Deliver the best online chat experience Online chat meets a broad spectrum of customer needs including rapid, personalized, and timely communications through direct interaction. Chat is increasingly preferred among a rapidly growing segment of online consumers. This preference may be so significant in those segments that other traditional forms of communication are no longer a factor. That said, leading companies continue to maintain customer service channel choice while simultaneously encouraging customers to migrate to online support and chat.

There is tremendous opportunity for companies that launch online sales chat well. Here are four things to consider when optimizing your chat offering:

1. Migrate your customers to chat – save money Online chat is a cost-effective channel that reduces overall contact center costs by reducing average interaction costs. Enabling customers to easily access support online can reduce future calls. But in order for online chat to prove beneficial for both customers and website owners, chat needs to be easy to use, provide lots of functionality, deliver near zero wait times, and be accurate—all while properly conveying a company’s personality and brand. Several tactics can be used to promote online chat and attract your customers to this service channel option. These include:

■ Provide incentives for your customers to use or try online chat

■ Increase your web chat usability – make it easy to find and easy to use

■ Promote your online chat option through traditional customer service channels such as email or frontline 1-800 support

■ Understand the difference between reactive vs. proactive chat and use appropriately

TELUS International | Global Outsourcing Insights

A well-executed chat offering improves both Customer Satisfaction and ROIAs consumers continue to move their shopping and customer support requests online, there’s tremendous opportunity for companies with a web presence to grow their customer base and provide top-notch customer service and sales support within the online environment. Forrester Research predicts that U.S. online retail sales will reach nearly $250 billion by 2014. Supporting customers online while they research and purchase a product makes a lot of sense. Yet surprisingly, few companies offer online chat specifically to support sales. And when it is offered, there is still a lot of room to improve the overall customer experience.

Client snapshot – how chat improved the bottom line For a leading global computer manufacturer, TELUS International pioneered the creation of an online chat sales channel. Within weeks of launching, the client realized that chat was a source of untapped revenue, completely exceeding their expectations:

■ First month alone, chat sales program resulted in $2M in revenue with 50 agents

■ Chat enabled “assisted” online sales with higher up-sells and cross-sells

■ Revenue margin 30% higher for chat compared to voice

■ Revenue per hour (RPH) and margin per contact (MPC) continue to exceed targets

■ Higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores achieved over voice

■ Little customer resistance to using chat with high chat volumes during hours of operation

■ Better customer feedback; chat customers were more responsive, answering post satisfaction surveys more often than voice customers

■ Now has 4 chat programs (both reactive and proactive) in place with TELUS International

Online Chat: the next big customer service and sales channel.

2. Train for chat – deliver on your brand promiseTraining for online chat specifically is one the most important things you can do to offer an optimal customer experience. A good telesales agent is not necessarily a good chat sales agent. Educate agents on the differences between chat and other forms of communication. And be sure to invest in writing skills. In addition to correct grammar, the ability to deliver on your company’s brand promise is essential to maintain a professional end-customer experience. Whether hiring specifically for chat, or training existing agents for chat, training should cover:

■ The company’s web-based customer contact strategy

■ Performance objectives for the chat agent (e.g. how will they be measured?)

■ The actual chat platform technology used in the call center

■ The company’s policy regarding the use of “canned” vs. free-form responses

■ Policies regarding chat writing style

■ Chat-related policies and functions around co-browsing, document sharing, page pushing

■ Corporate privacy policies

3. Staff for chat – avoid long wait times and frustrated customers

Experience shows that well-trained and well-equipped agents can handle multiple chats simultaneously due to the time it takes customers to type their questions. When staffing for online chat, keep in mind that customer expectations around using online chat is real-time response (answers provided within 30 seconds). Long initial wait times to reach an agent or delayed responses between answers are often not acceptable. Other factors to consider when staffing for chat include whether you plan to offer proactive or reactive chat (or both), your posted days/hours of operation, and the complexity of your products/solutions.

4. Measure chat – find the metrics that really matterLike most contact center metrics, the metrics used to measure chat must promote a balance between productivity and quality. Traditional metrics like average response time (time between customer question and agent response) or the number of agent chats per hour/shift need to be combined with other quality metrics that the agent can control. These other metrics can include:

■ Accuracy of response – gauged by the accuracy of the chat transcript

■ Quality of response – gauged by a quality evaluation of the chat transcript

Learn more

As a premier provider of contact center

and BPO solutions, TELUS International

successfully manages the customer care and

sales support requirements of some of the

world’s largest and most respected brands.

Backed by a multi-billion dollar telecommuni-

cations company, TELUS International

has the financial stability and communications

expertise to support your business.

Our track record covers:■ Hiring, training and staffing for chat■ Sharing and validating best practices

for chat■ Implementing chat technology in the

contact center■ Measuring and benchmarking

chat success

TELUS, the TELUS logo and the future is friendly are trademarks of TELUS Corporation, used under licence. © TELUS 2011. 11_00040

Connect with us today for your global outsourcing solutions.

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North America toll-free: 1.800.306.1586

Email: information@telusinternational.com

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■ Contact resolution rate – gauged by successfully closing the chat conversation

■ Customer satisfaction – gauged via post-contact surveys (typically email based)

Benchmarking study for best practicesTo enhance our own clients’ use of online chat as a customer service and sales channel, TELUS International commissioned a benchmarking study using independent consulting firm, SPOT Consulting. Sixty in-depth chat sessions were conducted with six Fortune 500 companies to analyze the qualitative metrics of an ideal chat sales session. The complete white paper is available for download at telusinternational.com