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More and more people are shunning traditional customer service options like email and phone services in favor of live chat support for a variety of reasons. It allows for a more direct access and more personal interaction with customer service, without all the inconveniences that come with other options. But before you decide to use live chat support on your website, you have to make sure that it is the right choice for you first. Let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons of live chat support to see if it’s truly the right option for your business.
Live Chat Allows for Instant Support
One of the biggest advantages of live chat is the proximity and speed at which questions are answered. People are used to instant gratification nowadays, and you don’t know how detrimental to your brand slow customer service can be. You’ll be able to address your customers’ concerns quickly and reduce the load on your phone support team as well. Your clients will appreciate being able to be heard right away and will come out with a good impression of your customer service as a whole.
More Personal Interactions
Zappos is an example of a company that has learned how to use chat support to establish a closer relationship with their clients. Their chat support service team members are encouraged to establish more personal rapport with repeat customers, and many customers have claimed that the main reason that they still shop there, even if prices might be a bit higher, is because of how well they’re treated by customer service agents.
Live chat can also be monitored more easily and integrated with a variety of other applications to make follow up even simpler. For instance, SysAid’s help desk allows you to manage all of your IT support functions in one place. You can use their chat option to save conversations and attach them to a corresponding help ticket, which makes follow-ups much easier for other agents and helps establish an ongoing relationship with your clients.
Chat Support Limitations
While chat support is usually a plus for any business, you should know that it also has some limitations you should be aware of. One of the main issues is communication barriers. The nuances of language can often be difficult to detect through chat and it’s also much more difficult to convey emotions through text. While emoticons are used to show emotions when it comes to informal texting, they’re simply not acceptable for businesses. This is why you have to be careful with your tone and phrasing and make sure that you only delegate the task to team members who have a natural ability for understanding tone through text.
Conclusion
Adding a live chat support option to your site is usually a great way to establish a direct link with your clients and reduce your reliance on phone support. It’s also a great way to answer your clients’ concerns quickly while showing that you care.
