Release notes for April 30th: Hub Updates, Chat History Timeline, Integrations API Update

 

Hello SnapEngagers,

here are some updates of what the dev team has been working on in April.

If you study this post carefully you may find an easter egg revealing an upcoming feature release 😉

Hub Updates

  • We have increased the font size in the chat transcript area and updated the colours a bit to make the text more readable.
  • Previous interactions with the visitor now appear in a timeline on top of the chat transcript column and can be read in line of the chat transcript column for easier access:

  • We have enabled keyboard shortcut commands in Hub. Please note that the shortcuts now work with the Ctrl instead of the Alt key. You can find an overview of available commands on the second page of your home screen dashboard.

Resolved Hub Issues

  • Fixed an issue where the visitor location map was blinking.
  • Fixed an issue where agent alerts did not show in the chat transcript.
  • Fixed an issue where right side Contact Info Column collapsed unexpectedly. It now also has a narrower minimum width.

 

Other Updates

  • For clarity we have renamed the ‘Post API’ to ‘Integrations API‘ – no code updates are required on the client side.
  • The Integrations API now includes how the chat ended: Agent, Visitor, Time Out or No Agent Found.
  • The Channels tab access is now available to be able to be restricted from the Permissions settings.

Resolved Issues

  • Fixed an issue where sub-administrators saw a wrong ‘Free’ account type in the admin dashboard.
  • Fixed an edge case where some online chats were categorised as offline
  • Fixed an issue with the Logs API not returning cases inclusive of the end date
  • Fixed an issue where visitors in Safari private browsing mode caused errors.
  • MS Dynamics: Fixed an issue where cases were attached to inactive accounts

Your Customers Deserve More Than “Good Enough”

Improving Customer Experience for the New, Attuned Customer

Now that most businesses have an online presence, they’ve also realized how important it is to adopt a customer experience mindset. There are many benefits to going online and getting information about a product or service. Similarly, online shopping has many benefits too.

When you switch to online shopping, you don’t have to drive through traffic or terrible weather conditions. You don’t have to hunt for the exact size and color you want, only to find that it’s unavailable in the store. And you don’t have to stand in line to make payments. Shopping online makes a customer’s life a lot easier.

And even if the customer is only going online to get information about the product and not actually shopping, this is still an important service that they’re able to receive via the company’s website. Plus, going online now enables people to look at reviews that other people have written about a product, service or company and this is also valuable information to many people.

So if you want to add value to the lives of your customers, you need to make sure that you give them a good experience when they come to your website, blog and social media pages. Your marketing attempts should be people-focused. You need to recognize the thoughts and emotions going through the minds of your potential customers. And you need to make sure that these thoughts and emotions are positive in nature, at least if you want to convert more viewers into customers.

Improving Customer Experience: Information, Content, Images

What can you do in order to improve customer experience? What would help to convert a viewer of your website into a customer? There are many options. The most obvious one is to have a well-organized website where the customer will be able to find the information they are looking for. You can also work on your images and content to give your customer what they’re looking for.

  • Covering the Basics: Usually, the customer only needs basic information about a product. But you’d be surprised how many companies make it quite difficult to find. When you work at a company making a certain product or providing a certain service, the specs of that product or service become second nature to you. So you may not even realize that a customer needs to be given all this information.
  • Informational, Accessible Content: You can start with the basics. Figure out what the customer wants to know. Do a survey. It doesn’t have to be a survey on a grand scale; it can just include a few people. Get some feedback and then use it to write your website content. Also make sure that your content is written in an accessible manner so that it will be understood by the majority of people.
  • Improving Visual Experience: Images can also do a lot to improve customer experience. Most people respond well to clear, bright, beautiful images. Of course, your images have to be relevant to your business. So you can’t post an image of a beach when you’re selling real estate (unless the real estate is located on a beach). You can use images of your products and people using your products.
  • PayPal and Customer Experience: For example, consider the images used by PayPal. Now, PayPal provides an intangible service. How do you portray the transfer of money in images? PayPal solves this problem by just showing you how people are adding value to their lives with money—by buying things that they enjoy or by buying gifts for others. Each image shows people smiling. And the people portrayed belong to various races and cultures, not just one, which makes them more relatable. The result is a greatly improved customer experience.

Adding the Personal Touch via Live Chat

Going online to get information is very convenient. So is online shopping. However, if there’s one thing missing in the online experience, it’s the personal touch. Often, you can’t ask anyone for help. If you need the answer to a question, you have to refer to generic FAQs or send an email which it will take quite some time for the company to answer. This can lead to a drop in customer experience.

However, the problem is rectified by using live chat. It’s almost the same thing as talking to someone. And since most people are used to typing these days, on their keyboards as well as their phones, live chat becomes as convenient, if not more so, than actually talking to someone over the phone.

The live chat prompt which shows up in a corner of the screen is unobtrusive. And assuming that the customer service representative on the other end of the line knows their stuff, this can help to improve customer experience greatly. You can get answers to all your questions right away, without having to go through FAQs and Site Maps. Plus, the answer is personalized; it addresses the exact question that the customer has, and not generic questions that other customers might have posed in the past.

This can be helpful when the customer is still making up their mind about buying the product as well as later on, if they’re having any issues using the product. So customer experience is enhanced throughout the process of buying, owning and using the product. And more and more companies are becoming conscious of the fact that they need to keep track of the customer’s experience throughout the product’s lifetime, if they want to have repeat customers, referrals etc.

Fulfilling the Needs of the Attuned Customer

Today, a company can no longer afford to aim for “good enough,” not just because their competitors may be aiming higher but also because customers have become more savvy. There’s a difference between content which is promotional and content that is informational and customers have come to prefer the latter. This is especially true of customers who are passionate about certain products or services.

Customers have always wanted products and services that genuinely fulfill their needs. The difference is that they’ve learned to distinguish between companies which are genuinely trying to fulfill their needs and companies which are just trying to turn a profit. In other words, they’ve become more attuned to sincerity.

So the solution is not just to convince them that you’re interested in improving their experience but to give them what you promise as well. Working a little harder to improve customer experience won’t just give you a grateful customer in the short term; it will help to build your company reputation as well.

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Release Notes April 4th: Hub Beta Updates, ADA compliance improvements

Hi all,

we have been getting a lot of great feedback on the new Hub Beta, some of the issues reported by you we were already able to fix. More UI updates are currently in the works – keep checking back to see the latest changes, we’re moving fast 😉

Hub Updates:

  • Shortcuts Updates:
    • Fixed an issue where multi line Shortcut messages were cut off.
    • On enter a shortcut is now added to the input box instead of sent to the client directly.
    • The search in the Shortcuts modal also includes the message text instead of just the command.
  • Improved updating Hub when reconnecting after the computer goes to sleep.
  • Improved the display of ‘Sneak Peek’ messages not yet sent by the visitor, to make it more obvious to the agent that the message is not yet submitted.
  • The Hub browser tab title will now continue to blink when you have an unanswered message, additionally to the red notification dot on the favicon.
  • Fixed an issue where the sound notifications were not working when the Hub tab was in the background.
  • Fixed several CSS issues with Internet Explorer 11 and Edge browsers. (We still recommend to use Chrome, Safari or Firefox for the best experience at this time.)

Other Updates:

  • We have improved the ADA compliance of our chat box by adding title tag to iframe element and allowing to close the chat box with the Esc key.
  • The auto-responder messages of the Facebook, SMS and WeChat channels are now included in the chat transcripts.
  • We have removed the visitor email address from the Analytics drilldown section and have replaced this with the City. This change was necessary to be compliant to data privacy regulations.

Resolved Issues

  • We resolved further edge cases where a chat was labeled as an offline case in the Analytics.
  • Fixed an issue where the file upload from the visitor side broke when the visitor selected a different file.
  • Fixed an issue with the ‘close’ callback in the visitor JavaScript not being called correctly all the time.
  • Fixed an issue where the password originality in Security Settings not allowing a specific selection.