Staff Not Present? Keep Bookings Rolling in with Chat Integration.
Whilst visitors are booking holidays and other leisurely activities to do during the summer, how do you ensure your company is running smoothly when staff members take annual leave?
It can be stressful for colleagues to provide cover for absent staff members when they already have their workload and targets to achieve. It can also include additional work for management to ensure another member of staff can stand in for them and monitor that the work is getting done.
Any decrease in the quality and volume of tasks being completed can reflect in the service provided to visitors and their satisfaction, for example, if new customers are not being called.
An easier way to ensure customers are served to a high standard is through live chat integration. The communication channel is available on your website for visitors to be instantly connected to a representative in real time. Chat integration is great for when staff members are absent as the user licences are not allocated to named individuals. As long as you haven’t reached your limit (5 users logged in at the same time etc.) any member of your team can log in and handle the chats.
Unlike a phone call representatives can handle more than one enquiry at any one time. Users can control their own workload with their availability status, as each chat is different due to the speed the visitor types and the complexity of their questions. Operators may feel they can handle more chats in that moment or decide they can only focus on the ones they are currently handling and switch to unavailable.
When all users are unavailable or logged off the chat button can display in an offline status, that can initiate a form to gather the visitor’s details and nature of enquiry, once completed this is sent to an allocated email address. Representatives can see these offline requests in the Click4Assistance dashboard to ensure they do not get missed; they can be marked as “Actioned” so other users do not respond to the enquiry as well.
There are many features and functionality in the Click4Assistance solution to help with the scaling of staff resources and their productivity. This includes:
Chat Distribution
Chats can be distributed to a group of operators. The system will check if that group is available, if they are one of the users will receive the chat. If they are not, the system will then check the back-up groups that have been assigned and direct the chat to a representative within them.
Ghosting
If an operator is waiting for a particular visitor to reply, they can continue to keep their response rates high as the representative can see ‘Ghost’ text as the visitor types. The user can get an idea of the enquiry and start to prepare how they are going to respond.
Pre-Defined Replies
Another way to maintain a high response rate is to have a pre-set library of agreed replies to frequently asked questions. Representatives have access to the responses and can edit the selected one before sending, providing the visitor with the most relevant and accurate answer.
Auto Navigation
Answering visitors quickly and to a high standard allows representatives to help as many visitors as possible. The Auto Navigation feature pushes through a specific page that the operator has selected to the visitor. The page opens up in a new tab within their browser, providing them with more information and encouraging them to self-help, freeing up the representative to help with more enquiries.
Don’t let the lack of staff members, especially during the holidays affect how your visitors are served. Ensuring each one has their enquiry answered satisfactorily couldn’t be easier with live chat integration. Click4Assistance has been working with the travel industry for over 10 years, including organisations such as Cruise and Maritime Voyages, Destinology and Bolsover Cruise Club. For more information contact our team on 01268 524628 or email theteam@click4assistance.co.uk.
