Everyone knows it’s a challenge to “nail” excellent customer service. It’s been documented, lamented, with every solution put forward for decades now. But there’s an ugly reality of customer service that is far less understood—almost no one is getting live chat right.
That isn’t gospel, as 38% consumers rate live chat to have a terrible user experience, as our industry report on live chat statistics reveals.
This poses a problem for modern businesses that want to leverage live chat as an easy, personal way for customers to seek fast help.
How did live chat become so frustrating?
Live chat is like a call center—frustrating and relentless.
A startling 43% of businesses know their live chat user experience is not good enough. Nearly half of businesses admit to delivering a poor live chat experience for their customers, and still, nothing’s changing. Why is that?
The problem is standard live chat support is archaic.
We adhere to a queue mentality and succumb to being treated like a ticket number, not a human being.
Live chat mirrors the worst of experiences that customers endure via email—or even social media channels—with long wait times, the support being offline, disconnected conversations, and excessive effort needed to start a chat. (That is particularly so around pre-chat forms according to our survey results).
Why is it so hard to get support right first time?
How many times have you been transferred from tweet to email, or even from rage tweet to Twitter DM, only to have to repeat your whole story again for someone else? We’ve all been there.
It’s no wonder that 16% of businesses confirm their customers are most annoyed by having to repeat themselves.
Customer-centric companies can’t even get it right
Recently, I tweeted @amazon asking for a refund on some Prime Now produce that was delivered for a dinner party.
“Sorry,” their tweet read, “You need to contact @amazonprimenow for this. Here’s a link for help.” Sure enough, the folks at @amazonprimenow had zero context of my issue, and the link was a dead-end self-service article.
So I gave up and tried their live chat. I was put straight into a queue, and left to wait. Then help arrived. Again, with zero context to my simple query. So I retyped my story.
I realized I had spent 15 minutes chasing a £5 refund on bananas and my frustration levels began to soar.
Amazon is striving to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” If they can’t get this right, is there any hope for the rest of us?
A frustrating live chat experience won’t cut it when it comes to keeping your business competitive on the customer service front. Almost 60% of consumers are unlikely to return to a business where they experience poor customer service, even if a trusted friend said the service had improved.
So, what’s the solution? How do we fix live chat if it was never “right” in the first place? By taking all the frustrations out of live chat.
It’s time live chat was a joy for everyone involved – customers, teams and everyone in between.
In our own lives, we know this to be true: consumers have evolved and do not expect effortless customer service. They anticipate a struggle. This is where you can win.
Live chat takes effort; messaging is easy. In fact, we message every day with our friends via iMessage or Whatsapp and with our colleagues via Slack and Hipchat.
There should be zero distinction between the effort we exert for live chat and for personal messaging apps – whether your company is big or small.
Live chat should be easy, even as you scale.
And live chat support can be your opportunity to build customer relationships that are effortless, comfortable, and personal—just the way we’ve always hoped it would be.
But here at Kayako, we know this is not enough. Creating effortless customer experiences only solves half of the equation. Support leaders need to think about much more.
How does live chat impact teams?
- How often are support teams stressed from the pressure of keeping customers waiting while also tackling the growing queue?
- And what if no one’s available at all?
- What if the conversations stagnating in the queue make your agents love their jobs less?
Not all support teams are ready to offer live chat.
Whether it’s scarcity of time, agents available, or competing priorities, there’s no point in offering live chat if your team cannot guarantee decent availability on chat requests—especially when you’re ready to scale.
The realities of live chat are equally painful for customer support teams as they are for customers. This isn’t right.
Introducing the new Kayako Messenger: friction-free messaging for the modern era
At Kayako, we’ve completely rebuilt our Messenger live chat tool with the realities of modern-day customer service at the forefront. Unlike legacy live chat tools, the new Kayako Messenger is fast, effortless, and helpful—no matter your team’s size or availability.
We’re working to solve the whole equation: effortless and scalable live chat experiences for your customers and your teams.
Stress-free should be a no-brainer. Easy should come as standard.
We’ve eliminated the disadvantages of legacy live chat tools so you can:
- Create a live chat home screen that welcomes your customers and reduces inbound conversations.
- Personalize your customers’ first interactions with your live chat support with helpful support articles, recent tweets, or each customer’s recent conversations.
- Present an interface that’s highly customizable to match the look and feel of your brand – your customers will love those this beautiful live chat interface.
But that’s not all. We are going for more than a positive customer experience.
If live chat can’t be scaled in the modern customer service world, there’s no point in offering it at all.
Our live chat study also found:
- 79% of businesses say offering live chat has a positive effect on sales, revenue, and customer loyalty
- 63% of consumers who spend between $250-500 a month online are the most likely to both buy from, and be loyal to, companies who offer live chat
- Over half of consumers are more likely to repurchase from a company who offer live chat support
From tiny teams to massive companies, the agent experience is designed to make live chat a more accessible opportunity.
Stop your customers repeating themselves
Kayako Messenger connects real-time conversations with the rest of your customer’s history. Customers can start new chats, or pick up existing conversations, without clicking away from your website. Everything is connected with context and backstory – regardless of channel. With Kayako, my three conversations with Amazon support would have been one. Faster support, effortless customer experiences.
From easy attachment upload to a personalized home screen tailored to the look and feel of your brand, the new Messenger works beautifully across every device so support teams can reply on their time, in their own location.
Move past the disadvantages of live chat software: Take it for a test run
With every detail of the new Kayako Messenger, we strive to make you think, “Wow, that was easy.” We hope you can pass this feeling onto your customers as well.
To see how you can convert more, support faster, and clear your queue quicker with the new Messenger, just start a free trial today and start chatting.