Why live chat support services might be the perfect solution for your business?

Businesses have it pretty tough these days. For one thing, consumers are applying pressure for organizations to deliver exceptional experiences, fast issue resolution, and convenient communication options. As an example, Salesforce found that 67% of consumers report that their standards for customer experiences are higher than ever. On another front, businesses are also facing more pressure from the inside as employees become more vocal about the quality of their jobs. 

When the stars align, companies can satisfy both their internal and external constituents. But when the customer comes first, sometimes employees just need to accept certain conditions of their jobs, good or bad. Customer service agents, in particular, can feel the weight of this dichotomy as they're on the front lines, interacting with customers every day.

Certainly one area where both customer and employee interests converge is customer service tools. Customers want to be able to use the best tools and so do employees. For customers, this means ones that are convenient, fast, and easy to use. And agents want tools with good usability that help them be successful.

By adopting live chat support services, businesses can find that sweet spot where everyone is happy. Here's why:

Why live chat support services are good for agents?

Those digital natives mentioned above are also well-represented among customer service agents. They are comfortable with technology and used to chatting with friends and family in their personal lives. Multiple, simultaneous open chat sessions is often the norm with this group, which is an important factor when providing live chat support services. But these Gen Z/Millennial agents have high standards about the technology they use, so not just any chat solution will do. Ones with features like programmed answers and co-browse should appeal to them and help them be superheroes to the customers they're supporting.

Why live chat support services are good for customers?

Customers love the convenience, speed and simplicity of live chat support services. It's a digital channel backed by the expertise of a live human, with real-time interaction. The digital nature of it means it fits into many people's lifestyles and the agent interaction greatly increases the probability of quick, effective issue revolution. Our benchmark research revealed that live chat support services received top scores for customer satisfaction and is among consumers' top 3 preferred channels. As "digital native" Generation Z and Millennials become the dominant consumer groups, the popularity of chat is bound to increase.

NICE knows a thing or two about live chat support services.

NICE CXone is the leading cloud customer interaction platform—100% focused on helping contact centers achieve their customer experience goals. Our chat solution, Advanced Chat for CXone, contains the features to satisfy all your constituents. Find out how our client, Vera Bradley, is using Advanced Chat for CXone to fuel their CX success.

Any digital channel

Your customers are trying to reach you for service on digital channels – even if you’re not there yet. How many SMS text messages go to your call center phone number with no response? Who’s trying to find you on Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp and not finding you? Now with CXone it is easy to provide digital-first omnichannel service in all the channels your customers expect.

  • Personalized digital interactions: deliver native experiences in each of 30+ messaging channels, such as rich media, emojis, and other collaboration tools.
  • Simple to Activate: pre-integrated channels make it easy to offer to customers and agents.
  • Easy to Say “Yes”: simple packaging removes barriers to offering all channels to customers and agents.
CXone digital channel
Empowered agents

CXone empowers all your agents to deliver a true digital-first omnichannel customer experience by simultaneously combining all customer interactions in one intelligent inbox across multiple digital channels and voice for agents to select ("pull"), while dynamically prioritizing the most time-sensitive or real-time interactions according to service levels ("push"). All delivered in a single application – complete with full customer context, journey history, and sentiment.

  • Single Interface: one inbox for all digital messaging and real-time (voice/chat) channels – retaining native experience of each messaging platform.
  • Agents in Control: ‘pulling’ work in natural flow, while dynamic prioritization maintains SLAs – and prevents ‘cherry picking’.
  • Customer Card: full customer context, journey and conversation history, plus sentiment.
Holistic management

With CXone, omnichannel interactions are managed holistically, from agents to supervisors and beyond. Integrated workforce optimization, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence across digital and voice interactions ensure complete management across contact center operations.

Related resources
Case Studies

Best Practice: The Power of a Digital First Contact Center

Your customers have different preferences in how they want to contact your business. Hear from NICE customer, ESCI on how opening digital channels transformed their contact center, improved agent productivity and drive down costs for their contact center.