Let’s Chat about Chat

by Heather Hughes

More businesses are offering chat to their customers as a support option. Here’s why that's great news for both these businesses and their customers.

Chat offers several benefits to customers. Typically, chat users find this method to be convenient — for example, they can get immediate help while making an online shopping decision. And 74% of chat interactions result in a first-contact resolution.

As we’ve previously reported, our 2018 NICE CXone CX Transformation Benchmark study found that consumers rate online chat as one of the top methods for satisfaction, ease of use, and likelihood to recommend.

Companies that deploy chat as a service option also can realize numerous benefits. For example, competent chat agents can simultaneously manage multiple chat sessions, making chat a cost-efficient, agent-assisted channel. Additionally, chatting with online shoppers can increase conversion rates and thus, revenue.

Seems like a potential win-win situation, but are consumers and businesses really aligned on chat? To find that out, we surveyed more than 900 organizations in the US, UK, and Australia as part of the business wave of the CX Transformation Benchmark.

Happily, we found that companies and consumers are mostly aligned in their enthusiasm for chat across satisfaction, preference, and Net Promoter Score. If anything, organizations underestimate how much customers find chat easy to use for customer service interactions.

Thankfully, this hasn’t stopped more organizations from adopting chat. The percentage of US businesses offering chat jumped 21 points year-over-year — from 46% to 67%. And US consumer use of chat tripled in the same timeframe.

Clearly, chat is a channel with a lot of momentum.

To find out more about the potential of chat, download the 2019 NICE CXone Customer Experience (CX) Transformation Benchmark.

This comparison of consumer vs. business opinions is full of thought-provoking information that you don’t want to miss!