Providing Great Customer Care with Online Support Chat

Providing a first class customer care is becoming the foremost priority of the online retailers as it could score them life-long customers for their business. In today’s competitive business world, it costs more time and money to acquire new customer than retaining the existing ones; therefore, to bring loyalty in customers, you need to keep them happy by upgrading your customer services. Online Support Chat has helped enhancing the customer care, as a survey has shown that 56% shoppers are more likely to buy from websites with a live chat feature. However, the way live chat is being delivered matters in improving the customer support. Given below are some best practices for delivering effective live chat to improve the customer services.

Customization: Be sure that your chat icons/buttons or windows match your organization’s branding and are appealing for your online traffic.

Proactive Approach: It is becoming an increasing trend of business websites to proactively approach visitors for chat through a pop-up window. This way, they can get the visitors attention towards their services or products.

Avoid Aggressive Chat pop-ups: Make it an option for the online visitors to close or decline a chat pop-up invitation. The forced live chat pops might annoy or irritate your potential customer.

Chat Incentives: If you are offering online support chat on your business website for the first time, you can offer incentives to motivate the users. A survey conducted in 2012 revealed that 80% customers said that a free shipping offer would entice them to prefer live chat over phone calls or long waiting emails. The other 74% shoppers said that they would start using live chat if given special purchase discount.

Don’t Over Promise and Under Deliver: Delivering less than you offered or promised leaves a bad impression ultimately breaking the trust of your customer in your products or services. Therefore, don’t ever make promises with your customers which you think will not be full-filled. Always try to jump up expectations as it comes as a good surprise for your customer.

Be A Problem Solver: Online Customer Support allows chat operators to provide to the point and instant answers of the customers’ queries. Hence, don’t let your customers wait and worry; rather provide them immediate response leaving no question unanswered. A survey result has unveiled that 79% of shoppers chose to shop from websites having online chat as it provided them with immediate answers of their confusions and queries.

Effective Conversation: Always adopt a friendly and informal tone while offering online customer support to your potential and current customers. Be careful about the proper use of grammar and punctuation marks, as these carry a lot of weight in making or breaking your impression.

Online support chat in business websites is playing a key role in improving the customer support. The better a retailer is in providing the live chat; the more likely he is to improve his customer services.

Online Customer Care Resolves Apprehension in Booking a Stay

Tired of the day-to-day work routine? Then, it’s the best time to apply for an annual leave. Under U.S. federal law, employers are mandated to give employees a paid vacation, typically 10 to 20 work days! You can make use of this period by going on vacation. According to a study by WHIP (World Independent Hotels Promotion), hotel websites and booking engines are used in conjunction when planning a trip. While this study illustrates findings made in Europe, American hotels can use the information to understand how potent their websites are. They should integrate Online Customer Care to attract traffic to their website. This web-based tool enhances the visitor-to-conversion rate by delivering superior customer support.

An internet booking engine (IBE) is defined as an application used by the tourism industry to book flights, hotels, holiday packages, insurance and other services online. Although, it is more commonly used by airlines, travel associations around the world are using IBE to fulfill tourist’s needs. According to the information graphic, “Booking Patterns of Guests in Independent Hotels”, despite the presence of IBE websites, more consumers prefer to book their stay on a hotel’s websites. In fact, a customer will spend 14 minutes on a hotel website while they will spend only 11 minutes on a booking engine. Although, 20.2% of customers discovered the hotel through an online travel agent, they prefer to book directly on the hotel website!

In order to maximize conversion, hotels can add online customer care. This online CRM application connects visitors to a customer service representative (CSR) through live chat. CSRs play out the duty of a personal concierge. From the moment, a guest arrives at the website; they are individually greeted by a CSR and are proffered assistance. Although, a visitor is at liberty to respond, they will find it is in their benefit to live chat through Online Customer Service. A hotel chat representative uses online metrics such as referral URL, keyword searches, and webpage duration to comprehend a visitor’s activity. Online customer service then proactively engage customers into a meaningful discussion to help resolve booking concerns such as negotiating prices and to learn about amenities in detail.