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Tracking customer service interactions is critical for improving and training your team. For small to medium-sized business, though, working with those recorded calls is a labor-intensive (and/or cost intensive) operation. Live chat provides an alternative solution, allowing for customer interactions to be recorded in a format that’s much easier to run analytics on.
The next step is to be able to have a direct understanding of how your customer service interactions are driving buying behaviors. With the emerging connectivity between live chat provider software and Google Analytics, this type of information is available now.
A Robust Analytics Engine for Live Chat
Google Analytics is the premier tool for measuring site visitor interactions through your website. By setting up custom event tracking, for example, you can monitor the difference in your sales conversion ratio between people who read your blog and those who don’t. This sort of data provides crucial insights into the best methods for improving your web site and visitor flow.
Now that same robust engine is available for tracking the effectiveness of your live chat interactions. Live chat software providers that offer Google Analytics integration (like Velaro) allow you to trigger live chats as a custom event. This integration means you can:
- Directly measure the impact of your live chats in a buyer’s journey through your website
- Determine how and when people access live chat during their visit
- Measure the effectiveness of individual live chat agents by determining the conversion rate for customers who engage with each agent
This functionality allows for an unprecedented view into the impact of live chat and even gives you the insights you need to improve your website and customer service team.
The Future of Live Chat Analytics
Of course, custom event tracking for engaging in a live chat is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to live chat integration with Google Analytics. The future of live chat insights could create an unprecedented amount of understanding that can lead directly to improved customer experiences (both in a chat and out of one). Here are some of our visions for the future of live chat analytics:
- Chat Transcript Keywords as Custom Events – By allowing specific conversation topics and keywords to trigger as a custom event, brands will be able to understand which topics lead to a better conversion rate and which questions customers find most critical to making a final decision.
- Sentiment and Success Tracking – When the sentiment and “success” of a live chat can be integrated as a measurable event in analytics, brands will have the insight they need to fully measure the impact of a specific live chat, and that live chat agent, on a customer’s purchasing behavior.
Because the integration capabilities of Google Analytics are new and growing, the near future will see a wealth of new features and abilities. These types of insights will be critical for improving the customer experience on your website. Using live chat is the first step, understanding the impact it has is the key to the following steps.
