Chat, your concern should be about availability. Does your Live Chat support team work 24/7? If it doesn’t, can you send automated messages outside business hours? These are some things to consider before implementing Live Chat to prevent bad customer experience.

  1. Craft your message

You also have to be very careful when crafting your live chat engagement messages. Make sure your brand is personal and specific, as Live Chat is a one-to-one communication tool. If you have a human team behind the chat, make sure they answer quickly and ask only the necessary questions. Now, if you have automated Live Chat, make sure your messages contain calls-to-action (CTAs) to guide users through the buying journey.

  1. Measure results and optimize your Live Chat

Make sure you monitor your company’s Live Chat periodically to understand how it’s performing, if there are new frequent queries related to specific events and how you can use Live Chat information in favor of different departments – Customer Service, Product, Marketing, etc.

You should measure Live Chat quality and performance and analyze key Customer Service metrics through it. From here, you can adjust the tone of messages, timing, and overall agent training.

Ready to add Live Chat to your website?

Live Chat can optimize many aspects of digital business, and executives are increasingly aware of its importance. A 2018 survey from Bold 360 found out that 71% of respondents believe Live Chat will surpass traditional customer service communication channels by 2021.

Hasn’t your organization incorporated Live Chat yet? It’s time to change that.

Arena has one of the most complete Live Chat solutions on the market. You can try it for free and start engaging your customers in real-time right now.

How to build an eCommerce strategy with Live Chat

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The best retailers use Live Chat tools to inform and engage online shoppers. This post will show you how to use it on eCommerce and give examples of successful use cases.

Have you ever thought about what defines conversion on eCommerce? Most online retailers believe that the checkout process defines sales. However, many variables lead the customer to the purchase, so the conversion process involves much more than the checkout page.

Build an eCommerce strategy with Live Chat

In a messy and pulverized eCommerce market, where online brands are often competing for customers’ attention, it can be a struggle to lead users from research to purchase.

An excellent strategy to maximize sales and engagement could be through Live Chat. Look at the most successful online services – from marketplaces like Amazon to digital retailers. You’ll see that all of them have a Live Chat window in their webpages and applications, where they offer the possibility to talk to customer support or sales agents.

Beyond just a convenient button, Live Chat serves as an essential touchpoint with the customer across the decision-making process and after the purchase. It’s as if brands are transposing the classic tagline “How can I help you?”, the cliché of physical retail, to digital spaces (but in an organic, non-intrusive way). 

In the age of immediacy, digital marketers and salespeople need tools that help them quickly respond to customers and solve problems more dynamically. In that sense, Live Chat can be a great option for companies who want to professionalize their eCommerce operations.

In this post, we will explore:

  • The concept of Live Chat
  • Examples and use cases of Live Chat in eCommerce
  • Specific benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce
  • Using Live Chat beyond Customer Support

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a tool that allows customers to comment and interact via messages directly on a company’s website, usually while browsing products and viewing content. The Live Chat is generally presented as a window in the page’s corner or as a pop-up button. It can sometimes be hidden in the customer support section.

Live Chat makes communication between brands and their customers much quicker and organic as it emulates messaging platforms. That is crucial for brands that want to build more personal connections with clients. 

Also, Live Chat allows users to speak directly with companies, without having to reach them by email or phone, for instance.

One of the main benefits of Live Chat is that it allows multiple interactions in a single web interface, which is vital in the age of digital multitasking. According to a study from E-Consultancy, 51% of customers prefer Live Chat to other channels precisely because it allows them to multitask. 

Sales and customer success teams typically use live Chat to provide customers with support and personalized answers in real-time. It can be used by companies in different sectors, from marketplaces, online retailers, entertainment, and media companies. What varies is the person behind the live Chat.

If you run a media company, you might have editors commentating live events and sales reps behind the Chat offering subscription services. Now, if you run a fashion eCommerce, for example, you might have a customer support professional offering to help with product and shipping information, and so on.

Why using Live Chat in eCommerce

When it comes to the experience in eCommerce websites or marketplaces, customers want more than great products and a neat catalog curation. Interactivity has become a key element of shopping, and customers want the chance to have their problems and doubts solved all at once if they can. 

That’s where Live Chat comes to play. It can boost your eCommerce strategy, improve customer experience (CX), and give your teams more instruments to convert customers and gather business insights.

Let’s explore a few benefits of Live Chat for eCommerce and how it can enrich Customer Experience.

Fast customer support

Online retailers know that the longer they take to answer a customer, the less likely they are to convert and stay loyal to the brand. The truth is nobody likes waiting for replies through email, SMS, and other support channels.  

Because Live Chat is instantaneous, it’s a lot more attractive as a customer support tool. A recent research suggests that it takes only 42 seconds for a live chat support staff to solve a customer query, which makes the customer experience (CX) much better. 

Human touch

In the age of automation and chatbots, a human approach to customer experience might actually give you extra points in the relationship with customers. Even though automated emails and chatbots can be a blessing for optimizing customer support, studies show that users want to interact with humans whenever possible.

The 2019 CGS Customer Service Chatbots & Channels Survey found out that 86% of American customers prefer to talk to humans over chatbots. With Live Chat, you can give customers personalized, warm assistance in an easy, user-friendly way. Besides, much like at physical stores, consumers are more likely to buy when they are treated well.

Non-intrusive

Unlike other communication channels, Live Chat shows customers that the brand is available to help without disturbing customers’ attention. This non-intrusive approach is crucial for a customer-centric strategy and shows respect for customers’ time, which might help them reach a purchase decision.

Integrated shopping experience

If your company sells products online, you know how complex communication with customers might be. Let’s say a customer just checked out of your website and realized he registered an old shipping address. 

Traditionally, they would have to leave the website and reach out to the right customer support email address or phone to solve the problem, something that could take a couple of days to resolve.

Live Chat, however, can remove this type of friction by integrating the communication cycle in real-time, which is smarter and more effective than executing communication through different channels. 

Besides, E-consultancy shows that 29% of customers want to be in control of the conversation with brands, and Live Chat gives them that. 

Improve Conversion rates

While offering customers rapid solutions to their queries, Live Chat can speed up the decision-making process and improve conversion rates. A study by Emarketer found that more than 60% of consumers would return to a website that offers Live Chat, and more than 79% of consumers feel that having quick answers impacts their buying decisions.

Make personalized offers

While Live Chat is great for solving transactional problems in eCommerce (related to payment and orders, for instance), it can also be a great channel for offering product recommendations and special discounts. A study by ATG Global Consumer Trend found, for instance, that more than 90% of customers think Live Chat was helpful for them while shopping online.

By offering customers personalized recommendations or coupons, brands can use Live Chat to get them out of “research-mode” and convert them into actual buyers. Ecommerce players can also use it to upsell frequent customers. 

Optimize customer support costs

Live Chat represents a cheaper and effective way to communicate with customers from an operations standpoint if compared to call centers. With Live Chat, you don’t have to put your customers on hold, and a few representatives can talk to multiple customers at a time. 

Increase Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Every marketer’s goal is not just to convert customers, but to make them satisfied and loyal to your brand, so they always come back. Ultimately, customer satisfaction is related to customer convenience. 

An eDigital Research survey found that 73% of customers who used live chat support for online shopping were highly satisfied and willing to come back for future shopping. Another study by J. D. Power discovered that overall customer satisfaction was higher when customers used the Live Chat window than in other channels. 

Examples of Live Chat in eCommerce and digital platforms

If you look at the digital landscape, you will see that many highly regarded brands have used Live Chat to enhance their websites. 

Still having trouble visualizing how Live Chat can be incorporated into eCommerce? Let’s see how successful digital platforms and retailers are using it. 

Amazon

One of the global references when it comes to marketplace and eCommerce experience is Amazon. They offer Live Chat options that allow users to chat with customer support specialists about account details, orders, and shipping processes. 

The customer can choose the topic he wants to chat about (memberships and subscriptions, ordering and shopping preferences, Login & Security, etc.) before being redirected to a specialized support agent. 

PlayStation

Can you imagine how many customer queries PlayStation, from Sony, receives in its customer support channels everyday? Probably loads of them. In order to make communication with game players easier, the company has Live Chat rooms linked to its webpage, whereby customers can chat with support agents about things like account access, game purchases, and charge refunds. 

Apple

Among the companies that offer great user experience is also Apple, which has a real-time customer support team on Live Chat. Through the chat, customers can arrange a chat with an Apple expert who specializes in their exact question. Everything happens within Apple’s website, so the customer doesn’t have to worry about sending and waiting for emails and phone calls. 

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Shoply.tv

Shoply.tv is a project which was developed collaboratively with Arena, unifying a great live video solution with a powerful live chat tool. Even though some features are currently being developed, the results are already used by more than 2,600 clients around the world, and we’re still counting. Shoply used Arena Live Chat to develop a live video shopping solution that enhances customer experience by enabling the best sales and engagement tools.

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How to derive even more value from Live Chat in eCommerce

So you have learned that Live Chat has many benefits for your eCommerce operation. However, in order to effectively sustain its value, you have to manage it wisely. Here are a few tips to take advantage of Live Chat beyond customer support.

1) Share customer feedback with marketing teams

Insights from Live Chat can be useful for other departments, not just customer support and sales. Online stores can share customer feedback with marketing teams as well, just so they can make changes in their strategies according to what’s best for your audience. 

2) Integrate Live Chat leads to your CRM and Customer Data Platform (CDP)

Live Chat tools can also provide information to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and be integrated into Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

You could choose to add CRM contact information to your Live Chat tool, integrating valuable customer information that can be used by support and sales professionals during sessions with customers. 

By having all customer information available, you can reduce friction and improve conversions. After all, your team should focus on answering your users’ needs, without spending too much time searching for customer information.

A CDP, on the other hand, can use Live Chat information to determine customer profiles, products bought by single customers, and the value generated by chat conversations. It can also integrate Chat information to data generated by other channels and customer platforms.  

That way, your teams can follow up with the created leads, having access to easy conversion reports and reducing the friction between different data platforms.

3) Understand where users come from

One of the challenges for eCommerce players is to understand how their marketing efforts connect to online conversions in a granular and accurate way.  Talking about Live Chat, how can they track what led to a conversion in the Chat?

Some Live Chat tools allow you to connect the dots between chat sessions and the marketing sources that led the customer to the chat – whether it was a campaign, a keyword, or landing page.  You could integrate your Live Chat to Google Analytics for instance, and see a bigger picture of chat conversions and Adword campaigns that led customers to chat sessions. 

Such data is important to determine if your marketing channels are actually bringing people to your page – and how they are connected to your Live Chat. That allows companies to optimize campaigns more accurately according to the insights.

Want to try Live Chat on your eCommerce?

If your company still hasn’t adopted Live Chat support, maybe it’s about time to change that!

Not sure where to start? Arena has one of the most robust Live Chat tools in the market, and the best part is that you can try it for free! Access our free trial and get the best out of the Arena Live Chat.

How Customer Data Platform is reinventing customer relations

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Using a Customer Data Platform is helping companies to focus obsessively on their customers and benefit from their engagement.

You need to know your customers—this isn’t any news. It doesn’t matter if you want to make them more engaged, optimize your budget for campaigns, or improve your ROI.

Customer accurate information is at the heart of every company and should be treated correctly to generate powerful outcomes from your marketing efforts.

If you don’t have a consistent understanding of your consumers, then all your strategies will likely go down the drain.

But how exactly do you get to act like you know your customers? The answer is simple: by managing their data.

To treat data thoroughly and reach your customer relationship goals, you might come across the need to use the right technologies. This is when the Customer Data Platform (CDP) walks in.

A customer data platform monitors and tracks multiple data sources to bring relevant information to a single hub that is easy to access and understand.

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Once implemented, CDPs collect, integrate, manage, and analyze customer data continuously. These automated processes help many teams to focus on solving complex problems that require a human brain. At the same time, a Customer Data Platform brings current, real-time data to be leveraged and turned into marketing master plans.

Why do companies use Customer Data Platforms?

Is there a reason why companies implement a Customer Data Platform in their business models? Yes, many.

According to Gartner, plenty of marketers look to customer data-driven strategies to deliver growth. For example, marketers invested two-thirds of their budget in supporting relationships with their customers in 2017 and 2018. 

Still, they have found the technology they were using to be frustrating—until CDP’s unique upshots came out as a solution to their problems.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out for several channels and concentrates real-time data in a single place your team can access whenever it is convenient.

This stimulates a collaborative work environment and speeds the pace of operational routines. Customer Data Platforms are also known for making marketers’ lives less complicated since automating workflows would take too many working hours to be accomplished.

The other reason companies use Customer Data Platforms is that they are much more than a simple database. According to the CDP Institute, the ideal Customer Data Platform should contain five essential capabilities:

  • Absorb data from any source
  • Give full details of ingested data
  • Store data without end and frequently
  • Create unified profiles (such as personas)
  • Share data with any system that needs it

All of the five skills above drive brands into having a vigorous understanding of their customer base by collecting and analyzing reliable data across their marketing channels.

What types of data does a Customer Data Platform assess?

The types of customer data assessed by a CDP can be quantitative and qualitative. 

In other words, by using a CDP, you will be able to figure out:

  • How to identify your customers, using personal data
  • How to interact with your customers, using interactional data
  • How customers expect to be impacted by experiences, using behavioral data
  • How your customers perceive your brand, using attitudinal data

The datasets above are being generated at all times in any digital environment and should be combined to create an unbeatable and absolute customer understanding.

But how do CDPs gather such different information?

They reach out to analytics reports, engagement measures, support occurrences, eCommerce metrics, and customer feedback (to quote a few), to maximize your knowledge and equip you with fast, accurate moves.

This is the main reason why CDPs are revolutionizing the way brands communicate with customers and vice-versa. They are an unlimited and underlying base for companies to create remarkable customer experiences and increase customer engagement in a way we have never seen before.

The effects of CDP in customer experience

A Customer Data Platform grants companies an invincible competitive advantage: passionate customers who keep being fed with reasons to remain brand loyal.

Historically, we can see customers have adopted technologies faster than the brands they interact with. This made companies try to embrace digital transformation technologies focused on customer experience to reach out to consumers where they are and how they want.

Expanding your brand’s online presence to talk to customers in multiple channels isn’t enough, in any case. Any company can create an Instagram account and interact with its audience then and there, right?

However, the ones that truly stand out are focused on delivering personalized, relevant, well-designed interactions that take place as soon as customers want.

Tailored customer interactions should happen anywhere, at any time. This is the main reason why organizations around the world are digitizing their business models. According to the Boston Consulting Group Research, personalization will drive an $800 billion revenue shift to the top 15% of companies that work best on it, in only three industries.

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I know what you’re thinking: that’s much profit for a small number of companies—and yes, it is. Even so, it sounds like a warning: companies that aren’t ready to turn personalization ordinary in their marketing campaigns, will be left stranded.

As you know, doing a great job on personalization is all about knowing everything there is to know about your customers and quickly activating your knowledge when needed.

Can you notice any coincidences between this goal and the usage of a CDP?

How CDPs are reinventing customer relations

Suppose you’re leading digital initiatives to deepen the relationship between your customers and your brand. In that case, you should pay attention to the changes CDPs are leading in customer management and how it differs from other popular marketing tools.

A Customer Data Platform is way more complete than a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

CRM will tell you how to personalize and improve existing customer relationships. Meanwhile, a CDP will do that and indicate how you can promote products and services and what you should do to attract new customers.

With the new untapped potential CDPs unleash, companies are increasingly confident in meeting market changes and customers’ preferences. Hesitating in our competitive world is no longer an option, and data-driven marketing plays a vital role in feeding companies with unequivocal customer interactions.

Ahead, we have numbered a few ways Customer Data Platforms reinvent customer relations to inspire you and your team.

1. CDP enables segmentation opportunities

While it simultaneously optimizes strategies, a CDP provides companies with a 360-degree view of customers to act on an essential customer experience requirement: segmentation.

Segmenting customers by specific traits, behaviors, attitudes, and others is a fantastic opportunity to create tailored marketing touchpoints throughout their journey and attract them with meaningful content.

When based on data, segmentation is an unmatched growth engine that encourages customer loyalty and enhances profitability.

2. A CDP gives your interactions a personal touch

Similarly, you can not spell personalization without customer data.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will help you quickly access reliable information to customize customer interactions, making your consumers feel special, and long-term relationships feasible.

Many companies are using CDP for Customer Data Management. See below how their tactics connect with top-level personalization:

3. A CDP enriches customer relationships

There isn’t enough emphasis on how knowing your customers is essential for customer relations.

People expect to be treated accordingly to their visions as much as they wish to connect emotionally with brands. A single miscommunication can harm brand-customer relationships irreparably.

As soon as you have a panoramic view of your customers’ habits, preferences, needs, and issues, you should feel more confident in building specific touchpoints that elevate the customer journey and make customers want to hang around you for longer.

Owning a Customer Data Platform will also measure your customer loyalty programs’ effectiveness and help you find what groups of customers deserve attention according to their life cycle.

4. A CDP is agile

Agile methodologies are the perfect response to a world that is changing every day, every hour. CDPs consider our ever-changing environment and let your team access specific data whenever it needs, contributing to an agility mindset.

Agility layers can be used to shape CDP frameworks that adjust to your company’s infrastructure, turning data sharing into a reality. CDPs also absorb data from other internal systems, like CRMs and Data Management Platforms (DMPs), you might already have.

Apart from that, CDPs update in real-time. This allows you to assess micro-moments data and instantly operationalize it.

5. A CDP ingests data from any source

Your customers are everywhere these days, right? You can find them on social media, navigate your website, read your emails, download your app, and take a look at your physical store. The interaction possibilities between your customer and your brand are countless.

If truth be told, it truly doesn’t matter where your customers are and what they’re doing. Whether they’re reading your blog or using your chatbot, data is being generated at all times, collected from simple interactions to complex operations.

A Customer Data Platform reaches out to any source of information, from Live Chats to SEO, from blogging to Twitter, from customer loyalty to affiliate marketing programs to provide your company with everything you know about your potential and current consumers.

6. A CDP elevates digital transformation

Simply, a digital transformation process should rely on—and a lot!—on a Customer Data Platform.

By watching digital-native organizations, it becomes clear that many technologies can be embedded to digitize businesses.

However, it is worthless to implement technologies that don’t accurately connect with customers’ needs. Digital transformation starts and ends with the customer, transcending traditional marketing, sales, and customer service roles.

That being said, without a reliable Customer Data Platform, companies who are digitizing their operations will mostly fail to unleash the real potential of a digital transformation.

Digital-native companies have already built their business model based on data collection and responding to customers’ needs with high-level experiences.

These companies combine traditional marketing strategies, such as loyalty programs, with groundbreaking digital initiatives that connect with customers in real-time and engross their engagement.

Remember: It is crucial to direct your digital transformation efforts into interactions that engage your audience, and a Customer Data Platform is intimately related to that.

It taps into your databases to unify relevant information and operationalize customer knowledge, delivering targeted experiences that will delight and retain your customers.

It should also be stated that CDPs assist companies in taking a step back and revisiting their processes to leverage technology cleverly.

For example, Netflix was quick to turn its service into a scalable streaming platform that replies to customers’ demands. The now-sector-leading company could only reinvent itself because it took a very attentive look at customer data and responded accordingly.

Align your digital initiatives with the power of a Customer Data Platform

While IT staff has been skeptical for a while, digital leaders worldwide have been engrossing CDP in their workflows and getting amazing results from data management automation.

Not only has perfect treating data been helping these leaders come up with customer-centric solutions, but it has optimized their budget and turned manual work more effective.

Forbes Insights highlighted that 44% of surveyed organizations stated a Customer Data Platform is helping drive customer loyalty and increase ROI.

Arena serves customers from 120 different countries and sees firsthand how the fast-paced digital environment influences global market changes day after day.

That is why we work to build awareness for digital leaders and marketers to embrace Customer Data Platforms in their full potential and boost customer engagement.

In case you need to further your research towards the CDP role for the upcoming years, download our Customer Data Platform 2020: the future of marketing and sales ebook and take a deeper dive.