Role of Quality Control and Training in a Live Chat Service – Part 2

In the previous part of this series of articles regarding the importance of Quality Control and Training in a Live Chat Service we spoke about Language errors which are very common amongst Live Chat Operators. In this article we continue with another common mistake that happening in a Live Chat Service. Trust us we have gone through this ourselves in the last few years.

Listening! Acknowledgement Errors:
With improvements of Live Chat Technology, an operator has the ability to speak to more than one visitor simultaneously. However, this does have side-effects too. Just like in Customer Service and Sales, listening to visitors, understanding and acknowledging their needs is also important in Live Chat. Any compromise on any of these factors can lead to a disappointing conversation.

Live Chat Agents must understand that it is vital to listen to the web visitor, understand what he/she is saying, acknowledge it and then qualify the visitor accordingly. A failure in the execution of this step can damage the rest of the Live Chat. Efficient Quality Control can assure that these errors are reduced to a negligible percentage. Our Quality Control Department uses a methodology called "Damage Point Analysis" to correct these mistakes.

Previously, we used to scrutinize random chats done by random operators during the day. The number of chats to be analysed, depends on the number of chats that happen during the day. If you have constant traffic that amount to hundreds or thousands, a good number would be 10% of chats. Operators might have up and down days, so be fair and have a couple of chats rather than one chat to go through quality control for any individual operator.

However, with our own software, WG Live Chat Software, we are able to see real time chats, rather than waiting on chats to end and receiving transcripts of those chats. We can jump in at any time in cases of critical errors or if it seems that some major damage is being done like wrong information is being given out amongst other things no matter how rare these cases are.

It is important to point out here that quality control and training go hand in hand. Feedback should be given for all chats done good or bad.  For the bad ones, training measures should be put up to help the operator improve. We have seen in the last few years that misconception by operators on what they have said is common. It might simply be a matter of them not knowing how the conversation is being perceived.

Let’s summarize on what can be done for these errors.

1. Quality control measures should be put in place for random conversations throughout the day. Just a sample of more than one conversation of one operator should be enough. This can help in seeing any trends or weak points that the individual operators might have or as a whole

2. Feedback should be given for all chats that have taken place, good or bad. Appreciation for good conversations is a very powerful tool in motivating live chat operators to do better.

3. Training should be ongoing and not just when error occurs. Implementing a training program, using good practices of Customer service and sales (depending on the role of the agent in your organization).

Part 3 of this series will identify another problem that occurs in Live Chat, i.e. Lack of Product or Service knowledge.

2011-01-11T10:27:30