Today, a successful customer experience is about meeting people where they are.

We've always highlighted our key idea when it comes to customer messaging: send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, in the right location. And now, one channel has more prospective clients than any other: live chat. Consider how you communicate with others on a daily basis. You probably use iMessage and WhatsApp to communicate with family and friends, and you probably spend more time on Slack chatting with colleagues than in person. Customers expect to be able to communicate with businesses via messaging because we communicate with people via messaging all day.

Here are some best practises for increasing the quality of live chat communication and providing better customer service.

Avoid Passive Writing and Instead Be Active!

Politicians enjoy speaking in the passive voice. "Mistakes were made," became a campaign slogan during Bill Clinton's presidency and has been utilised by a number of politicians since to get out of tricky situations.

Removing personal pronouns, like in the above phrase, is fundamentally a strategy for avoiding accountability. So, although this may work in politics, it should never be utilised in a contact centre. This brings us to our third live chat best practise, which is to be engaged in your live chat.

Using this approach, ensure that advisers take personal responsibility for a customer's issue and use phrases like "I" and "you" to give clients the impression that someone inside the company is personally trying to remedy their issue.

Also, utilise active verbs to convey to the consumer that their issue is a top priority for the organisation, much as an adviser is supposed to do over the phone. Saying "your contact is a priority" will certainly upset the client since they will be aware of the amount of interactions an adviser receives each day and may believe they are being misled to. As a result, an adviser should demonstrate them using active language.

Consider the following statements: "This will be handled by [X]" and "I will ask [X] to process this for you." The second phrase, with activity and personality, is clearly an improved version.

But how can advisers assure that they do not go from active to passive mode?

To accomplish this, Neil Martin recommends the "by robots" test, which works by having advisors mentally add the words "by robots" to the end of each sentence. If the statement still makes sense, the advisors' words will be in the passive voice. If they are unable to add "by robot" to the end of each sentence, it indicates that it is active and the advisor can press Send.

Express Genuine Empathy

Empathy is just as vital on live chat as it is over the phone. This excellent practise for live chat is frequently overlooked. Neil uses a significant complaint made to a railway operator via live chat to highlight how this lack of empathy may harm a brand's relationship with its consumers. According to the complaint:

A member of your employees forced my daughter to off the train at 9.30 p.m. yesterday night at an unstaffed, deserted stop because she couldn't show her ticket, despite her explanation that she'd misplaced her ticket and didn't have any money to get a replacement. This was really disturbing for her, and I'm shocked that you'd order a teenage girl to leave the train so late at night."

A response to this message that should NOT be permitted would be something like this:

"Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience." In order to investigate, I need to know where your daughter got off the train."

The adviser who makes such a remark will have to work hard to regain the customer's trust, since they have squandered a good chance to demonstrate that they are truly interested in what is essential to the consumer.

In reality, four significant sections of the statement that Neil found problematic are outlined below.

Our - Why not "my" or "I" instead of "our"? By using the term "our," the advisor appears to be hiding behind the brand and not accepting personal responsibility for the problem.

Any - There is no question that this circumstance created discomfort, yet the term any implies that the adviser may not have completely believed the consumer.

I'm looking for - The word require is very formal, but it also causes a sharp turn in conversation. Before any genuine empathy is shown, it's all about the company and the information needed to close this case.

Alighted is a piece of railway jargon that breaks rapport. On live chat, just as when building rapport over the phone, it is critical to mirror the customer's tone and demonstrate commonality. This principle is violated when company jargon is used.

As an alternative, another train company advisor suggested saying:

"I'm sorry to hear that, Frank." I understand how upsetting this must have been for your daughter. Could you please tell me which station your daughter got off at so that I can look into this?

This is a much better example, and the words and phrases that make this a great empathy statement are highlighted this time.

Remember, this is a chat.

Our first live chat best practise is to keep in mind that this is a discussion, not a transaction, a letter from a lawyer, or a list of terms and conditions. As a result, it must sound like a genuine dialogue between two individuals.

Neil Martin, Creative Director at The First Word, suggests asking advisors to "have a conversation with the customer on the phone, while typing what they say directly into the live chat." Request that advisors consider what they would say to a customer in person."

Avoid becoming overly formal.

According to Neil, a significant issue that many advisers have is being overly professional via chat, and he proposes asking the advisor, "Would I say this at home?" before pushing Send.

To emphasise this argument, consider the following real-life live chat message made by an adviser at a well-known utility company:

"Please give an up-to-date metre reading to aid in creating a bill for the home in which you reside."

Nobody talks like this. It is highly official, full of jargon, and way too lengthy. Each of these aspects gives the buyer the impression that they are conversing with a robot.

Why does the adviser not write what they would like to say? Perhaps something like this:

"Could you please give me your metre reading?"

For the advisor, it may be as simple as typing what they would say on the phone directly into the chat window.

Find Ways to Make the Conversation More Personal

Personalisation entails comprehending the inquiry and attempting to relate it to something the organisation already knows about the consumer, which may sound straightforward but is challenging to do in practise.

According to Mike Murphy, Account Executive at Genesys, "this type of personalization delivers that kind of wow factor, as the consumer feels 'you've thought about me, you've made me feel unique today.'"

To make it simpler for advisers to provide a personalised conversation, the contact centre should maintain track of prior interactions with clients, from how frequently they call to recent purchases and complaints.

Furthermore, when a consumer discloses information such as "I have two dogs," advisers on the live chat channel can make a note of it and register it in the knowledge management system. Advisors might then gently reference that fact during subsequent encounters to help exhibit similarity and create rapport.

Don't request too much information all at once.

Before starting a discussion, don't ask for too much information about the consumer. This may deter people from establishing a conversation in the first place.

It is best to start by asking merely their name. More information can be provided later in the discussion

Consider the customer to be a friend.

It is critical for a business to keep the discussion going in a friendly manner. Contact centres that do this frequently receive a lot of praise for never giving their customers canned robotic responses.

So, encourage live chat advisors to treat all customers as if they were friends!

Check that the Live Chat Team has the right personalities.

Hire people that have the necessary personality to work with live chat.

Allow the live chat team to be themselves rather than hiding behind the screen by writing responses formally, as if writing a letter!

It may also be beneficial to keep teams on live chat for shorter periods of time in order to keep the conversations and chat advisors fresh!

Mirror the Customer's Language Use

Mirroring language on chats is always a fantastic approach to interact with consumers, just like it is while creating rapport over the phone.

Also, on live chat, a good rule to follow is that if the customer uses emoticons, for example, we should as well!

Inform customers that webchat responses are faster than email responses.

Make live chat the most visible and prominent onsite channel for customers to contact.

If the contact centre wants customers to stop using email, inform them via an onsite message that email queries take longer to respond to and thus resolve. I know it's obvious, but it's working for us.