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New reality crawled into our lives. Those of you who are doing your best to keep your business going probably have had to adjust to a new way of working and connecting with both teammates and customers. That means that you may be in the middle of trying out different tools for communication.
In this post, I will show you how live chat can be used in a remote work model.
Why live chat software takes the lead
Live chat is one of the tools that has noticed a higher demand due to COVID-19. It has been a popular solution for many industries that operate online. Lately, it has also found its place in companies and institutions that normally operate face to face but had to switch to a remote work model. These are schools, universities, medical facilities, banks, and churches, to name but a few.
The ease of use and instant replies make communication with businesses more natural and smooth. Besides that, live chat allows for keeping a customer service team in one place, making the managing process easier. See if it answers your needs.
- It’s convenient for customers
Customers want a quick connection with brands, but, at the same time, they want to start a conversation when it’s most convenient for them. With limited choices for handling things in person now, people mostly make a call, write an email, or jump on live chat. Because agents can handle many chats at once, waiting time is minimized. However, if an agent is not available on chat, customers can still leave a message, and their case will be handled as soon as possible.
- It’s convenient for a support team
Back in the call-center days, when an agent didn’t know the answer to a customer’s question, they muted the phone and asked everybody around for answers. Right now, live chat offers many options, e.g., whispering on chat or transferring a chat to the right person. Also, agents can chat with many customers at once, which makes it more challenging sometimes, but also less humdrum. Agents can also analyze which types of cases happen the most, and after creating canned responses (ready-made answers), they can provide support quicker.
- It’s convenient for customer service managers
Live chat helps with managing the whole customer support team. It has a work scheduler that lets you set up specific working hours for each agent to make sure there’s always someone available on chat. Reports let you see when the peak times for chats are and how many agents are needed to cover the traffic. Managing the team from inside the app and creating a customer service strategy is quite easy.
Depending on the industry, live chat serves many different goals. Let’s highlight some recent use cases of LiveChat in different industries.
LiveChat use cases for different industries
When the pandemic started, we offered LiveChat for free to non-profit organizations. If you’re a non-profit organization take a look at our Care to Chat campaign. Additionally, we wanted to help all of the institutions that operate offline but had to switch to a remote work model. If you’re in this situation, reach out to us.
Many schools and universities switched to remote work and that entirely changed the way they communicate with students and parents. But LiveChat isn’t new in the education industry. Schools and universities use it to guide students throughout the whole admission process and help with daily issues. However, right now, they receive many additional questions about online lessons, the current situation, and any technical issues that may come with the recent changes.
Whittier City School District is a good example. It’s a transitional kindergarten. They serve approximately 6,300 students who matriculate into the Whittier Union High School District.
They switched to a remote work model recently, and they sent mobile devices home to all of their kids. After that, they were bombarded with emails asking for help. For them, LiveChat is one of the ways they provide technical support to parents and students. Here’s a screenshot of their pre-chat survey. As you can see, they provide support in English and Spanish.
Southwestern University also started using LiveChat in March. They mostly answer questions about the University and admissions. They use eye-catchers (the colorful badges that bring attention to the chat), which makes it easy for students to spot LiveChat on their website.
IAIA is the Institute of American Indian Artists. It’s a college for Native Americans and Indigenous people. They were looking at the possibility of adding a chat feature to their website to manage all the inquiries they receive. Now, they offer LiveChat all over their website.
Cornerstone Church, based in Long Beach, California, has suspended all of their gatherings offline for now and encourage everyone to join online. They post videos on a daily basis and conduct live transmissions via social media. LiveChat helps them stay in touch with their community, right on their website.
Ofe.ca offers free employment services designed to connect job seekers and employers to create long term, sustainable matches, and grow their local labor market. They reached out to us because they wanted to be able to engage with their participants remotely during the COVID-19 crisis.
For-profits and other industries
The above examples are non-profit companies and those who help others in times of crisis. There are also many for-profit companies that started using LiveChat recently. Retail and consumer goods industries are those that noted higher demand. For example, grocery delivery services sales are at an all-time high right now.
Iceland is the UK’s leading frozen food specialist, and they offer online shopping. They’re committed to becoming the first major retailer globally to eliminate plastic packaging from all of its own-brand products by the end of 2023. Recently, they have started using LiveChat to help customers with their orders. I can only imagine how many questions they get now about available delivery slots.
As stated on their website, “Live Chat is the quickest and easiest way to speak to us. Look for the live chat icon in the corner of your screen to start chatting during our opening hours.”
Online deliveries are thriving these days, and shopping online generates many more inquiries from customers while also providing a chance for a higher conversion rate. Live chat, if used right, can help with that significantly.
A great example of that is another retail business, Copenhagen Imports, a furniture store. They have many locations around the world and sell the latest beautiful, functional contemporary furnishings for the home and office. They answer questions about their products but also offer technical support when people have issues with their accounts. They also use greetings (automated messages inviting people to chat) to gain customers’ attention. For example, they monitor when someone is on a checkout page for a long time without any action or if someone enters a cart page. In those cases, they display a personalized message in the chat widget to let people know that they’re available.
Talking with customers on checkout pages helps to make sure a transaction goes smoothly. And offering assistance on search pages is a great example of using live chat to recreate an in-store experience.
Keeping up with customer inquiries and helping those in need
We hope your business is going well. Hopefully, an increased number of customer inquiries is just a nice problem for you, and you will solve it with the right time management, tools, and a dedicated team. However, if you struggle with gaining traffic to your website, live chat is also one of the tools that can help you because it augments your company’s credibility.
Every business is facing some issues now, especially if they’ve switched to a remote work model. However, if you think we can help with solving some of your problems, reach out to us. We offer an extended trial for all companies that needed to switch to remote work. Additionally, we offer a 50% total discount for the first annual payment.
Here’s our detailed guideline on how to start with LiveChat. It’s simpler than you think, and if you have any questions, our Support Heroes are available on chat 24/7.
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