In my previous post,  Creating a Blueprint for Web Chat Success, I wrote about the benefits of Web chat and how to determine if your company was ready to offer this channel to your customers.  If you followed that methodology, you’ve looked at your market space, examined your customer profile and preferences, and hopefully determined that the Web chat channel is a good fit for your company’s strategic goals and vision.  But where do you go from here?   

There are multiple steps that you can take to help guarantee a successful implementation:
 

• Pick the right solution for your company…what features are most important to reach your goals
• Start smart. Your initial implementation should be a small, with a limited, flexible schedule.
• Focus on quality, not quantity. Help representatives be successful, by training them on appropriate procedures for complex issues and use a knowledgebase.  
• Track success and failure. Track metrics, ask customers for feedback, create best practices
• Test and monitor. Test the solution fully before deployment, and have backup plan if queues become overloaded.
• Market your solution. Promote chat on your website; include live help links in correspondence, and use in conjunction with phone calls to enhance customer experience.
• Look for new applications for Web chat, both externally and internally, e.g., expand service hours and the customer base that Web chat channel is offered to, implement video and co-browsing, smartphone applications, support and escalations.

Please see my presentation, Web Chat - Why, What, and How?, that goes into further detail on the steps for implementing Web chat.  The presentation includes the steps discussed in my previous post for determining whether moving forward with Web chat is the right decision for your company, as well as where we are going next in terms of customer experience. 

For those of you who have implemented Web chat, I am very interested in the impact that it has made to your company.  Did you follow any of the steps listed above?  What is your biggest lesson learned regarding the implementation?

Thanks for reading!

Janet Thalacker

Web Chat Enthusiast

Inside Strategic Consultant