Chapter 8
With bigger teams come more chats, with one exception
This metric does not simply reflect agent capacity; it also serves to inform staffing decisions. For example, it’s very likely that agents on smaller teams are handling phone calls or multi-tasking when on live chat. That may be a basic operational necessity for smaller organizations.
Regardless of size or industry, businesses need to strike a balance between serving customers more efficiently and ensuring agents aren’t under- or over-worked.
To keep chat volumes manageable for each agent, best practices include routing and queue management configuration and deflection to bots or a self-serve channel like a knowledge base, leaving the more complex requests for live agents to handle.
In contrast, teams looking to increase chat volume per agent should look to automatic and manual proactive invitations to reach out to visitors under defined conditions.
Chat volume per agent can be heavily influenced by how agents are deployed to serve customers throughout the day. For example, if live chat is offered on a 24/7 basis, then during peak times the agents will have a large number of chats taking place, whereas in non-peak times of the day chats per agent will be significantly lower. It is important to consider how best to align resources to peaks and troughs in customer demand during the day and week.
