Chat Metrics: How To Measure Success In Live Chat With Customers

Live chat has been around for quite a while now, but it’s still one of the best tools we have when it comes to communicating with customers. While you may think that live chat is just another tool in your marketing arsenal, there are actually some metrics you can track to gauge its success. 

In this post, we’ll discuss what those metrics are and how you can use them to measure the effectiveness of your live customer service outsourcing investment. 

Table of Contents

• Chat Metrics: How To Measure Success In Live Chat With Customers
• The need for chat metrics
• 1. How many chats are you getting?
• 2. Response time is everything
• 3. Average handle time (AHT) is a critical metric.
• 4. Define ‘First Contact Resolution’.
• 5. Customer satisfaction score
• 6. The outcome as a key metric
  • Measuring the effectiveness of your live chat team is a critical success factor.

The need for chat metrics

You can’t just assume that live chat is a success or failure. You need to measure its performance to know if it’s actually helping your business. To do this, you need to gather data on how many customers are using your live chat services, how long each conversation lasts, and what questions they ask. 

This information will allow you to see if your live chat is improving customer experience overall and may also help improve engagement levels across other channels, like if you have your customer service answering the phone calls from your customers.

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Measuring the performance of live chat through customer usage data, conversation duration, and question analysis is crucial to determine its impact on customer experience and overall business success.

1. How many chats are you getting?

The first metric to track is the number of chats your team is getting. This will give you an idea of how many visitors are using chat as a support channel and let you compare it against other methods (like email or phone calls).

You can measure this in a few different ways:

• The number of chats per day. If you have one agent per day available for live chats, this is an excellent way to get a high-level view of how many people are connecting with your agents over time. It’s also useful if you have multiple shifts – you can see how many customers connect each hour at peak times.
• The number of chats per month/year. If your business has a consistent amount of traffic throughout the year, this could be an effective way to see how well social media campaigns or marketing efforts translate into new conversations with customers.

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Tracking the number of chats is essential to understanding the popularity of live chat as one of your support channels. It can be measured daily, monthly, or yearly to give a high-level view of customer engagement and the impact of marketing efforts.

2. Response time is everything 

Response time is how long it takes you to respond to messages sent by your customers. It’s critical because it shows how quickly you are responding to your customers and also helps them feel like they can reach out at any time with questions or concerns.

While many things can affect response times, ideally, your average response time should be less than two minutes. This means that if a customer sends in a message asking for help right now, they will receive an answer within two minutes.

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Response time, the duration between customer’s message and support team’s reply, is a critical metric in live chat as it directly affects customer satisfaction and perception of support availability. Aiming for an average response time of less than 2 minutes can improve customer experience.

3. Average handle time (AHT) is a critical metric. 

Average Handle Time (AHT) is a critical metric to track, as it is the average time it takes to handle a chat. AHT is measured in seconds and is an important indicator of customer satisfaction and service quality. If you want to measure your live chat’s success, then AHT should be one of your top metrics.

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Average Handle Time (AHT), measuring the average duration of a chat session, is a critical metric in evaluating live chat success and customer satisfaction.

4. Define ‘First Contact Resolution’. 

First Contact Resolution (FCR) is a term you’ll hear thrown around a lot in the live chat industry. In short, it’s how quickly and effectively you can resolve an issue for your customer.

Make sure all of your employees know how important FCR is – and remind them regularly. This will help them understand why they should be motivated by this metric instead of just focusing on closing sales or their other goals. It also means if any issues arise during live chats, they’ll know exactly what steps they need to take to handle them correctly so they can hit those targets easily next time. 

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: First Contact Resolution (FCR) measures the effectiveness and efficiency of resolving customer issues through live chat in a single interaction. Emphasising the importance of FCR to support teams can drive improved customer satisfaction and issue resolution.

5. Customer satisfaction score

The most important measure of success in live chat is customer satisfaction. It’s a measure that indicates how well your company meets or exceeds the expectations of its customers.

To get started, you’ll need to create some data points that can be used to calculate customer satisfaction scores. These include:

Net Promoter Score (NPS). The NPS is a customer loyalty metric that answers the question, ‘How likely is it that this customer would recommend our brand/company?’ Customers respond on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being not at all likely and 10 being extremely likely. An NPS score of 9 or 10 means that most people who interact with you would likely recommend your brand. 

Net Promoter Score Heatmap. Tracking net promoter scores over time allows you to see which channels are generating positive reviews and which ones generate negative ones; this will help determine where improvements need to be made after looking at specific interactions provided by users, such as keywords used during chats. 

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Using metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and NPS Heatmap can provide valuable insights into customer loyalty and highlight areas for improvement.

6. The outcome as a key metric

Outcome metrics measure how well your live chat team is serving customers. If a customer says, ‘I was able to resolve my issue with the product because of this chat’, that’s an outcome measure. You can also have qualitative (or non-numerical) measures, like ‘customers who used live chat were happier than those who didn’t’.

There are many ways to measure outcomes in live chat:

• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Net promoter score surveys
• NPS-based conversion attribution 

💡KEY TAKEAWAY: Outcome metrics are essential in evaluating the effectiveness of live chat in serving customers. Examples of outcome metrics include customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, and NPS-based conversion attribution.

Measuring the effectiveness of your live chat team is a critical success factor.

Live chat is a critical part of the customer experience, and you need to know how well it’s performing in order to improve it. The metrics you choose for measuring success should reflect what matters most to you and your business. The important thing is that they are relevant and useful for understanding how live chat contributes to other business functions like employee performance or business development.

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We aim to help you deliver a better customer service experience, so we share insights on how to measure your business live chat success.

Greechat is a fully managed live chat solution for businesses across different industries that helps boost customer satisfaction and increase sales.