Want to improve your live chat strategy? Looking for the best questions to ask in post-chat surveys?
It’s not a secret anymore – Customers prefer live chat when it comes to customer service and customer support.
The real-time experience of live chat beats email and other channels by a mile.
But how do you know whether your live chat strategy is working? How can you tell if customers get the best support experience possible? Or how do you even know which live chat agents have the best skills for the job?
That’s what you’re going to find out from this post. We’ll discuss the idea of running post-chat surveys, and I’ll also show you what questions you should be asking.
Let’s take it from the top?
What is a Live Chat Survey?
The term – chat survey – refers to a strategy of collecting customer feedback after a completed chat session. Typically, companies run chat surveys to assess customers’ satisfaction and gauge their overall experience with the channel.
In short, the post-chat survey is your opportunity to collect feedback about your service and the overall live chat experience.
But why run a post-chat survey?
There are four main benefits of using live chat surveys.
Assess customer experience
In today’s world, customer experience is everything.
Consider this data, for example:
- Businesses that improve customer experience across the line see a whopping 80% increase in revenue.
- 73% of customers admit that customer experience helps to drive their buying decision.
- 86% of buyers are willing to pay a higher price for a product if it means getting a better customer experience.
What’s more, in their report, “Customers 2020” a customer experience research company, Walker, predicted that by now, customer experience would become the key brand differentiator, moving past price and product.
Judging by the data I quoted above, their prediction came true.
Chat surveys can reveal your customers’ experience with live chat. They can tell you whether customers enjoy conversing with your agents via live chat at all, and what they might be missing in your strategy.
Furthermore, you could even survey customers to assess whether it is even worth it for your brand to use live chat for sales or support.
Evaluate agent performance
Surveys can help you understand each agent’s performance too.
With them, you can discover which agents perform brilliantly, and who might need additional training.
Furthermore, those surveys can also reveal areas where your chat support process flow might be failing.
Why is this important?
Unfortunately, 44% of customers admit to receiving an incorrect answer from a customer service agent. Chat sessions like these create a poor experience and result in negative customer feedback.
Identifying your agents’ knowledge gaps or lack of live chat etiquette will help you eliminate such problems and improve chat quality.
Learn more about your customers
Chat surveys will also help you understand customer behavior. By asking the right questions, you can uncover your audience’s buying habits and expectations for customer service.
TIP: The survey data can provide an additional point to use when segmenting customers and help you discover new customer groups to market to.
Spot gaps in live chat support strategy
But most of all, chat surveys can help you understand gaps in your live chat support strategy.
In fact, post-chat surveys can deliver unmatched data to help you engage customers and provide a far better customer experience.
You can discover…
- …whether customers are happy with your response time. Given that 1 in 5 customers will stop using a product if a brand is slow to respond in the online chat, it’s an invaluable insight to have.
- …if they can access live chat easily on the site, or struggle to find that option.
- …how well your welcome messages engage potential customers and more.
The 3 Types of Live Chat Surveys
So far, we’ve been discussing live chat surveys in more generic terms. However, I believe it’d be worth it to distinguish between different types of surveys you could run on the site.
There are three main types of chat surveys you could run, each serving a different purpose in your live chat strategy:
#1. Pre-chat surveys
These surveys aim to collect information to help the agent understand the visitor’s needs before the chat, and help them better.
Pre-chat surveys are also a fantastic sales strategy, allowing agents to learn more about the person, and conduct the conversation to maximum success.
Here’s an example of a simple pre-chat survey that assists a customer in directing their query.
#2. Post-chat surveys
This is, by far, the most common live chat survey. It appears in the chat window after the agent closed the conversation with a visitor, and asks various questions regarding the chat experience.
Post-chat surveys can take many forms, depending on the type of questions you ask.
They can include a simple net promoter score survey, for example, a chat rating, or a direct question inquiring about the quality of the live chat experience.
#3. Offline surveys
Finally, offline surveys replace the chat window outside of business hours, when there’s no agent present.
Typically, these surveys work like a lead capture form, asking visitors for customer contact information so that an agent could follow up with them once they’re back online.
Here’s an example of an offline survey we use on this site:
What to ask in a live chat survey? 3 Types of live chat survey questions
When running live chat surveys, not only you can choose from different types but also, different questions to ask.
Here are the most common types of live chat survey questions that you can use, with additional information on when each question type would work best.
A Yes/No Question
This is the simplest question possible. As its name suggests, customers can reply only either yes or no, and don’t have to provide any additional clarification in their answer.
Because of that, these questions get an incredibly high response rate. Plus, they deliver clear responses that are easy to understand and measure.
A yes/no question example: “Are you satisfied with the support received?”
To answer, a customer needs to only select from two options, and their feedback is done.
However, because of the simple nature of such questions, they provide little to no detail or explanation behind the person’s decision.
You don’t know what made them select their answer, nor do you have an option to explore that further.
When to use:
A yes/no question is versatile enough that it can be used before and after a chat conversation.
TIP: If your live chat software provides that option, use visual indicators instead of the “yes/no” option. These could include a smiley face emoji instead of the “yes” button, and add a bit of fun to collecting customer feedback.
An NPS Question
NPS (an acronym for Net Promoter Score) is the golden standard for evaluating customer experience and loyalty to a brand. It can, however, be used to assess the quality of your live chat experience as well.
At its core, NPS is a single-question survey, asking for the person’s likelihood to recommend a brand or product based on a particular experience.
Customers provide answers using a rating system from 0-10 and based on their rating, you can categorize them into 3 groups:
- Promoters (respond with a score of 9-10) – These are your most loyal customers. They love your experience and are willing to tell others about it and recommend your business.
- Passives (Score: 7-8) – Passives are happy with your service, but not to a point of recommending your brand to others.
- Detractors (Score: 6 and below) – Detractors are unhappy customers, dissatisfied with your service, and most likely would never engage with you again.
When to use:
You can trigger the NPS question to display right after a person has finished chatting with an agent, asking them to rate the experience.
A multiple-choice question
The multiple-choice question allows you to get more feedback from customers without forcing them to write a detailed response. Instead, customers can choose the most relevant answer from a list of available options.
The one drawback of this question type is that it puts words into customers’ mouths. Multiple-choice surveys, typically, feature close-ended questions, after all. This might lead to receiving incorrect feedback as customers might select an answer that’s the closest to their sentiment but doesn’t express it completely.
When to use:
Because these survey questions feature pre-defined answers, they can be used in many different scenarios. You can use them to ask customers which department they’d be the most interested to speak with or inquire about their chat experience.
Conclusion
Live chat surveys help you understand customer expectations, get real-time feedback, and engage with customers to fill gaps in your support strategy.
After reading this post, you know which questions to ask in a pre- or post-chat survey to drive meaningful insights for your company.
Good luck!