Yes or No to Live Chat for your Business? Read this first.

With reduced in-person interactions, we are seeing more and more organizations integrate live chat on their websites to help answer customer inquiries on the spot. Live chat is a great feature for any for-profit or non-profit, but only with the proper preparation. Fate favors those who plan!

Consider your organization’s protocols when you hire a new employee. That new person needs to learn about your mission, services, and—most importantly—what they can say and can’t say when a customer asks a question.

My first job was at Chuck E Cheese. When a birthday party was booked, I helped the families organize their playtime, break for food, and schedule their child’s musical performance with the animatronic band. I love working with kids, so it was a great way for me to learn about customer service while making a little gas money.

One afternoon, in the middle of a birthday party, a couple of walk-in customers wanted to buy a pizza and asked me to help with that. Chuck E Cheese had a very systematic approach to working with customers. They are greeted at the door to check in with their kids, then order food and tokens, and play while their food is brought to their table. When a customer wanted to order something else, they usually went back up to the ordering station.

I was trained on how to throw a great party, but the system was not set up as a sit-down restaurant, and these two men were insistent that I got them a pizza. Young and eager to please, I took their order, and gave them an estimated cost (remember, there were no printed menus). Meanwhile, my birthday party was waiting on me while I was ordering a pizza.

The pizza ended up costing more than I thought, so I had to go back to the customers and ask for more money. Needless to say, they weren’t pleased. And my birthday party got increasingly annoyed. As an employee, I was harming the brand because I didn’t have the direction on how to handle a situation.

This is how you need to think about live chat for a website. What are the questions that you can answer? Which ones need to be given to another person? What actions absolutely need to be avoided?

As you think about live chat for your organization, be sure you avoid these primary pitfalls.

Skipping on training and planning. By no means is this a “dip your toes in the water” activity. You need to need to develop a list of commonly asked questions and have answers ready to go. Your chat team needs this at their fingertips. This is essential but it is also not as hard as you might think. You already know the answers. Now, organize them.

Forgetting about chatbots. Absolutely no one reading this has the time or resources to staff a fulltime live chat feature. We are all stretched to the max, which is why you need a first line of defense: chatbots. These automated helpers save you enormous amounts of time—and can be more reliable than a real person.

Waiting for an opportunity to arise. Live chat is just what it sounds like: a conversation. Just like meeting a new person, you can start the conversation. How do you do this without seeming creepy? Be real. Be aware. Be courteous.

Ultimately, organizations that have live chat on their website have a big advantage over their competitors. Do it right, and you stand ready to reap the rewards.