Are you thinking about implementing Live Chat in your contact center? There are some things you should consider before rushing in - things that will help you decide if Live Chat is really the right solution for your organization.

1. What to Consider Before You
Implement
Larisa Reilly Thomas

2. What We Did When We
Implemented
Contractually obligated to offer Live
Chat.
 Customer Service department was not
prepared to offer Live Chat.
 Started from scratch with a fast
approaching deadline for compliance.


3. Is it Right for You?

Ask yourself the following
questions:
 Is it right for your organization?
 Will it save you time and money?
 Can you use canned responses
or will each response have to be
unique?
 Do your competitors use live
chat?
 Will live chat differentiate you?
Or are you just catching up with
the rest of the industry?

4. Focus on Your Customers
 Is it right for your
customer base?
 Will they use it?
 Are your services
already oriented to the
type of customer who is
likely to use newer
technologies?

5. Create a Plan for Success
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What are your
organizational goals for live
chat?
Does live chat easily
integrate will your already
established customer
channels?
Will your customer service
center be able to easily
adapt to live chat?
Is there a real business
need for live chat?

6. Who has the Best Solution?

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Do any of your current vendors
offer a live chat solution?
Have you done the research to
find the best in class
providers?
Does the solution support
multiple languages? Is this
important to you?
How long has the vendor been
offering a live chat solution?
Does the solution allow for
multimedia queuing?
What monitoring is available?

7. Soft Launch

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Roll out to a select group
of agents.
Limit the hours live chat
is available.
Consider limiting to
premium customers only
if this is feasible.
Training, training, training
.
Don’t implement until
your ready.

8. Help Your Agents Succeed
Put the emphasis on
quality of
communication.
 Get feedback from the
agents during the
transition period.
 Provide an adequate
canned response
database.
 Keep agents motivated.


9. Track the Success & Failure
Create your own best
practices.
 Set metric goals that are
realistic.
 Report and give
constant feedback to
your organization.
 Ask your customers for
feedback.


10. Test & Monitor
Fully test before
deployment.
 Overstaff for initial launch.
 Monitor the interactions to
make sure they meet
quality standards.
 Be prepared to make
changes.


11. Market Live Chat
Promote it prominently
on the website.
 Include link to live chat
in emails.
 Direct customers to live
chat via the IVR of your
phone system.


12. Look for New Ways to Apply
Live Chat to Business Practices
Provide service during nontraditional hours of operation.
 Add tools to canned responses
that agents can push to
customers via live chat.
 Use chat to help customers
navigate website via cobrowsing.
 Use it internally to aid
communication between
supervisors and agents.


13. Is Live Chat the Right Thing For
You?
It’s not just a cute marketing idea. Used
correctly by your customer service
representatives, live chat can be a powerful
tool for communicating with customers.
 It’s also cost effective. If done
properly, your employees can handle more
customer interactions in the same amount
of time than they can via the phone.
 It can improve your resolution of service
questions - it’s especially perfect for quick
and easy FAQs.
