Swiss online insurer relies on live chat

The online insurer Smile Direct relies on an online chat for customer support.MK What were the reasons for launching the chat channel?ANDREAS GROSS We are an online insurance company and we want the customer to purchase online. The call center should support if the customer has difficulties and questions. We want to offer the customer support in the purchasing process, without a media break.MK What are your goals in using the chat?LARGE Provide the customer with optimal support in their buying process.MK What information do you keep track of through the engagement platform?LARGE The different topics in the conversations. We investigate where the customer is and where there is potential for improvement on the website in general. We are currently evaluating everything we can. In addition, we are considering extending the service hours at least once for the chat. The chat offers us an easy way to serve customers via home office, e.g. until 8 p.m. or on Saturdays.MK How many languages are covered in the chat?LARGE Officially, our team of consultants is trilingual: German, French and Italian. But a few customer advisors also speak other languages. These are currently only used if the customer says that they do not speak any of the three national languages. An official extension with English will be introduced in 2017.MK How are the chats assigned to your consultants?LARGE Chats are assigned via Skills and the language settings in the website visitor's browser.MK How do consultants react?LARGE Very pleased and very motivated. It is an enrichment of their work. At the beginning there was also feedback that it is not so easy. It is not just telephony in writing, but written communication. We have specially trained our employees on this and selected them according to the language requirements.MK How many consultants do you have handling the chats?LARGE Currently, 14 employees provide advice via chat but also in parallel via telephone and e-mail. These customer advisors have priorities: During business hours, they give priority to chat. When an employee is on standby in the chat, he or she is not logged in for inbound phone calls. In the meantime, our consultants can handle two chats in parallel. However, we want to increase this. To support the consultants, an answer library is used that already existed before. We do not encounter any fundamentally different questions in the chat.MK What are typical questions in chat?LARGE We are frequently asked about product ambiguities regarding coverage. Of these, the majority of questions relate to coverages that customers cannot select because they are not activated but are visible on the page. For example, Assistance cannot be selected because the vehicle is too old. We learn a lot from this to optimize the presentation on our site. There are also often specific questions about the contracts.MK What other channels do you use?LARGE Telephony, e-mail and an FAQ module that we use to pick up customer questions at an early stage.MK Did you have any fears before the launch?LARGE Not necessarily apprehension, but we didn't know how customers would react to this new offering. Expectations ranged widely from "we'll be inundated with chats" to "nobody cares.MK And what is the first impression?LARGE We are positively surprised by the amount of requests. I am particularly interested in where the zenith for chat inquiries is. We have noticed that chat is perceived as another contact channel to the service center. When we are not available by phone, website visitors try to reach us via chat and, in some cases, email. Our challenge will be to synchronize this data.MK Your team of consultants was trained by Sylvia. How did the training go?LARGE The training went step by step and was very good. Both sides were very motivated and this was very well received by our consultants. The training was necessary for us. Source of conversation: iAdvice