We've got a solid process for managing chats for a diverse group of websites.
- We go through a detailed on boarding process to get the info we need. We study the ins and outs of your site, and also ask questions as needed before starting the chat service.
- If we don't know the answer to a question, we are honest with the visitor (visitors appreciate transparency rather than halfway answers). We then offer to connect them with someone on your team via email to get an answer asap.
As simple as this sounds, the attention and transparency goes a long way based on what we're seeing.
As far as scaling, we've got numbers around what it takes to manage a customer at various website traffic levels (prices are based on website visitors), so I've got an idea of how we'll scale for customers vs chat team.
What about a way to escalate to my own team via chat? That way you field general inquiries and make it look alive (chat that goes to "leave a message" just sucks), but the moment someone is getting serious or has an in-depth question, you can tx them to me.
I think this is s good idea. At my last company, we did live chat, and it was very popular. But the constant interruption to our few developers wasn't feasible. And later, it was hard to get salesguys to make sure they were really always available. Taking the front load off is excellent.
Right now, we don't escalate via live chat but instead connect them via email quickly.
The bulk of our customers don't seem to be using live chat now, so doing an escalation / transfer process via live chat could be a source of confusion and friction. For now, we'll stick to email connections (working well), but it's on my list.
How are you thinking about scaling it? How to understand every websites issues and provide a live Customer Service?