5 proven strategies to drive roi for chat
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TRANSCRIPT
5 Proven Strategies to Drive
ROI for Chat Panel: TELUS International, Dell & SPOT Consulting
Webinar on-demand at: telusinternational.com/chat
Sponsored by TELUS International
Moderated by
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5 Proven Strategies to Drive ROI for Chat
Emily Millar
VP Client Relations
TELUS International
Jeffrey Hutchings
Director, Sales
Dell Inc.
Kim Keating
VP Client Services
SPOT Consulting
Panel / speakers:
3
Objectives
Why every company should consider chat for care & sales
Why effective online chat is important
Five proven best practices to drive ROI from chat
What the ideal chat session might look like
How Dell, a customer service leader & chat pioneer, uses best
practices to drive CSAT & sales ROI
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Why chat is important?
Chat has many well-known benefits:
Serve customers in their preferred communications channel
Address customer issues in real-time in the online environment
Attract a hyper-digital generation that will not phone or visit a store
Reduce shopping cart abandonment by assisting with order forms
Take social interactions into a more private & secure online setting
Reduce expensive calls into the call center
Achieve higher customer satisfaction scores over other channels
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Why chat is important?
Growing expectation for instant online support; chat gets good
reviews:
Once a shopper has used live chat, more than 2/3rds will actively look for sites
that provide it – Bold Software survey, 2010
77% of chatters agree that the technology positively influenced their attitude about
the online retailer – Bold Software survey, 2010
63% of survey respondents said that they were more likely to return to the website
where they had originally experienced live chat – e.Marketer.com, 2009
Reactive chat (or click-to-chat options) earned a 15% ROI whereas Proactive chat
(or chat by invitation) earned an impressive 105% ROI – Forrester, 2008
Live chat was the best way to reduce shopping cart abandonment – e-tailing
group, 2011
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Yet, surprisingly…
Company American Customer Satisfaction Index
(ACSI)
No Sales Chat at time of
study
Industry Leaders in Customer Experience & Loyalty
Netflix 87 x
Amazon.com 86 x
Newegg 86 x
FedEx 85 x
Barnes & Noble 84 x
UPS 82 x
Costco 81 x
Border's 81 x
Target 80 x
Southwest Airlines 79 x
Charles Schwab 79 x
Expedia 79 x
Lowe's 79 x
Microsoft Office 76 x
Nokia 76 x
AT&T 75 x
Macy's 71 x
Time Warner Cable 61 x
Disney - x
USAA - x
The chat channel is immature
despite benefits, ROI and
consumer preference for it.
And sales chat, specifically, is not
widely available.
Still lots of opportunity to interact
with customer online.
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Benchmark study
Research methodology:
Team of subject matter experts
60-indepth chat sessions with 6
Fortune 500 customer service
leaders
Analyzed a further 150 chat
transcripts
Customer Experience (CE) based
on three major criteria:
Agent Skills
Chat System
Communications Style
75%
44%
79% 82% 86%
68%
Cu
sto
me
r E
xp
eri
en
ce
Total Customer Experience Benchmarking Results
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The customer experience can be improved
Disappointing Responses
Customer: Are you still there? Agent: I apologize for any delay on my responses as I may be engaged in multiple chat sessions with different customers at a time.
Platform Failures
Customer Experience: First chat session failed, because the chat initiation page froze and the session never loaded. Tried reaching a sales agent repeatedly over 24 hours, but chat option didn’t function and was removed from the site.
Flawed Writing
Agent typed 24 emoticons, lols and exclamation marks in 20 short responses during a single chat session.
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How?
What makes up the ideal chat
customer experience?
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Top 5 best practices
Make chat feel like a phone call -- strive for < 60s response rate
Provide up-to-date product training with feature comparisons
Effectively facilitate the sale or resolve the customer issue
1 Agent Training – don’t underestimate it
Training needed:
o How to ensure accurate answers (access to knowledge bases)
o How to up-sell / cross-sell & uncover needs
o How to personalize as appropriate
o When to use canned vs. free form responses
o How to use chat system features to benefit CE
o How to write for chat; construct a conversation flow
o How to best represent the brand online
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Tip: Strong Agent Skills Can Reduce Effort
Most people scan for information while multi-tasking, so keep it simple in online interactions:
1. Skip a wordy greeting; offer help right away:
Welcome to [Company] Live Chat! My name is David. Thank you for waiting. How can I help you?
2. Appear seamless. Avoid transferring customers to different departments. If a transfer is required, make it a warm transfer:
It sounds like it could be one of several issues, but I am unfortunately not equipped to diagnose the problem you are experiencing. I think the best course of action is to call Technical Support at 1-800-***-**** or e-mail them at [email protected]. I could also connect this chat to their department. Would you like me to?
3. Stick to the point. Support the customer with links to the specific resources they need. Use short and to-the-point answers:
Customer: Is your site protected? Agent: Yep! http://www.company.com/shop-with-confidence Customer: Okay, I see. Can you tell me about your shipping policies? Agent: Yes, it is free shipping and free return shipping. Standard shipping is about 4 - 5 business days.
4. Like the opening, the closing sets the tone and supports the overall corporate brand:
Agent: Did you have any other questions or anything else? Customer: No. I'll call-in later. Agent: If anything else does come up, we are here 24/7 for you! Have a great day!
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Top 5 best practices
Strong writing skills are critical to conveying an accurate
message & upholding the company brand
Focus on Customer Effort
Don’t make customers work to understand responses or
find answers
2 Improved Chat Writing = Better CRM
Focus on:
o Brevity & staying on point
o Grammar, spelling & sentence structure
o Voice & tone
o Terminology
o Personalization
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Tip: Chat Etiquette
Establish a chat etiquette up front & measure via transcripts
Agent is polite & ‘speaks’ positively about the company, products & competitors
Agent offers empathy when appropriate
Agent is energetic, engaged and upbeat with the customer
If needed, agent asks permission to put customer on hold (explains reason, sets
timeframe, thanks customer)
If needed, agent asks permission to push urls to the customer
When transferring a chat, agent explains where chat will be transferred & why
Agent responds to customer within 2 minutes of customer/agent last response
Agent checks in with customer within 2 minutes if customer is unresponsive
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Top 5 best practices
Maintain the human element online
Know how to construct a conversation flow:
Most important info up front
One or two ideas per response
Multiple back & forth exchanges
Use the right balance between free form vs.
canned responses:
For efficiency – aim for 50/50 use of hot keys
Personalize using customer provided info
3 Be Human!
Answer initial concern-
Ask if customer was satisfied
with the given information.
Question-
Collect more Customer Info,
Budget, Question for Needs,
Probe and Position.
(continue the conversation to close)
Offer additional help (e.g.
configuring their system)
If customer agrees,
proceed to “Question”
Open- with appropriate (short) spiel
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Top 5 best practices
Hours of operation
Entitlement process
Queue position
Wait times
Typing notification
Encryption of sensitive info
Ability to change font size
Post-chat transcripts available (via email)
Added features: co-browsing, page pushing
4 Optimize Customer-Facing Features
Avoid the dreaded question:
o Are you still there?
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Chat features help set expectations
Chat transcript easily obtainable
Increase or decrease font size
Personalize with name, if desired
Hyperlink to security/ privacy statement
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Top 5 best practices
Metrics need to promote a balance between productivity & quality
Traditional metrics like Average Response Time or Chats/Hour
need to be combined with quality metrics the agent can control
5 Right Metrics = Right Agent Behavior
E.g. Metrics for quality Measured by:
Accuracy of response Quality of chat transcript
Quality of response Quality of chat transcript
Contact resolution rate Successful close of chat
conversation
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) Post-contact survey (usually email)
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Best Practices: ROI
Within weeks of launching chat queues, our customers have realized
chat as a huge source of untapped potential:
Quick & convenient for customers
Efficient: agents handle multiple chats at one time
Up to 1/10th the cost of voice
Up to 10 to 15 points higher in CSAT over voice
Up to 30% higher revenue margins vs. voice
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Putting it into action
Dell chat sales
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Dell | chat sales
Looking at best practices, three key areas emerged where we could improve
the chat customer experience:
1. Improve chat training with a heavier focus on CE
2. Revise current metrics to foster the right agent behavior
3. Reduce Customer Effort in the chat channel
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Dell | chat sales
1. Chat Training Curriculum Focus – Before & After
10%
20%
45%
25%
Former Chat Training Focus
Customer Experience Salesmanship
Product Knowledge Applications
20%
25%
35%
20%
Revised Chat Training Focus
Customer Experience Salesmanship
Product Knowledge Applications
More emphasis on customer
experience & salesmanship
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Dell | chat sales
2. Revise current metrics to foster right agent behavior
Original curriculum focused heavily on efficiency metrics: AHT, Chats/Hr
Needed to increase emphasis on CE to drive right agent behavior
More time to build rapport, uncover needs, cross-sell, up-sell
CSAT took priority alongside other chat sales metrics
CSAT
Close Rate Scores
Revenue per Chat
Margin per Chat
Transcript QA Scores
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Dell | chat sales
3. Reduce customer effort in chat
Focus was on improving the conversation flow to engage customers,
make them feel secure & ideally, uncover further needs / opportunities
Use chat flow diagrams to guide agents (pre-crafted scripts of important
questions as the chat progresses)
Conversation flow sample:
After a standard opening statement followed by addressing the customer’s initial concern, the chat agent should uncover a customer’s budget and purchase timeframe. The chat flow suggestion might look something like this:
Customer’s Budget: Rep asks about customer’s budget either in monthly payments or total cost.
Agent: I can help you get the biggest bang for your buck; what sort of budget are you looking to
stay within?
Purchase Timeframe: Rep asks the customer for a general or specific timeframe in which they are looking to purchase.
Agent: I can check which promotions will be available to you. How soon are you looking to purchase
your new system?
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Dell | chat sales
Measure and QA post-chat:
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Dell | results
To measure results of new chat training curriculum:
Comparative Analysis
New hire agents underwent advised
training before serving their first customers
Tenured agents continued serving Dell
customers as per original training program
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Dell | results
The results were impressive:
Results
Milestone Improvements In Program
That Was Already Meeting Goals
CSAT Increase
Close Rate Increase
Revenue Per Chat Increase
Margin Per Chat Increase
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Summary / Q&A
Chat has many benefits (customer preference, cost, efficiency)
Take a measured approach to implementation
Hire & train for chat
Model of control
Consistent focus on customer experience (CE)
Leverage the technology to make customers feel secure
Set customer expectations upfront
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Questions Voice vs. Chat comparisons
Chat popularity
Rise of video chat
Hiring for chat
When to use canned responses
Transactions more suited to chat vs. voice
Role of social media + chat
Maximizing chat efficiency
Connect!
Learn more about our chat & contact center
outsourcing practice:
TELUS International
telusinternational.com
SPOT Consulting
spotconsulting.biz
Download white papers.
Questions: