Chat is a powerful business tool that, when added to a website, causes more visitors to engage in conversations with sales people - visitors that would otherwise have browsed away without ever calling or filling out a form. In our experience, at least 25% more visitors will engage with a business that has chat on their website. Great! But once visitors engage, how do the best sales people convert conversations into appointments and sales? This post provides some guidelines for effective communication and website chat etiquette.

Add A Photo
It’s a bit ironic that the first key to better chat conversations is a picture and not something to do with words, but first impressions count and building rapport is the number one key to effective chat conversations. ContactAtOnce! enables you to upload a professional looking photo that will appear in the consumer-facing chat window, and in the drop in business card. This photo should be a headshot of you smiling and looking relaxed, taken at your desk or in your work environment. Consider yourself ugly or unattractive? Even better! Our experience has been that website visitors are more likely to trust pictures of “normal looking people” than they are pictures of beautiful, curvy models off the pages of magazines. Adding a photo personalizes the live chat experience for the customer, humanizes your website, and allows you to establish the rapport required for a productive conversation. And don’t forget, if your conversation with a site visitor is successful they’ll soon be walking through the door of your business so you’ll want them to instantly recognize you.

Introduce Yourself
Answer inbound chat requests with “Hello, my name is ___. How may I help you?” or a similar greeting. This will often prompt the customer to give you their name and tell you what they are looking for.

Keep Messages Short and To The Point
Keep messages simple, concise and give people time to respond. Follow these guidelines:

• Ask only one question per message sent.
• Provide one answer per message sent.
• Don’t use the “machine gun” technique of sending lots of messages in quick succession – it will only confuse and irritate the visitor
• Do give the visitor ample time to reply after each message you send (hint: ContactAtOnce! shows you when the visitor is typing so you can get a good sense of what they are doing…)
• Acknowledge every message you receive, even when an answer is not required. For example, visitor say “I really like green” and you respond “ok”.

Humor - Be Cautious
As with email communications, be very careful about the use of humor within chat conversations. In fact, in initial business conversations steer clear of humor and jokes unless the other party initiates them, and even then be careful as to how far you push it. There are cultural and personal differences among the population, so what seems funny to you may be considered weak or even offensive to others.

Jargon, Slang and Abbreviations
Jargon, abbreviations and slang used in live chat and instant messaging conversations can help reduce keystrokes, but may come across as being unprofessional to the person you are communicating with. Worse still, if the other person isn’t familiar with the lingo, it may totally confuse them. Until you get to know the person better, or you see them using the same lingo, it is best to steer clear of it. That said, with the incredible popularity of text-based communication of all sorts, you will encounter an increasing number of visitors that will use slang to communicate with you. Make sure you know the basics so you can understand what they are saying to you and/or asking you. For your reference, a chat slang guide was included in another post on this blog

Don’t “SHOUT”
TYPING YOUR MESSAGES IN UPPERCASE is extremely rude - it’s considered shouting and very aggressive. Use lowercase letters.

Relax, Fat Fingers…
Chat is less formal than email so proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and grammar should be considered a bonus but not a requirement when chatting.

To be continued in the second post in this series…