7 Reasons to Use a Managed Service

With conventional live chat, in-house employees respond to customers in real time when they arrive at your website. But with managed services, a third-party agency does it for you

Most firms assume that they have to manage live chat services for businesses in-house, but that’s not the case. In fact, getting outsourced experts to handle your chats for you is often far superior.

In this post, we take a look at some of the compelling reasons to use a managed live chat service for your live chat. Read on to learn more.

In-House Employees Can’t Give Live Chat Their Full Attention

In-house employees would love to spend all day doing nothing but talking to website visitors. Unfortunately, though, they usually have other responsibilities, particularly if you run a small business. Because of this, they may not provide users with a timely response to their enquiries, reducing your website’s capacity to convert.

Managed services change this dynamic. Staff are available twenty-four-seven to respond to visitor queries immediately so leads don’t have to wait.

Managed Services Can Respond To Live Chat Queries Quickly

Companies have less time to respond to customer queries than they think. Firms might want a couple of minutes to talk to a visitor but, in reality, they only have between 10 and 15 seconds. If the customer doesn’t get a response within that time frame, they may click back to search results or close the tab.

Again, managed services solve this problem. Agents are available to chat immediately, reducing the bounce rate.

Managed Live Chat Services Are Available Out Of Hours

Most businesses do not run offices twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, even if you respond to chat queries rapidly during regular office hours, there will be times when no one responds.

Unfortunately, most customers will attempt to communicate with you outside of standard hours. Their free time usually falls in the evenings or weekends.

Technically, you could put on staff during the evenings, but that would dramatically increase your spending and eat into your margins.

Managed live-chat services deal with this problem by being available twenty-four-seven. And, critically, they don’t cost as much as employing a full-time member of staff to take chats directly. You just pay a service fee, and the outsourced agency takes care of it for you.

Managed Services Can Handle Multiple Chat Simultaneously

Regular employees who aren’t customer service specialists can find it hard to manage multiple conversations at the same time (as well as the rest of the work they have to do). Keeping track of customer issues is challenging, particularly if they are complex.

Managed live chat staff, though, have substantial training and experience in this area, This lets them converse with multiple customers concurrently.

Why is this useful? Primarily because it cuts costs. Each agent can have on average 3 live chat conversations at the same time, reducing labour input.

Managed Live Chat Staff Have Significant Customer Service Training

Managed live chat services also tend to provide better overall customer service. Agents have specific training in how to manage and deal with your clients via text chat.

Remember, most in-house staff do not have customer service training. And while they can talk to customers, they may not always do so in the best way.

Live agents, on the other hand, can calm them down, reassure them that their problem is being dealt with, and forward them to the right technical member of staff. Overall, they improve their experience, even if they can’t always answer all of their questions.

Managed Live Chat Services Study Your Customers And Learn From Them

The most sophisticated outsourced live chat services collect data to help you improve your communication over time. They explore how you are using live chat services right now and how you could potentially improve customer reach in the future. Data-driven insights help you gain a deeper understanding of what your customers want and how you can serve them better.

Managed Live Chat Service Providers Save Customer Information, Preventing Repetition

Lastly, outsourced live chat services help prevent customers from having to repeat themselves every time they communicate with you. Agents save conversations and then review them in real-time if a customer returns for a second or third time. If you have a shortlist of clients at your firm, outsourced live chat staff can even get to know them individually and offer them a more personalised service.