Live Chat and Technical Support: Make it Work with These 5 Tips

Using live chat to assist cus­tomers with tech­ni­cal sup­port issues may sound like a thorny com­bi­na­tion, espe­cially if you have a com­plex prod­uct or ser­vice that reps in your call cen­ter typ­i­cally han­dle. How­ever, live chat is a great medium for tech­ni­cal sup­port cus­tomer ser­vice – espe­cially if your prod­uct or ser­vice is accessed online. Cus­tomer ser­vice, par­tic­u­larly in tech­ni­cal sup­port, is increas­ingly becom­ing avail­able on numer­ous multi-channel plat­forms, and live chat is an effi­cient, per­son­al­ized way to help cus­tomers and strengthen your product’s reputation.

To make sure that your cus­tomer sup­port team is well-equipped to han­dle cus­tomer ser­vice through live chat, incor­po­rate these five tips into your train­ing program.

Live Chat Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Tip #1: Ask and you shall receive

In live chat, you’re rely­ing on short snip­pets of text, and you don’t have the lux­ury of voice into­na­tions to help make a point. You may be deal­ing with frus­trated cus­tomers who don’t know how to describe the prob­lem very well, so it’s con­tin­gent upon the tech­ni­cal cus­tomer ser­vice rep to know how to ask the right ques­tions. Be pre­cise and keep the ques­tions sim­ple – this will help you guide the cus­tomer to the actual issue and will save time in the process. Work with your team to for­mu­late tem­plate ques­tions that help diag­nose com­mon prob­lems, so that it’s easy for your team to nar­row down the issues and elim­i­nate confusion.

Live Chat Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Tip #2: Keep jar­gon to a minimum

Even with tech­ni­cal prod­ucts that your cus­tomers may be famil­iar with, you can’t assume how well they know the ter­mi­nol­ogy. Remem­ber, live chat cus­tomer sup­port lim­its how much you can express and learn from the cus­tomer, so it’s best to be clear and use com­mon, rather than jargon-y words when assist­ing customers.

Live Chat Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Tip #3: A pic­ture can tell a thou­sand words

If your prod­uct is cloud-based or includes soft­ware, make sure you equip your team with remote desk­top tools that allow your cus­tomer ser­vice team to visu­ally see the prob­lem by trans­mit­ting the customer’s desk­top to the rep’s screen. Using remote desk­top tools can save time and elim­i­nate frus­tra­tion by allow­ing your reps to see the customer’s screen and diag­nose the issue, with­out repeat­edly ask­ing the cus­tomer to describe the problem.

Live Chat Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Tip #4: Per­son­al­ize the experience

Live chat allows you to per­son­al­ize the cus­tomer ser­vice inter­ac­tion since the cus­tomer is already online, so take advan­tage of this fea­ture by mak­ing sure your reps have a photo of them­selves next to their name in the chat box, and that they use their real name. A photo and name builds trust and helps rein­force to your cus­tomers that they are being helped by a real per­son, and not just an auto­mated system.

Close the deal in the same chat session

Endear your cus­tomers even fur­ther to you by mak­ing sure your reps try to “close the deal” dur­ing the same chat ses­sion, even if it takes longer. You want to avoid incon­ve­nienc­ing your cus­tomers by requir­ing them to log on mul­ti­ple times, or pick up the phone and call while they’re resolv­ing their issue(s). In your train­ing pro­to­col, pri­or­i­tize suc­cess over swift chat ses­sions. Your cus­tomers will appre­ci­ate it.

Live chat can be enjoy­able for your agents and cus­tomers with the right tools and training

As with many forms of tech­ni­cal cus­tomer sup­port, live chat comes down to how well your team is trained and equipped; if you train them thor­oughly and give them the right tools, chances are, they’ll enjoy assist­ing cus­tomers with live chat, which your cus­tomers will notice. If you neglect train­ing and estab­lish­ing pro­to­cols, both your team and cus­tomer sup­port rep­u­ta­tion will suf­fer. Make live chat work for you by incor­po­rat­ing our above tips.