No one likes waiting in line, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a bad experience. This ethos doesn’t only apply to physical lines, but also online chat queues on your website. When visitors attempt to enter a chat with your agent, however, they may be greeted with messaging akin to “please wait.” With SnapEngage’s new chat queue improvements, the queue is approached more holistically for a much improved customer experience.
There are essentially two core pillars of a great customer experience – speed and accuracy. Consumers today demand instant service paired with expert answers. When an online visitor has a question or concern and they’re placed in a chat queue, a key issue is raised – how long it will be before they can speak with an agent. Not only that, but key conversational context can be lost if a customer returns to chat, only to find that their chat history is lost and they must start again from the beginning.
SnapEngage’s chat queue improvements and new Continuous Conversations tackle these concerns in a robust way to alleviate all frustration and uncertainty for the visitor, ensuring your customers and prospects a better experience with your brand.
A Better Chat Queue Experience
Like most online conversations, a queue comes into effect when all of your agents are already busy talking to visitors. For an existing customer or prospect, being faced with waiting an indeterminate amount of time before receiving support can be frustrating and negatively impact their perception of your business. Luckily, the chat queue improvements and new Queue Status Message provide much needed relief.
With the new tools afforded to chat administrators, visitors will enjoy a better experience. No more guesswork – now visitors will be able to see the exact place that they are in the queue so that they can make informed decisions about whether to wait or try another contact method. The visitor’s uncertainty and anxiety is reduced, and being able to see their ongoing progress in the queue line reduces the visitor’s perceived waiting time. How customers feel while waiting in line often matters more than the actual time they spent waiting.
Visitors can watch the Queue Status Message to see in near real-time how quickly they are moving through the chat queue. This provides a more humanistic and user-friendly approach to waiting in line; visitors can determine if they have time to grab some coffee or perhaps leave and try again later if the queue is judged to be too lengthy.
More Control for Administrators
Administrators now have a variety of tools and options to optimize their visitors’ chat experience. Aside from implementing the dynamic Queue Status Message indicator, you can also craft a custom entry message for all visitors entering the queue.
Similarly, you can also create a custom queue status message for those waiting in the queue. While this is optional, like many of the customizable tools, it provides a welcome update that is personalized to your brand. This message updates visitors every time they are moved up in the queue, so they never feel as though they are being left on the backburner.
For more information on the chat queue, watch SnapEngage expert and Head of Product, Michael Ball-Marian, break down the improvements in the video above!
Keep Key Context with Continuous Conversations
Leverage new contextual tools to upgrade your customer conversations and build meaningful relationships as well as brand loyalty. With the new Continuous Conversations, visitors can be automatically routed back to the same agent they chatted with previously.
If a visitor has to leave a chat for any particular reason, leaving their question or concern unresolved, it’s very likely they will ultimately have to return to chat in order to address their concern. However, without Continuous Conversations, the specific visitor would be routed to any available agent when they return to chat again.
A visitor having to re-explain the issue at hand to a new agent may reignite frustration, or worse, exacerbate it. Either way, this is no way to create a meaningful connection between your business and its online visitors.
For chats that occurred within the last seven days, Continuous Conversations provides the opportunity to never lose conversational context, build better rapport with visitors and resolve issues more quickly. The context is kept for both sides of the conversation, benefitting visitors and agents alike.
Have questions about how to get started with these new features? Chat with us!
