FAQ Bot News - 6 ways to minimise live chat frustrations

When we started talking to our customers about live chat, one of the most common questions asked was “how would we service it?”. If they didn’t have a large contact centre to respond to live chat requests, customers were rightly wary of creating a disappointing or frustrating customer experience. They didn’t want to leave customers hanging, waiting for a live chat that wasn’t really live.

Here are six ways to make sure you never miss an important chat, and ensure your customers get great service, every time.

Automated chatbot as your first responder

An automated chatbot with live chat built in gives you the best of both worlds. With a chatbot as first responder, your customers will always get an immediate response, 24/7. And then if they need extra help, and you have someone available, the chat can be handed over to a human agent.

Browser and email notifications so you never miss a chat

Set up your live chat notifications to suit you, and the way you work. Choose to be notified in the browser (via website push notifications), or by email, whenever there’s a new live chat that needs your attention.

💡TIP: Use email notifications to get notified of a new chat in a Slack or Teams channel.

Only offer live chat when your team is available

There’s nothing more frustrating than live chat that’s not live. When you think you’re sending a message to someone, only to find out there’s no-one there. Fortunately, FAQ Bot has two options to prevent that from happening:

Set up schedules for your live chat hours
Toggle live chat engagements on/off when you’re available

Use one of these, or a combo of both, depending on what suits your organisation and circumstances, and let your automated chatbot deal with everything when you’re not around.

Trigger live chat behind the scenes

Set up your automated chatbot to send your team a live chat request as a background process. By not offering chat upfront as a button or suggested action in the chatbot widget, you don't create the expectation there is someone to chat to. Chat will only become an option for your customer when an agent is available and has accepted the request.

This can be used to escalate a problem, for example if your customer asks a question your bot can’t answer. It can also be used when your customer asks a question on a specific topic, such as pricing or how to order, and you’d like to introduce a human agent to close the sale.

Behind the scenes live chat also allows agents to screen possible live chats and only accept those where there’s potential to add value. If there’s no-one available, your customer can continue to chat to the bot as normal, and/or request a call back.

Mobile-friendly live chat

Sometimes you’re not at your desk when a chat comes in. With our mobile-friendly live chat you can view your live chat inbox, and respond to live chats, directly from your mobile device.

Use quick replies for...quick replies

Customisable quick replies or canned responses are also handy to get a response to your customer faster. Use them when on the go, and for common conversation elements like greetings, closures and questions you get asked often.