Back-and-Forth Live Chat in Focus

Customers who choose live chat for customer service are satisfied a higher percentage of the time than those who call, email, or use social media channels, according to findings of the quarterly Zendesk Benchmark report.

“Customers are gravitating more toward live chat as their preferred channel,” said Jason Maynard, senior manager of data and analytics at Zendesk. “Organizations who use live chat move customer requests away from web forms and feedback tabs to real-time chat, where questions can be answered directly in the web or mobile experience.”

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Another interesting finding from the survey shows that customers appear to like a more back-and-forth style of conversation. Specifically — live chat customer satisfaction increases as the number of chat messages exchanged increases. One possible reason: customers are happier with agents who are more engaged in the customer support process — either by asking more troubleshooting questions, or simply taking the time to ask the customer how his or her day is going.