Nveevo’s Blog

What makes for a great customer service? Is it the operators’ skills? The tools they are given? How about the availability of said service? How does it fit with the new generation?

These are valid questions and merit to be discussed. 

We now live in a fast paced world, where more than ever before the motto “time is money” is true.  The internet as also helped; we do everything online, pay our bills, make bank transactions, and make all sorts of purchases. Even the food we eat can be ordered through the internet.  Therefore it is only reasonable to think that we would need a customer service system that would reflect our new lifestyle. 

The new generation, the young adults, the driving force of our economy is a group of people who no longer know, nor accept the concept of delayed gratification. Hence the necessity to have a Live Customer Service available at all times to satisfy the most peculiar customer.

One of the easiest ways to do it is through Live Chat Support. Live chat support fulfills all the needs mentioned above: it is fast and efficient. There is no need to wait for a phone operator; a chat operator can attend the chat also immediately and can easily manage 3 chats sessions at the same time and offer all the help needed.

Another aspect that has to be taken into consideration is the business hours. It has been shown that people browse the internet after their regular business hours. They look around on the internet only after conventional businesses have long closed. Consequently your customer service must be available when customers are going to your website, not just from 8 to 5. Live 24/7 customer service is what is asked for and thus what is needed.

Last but not least, online businesses have customers coming from all over the web and therefore from all over the world.  Reaching out to your potential customers in their own languages represents a huge advantage and is an important aspect of business nowadays.      

For that reason we see that Live chat is the new way to offer customer service and when you combine operators’ efficiency, quick response time, with a 24/7 availability, multilingual and live service that is  Live Chat Support at its finest!

Just this morning, I received yet another spam mail offering Chat Software that will take care of all of my website customer needs.

Many if not most of us have realized how efficient a chat button is on a website. And this is the reason why software companies are bombarding us with this or that new chat program, that basically differ by just a few options. Sure this latest features are helpful, but in the end, all these softwares come short when it comes to the most important features of all: attending to customers.

Most businesses that can truly benefit from customer service via chat are home-based ones and the small ones.  Big companies already have created their own web customer service department.  However, these small businesses have reduced, multitasking employees who do not necessarily have the time to answer chats and would rather focus their effort and energy in growing their core business. Therefore more and more people are turning to the most obvious solution: Outsourced Chat Answering Services.

Chat answering services can be defined as a service where companies usually rely on outsourced agents to handle chats on their behalf and thus taking that heavy load off their shoulders. And although it seems like a simple, straight-forward and possible lucrative business, it’s not that common, even though there is a demand for it. But it exists!

When thinking about chat service providers, I have only found companies like Velaro and Nveevo; companies that have introduced a new line of service, which you can rely on for many years. If you are in the market for a 24/7 live chat package, they both work.  If you need Multilanguage support because of the ever increasing Hispanic population in the states, then only Nveevo can match your search criteria and furthermore prices –what rules this market- are far more attracting with Nveevo.

When deciding to GO LIVE and placing a chat button on your website, make sure you choose a company that offers both the software and the agents to take care of your chats, let it be during holidays, week-ends, after-hours or better yet, full 24/7.

Its 4am and Kevin -an online visitor- is already at your e-commerce electronics website surfing and learning about your products and prices and apparently he is still not confident enough to make the move and buy the item on the shopping cart because he has several questions about certain product features for the item he selected. What options does he have as potential customer? The truly and sadly fact is to abandon the Shopping Cart…

‘‘Statistics indicate that more than 60 percent of online shoppers abscond before completing an online transaction…

What’s going on? Is the “Buy Now” button disable?

Starting with the obvious; Kevin has selected an item. It’s in the cart. But now he needs to log in and fill out interminable forms or confront required fields for seemingly irrelevant personal data. Kevin does not understand what the procedure is and there are no instructions on site and the customer service telephone number is for office hours only.

If the item Kevin is buying is an impulse buy, by the time he gets through this maze, he will ask himself if he really, really need this particular item. Doubt sinks in as Kevin is getting shopping cart remorse and at the same time smelled the toast burning and the coffee buzz waning.

* The fact is that Internet businesses are spending huge chunks of money to get traffic to their site, and hopefully induce visitors to buy — only to find that a significant portion abandon their shopping carts before the purchasing process is completed.

* The fact is that Marketing Sherpa in a survey conducted among 1,100 emarketers found that the trend of shopping cart abandonment remained very high in 2006 for a 59.8 percent.

* The fact is that there is no single trigger for the abandoned shopping cart phenomenon. Rather, there seem to be several impacted causes — many of them obvious.

Basically if Kevin has already selected the product but then he had these normal questions like anyone else, these important, lingering questions that needed to be answered, there’s nothing in the FAQ, not much on the Features page, but he really needs these questions answered, all he needs is someone to talk to; he needs a customer service communications window where he can obtain answers.

Most ecommerce sites are now opening Live Chat windows to help customers like Kevin on their “Buy Now” mission and reduce their Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate.

Having a Live Chat button on site allows you to interact with your web site visitors, and helps improve your sales and customer service.

Initiating a Customer Care Chat it’s by far the most effective action to take. Kevin will get answers right away and the company gets a sale. The chat can be initiated by the Kevin by clicking on the online support icon, or by the website operator, after monitoring the visitor’s footsteps. From that point, the way to a satisfied customer is short.

Chat247 by Nveevo is 24 hours a day service for websites to communicate with their visitors with a live person in multiple languages…

Are your customers a click away from a live chat?

It has become increasingly more frequent to encounter a chat button, or various, on the websites that we browse.  It seems like also every company on the web is offering customer service by means of chat.  The questions that arise are why?  And how to do it right?

Why?  And how to do it right?

Online chat has been around for a long time and though most people associate chat with ICQ or AOL which popularized it in the mid 90’s it actually predates the Internet and has been available since the 1960’s.  Nowadays, many chat software, as well as platforms are available on the market.

Customer Service Chat (CSC) can be defined as an Internet service that allows the user to communicate in real time with a customer service agent by using an instant messaging (IM) application that’s built into the company’s Web site.

In retail e-commerce, chat is often promoted as being a cost-effective way to a human touch to the online shopping experience as well as being a way to provide immediate responses to customer questions. But if it is not skillfully done, it can produce just the opposite effect.

In a study done by Greenfield Online in 2000, it was shown that at least 28% of online shoppers abandon a purchase before completing it. Two of the main reasons were:

1-      Some consumers abandon purchases because they perceive it as riskier to shop online than shopping in stores or over the telephone where consumers can obtain direct and immediate information to offset the risk of the item not meeting their expectations.

2-      Other consumers find the checkout process confusing, and others abandon their purchases because they cannot speak with a customer service representative.

Dorine C. Andrews, in her article “Online Customer Service Chat: Usability and Sociability Issues” came to the following conclusion:

 1.) “Access to customer service chat is a primary barrier to a successful experience.” Most website that use the chat feature have a tendency to only have one or two chat buttons available and most of them put them on their “Help” page of at the end of the ordering process. The reality is that customers will most likely only scanned the main page and having a chat button there will entice them to stay on the website.

2.) “The customer service chat experience begins before the connection is made, as the user searches for the link/icon.” It has been shown that sociability-related design mistakes created suspicion, a sense of distrust and a lack of confidence in the company behind the website.  Not only is it important to place the chat button correctly, choosing the appropriate design is also important.  Having the chat available in the visitor’s native language will help decrease this sense of mistrust and make for a more pleasant experience.

3.) “Users expect to interact with an actual person during the chat and are disappointed with behavior that indicates “canned” or inattentive interaction.” According to New York-based research company, Jupiter Communications, more than 90% of online shoppers want some kind of human interaction while they shop. When potential consumers cannot taste, test, feel, smell, or watch a product in operation before buying it, their sense of purchase risk increases.  Therefore, it is important to have a real person attending your chat, someone who can totally focus on that particular visitor, providing the most accurate information regarding the product or service. Politeness and etiquette, personalized interactions and appropriate question-response time, make the visitor feel at ease, makes him/her feel important and not like “just another chat”.

4.) “When a positive customer service chat experience occurs, intention to purchase increases.” According to the Wall Street Journal, once installed, Web shopping sites that add chat also report higher per-order sales figures. Mobile technology retailer iGo.com added live chat to its site a year ago. Since then, the Reno, Nev., company has seen its average sale shoot up more than 50% to $168 from $108. Ken Hawk, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, says the increase stems from more completed orders and add-on sales that his customer-service representatives are able to suggest to users.

Having said this, in my experience, Nveevo’s Next Generation Customer Care is one of the best, most comprehensive and reliable services on the market. Nveevo skillfully combines one of the best Chat Software available in North America, through their partnership with Website Alive, with the technical savvy of its Implementation Team. Add to this the empathy, knowledge and human tact of its operators, integrating all the key findings mentioned above, and you get an amazing and unprecedented chat experience that will surely boost your sales and keep your customers coming back.