Live chat customer service - getting better all the time.
Live chat has been used for customer service for a couple of decades, making it one of the elder statesmen of digital channels. Younger channels, like SMS and social messaging, may be nipping at its heels, but live chat customer service is still going strong - gaining users and benefiting from significant technical enhancements. Customers rate live chat customer service highly as a preferred method of communication with businesses and, with more and more businesses offering it as a support channel, live chat is quickly becoming a "must have" for customer service.
Live chat customer service has been improved over the years as technology has evolved and companies have taken a more holistic approach to customer support. Perhaps one of the most impactful things to the quality of live chat has been the adoption of the omnichannel approach to customer service. This took live chat customer service out of its silo and integrated it with other support channels in order to provide consumers with a seamless customer experience. With omnichannel support, customers no longer have to start from scratch if they switch from chat to phone - they're chat history is saved and accessible to the phone agent.
A more recent enhancement to the live chat experience is the incorporation of chatbots. A chatbot is AI-enabled technology that mimics human conversation. Chatbots can answer basic questions and perform tasks like recommending products, making airline reservations, and collecting feedback. They can serve as the front end of an agent-assisted chat, gathering information before handing the conversation over to a live chat agent. When implemented appropriately, chatbots can improve the customer experience by providing timely service. Businesses can benefit from qualified leads, a boost in online sales and a decrease in agent-assisted contacts. However, if not used wisely, chatbots can cause customer frustration, so it's important to understand their strengths and weaknesses before implementing.
These and other refinements to the chat experience have made live chat customer service a favorite among consumers. Our research found that customers rate chat as one of the top channels for satisfaction, ease of use, and likelihood to recommend. Not only can customers receive quick and convenient support, but 74% of chat interactions are resolved with the first contact.
With the ongoing introduction of new technology and customer-centric approaches to service delivery, live chat customer service is bound to keep getting better. Organizations that don't currently offer chat support are missing out on significant benefits for themselves and their customers.
How NICE can assist with live chat customer service.
NICE CXone, the world’s #1 cloud customer experience platform, transforms your call center software – empowering exceptional agent and customer experiences: every channel, every time. NICE Advanced Chat and Cobrowse for CXone enables businesses to deliver the experiences that have made chat one of the top support channels. Read about the success one of our clients experienced with our chat solution here.
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Any digital channel
Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.
Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
Empowered agents
CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.
Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management
With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.
