Tavistock Relationships' Counselling Experience of Chat for Website

The organisation provides clinical services including a range of affordable counselling and psychotherapy services which support couples and parents throughout London. They also deliver professional training to the next generation of couple therapists.

To prepare for their implementation of live chat software, Head of Marketing, Communications and Digital at Tavistock Relationships, John Fenna, researched the channel by reading blogs and looking into the experiences of larger organisations, who typically required a more varied solution as they have a much bigger active client base to offer help. Fenna found that the best advice, though somewhat predictable is that “doing it badly is worse than not doing it.”

Tavistock Relationships’ Implementation

The organisation implemented Click4Assistance’s chat for website in December 2015. Fenna mentioned that Tavistock offers a complex service that is bespoke help for people with relationship and mental health concerns; because of this a portion of their audience will approach them with unease due to a number of reasons including their apprehension to discuss personal matters with a third party.

As their audience could be anxious about what counselling sessions consist of, this can deter them from booking an appointment. Chat was implemented to reassure them and help them to make the decision to book a paid session and not to provide specific counselling advice.

The organisation was so confident that they trained their staff with their account manager on hand, should they have needed any assistance. They found that chat worked best when there were simple answers to questions that weren’t as easily explained with their website copy that was usually ‘flat’.

From the range of enquiries received through chat, Tavistock had a range of results. They implemented measures which allowed them to streamline the use of live chat and focus it to receive the enquiries they outlined whilst improving other aspects of the website.

A small portion of visitors were looking for instant advice about a personal problem they were facing at that moment in time. Although the number of enquiries was small, Tavistock developed signposting and links to their own services and other helplines, they also limited their chat duration time to 15 minutes to reduce the impact on staff resources.

On the other hand, the organisation received a large amount of common service enquiries, where the answers were available on the website in various locations. Chat highlighted the information that their visitors’ required and the need to make it more visible. This resulted in Tavistock producing a relevant and more prominent FAQs, whilst chat is able to work within the website and be the channel aimed at generating conversions from those with concerns. This also allowed the organisation to focus the communication channel on high traffic times only through analysis of their web traffic and previous chat times.

Fenna had set rules for the chat channel and now they have it working in harmony with the rest of the website, his rules are:

• Have a wide range of opening times
• Don’t overburden your customer services team
• Set the rules – what is it for – are the crib sheets ready? Are there time limits on chats? Are there clear data links they can send to customers?
• Get the right tech
• Advertise it visibly
• Examine the reports – what are your customers telling you to change
• Act on it!

Tavistock Relationships has been using Click4Assistance chat for website software for 2 years, for more information on the solution call our team on 01268 524628 or email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk and find out how it can benefit your healthcare organisation.