Creating a web chat survey may feel daunting, especially if this is a new process. What questions should be included? How many questions should be included? What do I do with the results?
A chat survey is a simple yet effective method of capturing data and collecting direct customer feedback. Web chat surveys demonstrate to your customer base that your organisation values their opinions regarding their experience, products and services. Moreover, the results obtained from web chat surveys can help refine business strategies, improve retention rates and maximise customer experiences.
You can improve your customer experience by leveraging surveys before (pre-chat) and after (post-chat) an interaction to understand customers, build loyalty and improve performance.
What are the differences between a pre-chat survey and post-chat survey?
Picture this: a customer clicks on the chat widget on your website and begins conversing with a customer service agent. The customer is asked to provide their name, membership number, and reason for their enquiry. Could you enable your agents to be prepared with this level of information before they are connected to a customer? This is possible through creating a pre-chat survey.
A pre-chat survey is deployed before the website visitor is connected with a live or virtual agent. This type of survey is typically designed to ask the customer introductory questions so the agent doesn’t have to. The results from a pre-chat survey can help reduce the time it takes to resolve a customer’s enquiry by preparing the agent with relevant details before the conversation begins. Additionally, implementing a pre-chat survey can filter out the website visitors who inadvertently initiated a web chat, optimising the performance of agents who can focus their time on real customers.
Imagine a live web chat interaction between a customer and an agent that has just finished successfully – the customer’s enquiry was resolved! How can you capture how satisfied the customer feels after this interaction, particularly given the digital environment in which the conversation was held? Deploy a post-chat survey to obtain direct customer feedback regarding their experience.
A post-chat survey enables your business to gather direct customer feedback immediately after a web chat interaction has finished. This survey allows businesses to gauge customer satisfaction and learn more about their customers’ expectations, experiences and opinions. The results collected from a post-chat survey should be actionable; after collating the data, analyse it and share the findings with the broader business to drive better outcomes. Standard post-chat surveys include an NPS Survey to understand how likely a customer will recommend your company to someone else. This is an easy benchmarking tool that can help you measure the performance of agent interactions.
How to design the most perfect pre-chat survey into your web chat solution:
Here are some practical tips you can follow when you’re creating a pre-chat survey:
1. Keep the pre-chat survey brief:
As this survey is deployed before a customer is connected with a live or virtual agent, there are better times to ask the customer a series of in-depth questions. It simply prepares the agent with relevant customer details to reduce support and a faster time to resolve.
2. Design questions that will drive customer engagement and improve the speed of service:
Requiring agents to spend time typing simple questions before getting to the core of addressing the customer’s enquiry ultimately prolongs the duration of the interaction. To support your agents in delivering efficient customer service, structure the pre-chat survey to gather personal customer details, which will help improve the speed of service.
For instance:
- “Name” – referring to customers by their first name can help build engagement and create a positive impression through showing etiquette.
- “Customer or Membership ID” – using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, the agent can search for the membership ID provided to identify the customer. In doing so, the agent can view the customer’s profile and uncover previous interaction history, which can support in delivering a personalised customer experience.
- “Email Address” – obtaining the customer’s email address can enable the customer service agent to email the transcript once the web chat conversation has finished. This ensures the customer has a record of their digital interaction and can easily refer to any information conveyed.
- “Phone Number” – If the enquiry or conversation becomes complex, your agent can easily switch to a more personalised channel, such as a phone call.
3. Ask the customer to provide a reason behind their enquiry:
To help agents prepare for the conversation and optimise their ability to support a customer best, include a question within the pre-chat survey to understand the nature of the customer’s enquiry. This can be achieved by either presenting an open-ended question that allows a customer to type their enquiry into a textbox or designing a drop-down picklist that enables them to select the option that aligns with their query.
As an example, picture your business operating an e-commerce fashion site. A drop-down picklist within the pre-chat survey could be:
“What is the reason for reaching out today? Please select one option.”
- An issue with my order
- I need to update my details
- I would like to return/exchange an item
- Other
Once an option has been selected, contact centre web chat functionality can enable the customer to be routed to the most appropriate agent based on their selection.
How to create an optimal post-chat survey:
When you’re designing a post-chat survey into your web chat solution, ensure to:
1. Make this survey quick, simple and easy for customers to complete:
A post-chat survey is optional, so encouraging customers to respond to this is essential. Aim to create the post-chat survey between 2-5 questions that are concise and easy to understand. This will help improve response rates and gather unmatched customer feedback after a live chat interaction.
2. Create a question to measure customer satisfaction:
Understanding customer satisfaction is the centre of a customer experience strategy, and capturing this data soon after a live web chat interaction has ended is critical to improving business performance. Two key customer satisfaction indicators include CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and NPS (Net Promotor Score). CSAT questions are designed to ask customers about specific areas of your business, e.g. a particular product. In contrast, an NPS question indicates the likelihood of a customer advocating for your brand. Depending on your business’s preferences, an example of a web chat survey question that will allow you to calculate and measure either metric to determine your customers’ level of satisfaction can be seen below:
- For CSAT: “How would you rate your satisfaction with our customer service? Please select any value from one to ten, where one is the lowest and ten is the highest.”
- For NPS: “On a scale from one to ten, how likely are you to recommend our business to a friend? One being the lowest, ten being the highest.”
3. Understand the performance of your customer service team:
Once a web chat interaction has concluded, it presents an ideal time to understand how customers truly feel. To capture this valuable feedback, include an open-ended question, “How would you describe your experience with our customer service team?” The insights obtained from this survey question can reveal how effective your customer service team is performing and facilitate managers in pinpointing improvement areas or identifying potential knowledge gaps. Subsequently, managers can take proactive action by equipping agents with the necessary training sessions to deliver the best possible customer experiences consistently.
ipSCAPE’s multi-channel cloud contact centre solution has an in-built live web chat module securely built on Azure Communication Services (ACS). The web chat module provides users with extensive functionality, including creating and launching pre-chat and post-chat surveys. Some of the benefits users gain include:
- Real-time customer engagement – customer service agents can digitally engage with website visitors as they browse the site.
- Collecting direct customer feedback & measuring the results – managers can quickly deploy pre-chat and post-chat surveys to capture invaluable customer feedback. All data collected from the surveys can be easily extracted from the platform to measure the results.
- Increased agent productivity – agents can serve multiple customers simultaneously, which can help improve response times.
- Customisation of the chat widget – the display of the widget can be tailored according to the business’s brand colours and show the brand logo.
- Canned responses – prepared answers can be created for frequently asked questions as a ‘canned response.’ Leveraging this functionality improves the speed of service as web chat agents can click the response to send to the customer.
- User-friendly features – agents and customers can seamlessly share files and send emojis within the live chat on-site.
- Access to Chat Transcripts – all web chat interactions held on ipSCAPE’s platform are searchable and accessible via a transcript. An intelligent wrap code can be configured to trigger the chat transcript to be emailed to the customer as soon as the conversation has ended.
- Easy to set up – the only action item for users to complete is to insert the HTML code onto their website.
Want to learn more about how ipSCAPE’s contact centre solution provides advanced live web chat functionality? Unlock the robust functionality of ipSCAPE’s web chat by contacting us today to capture invaluable direct customer feedback through launching the perfect pre-chat and post-chat surveys.
ipSCAPE is a feature-rich, scalable cloud communication technology solution with advanced integration capabilities. We help businesses connect with their customers through multi-channel communications, including Voice, Web Chat, Email, SMS, IVR, and other emerging channels.