Last Updated on August 31, 2023 by David
The next evolution of the medium everyone loves to hate.
“Live chat has limitations, limitations we no longer have to live.”
“Live chat no longer makes the cut.”
“Live chat was great but now it’s history”
Live chat isn’t dying. It’s evolving. Countless businesses today still have a thriving live chat service and deliver their customer tremendous amounts of value. So why is the industry nitpicking on live chat? Why do we still see businesses large and small adopting live chat as an outreach channel? To understand live chat and where its headed, we need to look at the larger picture and analyze other trends developing in parallel with live chat.
It’s hard to claim which support channel is the dominant one. The answer most certainly depends on your industry. I know I constantly pick up the phone if I want to reach PG&E, our local electric and gas provider. For talking to my credit card company? Phone as well. To get some questions answered about the recent pack of batteries I purchased? A quick email or tweet will suffice. Issues with the recent model airplane I purchased? I choose live chat. The fact is, all four businesses offer live chat support. I chose other channels over live chat for many different reasons.
Certain interactions aren’t suited for live chat.
There’s a certain comfort level missing during live chat when the interaction requires sensitive information to be released. Accountability is top priority when dealing with financial, medical, and other urgent matters. Live chat doesn’t deliver in this department because you can’t put a face or voice to a name.
Some businesses aren’t staffed up for live chat.
More often than not, the wait for an agent to come online is grueling. And if there isn’t anyone available, live chat isn’t available either. It’s like talking to an empty room. Hello?? If the live chat service isn’t smart enough to transition the customer to another communications channel, you lose the potential chance to talk to a customer or make a sale. There’s also an underlying assumption that if a conversation is going to be “live”, replies need to be sent within seconds. Not minutes, hours, or days. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on businesses’ support infrastructure.
Some businesses aren’t known for live chat.
When businesses insist on using canned replies and templates for every exchange, the customer experience is extremely jarring. The impersonal nature of this type of live chat experience is worse than email or phone since it doesn’t feel like the chat is really “live”.
Inconvenient for customers (and agents).
The biggest issue with live chat is actually the “live” prefix. Neither customers nor agents can take an ongoing conversation with them, resulting in the inability to start and pause conversations on-the-fly and on-the-go. Missed messages while the customer is away often never get delivered. The live chat window must remain open so the chat doesn’t automatically end and your volume must be turned on so you don’t miss a notification.
Live chat is old school.
The concept of live chat is completely foreign to millennials. Sitting at a computer and waiting for a reply makes no sense in a world conditioned by instant messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp.
Even with its flaws, live chat does have its merits — it provides near instant gratification for sending messages with ease. When conversations do go well, the experience can be engaging and rewarding. If businesses are able to keep a live chat team running at top gear, nothing can beat its online support presence.
Types of Conversations
Let’s take a step back and think about conversations in general. Between people, there are three main paradigms: active, inactive, and intermittent conversations. Active conversations can be you going to your friends house and starting an involved chat about Star Wars versus Star Trek. It lasts 2 hours and you head home feeling like you’ve won. Inactive conversations can be the relationship between you and a distant relative. The relationship is there, you do talk, but on such an infrequent basis that each conversation is rarely an extension of the one prior. Most of our conversations are actually intermittent. They’re continuations of previous conversations or engagements, in context.
Here’s an example. I wake up in the morning to get ready for work. My wife packs me a turkey sandwich for lunch. Before getting in my car, I message her and ask if she remembered to to put cheese in the sandwich. She calls me back on the phone and tells me no and that we’re out of cheese. During lunch, she messages me back asking how the sandwich tasted but I’m in a meeting. After a few hours, I message back telling her the sandwich was delicious. Each interaction is an extension of the one preceding it, minus the time parameter. Each interaction is also in context.
Intermittent conversations happen all the time and all around us. In fact, it happens so often that we really do take it for granted. Instant messaging service such as iMessage and WhatsApp are platforms where we most often experience intermittent conversations. We send questions, concerns, appreciations, and updates all the time to people we care about and interact with. We expect a reply but never with the formalities of an email or the urgency and immediacy of live chat. The exchanges are personal, natural, and most of all familiar.
The Evolution of Live Chat
Apps that support intermittent conversations definitely have the jump on traditional live chat platforms. It has all of the advantages of being fairly secure, personable, asynchronous (meaning you don’t need to always leave it open), and convenient for both agents and customers. There is a caveat to all of this. Just like live chat, most of these intermittent conversations happen in a vacuum. Messages, comments are pushed through a single channel. If you’re not paying enough attention, balls can still get dropped.
Over the past few years almost every helpdesk platform on the market has advocated for multi-channel as a means to capture customer conversations from every channel whether that be email, live chat, phone, or a myriad of social media channels. Customers have gotten used to this practice as well, leveraging whichever channel is most convenient for him or her at the time of contact.
But we need to move a little further. The burden of choosing the right channel needs to be lifted off of the customer’s shoulders and moved to the business’s shoulders in order to maximize engagement and provide the best possible experience.
How We’re Tackling the Problem.
Live chat isn’t going anywhere. It is however going to change quite a bit over the next few years as businesses start to realize how customer habits are changing. At Reamaze, we’re thinking about this problem from a whole different perspective.
Non-Chat Priority
Every conversation should start its life as a universal message. To the customer, this is neither email nor live chat. It’s simply a message to the support team — with no strings attached.
Expectations are set properly based on historical response times. Customers won’t expect an immediate reply. At this time, they can hang around and continue browsing or leave entirely.
The agent sees the customer message and notices that he is currently live and online. A reply is sent and instantly delivered to the customer.
The conversation continues in “live chat” mode as messages are continuously delivered without interference.
If the customer is still online and browsing but has the messaging modal closed, messages from the agent is still delivered via on-screen notifications.
Asynchronous and Transitional Messaging
The customer continues the conversation when the modal is re-opened. At this point, the customer may reply and continue to browse, or simply reply and close out the browser session entirely.
The agent immediately notices that the customer is no longer online. He continues the conversation and automatically transitions over to email.
The customer receives the agent reply via email and is impressed at the technology he’s seeing.
Parallel Updates
In an exercise of curiosity, the customer logs back onto the site and opens the widget to continue the conversation. The previous message from the agent is naturally updated in parallel across multiple channels.
Whether the conversations happen online or offline, in 3 seconds or in 10 days, messages within that conversation are updated simultaneously so no context is ever lost in translation.
By giving more priority to conversations not dominated by the notions of “live”, we can consciously remove the urgency and immediacy requirements of live chat. Customers can feel more comfortable engaging with support because clear expectations are set. Extra create is earned if agents are able to respond faster. Rather than penalizing both businesses and customers, the entire conversation rewards both parties for participating.
Asynchronous messaging allows both parties maximum freedom to actively engage, temporarily space out, or leave the conversation entirely without losing track of core content. Transitional messaging enables both parties maximum flexibility no matter what communications channel they’re using. Can we go beyond on-site messaging and Email?
Parallel updates keep conversations in sync across channels so agents and customers are no longer burdened to keep track.
The Great Divide
“Live Chat” is loved and hated by many, for better or worse. Beyond continuing to play a crucial role in many businesses today, live chat has done wonders for the customer service world. It laid the ground works for many great conversations and countless innovations in the way businesses and customers talk to each other. The next chapter is not to despise what live chat was, but to help define and shape what it will be. We’re excited for the challenge ahead.