Customer support is changing - Gone are the days when this business function was viewed as an obscure, albeit necessary part of the business. One that was out on its own, on the coal face without having too much to do with any other department. Now smart business leaders are realising the benefits of collaboration between support and sales teams and the importance of the marketing department keeping close contact with the support team too.
The support channels have changed too - organisations can no longer get away with simply using email and an under resourced telephone helpdesk, to support their customers. Much more is expected now, in fact customers demand almost instant responses to their enquiries and they are increasingly opting to use live chat, where it is available. Picking up the phone is simply too much commitment for many people today, whereas the relative anonymity and unintrusive nature of chatting via the web is growing in popularity each year.
Firstly, your customers prefer to use live chat for support issues. According to Econsultancy 79% of us prefer this channel as it offers almost immediate responses to questions.
Using live chat benefits you as an organisation too. Most notably, it allows your existing support team’s resource to provide much more support than using the phone alone. Agents can have multiple chats on the go simultaneously. Compare this to an agent on the phone to a single customer and many others getting frustrated as they are forced to listen to Opus Number 1 while waiting to be answered.
