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So, it’s time for you to assemble your live chat dream team. You want your live chat customer service experience to be top notch, so it’s no wonder you want the best and the brightest for the job.
But how do you know who is going to be a good match for your team? How can you tell who will treat your customers with kindness and compassion – who will work diligently to provide them with the solutions and the support that they are reaching out for?
This blog post will take you through a series of good customer service skills that you should look for when hiring live chat agents, and will give you some tips on how to spot these skills in your candidates.
This comprehensive eBook contains everything you need to know about hiring, interviewing and training your live chat team – whether they’re in the same office as you, or remote workers.
Download NowIt doesn’t matter what industry you are in or what walk of life you come from: dealing with people (be it a customer, a colleague, or a boss), often requires patience. Customer service can require a lot of it.
Sometimes customers ramble on and take a while to get to the point. Other times they disappear for a few minutes while your agents are chatting with them, or are slow to type out a response. There may be other times when a customer doesn’t understand a part of the solution that your agent is offering them, and will require a step-by-step explanation before they are ready to move on.
Regardless of what exactly your customers are doing or complaining about, it is important that your live chat agents know how to be patient with your customers.
Alternately, try asking them one or two everyday situational questions that will let you know whether that person is patient or not. Here are some ideas for you to play with:
Signs of patience include someone who is willing to wait, who doesn’t rush things, who stays calm and re-explains the problem in a different way, and who answers “C” in the latter examples.
Some customers have a lot to say, others need to have additional details coaxed out of them. Regardless of how a customer communicates, your live chat agent needs to be a masterful listener.
If an agent can’t listen correctly to a customer’s problem, chances are they might misread or skip over key information and come up with a less-than-ideal or even unsatisfactory solution. Alternately, they might force a customer to repeat themselves (if they are talking to the customer over audio chat or over the phone), which runs the risk of irritating the customer.
Ultimately, customers want to feel like their issue matters. An agent who is an avid listener will know how to use good listening skills to make the customer feel heard, and get started on the right track towards resolution.
While these listening skills are most useful in video and/or audio chat, they show that your candidate is willing and able to listen. You can further examine this skill during live chat training by listening to your agent interacting with a customer. Ask yourself: Do they remain silent and only respond to interject their perspective, or do they use words, sounds and phrases to indicate that they’re listening and understanding?
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. It allows a person to feel another’s pain, frustration, happiness, or sadness, and brings a true understanding of how the other person is feeling.
For a live chat agent to truly want to help a customer, they must be able to empathize with how the customer is feeling, and relate deeply to their issue. This will enable them to care enough about the customer to go the full mile for them, and to provide them with the most satisfying solution possible.
Communication over live chat is different from communication over the phone. Live chat customer service agents must be able to communicate well in writing with their customers. This involves being very clear to avoid repeat contact, and making sure that the customer understands what has been communicated.
This also means communicating with the customer in a way that they will best be able to understand. Agents shouldn’t use any uncommon abbreviations or jargon, unexplained technical terms, etc. that your customers might not be familiar with. For video and audio chat, agents should also be ready to use tone and body language to communicate effectively.
Communication skills will serve your live chat agent not only in the chat window, but also when tagging chats, writing follow-up notes, and in communicating effectively with managers or fellow agents should a problem arise.
Starting a new job requires that you implement new knowledge and apply new skills. To succeed in their position, live chat agents need to be willing to learn and use new applicable information.
Starting a new job requires that you implement new knowledge and apply new skills. To succeed in their position, live chat agents need to be willing to learn and use new applicable information.
Part of the willingness to learn and adapt involves being able to read manuals, guidelines, and ask superiors whenever they are unsure, instead of giving a customer wrong or uncertain information. It also involves being able to receive feedback, and not taking any constructive criticism from supervisors personally.
If a new team member asks a fellow live chat agent a question or for help, they should do what they can to lend a helping hand. This is important because contact between agents fosters learning moments, which ultimately play a big role in the onboarding process, and are vital to keeping up the quality level of your live chat team as a whole.
When everyone is in, working to lower a queue, your agent should be a team player and help achieve that goal.
To enforce this team player mindset, make sure that in the agent training and onboarding process, your new agent is paired up with an agent who can show them the ropes of working the system. This will establish an environment where the norm is for agents to help one another, and will help encourage your new agent to help another in the future.
Everyone can be a Negative Nancy every now and again, but it is important that your live chat agent have an overall positive attitude. Negative customer service agents and negative customers can feed off of one another’s bad energy, and result in an overall upsetting interaction. Negativity can create a horrible working culture for everyone else in the office, too.
Unlike with typical call center support, live chat agents are expected to be able to handle multiple customers’ problems at once. This is because live chat is not as demanding of attention as a phone conversation (which is part of why customers prefer it), so agents can juggle several chats at a time.
In order to succeed, your live chat agents must be effective multitaskers. This means not ignoring or forgetting to respond to one chat because you’re busy with another. It might also mean working on answering customer emails, or other assignments while also actively participating in a chat.
Live chat agents must have a good grasp of basic typing skills. This means being able to type quickly, and practice good spelling and grammar. It also means having a good grasp on computer shortcuts (such as copy and paste) and other functions that will save them time in the long run. An agent without these skills might be a good customer service agent, but live chat may not be for them.
One of the most commonly evaluated metrics is an agent’s average handle time (AHT). Live chat agents should measure up, and be able to use good time management practices to achieve the average handle time benchmark that is set by your company.
That doesn’t necessarily mean rushing to complete a chat; it means knowing where to spend your time and how to spend it wisely. For example, your agent should know to escalate a customer issue to a supervisor after spending half an hour trying to help them without success.
Organizational skills are important to most employers, and live chat customer service is no exception. Agents should be able to keep track of things like customers who need to be followed up with, updates to policy, custom canned messages, shipping times, active discounts, and more.
Whether your agent is keeping track of these on a sticky note or in a document, they should know where to access this information when they need it so that they don’t keep customers waiting.
There are three types of behavioral styles: passive, aggressive, and assertive behavior. Customers can adopt any one of these styles, and so can agents.
In order to effectively deal with customers, an agent should be assertive. If you aren’t sure what that means, imagine assertiveness as the healthy middle ground between passive and aggressive behaviors. Assertiveness means being able to maintain control of a conversation that is being hijacked by an aggressive customer, while also being able to help guide a conversation with a passive customer (who doesn’t know how to express what they want) towards resolution.
The right live chat agent won’t be a pushover (passive), but they also won’t be a bully towards your customers (aggressive). They’ll adopt the middle ground, and result in the most satisfying conversational outcome.
Alternately, ask your candidate:
When customers are typing in live chat you can’t see them or hear them, which means that sometimes it can be hard to tell what they are feeling. A live chat agent should be intuitive, and able to interpret your customers tone and emotions.
This is easier over audio or video chat, where facial and verbal cues give your customers emotions away; but it is also important to do over written chat. An intuitive live chat agent will know how to proceed carefully in instances where a customer is upset. They will know what sorts of customers they can use humor with, and will be able to read the signs that a passive customer is not happy with a solution.
An intuitive agent will be able to achieve a better resolution of a customer’s issues, and an overall better experience for the customer.
When the stakes are high for a customer, a chat window can turn into a high-pressure and even hostile environment. A live chat agent needs to know how to “Keep calm and carry on”, even when they are being yelled at (or typed at in all caps) by a customer.
By handling escalated, tense situations with calmness and fortitude, a live chat agent will have what it takes to achieve de-escalation, and make it big in the business.
Live chat exists to connect customers quickly and easily to solutions. To help customers reach the most ideal, satisfying solutions, agents need to possess problem solving skills.
This is especially important because agents will not always have the resources or the means to get customers exactly what they want. By using problem solving skills, agents will be able to turn a limiting situation into a realm of opportunities.
The best problem solvers always possess creativity. That’s because creativity helps people see solutions that you otherwise may never have thought of.
Creative agents might also be able to connect with customers in unique ways, or by using humor. Also, leave it to a creative agent to invent a process that gets things done in less time, and maximizes efficiency.
In one interview, I was asked to invent a fictional story on the spot about the business owner. While a fun topic, this one can get a little awkward, and your candidate might not feel as free to explore all possibilities for the story once you have made it personal.
In live chat and in customer service in general, first contact resolution (FCR) is everything.
This is because every time a customer makes repeat contact with your business over an issue that wasn’t properly solved the first time, their satisfaction and likelihood of becoming a repeat customer drops significantly. Repeat contact also results in clogged queues, a higher wait time, and a heavier workload for your agents.
Make sure that your candidate is a determined individual, who won’t abandon a customer until their issue is solved on the first try.
Whether your live chat agents are working remotely or are in-office, you need agents who are reliable.
Agents should be able to clock in on time—when they are expected to—and not leave their co-workers buckling under the pressure of a heavy queue. They should also be relied on to stick to established rules and procedures, such as wrap-up, etc.
Some days, during the off-season, being a live chat agent might be a breeze. Other days, during the busy season, the queue may never seem to go down.
It is important that a live chat agent be a self-starter with a good work ethic. They shouldn’t need to be reminded that “we have chats holding” to get off of “busy” mode and tackle those chats.
Your customers won’t always get the perfect solution that they were hoping for. This is where an agent’s ability to negotiate can prove valuable.
By negotiating with a customer, your agent can find a solution that works for both your customer and your company. This can be a vital part of problem-solving, and can also prove beneficial in sales, such as if your company uses proactive live chat.
Good negotiators are also often patient, persistent, and hard working – so be on the lookout for these characteristics.
“Don’t bring your baggage into the workplace,” isn’t always as easy as it seems. And when you’re working with a difficult customer, it can be tempting to for your agent to just slam against their keyboard and throw their stress, anger, or whatever they may be feeling that day out at them.
Sarcasm, curtness, or other disguised forms of aggression are means that some agents use to let out their frustration. These behaviors, however, can prove very upsetting for customers, and are not as discrete as agents might think, even in typing. Live chat agents must be able to avoid saying or doing something that might negatively impact your customers, and know how to manage their emotions and exert self-control during a live chat session.
Live chat agents should be professional in their interactions with customers. That means knowing what tone to use in interactions, and if they are using humor with their customers, knowing exactly how far to take it. It means representing and being true to your brand identity.
Professionalism also allows for good workplace conduct, and shows that an agent is serious about their job.
Ultimately, customer service is about helping others and improving the lives of your customers, if only a little bit. To flourish as a live chat agent, your agents should genuinely want to be a part of this process.
To successfully achieve FCR and customer satisfaction, your agents should put their willingness to help others ahead of their desire to leave early or start their lunchbreak already. They should be ready to make genuine human connections, and be willing to provide much needed help and assistance.
Finding an agent with all of these skills might seem tricky, but don’t worry. Stay positive, stay creative, and you will attract the same to your team.
For additional reading, check out our blog post, Do Your Live Chat Agents Measure Up? The 9 Best Key Performance Indicators and How to Use Them.
This comprehensive eBook contains everything you need to know about hiring, interviewing and training your live chat team – whether they’re in the same office as you, or remote workers.
Download Now
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