Introducing the Auto Responder
You would love to be available to your clients and site visitors at all times, but that is not feasible. The challenge is to be as available as possible and still support clients when you are not immediately available. In chat especially, clients expect answers (or at least engagement) almost immediately. Let SnapEngage work harder so your chat team can focus on day-to-day duties, lead/customer follow-up, and generally delighting your client base. We recommend turning on the Auto Responder as a quick solution to elevating your online presence.
Even when your chat team is busy chatting with other prospects and clients, you want to be able to engage with your site visitors in not just a timely manner, but in robust fashion as well. The window for a timely response to clients is getting shorter and shorter as consumers crave fast responses today more than they ever have before. But do not fear! This is exactly where the Auto Responder steps in. The Auto Responder can work as the first touchpoint with a site visitor, letting them know that your team is excited to connect with them. This gives your chat agents a few seconds to wrap up ongoing chats or emails so they can focus on the task at hand: delighting your site visitors.
seconds is a suggested Auto Response time
The Auto Responder message will help set the expectation for a delayed response, reduce annoyance and increase customer satisfaction and survey scores.
Why use the Auto Responder
You can take charge of setting clear response expectations for your clients and prospects. A common mistake is to leave clients in the chat queue with no notice of when a human agent might be ready to assist. One minute waiting in a chat queue could feel more like five minutes to a website visitor, especially when they have no idea when they will reach a live agent. The Auto Responder takes out the guesswork for a better overall chat experience. The Auto Responder also allows you to be transparent with your clients about why they may not receive an immediate answer. You are politely letting clients know that your team is busy, they are valued, and you are excited to assist.
Chat agents will feel less pressure to jump at every available chat. This may sound like a bad thing, but too much quickness (especially for newer chat agents) could accidentally result in unnecessary typos and/or poor, rushed customer interactions. Allowing your live chat software to work harder on your behalf will open the door for more positive client interactions for your internal team. Chat analytics will also flourish because chats previously denoted as “Not responded” will dramatically decrease.
Auto Responder best practices
As a best practice, we recommend setting the Auto Responder to between 25-35 seconds to let site visitors know you are there. Encourage a delightful client experience by coupling the Auto Responder with Chat Reassignment. Set chat re-assignment for a few seconds after the Auto Responder to satisfy the site visitor while transferring the chat to other members of your team who may be more readily available.
Another key tip: Use your brand voice and keep it human. We suggest a message that sounds like something your team would actually say or is even a bit creative if relevant to your brand voice. For instance, this would be a great Auto Responder message for an aerospace company: “We apologize for the delay, we are working on launching the next human into space! We will get back to you as soon as possible. Feel free to leave us a message if you have to jet.”
The Auto Responder is an easy and quick way to engage your clients and site visitors, set clear response expectations, and make chat more cohesive with your brand voice. It allows businesses to customize the message you’d like to send so you can connect with more clients than ever before. This way, chat can be available even when your chat agent team is busy and can’t respond immediately.