How are you tracking live chat leads?

If your current system for tracking leads in your sales funnel or support queue involves a spreadsheet, or matching transcripts with emails, or post-it notes stuck to your desk - then it's time to try a CRM.

We'd like to introduce our newest integration partner, Nutshell, a CRM platform for small businesses, built by a team that shares our commitment to excellent Customer Support. (They're also our neighbors, just a few blocks down from our Ann Arbor, MI office.)

When first starting with live chat for your website, there are a LOT of options for tools and platforms that you can use alongside chat to improve your customer experience.

I mean, this article from Appcues shows you 60 different tools that will improve your customer experience, and that's just one article!

In the fast-moving worlds of SaaS and ecommerce, it helps to focus on picking a CRM first. CRMs, Help Desks, and Knowledge Bases come in all shapes and sizes, so it's important to evaluate each option based on what will make make your business most successful. Doing so will make it easier for you to customize customer conversations, and analytically highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your communication channels. 

The Customer Support community is much different from other 'hard' tech communities because of the emotional involvement of the day-to-day work. Support can be very rewarding, but it can also be a grind. In a recent study, 45% of Customer Support professionals found maintaining and improving team morale challenging. (source)

Last year, sales on Cyber Monday topped two billion dollars. That was an 8.5 percent increase from 2013 as Cyber Monday was, again, the busiest day of the year for online shopping. We saw it on our network too. Chats for Olark customers went up 40 percent on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and those numbers stayed high for the week following Cyber Monday.

November and December - the holiday shopping season - will account for 20 to 40 percent of annual sales for small and mid-size businesses. 

How are you getting ready? 

Here at Olark, you may have noticed we've implemented a new reporting system, which includes feedback on how visitors feel your operators are doing.