Four Ways to Improve Your Customer’s Chat Experience

Helpful Tips to Increase Customer Satisfaction

Nicer Studio

Live chat is one of the fastest growing, and most popular, ways to engage with your customers. Live chat has shown itself to be a strong and effective way at establishing connections. In fact, 44% of online consumers say live chat is one of the most important features a site can provide. Not only that but chat consistently has the highest satisfactions out of any channel. Here are some best practices for talking to customers.

Speed is 🔑

Response time is of utmost importance. To put it another way, patience is a virtue you can’t count on a visitor having. Responses within the first 5 minutes of a message have a 400% higher chance of a reply than responses after 90 minutes.

But Empathy is 👑

Simply getting more interactions is great but reacting the right way is even more valuable. Be friendly and courteous, use emojis to keep things
light-hearted, and always say your please and thank you’s — You know,
the basics you hopefully learned in grade school 🙂. Studies show that customers tend to have higher levels of engagement when businesses interact in a friendly tone.

Yes, this includes the guy who starts out with ‘you all suck, why can’t I. . .’ Sometimes all someone needs is a friend to be friendly.

Listen to complaints

HUMBLE. by Kendrick Lamar
Learn to appreciate the complaints you get. They’re essential in helping your business grow. This can be a tough pill to swallow and at times can feel incredibly frustrating, but be thankful for the complaints. On average, for every person who voices a complaint there’s as many as 26 customers who have had similar issues and not spoken up. These complaints help you see your site or product through someone else’s eyes. That can be incredibly beneficial when you let it.

Also, in support, as in life, own your mistakes. An apology goes a long way towards keeping customers satisfied (more than double according to some studies).

Simply Put, Be Human.

In a market that’s increasingly cluttered with bots and pop-ups vying for peoples attention, the gut reaction may be to try and shout above the noise. However, remember the goal is to be helpful not obnoxious. Be kinder, not louder, and your customers will thank you.

Join the more than 3500 teams already using Smallchat to connect with their visitors. Smallchat is an easy to use yet powerful Slack integration made for chatting, in real-time, with visitors on your website.

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# Four Ways to Improve Your Customer’s Chat Experience

*Published Sep 7, 2017 · By Nicer Studio*

Originally published on Medium: https://medium.com/stories-by-nicer/improve-the-experience-of-customers-on-your-website-1f6df67e0b6e

Live chat is one of the fastest growing, and most popular, ways to engage with your customers. Live chat has shown itself to be a strong and effective way at establishing connections. [In fact, 44% of online consumers say live chat is one of the most important features a site can provide](https://www.forrester.com/report/Making+Proactive+Chat+Work/-/E-RES57054). Not only that but chat consistently has the highest satisfactions out of any channel. Here are some best practices for talking to customers.

![](/articles/four-ways-to-improve-your-customers-chat-experience/img-02.png)

### Speed is 🔑

Response time is of utmost importance. To put it another way, patience is a virtue you can’t count on a visitor having. Responses within the first 5 minutes of a message have a [400% higher chance of a reply than responses after 90 minutes](https://resources.datanyze.com/blog/lead-response-pitfalls).

### But Empathy is 👑

Simply getting more interactions is great but reacting the *right* way is even more valuable. Be friendly and courteous, use emojis to keep things\
light-hearted, and always say your please and thank you’s — You know,\
the basics you hopefully learned in grade school 🙂. Studies show that customers tend to have higher levels of engagement when businesses interact in a friendly tone.

*Yes, this includes the guy who starts out with ‘you all suck, why can’t I. . .’&#x20;*&#x53;*ometimes all someone needs is a friend to be friendly.*

![](/articles/four-ways-to-improve-your-customers-chat-experience/img-03.png)

### Listen to complaints

[HUMBLE. by Kendrick Lamar\
](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/humble/id1223585496?i=1223585761)Learn to appreciate the complaints you get. They’re essential in helping your business grow. This can be a tough pill to swallow and at times can feel incredibly frustrating, but be thankful for the complaints. On average, for every person who voices a complaint there’s as many as [26 customers who have had similar issues and not spoken up](https://www.groovehq.com/support/customer-support-statistics). These complaints help you see your site or product through someone else’s eyes. That can be incredibly beneficial when you let it.

Also, in support, as in life, own your mistakes. An apology goes a long way towards keeping customers satisfied *(more than double according to some studies).*

### Simply Put, Be Human.

In a market that’s increasingly cluttered with bots and pop-ups vying for peoples attention, the gut reaction may be to try and shout above the noise. However, remember the goal is to be helpful not obnoxious. Be kinder, not louder, and your customers will thank you.

*Join the more than 3500 teams already using Smallchat to connect with their visitors.&#x20;*[*Smallchat is an easy to use yet powerful Slack integration made for chatting, in real-time, with visitors on your website.*](https://small.chat)