Agent Development - Best Practices. Agent Development - Best Practices

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Agent Development - Best Practices

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Introduction

Chat agents have a tremendous impact on your online business. Their interactions with potential customers create lasting impressions, so when customers request help, it's up to your agents to assure them that you value their business. Live chat is a powerful tool, but it requires skilled agents to use it properly.

Overview

This Best Practice guide offers strategies for improving the selling and service skills of your Live Chat representatives. It leverages the experience LivePerson has garnered from helping 7,000 customers worldwide deploy and use Live Chat.

Each strategy is presented as an analysis of a Chat scenario, along with our recommended best practice in the discussed scenario.

The following tables describes the Best Practices presented in this guide.

Best Practice How is it done? 1 Make customers feel

welcome.

Make sure your agents have proper Canned Responses for greetings and closings. Use Enhanced Canned Responses to personalize your communications with dynamic data.

2 Make sure the customer's needs are met.

Use follow-up and probing questions. Avoid the need for customers to repeat a question. Develop selling scripts, with appropriate Canned

Responses for your agents to use so that they can guide visitors

through the product selection process.

3 Don't just answer questions, guide customers through a sale. Ensure chat agents are thoroughly familiar with your website and product line.

Agents should provide the requested information but also offer to help the customer place the order, as well as identify opportunities to promote ancillary products or add-ons.

4 Keep Visitors engaged while you research their questions.

Use On-Hold Messages to keep the conversation going and assure the customer that you are still there.

5 Keep chats clean and user-friendly.

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1. Make customers feel welcome

What will you learn?

In this section you will learn how to ensure that your agents welcome the customers they are chatting with in a professional and courteous manner, as well as ensure them that they are chatting with professionals who can address any issue. Canned Responses for greeting and closing, as well as personalized responses using macros, can help you create an inviting and professional environment for your customers.

What features should you pay attention to?

This section deals with the Canned Responses feature. You need to be familiar with the

Canned Responses that are defined for your account, as well as the procedure of creating new

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A practical example

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Now let's look at a similar chat, after the Canned Response has been enhanced with the use of macros. The agent presents herself by her screen name, then greets the customer using a macro that inserts the customer's name (as it was typed by him into the Chat window). This chat instills more trust, as well as a sense of welcoming. LivePerson's Enhanced Canned

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To summarize

Make sure your Canned Responses include proper greetings and closings. Enhance your

Canned Responses to include macros with the customer's name, the agent's name or a product

name.

How is it done?

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2. Make sure customers’ needs are met

What will you learn?

In this section you will learn how to use follow-up questions to ensure the agent is accurately reflecting the visitor's concerns as well as add efficiency to the chat.

What features should you pay attention to?

This section deals with the Canned Responses feature. You need to be familiar with the use of

Canned Responses.

A practical example

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The customer is interested in a certain type of refrigerator. The agent doesn't notice that the customer has requested a certain type of product and responds by using a Canned Response with a link to the company's product page:

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To summarize

Canned Responses are an extremely helpful, time-saving tool, but there is always a need to

thoroughly read the customer's request and provide value-added assistance. Train your agents to be familiar with your products and services, as well as with the Canned Responses they have at their disposal. They should be trained to identify situations in which a Canned Response does not provide any additional value and follow-up questions are needed. This can shorten the process, resulting in higher customer satisfaction.

How is it done?

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3. Don't just answer questions, guide customers through a

sale

What will you learn?

In this section you will learn how to spot up-sell opportunities while chatting with a customer or a prospect. Alerts to your agents about the availability of certain products and similar products that should be offered if a product is missing can clue your agents that they can try to close a sale even if the customers' initial request cannot be met.

What features should you pay attention to?

This section mentions the Operator Alert feature. You should be familiar with this feature, the possible alerts you can set and the way alerts are displayed in the Agent Console.

A practical example

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To summarize

Answering a customer's question is not enough! Alerts will help your agents to up sell, cross-sell or offer alternate products. Alerts in the Agent Console can also help agents identify targets of a marketing campaign, so they may offer incentives or customer deals if customers meet certain criteria.

How is it done?

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4. Keep visitors engaged

What will you learn?

In this session you will learn how to keep your customers engaged in the chat in the event that the agent must put the visitor on hold to research an answer or complete a procedure.

What features should you pay attention to?

This section deals with On Hold Messages. You should be familiar with the characteristics and use of these messages.

A practical example

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To summarize

Use On Hold Messages that are displayed to visitors when the agent does not respond during a chat session for a specified amount of time. These messages use the same fonts and colors as the agent's text.

How is it done?

Click here to learn about System Messages.

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5. Keep chats clean and user-friendly

What will you learn?

In this session you will learn how to make sure that your chats are clean-looking and user- friendly. Direct customers to a specific page on the website or send them documents using clickable links that are presented as text.

What features should you pay attention to?

This section deals with the Knowledgebase and Send Link features. You should be familiar with the characteristics and usage of these features.

A practical example

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Now let's look at the same chat; this time the agent uses Send a Link to direct the customer to the same page in a cleaner and more user-friendly fashion. The agent also sends the customer a relevant Knowledgebase article in the same manner.

To summarize

Agents should avoid using long, un-clickable or cumbersome links. The Send a Link feature enables the agent to type clickable text and send it as a link.

How is it done?

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