Live chat has come a long way from being used for fun to becoming an essential business tool. Time after time, its features have evolved to help businesses become successful. One of these features is the chat transcript.

The conversations you have with your customers and visitors are more than just conversations — they are ‘power tools’. Through them, you can capture insights that can help you nurture leads and upsell to repeat customers.

How?

By analyzing your chat transcripts, you will be able to know what works and what doesn’t. As you learn, you can improve your chat flow by creating better greetings, asking the right questions, addressing typical concerns, and more.

Let’s study the following chat conversations as examples:

Conversation 1: Vague Empathy

Sam: Hello, my Internet connection hasn’t been working for a couple of hours now. I want to know what’s wrong.

Jane: Good day, Sam. I’m Jane. Thank you for reaching out to us. First of all, we apologize for the inconvenience it has cost you but no worries, I will be more than happy to help you resolve it.

The above conversation seems perfect. The customer support staff started with a greeting and introduced herself. After that, she empathized with the customer’s trouble and reassured the customer.

Take a quick look again: at the beginning of the conversation, the customer already told the support staff what his problem is.

How did the support staff answer?

“We apologize for your inconvenience.”

It is vague. It also sends a message to the customer that, the person on the other end of the line is not listening to him, and doesn’t understand his frustration.

One of the basic needs people have is the need to be understood, which is best expressed by listening. If customers feel that the company is not listening to them, they will soon lose interest.

It is best practice to reiterate what the customer has said. Not only does it show empathy but it also helps you confirm whether it is what the client wants or not.

Conversation 2: Short and Sweet

John: Hello.

Jane: Hello John. My name is Jane and welcome to Gorgeous.

John: Is it possible to return an item I bought from your store by mail?

Jane: You can absolutely return items you bought from our store by mail. You can download a form for returning items on our website. Do you want me to send you a link for that?

John: Yes, please. I’d greatly appreciate that.

The conversation above is an example of the KISS principle we talked about in one of our previous articles.

From the instruction to the solution, the exchange was straightforward. Even if the conversation was brief, all the elements of best practice were there:

• Jane introduced herself and the company.
• She went straight into the solution.
• She made it much easier by offering the link.

The Clue is in the Conversation

There are many other insights to learn from your chat transcripts. Share these transcripts to your team so you can brainstorm together how to make the flow of your chat support better. Some companies share the transcript to their customers after the chat to show their transparency. So if you haven’t done it yet, go back and check your chat transcripts. You’ll be surprised at the wealth of information you can find there.