How To Do Live Chat Support From The Comfort Of Your Own Home

Live chat support is a growing field with many benefits for both employees and customers. It’s an exciting, challenging, and financially rewarding choice for your career. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of providing support through a website with live chat, how it works, how to get started, and what you can expect.

Employers can increase their efficiency by letting customers use their websites to get answers or submit questions in real-time while they shop online or browse content. You can provide that support from the comfort of your own home all you need is an internet connection. That’s right: no commute! Your office is wherever you want it to be (within reason).

We’ll talk about some of the things that employers are looking for in hires and give some tips on getting hired even if you’re new to the field or don’t have experience yet.

For example, hiring managers will care most about whether you’re personable and well-informed so that means being friendly and having patience as well as knowing your stuff when it comes to their product or service.

As long as those two things line up, they probably don’t care much whether you’re working from your bedroom or a cubicle farm in a skyscraper (unless they have specific dress code requirements).

6 Tips To Using a Live Chat to Provide Customer Support

Takeaways
1. Live chat support can be done from the comfort of your own home, providing flexibility and convenience in your work environment.
2. Implementing live chat support requires proper setup and integration with your website or platform.
3. Effective communication skills are essential for providing quality live chat support to customers.
4. Utilizing a reliable live chat support tool can streamline the process and enhance customer experience.
5. Continuous learning and improvement in live chat support techniques can help you excel in your role and provide exceptional customer service.

Table of Contents

Learn About The Company

As you’re learning about the company and developing your own sense of its personality, it’s important to remember that every company has a culture. Some companies have very formal cultures, where everyone wears suits and ties (or blazers and dresses) to work.

Some companies have more casual cultures, where everyone wears jeans and sneakers to work. Even if you’re working remotely from your home office, it’s important that you understand what the company’s culture is like so that you can fit in with the rest of the team properly.

If a company’s culture is very formal, then wearing suits and ties will probably be expected by management as well as customers. If a company has a more casual culture, then it might be okay for you to wear jeans and sneakers during calls with customers or clients.

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Read Through Everything On The Website

When you are at the office, you have a lot of resources available to you that help you do your job and answer customer questions. You have access to manuals, product guides, and training videos that explain how your company’s products work.

When working from home, you will not have those resources available, so will need to be more prepared than usual when talking to customers. The first step is to make sure that you read through everything on the website, not just the FAQs or support documentation but also the product pages and blog posts.

This way if a customer asks for more information about something like an offer or promotion on the site, or wants more details about an article they read on the blog, then you’ll be able to answer them without having to forward it to someone else.

Study For Live Chat Support Questions

Read the FAQ and knowledge base

Do your own research. When you come across a question that you aren’t sure about, do some digging and figure out the answer yourself. What was the cause? Will it affect other sites? Is there a workaround? How can this be prevented in the future?

What does Google have to say about it? Nobody wants to be spoon-fed try to get as much information as possible on your own and take initiative by asking colleagues if you don’t know the answer to something

Don’t be afraid to ask for help if needed. At the end of the day, live chat support is still a job involving customer service and we all know how stressful, sometimes unrewarding, and challenging this line of work can be. If you are having trouble with something or want help on how best to handle a situation, just ask! We’re all here to support each other

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Ask For Someone To Run A Mock Chat With You

Before you officially start chatting with customers, ask someone to practice a mock chat with you. Having the actual chat window open will give you an idea of what it will look like in a real-life situation, and it’s good to be familiar with how everything looks.

If possible, ask to use your own account so that you can play around with the different features.

You should also ask about any tips for the role for example, when do I escalate a chat? What should I make sure to include in my greeting message? Can I provide links to helpful resources? This can help give you some pointers on what is most important for this position.

Take A Real Chat With A Customer

The best way to learn what live chat support is like is to do a real chat with a customer. To set up a trial run, first, ask your boss if you can do a practice chat. If your company has never done this before, it will be even more important for you to show that you are serious about doing well.

After getting approval from your manager or supervisor, ask them to send you some test questions and then answer those questions. It’s also helpful if they give you an idea of what answers they think will be the most effective in helping customers get their problems solved.

Keep Your Agent Status As “Available” When You’re Ready To Accept Chats

Now that you have your account set up and have been training, let’s go over the basics of being a productive chat agent. First things first, keep your status as “available” when you are ready and able to accept chats.

We suggest not keeping your status as “away” at all so that customers know that they can reach you without having to wait unnecessarily. If it is critical that you be away from your computer, but still need to be available for chats, then you can use the “On Break” functionality.

This will keep your status to show customers that you are away but still allows them to request a chat with you. The On Break feature also allows agents to define how many hours they want their statuses displayed as “on a break” before returning back to the default state of “available”.

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Be Super-Friendly And Helpful

You will want to make the customer feel like he or she is the only person you are talking to at that moment. The customer should feel as if he or she is the most important person in your world, even though you may be chatting with a hundred customers at any given moment.

A few ways in which you can make someone feel special are by smiling while you type, looking up unfamiliar words, and giving them time to answer your questions. You always want to appear as though you are listening carefully to what they have to say.

Be Courteous And Patient At All Times

You may be wondering, “How do I help provide customer support remotely?” It’s fairly simple.

First, you need to know how your company is set up. Most companies have a chat app on the website where customers can submit chat support requests or catch you via email.

If that’s the case, then it’s just a matter of following along with whatever directions are provided and responding to customer questions as they come in by reviewing their information and helping them out as best you can.

Until such time as they ask for assistance in getting something done, simply leave them alone; once they need help with something, don’t hesitate to step in and get them settled again. Once the issue is resolved, thank the customer for contacting you (this will give them faith that you’re not going to disappear on them) and let him or them know how happy it made you solve their problem.

While this isn’t always needed (we’ve had so few issues come up that we don’t really feel all that compelled), it does make your customer feel better about doing business with your company if you go out of your way to thank him for taking the time to contact you.

Second, there are some things that are important when working from home: keep things neat and organized at all times; when working on electronics (such as computers), place or hold any metal objects away from yourself while working on those devices; always use caution when opening anything around children (or pets).

Smile When You’re Typing. It Helps You Sound Positive Over The Computer

Whether you’re a customer service representative or a freelancer, you can use live chat to interact with customers and clients.

Smile when you’re typing. It helps you sound positive over the computer! Even if you can’t see your customer, they will be able to hear that smile in your voice. Smiling also positively affects your mood, which translates into better service for your customers and more money for you.

Get in a comfortable position before chatting with customers–you may be there for a while. If needed, take breaks after each 20-30 minute session of live chat by stretching or getting up and walking around the room to keep yourself focused and avoid fatigue.

Make Sure The Customer Knows You’re There To Help Them

The most important part of your job is to be the customer’s best friend and advocate. When you’re starting out, it can be tempting to think that your goal is to close tickets, but that’s actually not true! Your goal is to help customers have a great experience with our product.

If they have a question or issue, they don’t want an answer they want the help they need.

Only give advice after you’ve gathered information about the situation: The first thing you should say when a customer contacts you is “Hi!” The second thing (not necessarily in this order) should be “How can I help?” That way, the customer knows that you’re there for them and ready to solve their problem.

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Stay On Top Of Email Response Time, Too

If you’re going to commit to living chat, you need to commit to email response time as well.

On average, I respond within an hour. However, depending on the nature of the business and my availability at the time I receive a message, this isn’t always possible. If that’s the case, it’s important for me to let my customers know I’m working on their issue as soon as possible even if I don’t have an answer yet!

Even if I can only respond with a quick note like “Hey Jane! Thanks for your message. It looks like your order has shipped from our warehouse but hasn’t arrived yet. Please check back in 3-5 business days and let us know if it hasn’t shown up! We’ll be sure to follow up with you ASAP!”

This is better than letting her sit around wondering when she’ll get her goods or whether they even sent the right things (which happened a lot before we had a solid customer service protocol).

It also shows that we’re human beings who care about them personally by making sure they know their order went out (you’d be surprised how often people don’t think to do this!) and how soon they should expect it.

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Conclusion

Okay, what if you want to take the whole “working from home” thing to the next level and make a career out of it? The best way we can think of doing this is by finding a remote job with flexible hours.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Have To Be In Front Of My Computer All Day?

No way! This is remote work, so there’s no commute time or meetings to sit through you can work from wherever suits you best and whenever works best for your schedule (as long as it’s during business hours).

What Is Live Chat Support?

Live chat support is a way for customers to get help from your company from the convenience of their own devices (laptops, smartphones, etc.) without having to wait on hold or navigate through a series of automated phone menus. You can talk in real-time about any issues your customers might have.

What Do I Need Before I Can Start Offering Live Chat Support?

You’ll need:

A computer that has internet access and an internet connection that’s fast enough to handle video streaming (high-quality video requires a good internet connection). A laptop is ideal because it’s portable and allows you to be flexible with where you work. But if you don’t have one already, most companies offer laptops at discounted rates when you sign up for a contract.

A quiet place to work where you won’t be interrupted (this includes family members and roommates who may not understand why they should leave you alone while working).

What Kind Of Hours Do I Have To Work?

It depends on what kind of schedule works best for you. You can set your own schedule and work whenever it’s convenient for you—even if that means working in the middle of the night! If you have a family, we recommend setting up times when other members of the household won’t be in front of their computers so they don’t accidentally get dragged into the conversation by accident (or intentionally).

Herman Edward

I am a content writer, and I love what I do! Writing makes me feel like the words are flowing through my fingers, and then onto the keyboard, like magic. My experience as a writer has taught me that writing makes me feel good, as well as helps others to feel better too!