The Key to Making Live Chat Successful in your HR Service Center.

So, what is it that’s so cool about having live chat in your service center?  Well, for one thing, it’s a consumer-grade intake channel.  And anything that’s consumer grade is good for the digital workplace, right?  Well, yeah, but…

While chat is normally good for the customer, it’s not necessarily good for the Customer Service Reps at the other end of the conversation.  Depending how the chat module fits in with those other tools that the CSR’s use, it may cause the CSR’s to do more work for the same end result.

Let’s take a look at some of those challenges…

Live Chat and Case Management

A chat conversation isn’t just about the chat module. It’s also about case management – chat is just another intake channel for the case management system, so all that back-and-forth of a chat interaction needs to somehow land neatly into case management.  And if the chat isn’t somehow integrated to the case management, the CSR will have to do extra work to get it there.

And extra work for a CSR translates to extra cost to process a case, and lower productivity in the service center.

Worse, an extra busy CSR may just leave the chat in the chat, in which case the service incident never gets recorded, and is excluded from reports.

Live Chat and the Knowledge base

Finding the right answer without a manual search, and landing that answer neatly inside the chat window can be a challenge.  That’s why it’s key to integrate the knowledge base into the chat to keep the consumer grade employee experience intact.  And to keep the CSR from having to go through cut and paste gyrations behind the scenes.

Chat and the CSR?  What’s in it for them?

The CSR is responsible for creating a case, and capturing all the required information.  When the conversation is happening inside of a chat window, and outside of the case management system, that can mean that the CSR has to deal with two applications for every one request.  That’s why integrating the chat so that it happens right inside the case, make the CSR’s day a whole lot easier.

In summary...

Offering chat to your employees is a great way to further digitize your workplace, and improve the employee experience.  But make sure that chat is well-integrated to the rest of your service delivery, so that an improvement for one doesn’t result in a detraction for another.

For more ideas on attaining success through chat in your service center, see the Info gram below.