Tag: Quiq

Remember when using acronyms like LOL, BRB, and BTW were the only way to express yourself on a text message? For a clever few, with a little time on their hands, the use of textual characters morphed into a new form of art to help convey a message. Who knew everyone would use it to communicate visually ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Fast forward a few short years and you’ll find the insurgence of rich messaging has us sharing the kind of rich media we could only dream about back then.

Rich messaging allows companies and customers to exchange hi-res images, videos, gifs, and even complete sales transactions all within a text messaging conversation. Rich messaging, aside from providing a more modern messaging experience, has the power to change the expectations of your customers. In this post, we’ll look at 5 ways rich messaging is transforming customer expectations for customer service.

Rich Messaging Basics

Although we’ve provided a pretty in-depth primer on rich messaging in a previous post, we wanted to remind you of the basics before we dive too deep into how this new way of messaging is changing the way customers are engaging with companies. Here’s what you need to know.

First, rich messaging is a new standard of text messaging that’s already been adopted by Apple and Google, plus a lot of well-known brands like Overstock.com and Brinks Homes Security. Much like SMS, which is the simple text message limited to 160 characters that most people are used to, rich messaging provides customers and companies a way to exchange concise messages over mobile devices. That’s the messaging part. Unlike SMS, rich messaging allows messages over 160 characters, high-resolution images, videos, and a whole suite of other features that make it a better experience than a simple SMS message.

Rich messaging isn’t just about images though. Rich messaging is really about meeting customers’ expectations of convenience. High-resolution images and videos help to convey a message, but that’s only part of the story. The ability to complete transactions within a message or present customers with suggested responses, enabling them to reply to an agent with a tap of a button, adds elements of speed and ease to interactions that consumers expect.

As customer expectations of service continue to increase, rich messaging will help shape their expectations. Here are 5 ways rich messaging for customer service will change customer expectations.

5 Transformative Ways to use Rich for Customer Service

1. Provide responses better and faster than phone and email

There is no doubt that today’s consumer is busier and on-the-go more than customers were even a decade ago. They expect rapid responses and want to communicate one-to-one with businesses – all on their terms. We can thank the digitization of everything from media to services for shaping consumers’ on-demand expectations.

By leveraging rich messaging, businesses can provide their customers with the same type of on-demand support that on-demand products deliver by removing some of the friction around engaging with a company. For example, if a customer searches for a company on their iPhone that has implemented Apple Business Chat, they can immediately start a messaging conversation simply by tapping a “message” icon in the search results. No need to call the company. The customer can simply message what they have to say.

2. Share media that tells a story

Rich messaging isn’t just a pretty face, or GIF rather. The ability to share videos, recordings, hi-res images and yes, even GIFS has been a gamechanger. The ability to share rich media, up to 10MB per message to be exact, makes it easier for agents and customers to help with purchases or troubleshoot issues.

For instance, customers who want to shop around for a new security system can send a picture of their current hardware to see if it’s compatible with the prospective company’s monitoring or if they’ll need to purchase new hardware. This eliminates the need to schedule an appointment for a technician to come to their home to see their current setup, which means less time and hassle for the customer.

3. Allow customers to complete transactions

Rich messaging is all about making the entire experience with your business as convenient as possible for your customers. There are a plethora of use cases and industries where the value is evident, but none so much as retail.

From browsing for a product to buy to completing transactions, rich messaging can help companies support customers through their entire purchase lifecycle. Helping customers navigate a site or find options within a product assortment can easily happen without the customer switching channels.

With rich messaging, customers never have to leave the messaging channel to complete their transaction. Instead of shoppers clicking around to check out, agents can send transaction cards, where customers purchase through a secure cart.

4. Enable customers to make reservations

It’s not just retailers selling tangible goods that can benefit from rich messaging. Services, consulting, travel and hospitality, or any industry where booking an appointment or making a reservation is important should be interested in using rich messaging.

For example, a hotel can a send reservation card to prospective guests allowing them to make an instant booking. The key word being instant. According to Statista, online travel sales are expected to hit a staggering 755.94 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, with mobile travel sales making up 95 billion U.S. dollars.

Going to travel agencies and booking by phone has become a memory only a dwindling few can recall. Travel and hospitality have set the precedence for making reservations. After all, if you can book a houseboat in Bali for 6 months from now from your phone, shouldn’t you be able to schedule your local lawn service next week with the same amount of ease? Making online reservations, with a focus on mobile reservations, a feature is more crucial than ever for companies that care about increasing revenue.

5. Give customers peace of mind with identity verification

Robo-callers with scam offers and bulk SMS messages from shortcodes that can’t be identified are becoming more commonplace. Consumers are becoming more aware and wary of such behavior and won’t hesitate to block numbers or type “Stop” to avoid receiving further communication.

Rich messaging gives your customers peace of mind that they are talking to the trusted brand they intended to engage with. With rich messaging, companies go through a rigorous verification process. Once verified, the company can use their official brand name, colors, logo and font in their messages.

Rich messaging adds another layer of trust to customer service communications. Regardless if the customer receives an outbound message from your company on their Android device promoting a new product or they send in a text message to troubleshoot an issue with a product on their iPhone, they’ll have the confidence that the information they share is private, secure, and going to the right place.

Rich Messaging Behind the Scenes

In addition to all of the features mentioned above that make rich messaging a better experience for your customer, the ability to understand how your messages perform allows companies to understand and improve engagement behind the scenes. Quiq’s messaging platform gives you key metrics for messages that were sent, delivered, failed, and responded to

Rich messaging doesn’t have to be limited to text messages either. Clients using Quiq are able to provide rich experiences to users across chat and other business messaging channels as well. This means that companies can provide content-rich, personalized experiences across SMS/text business messaging, web chat, social, and even within their own app when using Quiq. Ready to take transform your customer service with rich messaging? Schedule a demo to see Quiq’s messaging platform in action.

Using live chat to drive more revenue is just smart business and plenty of companies have embraced this technology as a way to grow their top line. Live chat is always on and at the ready to greet website visitors, field inquiries from prospective customers, and connect consumers to the help they need. It’s really no surprise that live chat has evolved from “nice-to-have” on a website to a necessary feature. There are so many companies currently leveraging the power of live chat and seeing their numbers grow in terms of both revenue and new customers that we felt obliged to highlight 5 of the top ways live chat drives revenue. Looking for a way to build customer loyalty, increase customer retention and boost your average order size? Read on.

Key Stats on Live Chat for Business:

Before we jump into the meat of things, let’s start with a few statistics to whet your appetite on how live chat for business is driving more revenue. Consider these important stats that showcase how valuable this channel is to your business:

• Waiting on hold when calling a business is the reason that 42% of customers prefer live chat (Business2Community)
• Customers who use live chat are 3x more likely to buy according to the American Marketing Association (AMA)
• 79% of businesses have seen a positive effect on sales with chat (Shep Hyken)

How Live Chat Drives Revenue

1. Live Chat Closes More Sales

Online chat provides the opportunity to speak with a customer when the interest in your product or service is at its peak. With chat, customers can get questions answered and concerns addressed before that interest waivers. According to sales consultancy firm, SalesforLife, chat delivers a 20% boost in sales conversions. This can be attributed to the immediate response to specific needs that move the prospect through the buyer’s journey. Consumers know there’s always some risk with a purchase. “Buyer Beware” hasn’t become a saying for nothing. But the ability to have a real-time chat conversation with a representative prior to purchase gives the buyer confidence in doing business with your company because they know help is accessible

2. Live Chat for Business Increases Customer Retention

Live chat is one of the most immediate forms of communication available to online customers. In today’s always-on-the-go world, people want to get answers fast. Your customers will not wait for hours to get an answer through outdated methods, like filling out a form on your website to submit a question and then…you guessed it, waiting for a reply to hit their inbox. When it’s all said and done, meeting your customer’s expectations of delivering fast, personalized service builds customer loyalty and the economics of customer loyalty definitely work in your favor. According to Harvard Business Review, increasing customer retention by as little as 5% can increase profits by 25% – 95%.

3. Live Chat Delivers a More Personal Experience

With the use of live chat for business, you can talk to your customers or potential customers on a much more personal level. Live chat allows you to ask probing questions, provide suggestions, and even offer complementary goods or services based on direct interaction with that customer. Consider this example: A mom is shopping for a bassinet for her newborn. Without any engagement, the customer may just add the item to their cart and checkout, Or, she may get frustrated with all of the choices and tire of reading reviews and look elsewhere. Now, consider the scenario with engagement from a live chat representative. After so many minutes on the product page, a chat window pops up and asks the customer “Can I help you find anything?”. The customer shares what she’s looking for and the agent helps her narrow down choices. In addition to helping her find a bassinet she loves, the representative suggests sheets and some popular sleepwear to add to the cart. This customer-centric approach leads to higher satisfaction rates not only because they are getting fast responses, but also because they are getting the answers that are specifically targeted to helping them with their questions. According to Econsultancy; 73% of their customers were satisfied when they talked engaged on live chat.

4. Live Chat for Business Builds Momentum

You did the work and drove traffic to your website. You’ve got consumers coming in and you need to follow up fast to keep the momentum going. If your shoppers filled out a form so they can be contacted, there’s always a chance that the customer may have failed to provide the right information or made a mistake when entering their contact information. What will you do then if you can’t follow up? You lose the sale. There’s also the chance that a competitor could catch your shopper’s interest while they’re waiting to speak to a representative who can help them make a decision.. Give your customers the opportunity to start a conversation in real-time, when they are most excited about learning more about your product or service and focused on you.

5. Live Chat Increase Order Value

Average order value (AOV) is a key metric to gauge how much revenue a company generates with each transaction. A growing AOV is an indication that either customers are buying larger ticket items per transaction or buying more items in a single transaction. Either way, life is good.   Live chat gives trained agents the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell and influence average order value. Agents can present complementary items or higher ticket purchases to consider. Many times, companies decide to implement chat so that help is available when customers need it and chat sessions are initiated when the customer requests it. In some instances, like what an item is added to a cart, some companies have implemented proactive chat to offer customers additional items they may find valuable.

What is business messaging, you ask? Oh, it’s only a way to get better customer engagement, attract more customers, and deliver a better customer experience is all. That seems like a tall order for something as simple and commonplace as messaging right? The truth is, the simplicity and reach of business messaging is what makes it so powerful for your business and preferred by your customers.

In this post, we’re going to define what business messaging is and what it isn’t. We’ll also highlight what business messaging means for your revenue growth, your customers, and your employees. Basically, everything that keeps your business going. Let’s get started.

What is Business Messaging?

First, let’s talk about messaging and get really clear about what business messaging is. Business messaging is a set of channels over which companies and consumers can communicate with each other. The most common messaging channel is SMS or text messaging. We’ve all had experiences with shipping notifications, marketing offers, promotional campaigns, and appointment reminders. These are the kinds of messages we typically associate with business messaging.

But business messaging isn’t just one-way and it isn’t just SMS/texting. Business messaging can happen on any digital channel where your customers already spend their time and it’s expected that dialog can flow both directions.  Here are a few scenarios that happen all the time:

• A home security subscriber who needs help setting up their new video camera.
• A shopper on your website who needs help finding a product and reaches out via web chat for help
• A loan processing officer texts an applicant to send in missing paperwork to complete an application
• Direct messages exchanged over social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Kik to provide one-to-one customer service
• A heating and air conditioning company setting up an appointment to install a new unit
• A retailer proactively communicating shipping and delivery information to consumers to help prevent an inbound phone call

Business messaging delivers the ease and convenience consumers have come to expect when they engage with family and friends to pre-sales and post-sales interactions with companies. In fact, 66% of consumers rank messaging as their preferred channel for contacting a company.

What Messaging Means to Your Customers

Your customers want to message you.  Research conducted by Market Strategies International has found that consumers are looking for a company to:

• Meet them where they already are – on mobile, social, and on the web
• Proactively reach out to them with relevant products and services
• Make it easy to do business with you

Quiq Clients like Overstock, Office Depot, Pier 1, and Brinks Home Security have discovered that messaging is an indispensable solution to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. These innovative companies have implemented Quiq Messaging to open new channels of communication with their customers – available wherever and whenever they need it.

CONVENIENCE: Messaging means that customers can reach out to you on any channel they already spend their time on like SMS, Facebook, and live chat when they’re on your website. It also means that your customers can respond to conversations with your company at their pace – as it fits in with their busy lives – versus stopping everything to make a call. With messaging, they can respond and engage in 5 seconds, 5 minutes, or 5 days.

EASE:  Customers keep their mobile device within arms reach at all times. Business messaging makes it easy for customers to shoot off a message whenever they need and then get on with their life. They don’t have to wait until they are in a quiet place to call or vigilantly watch their email for a response.

FLEXIBILITY: Messaging means flexibility to your customers. Customers have the real-time response of a phone call with the ease of reference that an email provides. That flexibility around their busy lives is more than a welcome mat. It’s more like the red carpet and it’s what differentiates companies among competitors and turns prospects into customers.

What Messaging Means to Your Revenue Growth

Increasing revenue is the number one thing that companies focus on. Every strategy and tactic is a means to that end. Often, companies will consider introducing a new product line or service or increasing prices as a way to bolster revenue.

Sure, those paths could lead to higher revenue, but they definitely aren’t the easy way to go. Developing a new product or product line can be a big time and money investment accompanied by the risk that customers won’t buy. Price increases provoke the ire of customers and may even cause some to turn to competitors.   

Ah, but let’s not forget, there are people out there who want to buy what you already have. Oh, and don’t forget your established customers who could come back more frequently. Many companies now look at customer experience as a way to attract more customers and increase the frequency in which they purchase. This is where messaging makes the biggest impact.

Messaging makes it easy for consumers to engage with your company when, where, and how they prefer. Prospective buyers can have questions answered with ease, speed, and convenience. Returning customers get timely service and support at their moment of need, which means, they’ll be back for more and will tell others how great you are.

Consider these examples and how your business can help customers move closer to purchase with business messaging:

• Service companies win when their prospects are able to get the answers they need to make a decision on a provider. Prospects can book an appointment to receive an estimate easily with business messaging. Messaging avoids delays and missed calls that can drive consumers to take their business elsewhere.
• Companies in the travel and hospitality industry use messaging to provide a premium experience from the very first interaction. Questions on weather conditions and cancellation policies are answered quickly so that potential guests can ease right into the booking process with peace of mind.

What Messaging Means to Your Employees

In any other day and age, allowing customers to engage with your company through so many channels would have been overwhelming. But it’s not that day and we’re past that age. In today’s modern messaging world, Quiq makes it easy for employees to manage conversations.  

In fact, Quiq Messaging can help optimize agent performance by providing advanced productivity features that improve the customer experience. With Quiq, employees are able to handle multiple messaging conversations at once, thereby increasing their efficiency and reducing the cost to serve.

There isn’t any downtime for training. Adding business messaging is a pretty flat learning curve for your employees. They are likely using messaging in their daily lives and are familiar with sending and receiving messages. The only difference is they’ll have an easy way to manage conversations.

All messaging conversations are managed within a single, unified desktop with features that help employees prioritize conversations, monitor customer sentiment, and make every conversation more personal and effective. Employees can feel empowered to provide the best customer experience possible.

Business Messaging Means Business

Business messaging makes a significant impact on two ways to grow your business – get new customers or have your existing customers buy more.

• Attract new customers – Make your business accessible so that it’s easy to do business with you.
• Keep existing customers happy  – Empower your customers to get service 24/7 through business messaging. Make it easy for customers to address questions and issues that may arise after the sale and they’ll be more likely to come back again.

The key takeaway here is that business messaging isn’t just good for your business. It’s a main ingredient to the secret sauce that can keeps your business running successfully. Ready to see Quiq Messaging in action? Sign up to try it right now for free or have one of our experts walk you through a custom demo.

Don’t deliver good customer service. Aim for the exceptional service that sets you apart from your competition. Customers demand convenience, speed, and ease when they need to engage with a company. When it comes to live chat, it’s critical to provide an experience that welcomes the customer to engage with your brand.

Live chat serves as your front line to the customer on your website. This messaging channel allows you to engage with your customers at their point of purchase for higher conversions. With live chat, customers can reach your brand at their convenience and receive the pre-sales support or post-sales service they need. This article gives you the 11 live chat best practices to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

11 Live Chat Best Practices to Deliver the Ultimate Customer Experience

#1: Be Transparent With Your Availability

While larger brands may have a customer support team working 24/7, other businesses may have limited hours. If you’re one of the companies that limits the hours of support, make sure that you simply disable live chat when your team is unavailable or when your company is closed. Quiq’s chat feature allows you to remove the chat bubble on your site during non-supported hours.

If your chat function isn’t available 24/7 and you prefer to receive after hour messages, tell your customers that you’ve received their message and let them know when you will get back to them.

#2: Choose the Right Place For Your Chat Button

To ensure that your customers know you are easily reachable through chat, one of the best live chat best practices to implement is to place the chat button on the bottom right side of the screen. You should also make sure that the button isn’t too big. You don’t want it to be a distraction. You will, however, want to use a bright color, so your site visitors have a visual indicator that it’s there.

While you don’t want your chat to be a disruption to your customer’s experience on your site you don’t want them to stall for too long in their process searching for help. Sometimes, your customers may need an invitation to start a conversation with you. You can offer proactive chat based upon predetermined criteria such as time spent on a page, page view history or customer segment.

In addition, you should place the chat button on every page of your website, not just the home page. You never know when your customers may have a question or need your help.

#3: Collect Information Upfront

Make it easy for employees to provide a more personalized experience to your customers by collecting a little information upfront. Use a short web form to collect information. This information can be used to route incoming conversations to the best queue or employee. Not only that, this extra information will help your employees identify the customer and the nature of their inquiry immediately instead of having to spend valuable time asking for it. Knowing full name, account number, topic category, or order number will help your team know who they are talking to and allow them to get a jump on helping the customer faster.

#4: Personalize The Experience With Images And Emojis

Today’s connected consumers gravitate to modern chat platforms that allow them to send hi-res images, videos, gifs, and emojis. These are the elements that make live chat conversations more personal, expressive, and fun.

Quiq allows your team to share images, videos, gifs, and to enable approved emojis so that messaging conversations always stay on brand. Customers and agents can use all of these visual elements within chat conversations to provide better context and to more effectively resolve inquiries.

#5: Always Be Ready To Respond

Customers want answers fast and at their pace. That’s one of the reasons they’re avoiding the phone and having to be tied to it. With live chat, customers can send messages in at their pace, whether they do so in 3 minutes or 3 hours. Companies can set service level agreements (SLA’s) so that everyone understands what an acceptable response time is for customers when they do reach out.

Quiq helps employees meet those SLAs with our Adaptive Response Timer (ART). This feature not only provides visual cues to notify employees when a conversation needs attention but it also automatically prioritizes multiple conversations based on how slow or fast the customer is responding to messages. This is critical because chat agents tend to handle 5 or more conversations at one time. Staying on top of the right ones is easy with Quiq.

#6: Never Get Disconnected

Your customers are busy and at times, may need to step away from a chat conversation. Sometimes, it’s only for a few minutes while they check another tab on their desktop. At other times, it may be a lot longer. When customers don’t respond after a certain time limit, most chat platforms will “time out” of chat sessions requiring the customer to initiate a new chat session and start their entire process from the beginning.

Unlike many traditional chat tools, Quiq’s chat platform is asynchronous, which means conversations never end and never have to be restarted. This avoids customer frustration of having to restart a chat conversation and agent uncertainty when a customer goes dark. Customers can return to the chat conversation whenever it is convenient for them. This conversational continuity gives your agents and your customers peace of mind.

#7: Present The Chat Conversation History

Sure, some customers may only need to contact you once, but there are some who need to reach you on a more frequent basis. It’s important that a record is kept of all the past chat interactions you’ve had with a customer. This conversation history serves as an excellent reference point and helps agents or employees know what kind of issues the customer may have encountered previously and the guidance they were given.

Quiq presents the entire chat conversation history to the agent, along with the most recent inquiry. Let’s say a customer starts a conversation with one agent, walks away during the conversation and comes back while that first agent is on break, the newly assigned agent will have the same latest interaction, as well as past interaction history, presented.

#8: Provide A Seamless Experience

From time to time, one of your employees may not know how to answer a specific question from the customer. So, they will need to transfer the customer to another team member. When this happens, you need to guarantee that the customer doesn’t have to explain her question or problem all over again. The new team member should have access to the previous conversation and simply continue the conversation.

Quiq’s transfer and collaboration features allow employees to ask for help behind the scenes from peers or managers. Customers can be easily transferred to other team members with or without them even knowing. Anyone invited to help with the conversation can see the entire history of the conversation and any additional information available on the customer. These features create a seamless experience for your customers while optimizing efficiency.

#9: Provide a Seamless Human-Bot Experience

Bots have gained a lot of attention lately, and with good reason. Bots have become time-saving customer experience superheroes helping companies serve customers more efficiently. From greeting customers to helping troubleshoot issues to soliciting feedback, bots are being used in a myriad of ways.

Consider using a bot to automate some of your redundant live chat processes to reduce the time and money it would take for an employee to do the same thing. Simple and repetitive tasks, such as gathering an order number, updating an address, or even finding the right department to route the customer to, can all be done via bot.

Deliver a seamless experience where humans and bots co-exist peacefully within conversations. Quiq treats bots and agents both like first class citizens. Bots can welcome customers and gather additional information for routing or in order to have an order proactively pulled up on an agent’s desktop. Agents can transfer to a bot during an active conversation and the customer doesn’t even need to know. The bot can collect a few pieces of information and then return the conversation to the agent. During that time, the agent can be assisting other customers. Bots will help you reduce the time to serve your customers and delight your agents as well.

#10: Use Sentiment Analysis

Use sentiment analysis to understand how customer conversations are going. This is particularly important for companies that may have a large number of chat conversations to manage. Managers can see at a glance which conversations are going well and which may be at risk.

Quiq uses simple visual cues that identify if customers mood shifts during a conversation. Agents and managers can quickly see if a conversation needs extra attention or needs to be prioritized.

#11: Ask For Feedback At The End

Your customers’ feedback or opinion about how the live chat interaction went is definitely a best practice. You trained your team members to provide the best service they could but the ultimate test will be what your customers thought about their overall experience. This is a timely way to know that you’re on the right track, as well as a great way to continuously improve your live chat experience.

Live Chat Is Your Front Line

It wasn’t so long ago the only way customers could get in touch with a company was by picking up the phone and calling. Now, with live chat and messaging options, customers can simply click-to-chat with a representative who can provide the pre-sales support or post-sales service they need.

Being available to your customers at their “moment of need” is where businesses turn visitors to their website into customers who love their product and service and rave about their experience. Live chat may be one of the first interactions your customers have with anyone from your company. Make sure you leave a great first impression by implementing these 11 live chat best practices.