LIVE CHAT SUPPORT OUTSOURCING

Our live chat expertise

As an outsourcing company, we’ve managed dozens of live chat channels for companies in a range of industries. Here are some of the best practices we’ve picked up along the way:
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Take a moment to greet the customer: This might seem obvious but a lot of people assume that they are speaking to a robot. By taking a minute to introduce yourself and humanize the conversation, customers will be relieved to know they are talking to a real person who can help them. 
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No walls of text: Chat is a less formal channel. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be professional but a long paragraph that would work well in an email might not translate to chat. Space concepts and ideas out into digestible chunks so you don’t overwhelm customers. 
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Share Knowledge Base Articles: To avoid long paragraphs of text it is often a better option to share a link to a knowledge base article.
Follow up regularly: Sometimes agents will need to look up an answer. If you do need to look up an answer while in a chat conversation be sure to continue checking in regularly or the customer might think you disappeared.
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Tone: Make sure your tone matches your brand as well as where the customer is at. Some companies like to take the opportunity of this less formal channel to have more personal conversations with customers while others like to keep things very focused and professional. Spend a few minutes thinking about the experience you are trying to create for your customers. 
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Make sure you’ve answered all their questions: Just like other channels, it’s important to make sure you’ve thoroughly answered all the questions a customer has. Before saying goodbye be sure to check in one last time to make sure they are all set. 

Five reasons to outsource your chat support

Less waiting time for your customers: By outsourcing your chat you can be confident that you will be staffed to the correct levels, ensuring your customers can reach your brand and get answers to their questions when they need them (in time to make a purchasing decision!). 
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Pre-sales and upsells: By engaging with your customers via chat while they are on your website you can quickly answer questions they have and potentially even upsell them. By outsourcing your chat support you can be sure none of these questions are missed. 

More efficient than other channels: Outsourced agents can chat with multiple customers at the same time, making it much more efficient than phone and email support. 
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Avoid the burden of staffing: Because it is a live channel, you need to be sure there are no gaps in coverage. You wouldn’t want someone to chat with your team only to find there was no one there to respond. By outsourcing your live chat channel you can avoid the headache of hiring and staffing and instead focus your time on more valuable initiatives 
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Offer many time zones: If you have customers all over the world you will want to offer them live chat service at the time that is most convenient for them. By outsourcing your chat support with the Sparkline Freelance Solution you don’t have to worry about hiring and training people in different time zones (or managing someone who works a graveyard shift).