Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
What happens between a customer opening the widget and an agent replying. Designing that is worth more than styling it.
The moments to design
- Opening. What greets them, and does it set the right expectation about speed?
- Before a person. Do you ask anything, offer articles, or go straight to the queue?
- Waiting. Do they know somebody is coming, and roughly when?
- Out of hours. What they see when nobody is there.
- Ending. How the conversation closes, and whether you ask about it.
Set the expectation honestly
The greeting is where most of the disappointment is created. "How can we help?" implies somebody is there. "We usually reply within an hour" tells the truth and buys you an hour.
Customers are remarkably tolerant of a wait they were told about, and intolerant of one they were not.
Asking questions first
Two or three at most, and only ones that change what happens next: which product, which order. Every question is a moment they can leave, and the agent can ask anything else in the conversation itself.
Offering articles before an agent
Effective where your help centre is good and the questions are repetitive. Irritating where it is not, and customers who have to argue past a suggestion arrive at your agent already annoyed. Make it easy to skip.
Build it in stages
A greeting, an out-of-office response and routing is a complete first version. Add questions, articles and automation once you have read a few hundred real conversations.
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