Today, 31% of organisations use web chat to support customer service and 30% use it to support sales (source). We know that web chat is a valuable customer communication channel. It has the highest levels of customer satisfaction- 73% compared to 61% for email and 44% for phone (source). However, as previously highlighted by Webhelp UK’s Solutions Director Dave Pattman, it shouldn’t be viewed as the quick and easy solution to all customer service challenges. The repercussions of improper implementation mustn’t be ignored. 25% of shoppers resent intrusive chat invitations and they could end up feeling alienated (source), an outcome entirely counterproductive to optimising the customer experience.

Our client, one of UK’s leading entertainment providers, describes web chat as ‘bringing human beings into our digital channels’. This is essentially how web chat works best, in adding value without disruption. Through our work with pioneering web chat implementations we’ve identified 7 key steps in the implementation of a successful web chat strategy, as detailed in our white paper Time to Chat: Capturing the value of next generation web chat

  1. Be strategic – identify when a web chat invitation will add value
  2. Be pragmatic – evolve your web chat strategies based on testing, impact on customer journey and user behaviour
  3. Be realistic – understand the true cost of web chat by realistic agent goals without harming the customer experience
  4. Be personal – link next best action strategies to web chat to enable powerful personalisation capability
  5. Be focused – find your success criteria, evaluate success and continue to evolve
  6. Be digital first – stay in channel and define the role of web chat in omni-channel strategies
  7. Be smart – find the right agents, focus on empowering them with excellent product knowledge and optimise the digital customer journey

Web chat is breathing new life into customer experience innovation as well as right shoring strategies. Offshore markets are financially attractive, overcoming the long-standing challenge of accent and delivering new levels of cost efficiency. Web chat has the power to transform the way organisations and customers interact and I personally find the future very promising!