Infotech Lead Europe: Web chat is increasing as a channel for advisors to talk to customers in contact centers, according to a BT research.
These findings are based on a research conducted on six contact centers in the UK and India. Out of six, three were operated by BT serving enterprise customers and three run by other large enterprises.
The research acknowledges the growing contribution of webchat to customer satisfaction, employee productivity and cost reduction for contact center operators.
For customers, who start their journey online, web chat is convenient as to pick up the phone. Further benefits include a calmer and quieter working environment for advisors and fewer challenges due to regional accents and background noise. Web chat also provides a clear audit trail of customer conversations.
Nicola Millard, Customer Experience Futurologist at BT Global Services, said: “Due to an increasing number of companies offering web chat to their customers, we decided to conduct research with contact centers that have deployed it and investigate the effects on both customers and advisors.
In addition, Web chat sits comfortably alongside social media, as it allows enterprises to draw customers into a more private dialogue, where they can discuss personal details and specific issues in a one-to-one channel.
Web chat creates highly positive customer experience. Almost three quarters of advisors interviewed agreed that web chat offers customers better service compared to calls. When initiated effectively, web chat puts customers straight through to an advisor with the relevant skills.
With many customers and advisors now using social media and instant messaging in their personal life, web chat was perceived strongly in terms of ease of use, offering specific benefits such as the ability to quickly cut and paste standard information and being able to scan entire conversations to check customer needs have been met.
Overall, 88 percent of advisors said they like web chat, many of these went further and expressed very high levels of satisfaction.
