Live chat used to be the fastest growing method of communication with customers, but that position is now being held by chatbots. It seems like more and more tasks are becoming automated these days. This includes contact center activity - but are customers willing to accept this? Here’s everything you need to know about live chat and chatbots in your contact center, so you can make the best decision for your operation.

Live Chat

A 2014 British customer satisfaction survey by eDigital showed that the majority of customers preferred live chat over email, social media, apps, SMS, and telephone when communicating with call centers. When done properly, live chat can improve customer interactions. There are a number of benefits live chat interactions provide for the company as well.

Experienced agents are able to handle three or four live chats at the same time, which increases their efficiency when compared to telephone conversations. Live chat also allows agents to be able to paste their answers from a variety of pre-typed answers in order to respond to the most frequent customer concerns as quickly as possible. Live chat also costs less compared to telephone conversations.

Chatbots

Chatbots take cost savings even further than live chat. They also have the ability to fully automate the contact center experience by using artificial intelligence (AI) to carry on conversations with your customers. A common example of a chatbot is a dialogue box that pops up when you arrive at a website and asks what it can help you with today. Bots create cost savings in your call center by answering hundreds of thousands of service requests at a time.

In order to make the best use of chatbots, there are four crucial tips for integrating chatbots into your call center.

1. Chatbots are most effective when they are used alongside human call center agents, not as a replacement for them.
2. Start implementing chatbots sooner rather than later to benefit the most from this new technology. Prepare to invest in them and learn as much as you can about how to use them to your advantage.
3. Make sure the chatbot you choose can handle many different call center scenarios. You don’t want your customers to be able to tell when they are chatting with a bot.
4. Develop your own team of resources to help you launch and maintain your chatbots. Your call center should have a team of employees whose responsibility is the optimal functioning of the bots.

Whether deciding on live chat, chatbots, or a combination of the two, you’ll want to make sure your customers approve. Many customers would rather chat with a real person than a bot. If you’re not sure what your customers think, you can survey them using KOVA’s Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback. Verint Media Recorder Customer Feedback can help you gather valuable information from your customers through IVR or email surveys. KOVA has a long history of providing outstanding customer service and expert software solutions. To learn more about how we can help you improve your contact center experience, contact us today.