Live chat can be an excellent tool for gaining new yoga students for your yoga studio and delivering excellent service to existing yoga students. There are many great ways your yoga studio small business benefits with live chat.
The following are live chat tips and suggestions for using a great customer service tool to your greatest advantage.
- Be sure you’re able to respond to live chat requests quickly. Purchase a live chat service that enables turning off the live chat button on your website and offers the option for your visitor to leave you message. Provide Support Live Chat, ClickAndChat Live Support, and BoldChat offer these features.
- When you turn off your live chat on your website, post a note saying when you’ll return. This is better than removing the live chat button completely because your customers may expect the live chat option.
- If your operators are busy, have them say right away to a new live chat customer that the operators are busy and it may be a few minutes. It’s much better to keep a live chat customer informed rather than guessing.
- If you offer live chat, be sure your operator or agent is knowledgeable to answer a variety of questions about your business. If your customers are greeted consistently with “I’m not sure, I’ll have someone e-mail you, then your live chat isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.
- That said, there will be times your live chat operator won’t have an answer. Have a procedure in place to contact the live chat visitor. Ask the visitor if they prefer a telephone call or contact by e-mail. Also have your operators to offer to relay the question to someone who can answer the question.
- Do not let operators answer a question with a link to a page in your website. Getting a “check out our web page here” message is not helpful.
- Personally, I don’t care for the automatic pop up windows when I’m on a website. I think live chat is best used as a way for your website visitors to initiate contact. I get annoyed at all pop-up windows in a website because it’s a distraction and interrupts my focus.
- I also dislike pre-live chat surveys asking for my personal information. I encourage you to let website visitors contact you anonymously.
- Use live chat yourself as a customer on other websites. Discover what you, as a customer, like and dislike. That way you get the customer’s perspective, and that is the perspective you should keep in mind when setting up live chat as a business owner.
- Offer every live chat customer a transcript delivered by e-mail. Provide Support, ClickAndChat, and Boldchat are a few live chat services that deliver transcripts by e-mail.
- Set up live chat only if you or a capable person is available to operate it. If you use it sporadically, your repeat website visitors may be confused and dissatisfied if they expect it.
Live chat writing tips
- Avoid acronyms, slang, or jargon.
- Use a traditional font, font color and font size.
- Use proper language and writing: capitalize, apply grammatical rules, use punctuation, and spell correctly, etc.
- Do not use vulgar or rude language. Don’t swear.
- Consider whether using emoticons is suitable.
- Encourage your operators to use “please”, “thank you”, “you’re welcome”, and other niceties which make for a pleasant conversation. Your live chat operators are often your first impression to a prospective customer. Make a great impression.
- Have your operators address live chat visitors by name if a name is given. Again, I prefer not giving my information. If you must, ask only for a first name. obviously, if you’re serving a current customer, you’ll need their account and so getting their information is necessary.
- Before ending chat, ensure your live chat customer is finished. Ask if there is any other way to help the live chat visitor.
- Think twice before outsourcing live chat offsite. Often live chat customers want very specific information. If your operators can’t answer the questions or give wrong information, that will hurt the relationship or lose a prospective customer.
- Instruct your operators to review their answer before sending it, especially if using canned answers.
Respect your live chat operators
- Have your operators introduce themselves by a fictional name, but not your operators’ real name.
- Do not expect or let your operators use their real names. Maintain your operator’s anonymity.
- Think seriously about displaying a photo of your operators in the live chat window. I wouldn’t dare expect my employees to post their photograph on the internet.
- If a customer is abusive, give your operators the authority to terminate the conversation immediately. Have a system of noting abusive customers.
- Do some practice chats with your employees to read their tone in their writing. Then review the good and the bad.
- Take the time to review your employees’ transcripts, especially shortly after hiring or after setting up live chat.
To learn more about live chat services available, check out our comprehensive live chat service provider comparison chart.
This blog has affiliate relationships with Provide Support, ClickAndChat, and Boldchat.
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