Being part of a customer live chat service team is not an easy job. They represent a business, and they have to remain professional, courteous and helpful throughout their customer interactions. They need to provide in-depth product information, some technical guidance or just simply lend a sympathetic, yet impartial, ear during complaints.

Then there are targets and presenting the company values positively for 8 hours a day and, well, we already said it’s not an easy job.

It is crucial that live chat agents continue their excellence in the interest of both customers and the business they represent. Knowing how your live chat team is performing will enhance the delivery of great customer service too.

Why Measure?

As a rule, measuring allows you to gain a deeper understanding of what you’re measuring. Then measuring the success of your customer live chat service team will allow you to understand where you need to improve to make the interaction with the customer more positive and engaging. It helps in building deeper customer relationships and fostering brand-building efforts.

Unless you measure the success of your live chat support team and fine-tune your strategy for business growth, it would be tough to find out what’s working and what isn’t, and what to do to improve it further.

Let’s look at some of the major live chat performance metrics to measure the success of your live chat customer support team.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT Score)

As the name indicates, this score determines how happy your customer is with the service they just received. This is one of the accurate benchmarks of customer satisfaction. Why? Because you just ask them straight, and they will tell you directly.

The initial step is to ask customers questions such as “how satisfied were you with the experience?” and then a response scale. Responses of customers are recorded and it can be used to take immediate actions to improve customer experience.

Usually, the CSAT is graded on a 1-5 or 1-10 star scale. An effective way to do the survey is to set it in the live chat window to automatically pop up once a chat is concluded. It can also be sent to customers by email after the live chat interaction.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a customer loyalty metric with an index ranging generally from 0 to 10. This score helps to find out how loyal the customers are towards your business and how likely they are to recommend your brand to their family and friends.

It allows you to categorise customers into three groups – promoters (9 or 10), passives (7 or 8) and detractors (below 6). The score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

NPS is seen as a top popular measure of customer success and is a significant metric for any customer live chat service team.

Average Resolution Time (ART)

ART refers to the average time taken by agents to resolve a query successfully. Also known as average handle time, a low score indicates that your team is doing a good job of handling live chat queries efficiently. A low ART could also mean your agent’s knowledge base is good, any internal transfers are being enacted quickly and an agent handles simultaneous multiple chats smoothly.

On the contrary, a high ART score might indicate that your agents need more training and support. If the ART is consistently high, then you might need to look at agent performance to make sure other parameters like CSAT and NPS are good. You need to make sure your customers are not ending the conversation early without the answers they are looking for.

ART is calculated by adding the chat duration in minutes to the total number of minutes spent in follow-up and dividing them by the number of chats.

First Response Time (FRT)

This indicates how quickly your live chat agents are picking up your site visitors’ chats. This is a significant parameter for the customer because customers turn to live chat because they want a quicker response when compared to phone calls or emails. No listening to hold music or wait for weeks for an email response

Low first response times improve customer satisfaction. If you monitor the FRT for each agent, it will help you identify who needs additional resources and training to better the response time. Once you know why your FRT is going up, you would be able to take steps to lower it through hiring more agents or tech upgrades or enhancing product performance.

Chat Abandonment Rate (CAR)

Chats are abandoned in two ways – either they never get picked by an agent or the customer exits the chat window before the chat can initiate. A high CAR may be due to a high wait time or first response time.

If both your response time and chat abandonment rate are high, you might need to look at more staffing or expand hours that will help lighten the load. Techniques like auto chat distribution and auto chat acceptance to make sure chat requests are not missed by agents.

Final measure

To accomplish the customer satisfaction goals of live chat support, it is inevitable that we measure these live chat metrics and analytics. Measuring the success of your customer live chat service is more than just a reality check. It is indeed an actionable step towards driving continuous improvement and setting well-defined customer service goals.

Also Read: Making Your Customers Happy – The Live Chat Way

• Author Details

Author Details

Tracey Horey

CEO of Live Chat Agent

Tracey Horey is a 20 year veteran of the Automotive industry and has been writing Automotive content and helping Dealerships optimise their digital space for over 15 years. Her experience working with various sized dealerships and her passion for exploring and understanding new tools for the auto industry has given her an in depth understanding of the challenges all dealerships face in a changing landscape.

accounts@livechatagent.com.au

1800 332 428