implementing chat

[remy]

At the moment we're seeking to implement chat in our call center and are looking for expertise on the subject.
Can you tell me:

How many calls does a chat agent handle at the same time?
Do you combine chat with other activities like mail?
How would you say has your customer reacted to it?
Have you implemented it for everybody or for a select group?
Does chat reduce the number of calls / e-mails coming in?

Hope you can and will help with these questions

[CallCenterJunky]

Do you mean chat as in Instant messaging services?

[remy]

Yes that is it,

When our clients go online and have questions they can contact us by a chat application, instead of calling us

[CallCenterJunky]

Chat is a good way to communicate however you may need to take into consideration that some people may use it for personal reasons as well i.e general chat.

One of our departments use the chat programs and they seem to work fine although alot of the agents use it to talk about social things as well "inapropriate" subjects as well, this is on a rare occasion.

Personally it think it is a good idea, it's an excellent communication method and it certainly has the advantages over E-Mail, however it is difficult to control and monitor it.

If the reason is just for help why don't you appoint Floorwalkers. That worked great for us. It provided a new learning experience for all of our agents as well as a privilege.

Hope this was of help

Regards

[ctaylor]

Remy,
I thought the following excerpt from the Customer Reach newsletter might be helpful to you
Web Chat Considerations
Question:
“We are presently researching purchasing a web chat application, We have several companies we are in discussion with, but my interest is on the impact it had on the call center itself and the staff within the call center. We are a small call center with about 40 full time agents, seasonal bump to about 100”

Expert Response:
When you are looking to implement web chat within your center there are a number of considerations you need to keep in mind;
-Unless you are integrating the web chats into your ACD queue, then you will not be able to rely on the ACD reports to provide you with good data on agent occupancy and activities,
-Like phone calls, web-chats are 'immediate' transactions and you will need to establish service standards for these inquiries and report on these daily,
-Web chats allow the unique ability to manage multiple transactions simultaneously. It is not uncommon for a single agent to work on 5-7 web chats at the same time.
-Of course the ability to carry one multiple transactions simultaneously is directly influenced by the completeness and robustness of your knowledgebase. The better constructed and laid out the knowledgebase is the better suited it will be for 'cut and paste' responses to customer questions.
Other related areas you have available to you and may wish to consider along these same lines would be email (once again you will need to establish service levels, share these with your customers and report on these each day) and community management. The attractiveness of community management is that it allows your own customers to answer other customer inquiries, with the appropriate controls and approvals on the responses. This latter area can, in organizations with a high loyalty level amongst customer result in dramatic saving and efficiencies in terms of total inquiries that need to be serviced by a live agent. Two companies that I am familiar with who are providing community management services are; Engage http://www.engagecorporation.com and Outstart http://www.outstart.com/portal/index.jsp .

Customer Reach is published monthly by The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. You can register to receive the newsletter free every month by visiting the TRG website at www.thetaylorreachgroup.com .

I hope that I have added value to this discussion. If I can be of further assistance please email me at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com

Colin Taylor

[remy]

Thank you both for your replies.
We're currently in the situation where we're looking foor all this kind of data so all help is welcome. Coincidently we're also checking whether it's a good option to implement a forum, where clients can indeed find out things about several subjects (posted by other clients and monitored by us).
We hope that this will reduce the number of calls coming in as well.

Would you happen to know any companies that have implemented web chat. I can visit their websites and see if they can provide me with more information

[dsc1]

Remy-

I have implement support sites that have utilized both chat and user forums/communities. In general there are some things that I would recommned...

1) start small - start of with short hours m-f type of thing
2) don't worry too much about crazy metrics to start but get the basics - total chats per day, chats per agent, speed to answer type of stuff
3) utilize macros for greetings, utilize a KB for standard and approved replies, etc..

If you ahve any specific questions just send me an email.