Providing Emotional Support via Live Chat Website Software
The Miscarriage Association provides support and information for individuals who have experienced pregnancy loss. The charity was founded in 1982 after a group of people had their own experience of miscarriage and found this support and knowledge was missing from their medical care.
Even with their growth over the last 37 years, the charity’s aims are still at the heart of their organisation:
- Offering support and information to anyone affected by the loss of a baby in pregnancy
- Raising awareness of miscarriage and
- Promoting good practice in medical care
The Miscarriage Association also hope that the information they provide helps family, friends, colleagues and health professionals alongside the individual.
Introducing Live Chat Website Software
The charity first started looking into live chat in 2017. Each step was carefully considered due to the nature of the support they give. Therefore they needed to ensure that they offered a service that provides a safe and secure environment with an instant connection to an advisor which doesn’t add any further stress to the individual (having to wait for an indefinite time etc.)
The majority of the time charities will have a representative handle more than one chat at a time to reduce the volume of enquiries and the pressure on their resources. However as the Miscarriage Association provides emotional support, the conversations may be longer, therefore to give each individual the time and service they deserve, the charity made the decision for advisors to only be able to take one chat at a time, which allows them to really focus on the individual’s needs.
As agents would be switching between available and unavailable several times throughout the day, the Click4Assistance solution automates this function. Miscarriage Association updated their settings to allow each operator to take a maximum of 1 chat at any one time, therefore when the advisor has a chat the software automatically changes to unavailable; which is then instantly switched back when that chat has finished. This mitigates any risk of an agent forgetting to swap to available as it becomes a tedious task to repetitively do.
Customising Live Chat
Because of the sensitive and emotional nature of the conversation between the charity and the individual, each step in the chat journey has been customised to ensure the right wording has been used, and to promote confidence in the enquirer that they are speaking directly with advisors from Miscarriage Association.
The chat button which has been designed to fit seamlessly on the charity’s website presents a pre-chat form when clicked, this displays:
- Their logo – most organisations show this in the dialogue window, however by including it within the pre-chat form encourages confidence within the visitor straight away.
- Instructions – a brief explanation of what to do and what will happen next in case the visitor is unfamiliar with chat.
- Privacy policy – providing this link helps the charity comply with GDPR as visitors can view how their data is processed and why.
- Name field – only supplying a name field allows the advisor to address the visitor personally, but enables the individual to only share any further information when they feel comfortable.
Once in chat, Miscarriage Association’s branding continues to be strongly represented with each type of chat bubble (agent’s text, enquirer’s text and the system messages) being colour coded to each shade they use in their logo which is also present within the window.
Additional functionality has been included within an options button rather than a traditional tool bar. This provides more space for the transcript and message composing sections, as each response can be of a lengthy nature. Therefore having more space offers a better user experience.
When there are no advisors available the charity has optimised the space on the offline form to provide their operational hours, informing visitors of when they can use the chat service. They supply alternative contact details as well as a call back form, encouraging the individual to still enquire.
Miscarriage Association is just one of the many charities that Click4Assistance works with. Each implementation is different and with over 15 years of experience we can help you provide a successful service tailored to the needs of your visitors.
For more information contact our team on 01268 524628 or email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk.
