3/10/2019 [Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat strategy - Part 1/2

[Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat

strategy - Part 1/2
injixo ⋅ Workforce Management ⋅ Jul 20, 2016 ⋅ 13 min read

Web chat is one of the fastest growing contact channels. From the customer perspective, it’s instant, it’s
easy and it’s text based. For the call centre it offers some tempting ef ciency gains over phone calls and the
chance to improve customer engagement. But the old saying ‘the devil is in the detail’ de nitely applies
here. In this podcast we discuss the pros and cons of chat, as well as providing some tips for getting chat
right in your operation. Chris Dealy of injixo is joined by industry experts Carolyn Blunt (LinkedIn, Twitter),
Managing Director of Real Results Training, and Tina Squire (LinkedIn), Strategic Contact Centre
Operations Director at Interact CC.

Press click on the play button and enjoy the podcast!

This Page Cannot Be Displayed

Based on your organization's access policies, access to this web site
( https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?
url=https%3A//api soundcloud com/tracks/274532233%3Fsecret token%3Ds

Transcript
Chris: In this podcast we discuss the subject of using Contact Centre web-chat. Over recent years, chat has
been one of the fastest growing contact channels. From the customer perspective, it’s instant, it’s easy and
it’s text based. For the call centre it offers some tempting ef ciency gains over phone calls. But the old
saying ‘the devil is in the detail’ de nitely applies here.

In this podcast we are going to discuss the pros and cons of chat, as well as providing some tips for getting
chat right in your operation.

I'm Chris Dealy from injixo and I am delighted to be joined today by Carolyn Blunt, Managing Director of
Real Results Training, specialist in training and development for the contact centre industry. As well as
running Real Results, Carolyn is a professional speaker and proli c author in contact centres eld and also
by Tina Squire, Strategic Contact Centre Operations Director at Interact CC a contact centre outsourcer,
handling contracts that cover sales & customer support, inbound & outbound, B2C & B2B, via phone and
web chat. Interact’s USP is to do things differently, for the bene t of both clients, and the people working in
the contact centre. Tina has 14 years’ experience in contact centre operations management, working with
blue-chip clients.

https://blog.injixo.com/workforce-management/podcast-top-tips-to-maximise-your-call-centre-web-chat-strategy-part-1 1/5
3/10/2019 [Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat strategy - Part 1/2

Chris: Do you think the use of web-chat in Call Centers is still in ascendence or has it plateaued? [02:01]

Carolyn: De nitely still growing, lots of our clients are looking at developing their strategy and train front
line advisors who are going to be handling their chat. The millennial generation much prefer the use of text
based (customer service). The evidence is there in how they prefer to communicate with friends and family.

Tina: Agree that it is still on the rise and we have clients that want to expand into that area. The ROI is
higher, the cost of sale is lower, this is the way I see things still evolving.

Chris: What is the appeal of web-chat to the rest of the population? [03:30]

Carolyn: The convenience of web-chat and the fact that it is less committal than a phone call and as there is
no need to go through lengthy IVRs and be put on hold, listen to music. This also gives the customer the
ability to multi-task at home while you’re making an enquiry to an organisation.

Companies can capture a whole group of people that perhaps may not have been quite ready to take that
plunge to pick up the phone.

Webchat is less intense and overall offers a more convenient way for people, and overall it just works.

Chris: From the POV of the Contact Centre, what is the appeal of web-chat? [04:41]

Tina: The bene t is mainly driven by the Cost per sale for our clients.

When a customer comes in on a webchat channel, from then on in - that is their preferred channel on which
to interact. Once they have tried it once and realise they are talking to a real person they will stick to that
channel.

In customer satisfaction scores it is consistent. There is an average of 88% and does not really uctuate. In
fact only from 86% to as high as 92%. So we are seeing a great satisfaction rate and importantly customers
are returning.

Carolyn: Yes absolutely, however there is more call for AI to be handling basic live chat, it does not
necessarily have to be a human. A client is using a large proportion of their live chat through automated
messaging and that is helping to make them competitive against much bigger competitors. They can
automate a lot of repetitive simple contact, and customers don’t even know that it’s not a real person and
that it is automated.

https://blog.injixo.com/workforce-management/podcast-top-tips-to-maximise-your-call-centre-web-chat-strategy-part-1 2/5
3/10/2019 [Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat strategy - Part 1/2

Chris: What is the pros and cons of agents handling more multiply chats concurrently? [06:38]

Tina: We have had great success in agents handling multiple interactions. Currently one of our biggest
Telcos are averaging three and a half interactions at any one time. So that means anything from 4 to 6. That
sounds amazing from an ef ciency POV, it does really depend however in what sort of query you are
dealing with.

On a more complicated Customer Service query, a complaint maybe that would come down to 2 to 3
concurrent interactions on average. But, with that I don’t see that customer satisfaction goes down if we
increase that. There are great wins to be had there.

Carolyn: An example of a ooding you can increase concurrency of chat massively to deal with customers
whereas with voice it is constantly 1 on 1, you have to get through those very quickly in order to be able to
do more. Actually, as a Contact Centre you don’t really lose out that much even though people in the short
term if they can’t make it to the of ce you can actually tweak that around other parameters which has been
really great.

Chris: A recent survey by The Call Centre Helper suggests that handling more than 2 chats can impact
quality. Is handling more than 2 chats sustainable? [08:37]

Carolyn: This is something you have to look at on a case by case basis, depending on the organisation, the
customers, what the chat content is about, what your self-service and knowledge base is like behind the
scenes. An agent may be able to handle three chats really easily at the same time, if he/she has all the
information and quickly searchable at their ngertips and they are able to cut and paste things into the chat
and redirect customers to things online and while they are looking at that the agent can be chatting to the
next customer. However, if the chat is very complicated and personalised and there is lots of detail to read,
the other two customers looking to chat are going to have to wait. That is where customer experience can
suffer. This can impact response time while the agent completes wrap up from customer number one,
customer number two and three are typing and waiting for me to read. This is when we start seeing
question marks from customers asking ‘are you still there?’ That is where customer experience in chat can
be impacted if we are not careful. This can put undue pressure on the advisor who is being pulled in all
these directions. If they are not careful they can skim read and not get to the right answer correctly. I would
like to put a limit of three generally but it really does depend on the advisor’s knowledge, the systems and
the content of the chat.

Chris: Do you have any tips on the technology you should put in place to effectively handle webchats?
[11:01]

Tina: Technology is really key. Whatever chat vendor you use would really depend on what you what to
achieve as a business and what you need to measure. As chat has grown, more and more suppliers are
coming on to the market. It is really about what you can do with the back end of it from a productivity and
operational perspective.

Carolyn: The really important thing for me is the integration of chat with your other channels. I much
prefer a vendor who can do my voice solution, email, chat and social rather than 4 different systems bolting
together and that that platform is then linked to the CRM and we have one single view, omnichannel of that
customer journey, so that if today I chat tomorrow I tweet and the next day I phone and I am dealt with by
three different advisors they can still see all that interaction history and its linked to all my accounts my
buying behaviour so that there is a joined up view on the information. The problem with chat is that if we
use it as a stand alone channel we don’t really know who it is we are talking to. So, I could be a really loyal
customer of yours and been with your brand for ten years and spent an awful lot of money, but if you don’t

https://blog.injixo.com/workforce-management/podcast-top-tips-to-maximise-your-call-centre-web-chat-strategy-part-1 3/5
3/10/2019 [Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat strategy - Part 1/2

have visibility of that you can’t then bring that into account when you are dealing with my compliant. And
really, that is what we should be doing when we are thinking about customer journeys and life time value of
customers.

Chris: Is there anything speci cally to think about when it comes to staff planning? [13:09]

Tina: As always in a Contact Centre it is essential to get your staf ng right. I nd that working with a
dedicated big ‘Chat’ team it is essential to have a Workforce management solution that can really cater for
that and I think that on a big chat channel like that where you have multi-skilled staff, you have individual
ability in terms of concurrency, having a Workforce Management solution where you can really tweak that
individually you are always going to have the ultimate staf ng at any time. With chat you have different
peaks and troughs through the day, all of that becomes very very relevant with chat particularly when you
have so many different parameters that you can tweak and work with from a productivity and ef ciency
POV. We found that absolutely invaluable.

Carolyn: It depends on how specialist your advisors need to be and the knowledge they’ve got and whether
you are doing skills based routing through voice already as to how you are going to set up your team. But,
for me it is really helpful to select advisors for chat teams that have good spelling, grammar and typing
speed which is really important. If we can think about having multi-skilled agents it gives us that exibility
because webchat can be unpredictable. We can over ow, if we have increased chat demand I can pull a
voice advisor onto chat and I can say ‘right I want you to take some because it’s queuing.

I am a massive fan of extending the hours that we make chat available, because people are browsing in the
evenings and weekend. If you are a retailer and you are not offering chat on weekends you are missing a
massive trick. Agents don’t particularly want to work evenings and weekends, I would like to see us using
Home-workers more for live chat. Advisors are happy to do that work from home and you don’t have the
issue of TV’s on in the background, because you just won’t hear it, it is a completely text based channel. And
as long as we are quality monitoring chatlogs in the same way as we quality monitor call recordings, there is
no reason we can’t have chat as a home working role, which gives us even more exibility in crisis situations,
agents can be pulled in without having to come and sit in a physical building.

Tina: Couldn’t agree more, the hours are absolutely essential. Our operation runs until 11.00pm at night
from 7.00am and those are our busy times, early in the morning and late at night, slump in the afternoon
and again the slump in the afternoon really lends itself to home-working. And, because you are working in
the digital space it is just a lot easier to manage home-working staff.

Chris: That concludes Part 1 of this Podcast. Thank you for listening we hope you enjoyed it. We will
continue on Part 2 with more from Carolyn and Tina on more top tips and pointers about where Web-chat
goes wrong, recurring themes when Call Centers fail to implement web-chat and any stumbling blocks to
watch out for. Also, how do we overcome those. You can subscribe now to get noti ed when Part 2 will be
available. Bye-bye.

https://blog.injixo.com/workforce-management/podcast-top-tips-to-maximise-your-call-centre-web-chat-strategy-part-1 4/5
3/10/2019 [Podcast] Top tips to maximise your call centre web chat strategy - Part 1/2

Thank you for reading!

If you liked this article follow us on:

https://blog.injixo.com/workforce-management/podcast-top-tips-to-maximise-your-call-centre-web-chat-strategy-part-1 5/5