7 Key Live Chat Metrics to Monitor for Continual, Qualitative Customer Service Performance

This vector image demonstrates the viability of live-chat-based customer service — offering real time customer support as and when customers need it.

Whether go-global or functioning in niche markets, maximization of customer acquisition & retention efforts brings long-term advantage to your global sales market gains/financial legacy; with technological-advancement and the opening-up of global brand-consumer relationship opportunities — leading to worldwide selling/purchasing of products/services — an omnichannel service solution is vital.

“Consumers utilize omnichannel communication to connect with commercial sellers — meaning a gap that once was is being successfully-bridged between product/service providers & consumers.”

As such, customer access to omnichannel communication is crucial; you can find out more info. on its advantages and key tips by checking out Callnovo’s guide on how to ensure seamless omnichannel experiences. If your global corporation is providing omnichannel customer support, then — in real time — you’re already on your way to wide sales growth & success. To compliment the above, let’s check out live web chat, its importance, and how your global corporation can ensure continual support that successfully-improves CS quality, leading to long-term customer retention growth/brand success.

Live Web Chat Support

Key Stats & Advantages

According to Callnovo Contact Center:

“Live chat offers an extremely-efficient, simple CS experience, ensuring customers receive rapid sales/support assistance that meets their service expectations as/when needed.”

Live web chat ensures a significant portion of your customers receive CS via live chat as their preferred means of connecting with you, building your customer base with long-term brand loyalty benefits based on the brand ambassadorship dividends you enjoy due to customers telling others about their positive customer experiences (CX). Essentially, live web chat is beneficial to reaching that niche consumer demographic that prefers such a comm. channel for contact with your CS support team.

Here’s some key statistics:

• 43% of the total global population itself (regardless of age group) has been proven to prefer live web chat for CS connections.
  That’s high in comparison to other telecom. channels — meaning significant brand reach & loyalty growth, leading to substantial global sales market success.
• Did you know: on a typical company website, 15% of visitors utilize live chat for company contact?
  This means: on average, 150 website visitors out of 1,000 are prone to contact you for pre-sales/post-sales support; though the percentage may seem small, this is significant yearly as it means long-term sales & market share incrementation against competitors.
• How about the fact that live chat increases sales opportunities by approx. 513% amongst customers?
  That’s right; by implementing live web chat support, you can observe high increases in sales conversions — meaning greater sales success and a competitive edge in the global market.

To compliment the above, several short-and-long-term market advantages to live chat CS & support exist:

• Greater ROI — since real-time CS and handling multiple chat tickets at once significantly-reduces service costs while improving sales; by implementing live web chat customer communication support, your business can increase ROI approx. 300%.
• Sales Incrementation — as live web chat increases sales conversion rates by 23%+.
• Better Sales Market Competition — since most global brands haven’t caught on to live chat benefits, meaning you can beat competition by increasing your customers’ satisfaction through convenient, quick live web chat CS.
• Heightened Long-term Customer Loyalty — as fantastic live chat CS increases customer satisfaction and the positive view customers have about you, creating long-term customer relationships worth 10x the value of 1st purchases.

Key Live Chat Metrics

So you can maximize on the above-mentioned benefits via successful live chat customer support implementation, it’s vital to ensure you maintain customer standards & expectations while offering such support — as it affords consistent service that gradually-increments brand reputation & loyalty while increasing global sales, leading to long-standing market competition & success. Let’s look at 7 key live chat metrics/key performance indicators (KPI) so you can successfully-maintain consumers’ service expectations, ensuring customer-centric service that leads to global, long-term sales success.

Total Number of Chats

Total number of chats within the key live chat metrics distinguishes chat session success from the total chats; the more engaged chats indicate your business has effectively-engaged website visitors. This live chat metric also determines the types of customer inquiries your CSRs receive. When customers have product, service, or website issues, a surge in initiated chats will show up.

Here’re some tips:

• During analysis, if you see almost all inquiries are related to specific info., either create a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page that covers all details — or, cover such details on the most visited pages.
• Check the number of chats — as well as the chat content in the chat history.

Average Wait Time (AWT)

The longer customers wait, the lower their felt value; knowing how long it takes your customer service representatives (CSRs) to answer live web chats helps you to understand how to increase chat response time efficiency to build better CX. AWT — a.k.a. Average Speed of Answer (ASA) — is the average time consumers have to wait in-queue; this differs based on average handle time. A 3rd party card issuer’s internal study found that customers are typically-willing to wait a max. of 13 minutes for support. Measuring wait/queue time gives you insight into whether your chat support is over-utilized and not at peak performance; not being at peak performance is counter-intuitive — as live web chat support should let CS teams handle chats simultaneously, reducing queue time significantly.

Here’re some tips to reduce ASA:

• Increase the number of concurrent chats currently permitted to be handled.
• Automatically-route chats across each necessary department for quicker responses.
• Use canned messages to reduce response time/chat duration.

Average Resolution Time (ART)

ART — the average time taken by CSRs to close chats successfully — is crucial within live chat metrics; a.k.a. average handle time, ART promotes lesser averages — meaning: the lesser the average, the lesser amount of time used to resolve customer issues — which positively impacts the customer satisfaction rate. If ART is high, your CSRs are handling/juggling too many chats/tasks at a time.

Follow these tips to maintain low ART:

• Integrate live chat where customers visit the most.
• Train CSRs with strong soft skills to effectively-handle chats.
• Use canned responses for faster resolution.
• Route chats to the right personnel for quicker responses.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

Research shows: 60% of businesses report an average of 15%-30% in performance improvement after measuring FCR for 1+ years. FCR is highly-important — as it measures CSR ability to resolve customer requests during 1st initial contact — with no follow-up needed. Please note: FCR is generally-associated with customer satisfaction — as the higher your FCR rate, the more satisfied customers are — driving customer loyalty.

Since live chat is highly-preferred, providing real-time analytics that deliver effective resolution of customer inquiries, increasing customer satisfaction, here’re tips on how to improve FCR:

• Train your CSRs to achieve improved FCR.
• Measure FCR across all communication channels to improve (1) efficiency on channels that lack high FCR, and (2) ultimately overall customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is the most rad KPI that directly-measures satisfaction levels; to measure CSAT, CSAT surveys are offered post-service, showcasing questions that determine how satisfied customers are with specific products, services, and/or brand interactions.

Here’s an example:

• How would you rate your overall satisfaction with your received service?

This straightforward question (measuring satisfaction via a 1-to-5 star selection referencing “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied”) gives your CS team a clear indication of immediate satisfaction levels. This is the main purpose of CSAT, allowing your team to determine how best to improve service.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

While CSAT measures satisfaction, NPS measures brand loyalty — via an index ranging from -100 to 100. This key live chat metric indicates how:

• satisfied customers are,
• loyal they are towards your company, and
• likely they are to recommend you to others.

As such, NPS surveys ask customers, for example, “How likely are you to recommend our brand’s products/services to others?” Based on each score, customers are categorized as:

• detractors (0–6),
• passives (6–8), and
• promoters (9–10).
  The NPS score is then calculated.

As acquiring new customers is 5-to-25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones, here’re tips to follow:

• Engage detractors to determine why they’re dissatisfied with your brand.
• Engage promoters to find out what can be improved — as they provide reliable feedback.

Missed Chats

Live chat uses analytics power that is actively available to prospects/consumers; if CSRs miss out on chats, your brand reputation will be negatively-impacted. A 3rd party mentions: 51% of consumers expect your business to be available 24/7/365. As such, if your team misses many chats, your company either doesn’t have enough resources to handle chats effectively — or, your CSRs aren’t effectively-deployed.

Here’re tips to combat missed chats:

• Use chatbots to engage customers at all times, able to answer FAQs, as some customer convos. can be resolved automatically.
• Balance chats with chat bots & human interaction, letting bots handle basic queries and CSRs handle complex queries.

Callnovo’s Omnichannel Outsourcing Solutions

A demonstration of omnichannel outsourcing solutions that provide global brands’ customers the opportunity to contact such brands as and when needed — affording strong, long-term customer retention, brand loyalty, and a competitive edge in global sales markets against competitors.

To compliment the above-mentioned guide on live chat metrics, Callnovo Contact Center can support you with fantastic omnichannel outsourcing solutions, ensuring top-tier CX, leading to heightened customer acquisition/retention and long-term brand loyalty/sales success.

Some key advantages:

• High-quality Expertise — quality service personnel skilled in areas as:
  customer-centric enthusiasm/service attitude,
  strong communication skills,
  customer service soft-skills,
  intuitive logical thinking skills,
  complex product/service knowledge, and
  acute management/operations skills.
• Always-available Service — maximizing customer satisfaction/CX by continually-meeting customers’ needs without limits.
• Omnichannel Support — accessible, rapid, always-ready support through all channels, leading to enhanced CX, influencing long-term brand ambassadorship/loyalty.
• Native Language Support — meeting customers’ needs efficiently, conforming to cultural expectations, improving customer loyalty.

Conclusion

Through continually-superb CS via the proper monitoring of the above-mentioned live chat metrics, your CSRs can maintain customer standards & expectations while offering such support, affording consistent service that gradually-increments brand reputation & loyalty while increasing global sales. To help you succeed, Callnovo offers a comprehensive omnichannel outsourcing solution with customer-centricity in mind to meet your customers’ CS expectations through fantastic experiences that fortify strong brand growth/loyalty, securing long-term sales success.