How CoPromote uses transcripts for site updates and onboarding

(Moha Antani (l) and Jorge Hernandez (r) of the CoPromote community team)

"Four years ago it was a complete mess," says Jorge Hernandez, CoPromote's communications director. "On an average day we'd get 50 emails, half of which were negative, and 10 chats in a row from people who were confused or frustrated or both."

CoPromote is a free co-marketing platform that helps content creators boost their social shares to new target audiences on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. The platform helps members scale reach and engagements by getting a social post re-shared and retweeted by other members of the community, and then tracks those shares and engagements for every post so you know who in your network is sharing.

The CoPromote team handles about 1-2 chats and 3-4 emails per day asking how the platform works, but as Jorge said, it wasn't always so peaceful.

Creating actionable feedback from live chat

The nature of email feedback was particularly frustrating for the CoPromote team. As Jorge explains, "We might ask a customer a question over email, but have to wait a day or two to get an answer, or sometimes never get an answer at all! Then we're stuck with incomplete feedback."

To gather more complete and actionable feedback, the CoPromote team started tracking chat transcripts in a spreadsheet and filtering those transcripts by reason for contact. They also noted what OS members were on. This made it easier to identify places on their site where people were hitting snags and other problematic patterns that needed to be addressed.

All of this data and feedback has helped CoPromote create new blog posts, social posts and FAQ updates, all of which helped decrease its number of inbound support requests. The difference is noticeable says Jorge. "Now the customers we chat with are more focused on getting reassurance that a social post is going to reach the maximum number of people."

(The CoPromote FAQ page)

Onboarding with live chat

Live chat also plays a key role in CoPromote's onboarding, which is vital to its customer retention. Many visitors sign-up for CoPromote expecting the platform to look like Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. Jorge says his team spends a lot of time explaining how the platform connects those networks and taking visitors through the connection process step-by-step.

"We use the !see command a lot because we can direct people to a specific part of the screen where they need to turn on an integration or add a network member," says Jorge. "When we address a new customer's concerns when they're getting started, and show them how to succeed in what they're trying to do, we stand a good chance of keeping that customer."

Keeping customers up-to-date

Jorge adds that chat has proven helpful when CoPromote makes updates.

"Inevitably we'll get a wave of questions like, "What did you do?!" Chat, more so than email, lets our operators add a human element to a frustrating experience and diffuse some tension. It also gives us the opportunity to explain intent in real-time so people truly understand why we made a change."

Ultimately, Jorge says it's an operator's attitude in chat that determines the success of a customer interaction. He's seen it firsthand during his shifts. Because CoPromote is an open platform, visitors on chat can be at any level of expertise, and chats might range from five minutes to 15 minutes depending on the case.

"There's no way to anticipate what's coming next, so you have to keep a good attitude going into every conversation and look for ways to help the customer accomplish their goals," he says. "The payoff is building those great relationships. I've had people come back and ask for me by name when they need help. It’s nice when they ask for us on chat because it makes our members feel like they have immediate access to someone they trust, and our whole business is built on nurturing trust."