Note from a SnapEngage newbie

Like most software companies, we tend to get caught up in the technology of our product and the fundamental reasons for doing what we do begin to fade into the background. We recently brought on a new team member who brings a fresh perspective to live chat, reminding us that the power behind conversion and customer satisfaction is not in the technology, it’s in the conversation.

TL;DR: Actually talking to your customers is important. Businesses can and should make this happen in real-time. Practice best practices with pros to ensure the best results.

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The fine folks over at Hubspot put together this swell infographic on the history of web design. Remember things like splash pages and skeumorphic design? Yeah, so do I. This is a great and rather hilarious example of the fluidity of interaction online. What is in today will be comedy tomorrow.

Continue reading “What about just … talking to the customer?” →

Using Client Feedback to Drive Innovation

What drives innovation in your organization? Are you constantly bringing “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” ideas to your product development team (to inevitably be met with eye rolls)? Or, are you truly listening to the wants and needs of your clients and working to improve your product to meet the demands of your user base? Hopefully, you answered with the latter.

Companies large and small across the globe interact with their clients on a daily basis, exchanging information through various streams – live chat, phone, email, support tickets, social mentions, etc. But information is only meaningful when there are processes in place to act on incoming client feedback.

When a busy support agent is assisting multiple clients at once, it’s easy to let an important tidbit of feedback during a routine conversation slip through the cracks, as “fires” and other, more pressing issues take priority. Even during lulls, incoming insights can fall by the wayside. So how do you overcome information overload and close the loop on valuable customer feedback?

Here are three tips to help ensure that client insights result in actionable, innovative change, rather than falling into the black hole of lost opportunities. Continue reading “3 Ways to Maximize Client Feedback” →

How To Qualify Leads With Live Chat

So you’ve built a can’t-live-without product/service, defined your buyer personas and created some great lead generation campaigns to get qualified traffic to your website. But attracting eyeballs is only the first step. How do you sift through your website visitors to make sure you’re focusing engagement efforts on your most actionable buyers, rather than wasting time with lost traffic and looky-loos?

Lead qualification is a crucial step in the sales funnel, but it can also prove frustrating at times. Live chat software provides excellent tools to help qualify leads so your sales team can do what they do best – close deals. Continue reading “4 Simple Lead Qualification Hacks With Live Chat” →

Delivering an Omni-Channel Customer Experience through Social Media

Love it, hate it, or simply live with it, there’s no denying that social media is everywhere and it’s here to stay. From photo sharing and 140 character statements to career building forums and dating services, social media has seeped its way into nearly every facet of our world.

So what does all this mean? Businesses must embrace and adapt to the changing digital social sphere by evaluating the effects and opportunities across their organization. Different functions to consider include: sales/marketing, customer support, reputation management, talent recruitment/management, research/development.

As customer experience continues to grow as a differentiation strategy, it’s important for businesses to meet the increasing demands of consumers, which requires an omni-channel approach to customer engagement, including… you guessed it… social media! Continue reading “Advancing Customer Service Through Social Engagement” →

Why Your Customer Experience Strategy Needs to Include Live Chat

The competitive landscape across most industries today is characterized by flooded marketplaces that leads to increased buyer empowerment. As it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate at the product and feature level, brands have turned to customer experience to create competitive advantages. In fact, research shows that 89% of companies plan to compete on the basis of customer experience next year.

Two basic fundamentals that consistently define a positive customer experience are speed and convenience. Live chat’s upward trend in adoption and usage, especially among millennials (see How Demographics Impact Live Chat), is a direct result of delivering on these two core needs among buyers.

Our friends at Software Advice, the customer experience reviews business, recently released the below infographic to further illustrate why brands should adopt live chat as part of their overall customer experience management strategy.
Continue reading “Customer Experience Management: Live Chat Infographic” →