Our software has a slight learning curve. After all, creating floorplans and seating charts in an HTML5 application is a new concept. Naturally, our users have lots of questions, especially during the new user onboarding process.
Enter Olark, our live chat support widget. Visitors that come to our site are automatically greeted with a welcome message informing them someone is standing by to help them in case they have any questions. The chat window can be dimissed and then quietly rests on the bottom of the screen and users can access it whenever, wherever.
I must also give a shout out to my friend Jerome and his company SnapEngage, an alternative to Olark. They are building a great product and they are an oustanding group of guys.
These chat requests integrate into Gchat so they don't interfere with our workflow. We get important information about the visitors, including:
- Their name and email (if signed in) - great for personalized service
- What city they're in - great to see our geographic reach
- What page they're on - great for personalizing our response
- What browser they're using - great for debugging
Managing our chat is a lot of work. We have anywhere between 20 and 50 inbound chats a day and the nature of our chats varies widely. Some simply thank us and carry on while others report a bug or ask a question.
At Social Tables, from Day One, we made a calculated decision to put customer service at the top of our priorities. Even though we’re a small team (only Julia and I oversee live chat) we've realized there is a lot of value in such customer service. Here's why:
- Lead gen and prospecting. We can ask a couple of qualifying candidates, see if there's a potential fit, and discuss follow-on steps in just a few minutes. People are more likely to initiate a chat than write a new email.
- Brand building. By interfacing with us, our visitors vibe off of our energy. They appreciate our attention to the their needs. Here's one bride that decided to blog about her experience with our support team.
- Customer devleopment. If someone is struggling with our UX or has a suggestion to improve our site, we can speak to them and get to the bottom of their feedback quickly.
- Recruiting. Our current rockstar intern, Oz, found Social Tables and initiated the live chat. The next thing you know, he was a part of our team!
Between Julia and I we have nearly 24 hours of the day covered. When we're not at our computer it goes to our phone. And when neither one of us is available it goes to our emails. When we have a chat request, even if we're in the middle of a meeting, we stop what we're doing and jump in to help. That's how important our visitors are to us.
We will continue to treat customer service as a priority because, apart from being the right thing to do, it has paid off in dividends.
On a more personal note, Olark's team has been phenomenal. We had some javascript conficts come up when we first implemented their widget into our new site and their team (including the co-founder) worked for several hours to help us.
