5 Tips to Build Solid eCommerce Brand with Live Chat Agents: An Ultimate Guide

If you have an eCommerce store, it’s a given that you need a live chat that’s staffed with live chat agents.

Your live chat agents are responsible for your live chat success. 

Studies show that an experienced live chat agent can handle 4-6 chats in a single time. The agents behind your live chat support have immense potential to dictate your customer’s shopping experience. They are representing your brand in more ways than one. And it falls upon company managers to select quality live chat agents who are customer service experts. Their goal must be to offer a consistent experience throughout the customer journey. 

Check out the ways that you can build your eCommerce brand with live chat agents. 

1. Ensure Live Chat Agents Provide Personalized Communication 

In online shopping where physical proximity is nil, personalization becomes all the more important. When customers turn to agents to talk, talking in a personalized approach can make up for many shortcomings of online support. 

Here are some aspects to consider. 

• Start the chat in a manner that makes the customer comfortable. A simple, “Hey! This is John. How can I be of help today?”. An agent introducing themselves before proceeding can build rapport and trust. 
• Truly make the conversation one of a kin. It’s a good practice to call customers by their names. It will make them feel like individuals rather than just another query. 
• Keep the friendly feel of the conversation. Ask the customers what brought them to the website. Again, ensure you use their name. It will add some weight to an otherwise mundane conversation resulting from a robotic conversation. 
• Before ending the conversation, always offer the thank-yous. Something like, “Thanks for reaching out, Jack. We’re happy to help you and will continue doing so in the future! Have a great day!” 

2. Focus on Empathy 

No customer wants to feel like another problem. While this may seem like a very minute parameter to take into account, empathy goes a long way. Train your agents to show empathy to customers, and teach them how to listen to problems and think from their perspective. It’s the least that the customers expect from a live chat tool. 

A Harvard study mentions that the companies that were empathetic, generate 50% more earnings. It’s a given that you’ll encounter frustrated or sometimes even rude customers. But your agent’s job is to keep calm and empathize regardless. 

No matter how qualified your agent is to solve the problem, it is all pointless if he or she cannot tackle the problem with emotional intelligence. So while building a team, apply best practices to hire live chat agents. They must know how to politely handle frustrated customers, have excellent problem-solving skills, and in general, be emphatic in nature. 

3. Train Live Chat Agents for Comprehensive Knowledge 

A customer query can range from anything and everything. Your agents, as part of their jobs, need to prepare for what kind of questions they’ll come across, and what to do in case there isn’t any solution at the moment. 

Being well-versed with the company’s knowledge base can work wonders for assisting customers. You can also integrate the knowledge base with your live chat to reduce efforts in fetching the answers. 

Here are some of the things that your live chat agents must know. 

• Products Knowledge. Although you might build an easy-to-navigate website and have a clear sitemap that showcases your product offerings neatly, your customers might want to skip the effort and talk directly to the agents. In such cases, your agents need to have knowledge of your extensive product directory. 
• Shipping Policies. Train your agents for eCommerce order fulfillment, shipping charges, and approximate delivery time so they know what to answer in case a customer poses a query. 
• Return/exchange policies. Similar to shipping policies cover the policies in depth in training. A miscommunication on these topics can turn costly for your company. 
• Software tools. Give your agents training to use automation or systems to make them work faster and more efficiently and answer to maximum customers in minimum time. 

4. Have a Standardized Reply Time 

How long of a waiting time is too long? Have you ever wondered what is the acceptable time to reply to your customers? And what is the time limit live chat agents shouldn’t cross at any cost? 

You have to question these things because there might be one agent who has an average reply time of 5 minutes while another agent who has an average reply time of 20 minutes. And you don’t want your customers to have different experiences when they interact with your brand. So set a standardized reply time that your live chat agents follow throughout every location and region. 

For example, if you develop a policy that no customer should be left waiting for more than five minutes then set up reminders for a chat to ensure every customer is answered within that time frame. You can follow this via an SLA (Service-level Agreement) timer. This will also be helpful as you scale and improve your outsources live chat support to a third party.  while also keeping your customer experience intact. 

5. Make Improvements Based on Previous Customer Experiences

A lot of customers pose the same kind of questions. This gives you an opportunity to identify the common pain points and have a better way to tackle these problems. 

For example, a lot of customers may have a query about particular questions. Like “What are the shipping policies? Or By when can I expect the refund? In such cases, canned responses help agents quickly send answers by making just minor tweaks. It saves their time and eliminates the mundaneness of their jobs as they don’t have to spend time answering the same questions again and again. 

Based on the queries, agents can also the top defective products, loopholes in refund and shipping policies, and so on. Use customer feedback to further strengthen your eCommerce brand and improve the shopping experience. 

Build Solid eCommerce Brand with Live Chat Agents

The first step towards customer satisfaction is agent satisfaction. If they are content and well-trained, you can assure yourself that your customers will be well taken care of. So adopt tactics that make their tasks easier and help them be more productive so you can collaboratively build your eCommerce brand.