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Customer with a lot of questions
Tech & Support

Building a Database of Customer Live Chat Questions

As a marketing, customer experience, or customer service professional, you are always looking for new ways to improve your team's performance when delivering excellent customer experience.

An important element of providing that great customer service is being able to answer customer questions quickly and efficiently in a way that conveys professionalism and expertise.

It can be difficult to keep track of all the various questions that come in, which is why it is essential to have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) database of customer questions. A well-organized FAQ database can be a valuable resource for your customer service team. Not only can it help to reduce the number of support requests that you receive, but it can also help to improve customer satisfaction.

Benefits of a FAQs customer database

Having a customer FAQ database can be a valuable asset for your business. Here are a few benefits that you can expect:

  • Your agents will be able to give detailed, easy to understand solutions to many customer issues; sometimes in a clear way your agents couldn’t come up with themselves.
  • To minimize customer wait time and reduce support requests, consider creating a comprehensive and accessible FAQ page, such as one available via a knowledge base. This powerful tool empowers customers to quickly find answers to their most pressing questions, without relying on your team's availability. Additionally, it allows you to provide additional information about your products or services, further enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Provide your customers with a lasting resource they can reference the next time they have the same issue.
  • You’ll gain insights into what your customers really want, even if that differs from what they say they want.
  • You’ll boost your website’s web presence and SEO efforts.
  • Lastly, it is a valuable training tool for any new customer service team member, as it will teach them the basics of how to handle customer queries, difficulties, and complaints effectively.

How to build a FAQ database

One of the most valuable resources you have when starting a database of frequently asked questions are your customers themselves. Here are some simple steps to follow when creating your own customer issue database your agents can use to improve every single live chat suposession:

Step 1: Review live chat transcripts from past chat sessions

The first step is to review the customer service history from previous chat sessions, this can be simply done with the right live chat software.

To gather valuable insights into your customers' preferences and behaviors, consider logging all live chat scripts interactions, no matter how modest the amount of data. This data can provide invaluable intelligence for your digital marketing strategy.

While you’re reviewing these logs, keep track of the following information:

  • The issue the customer called about
  • The information that finally resolved the issue
  • How knowledgeable the customer was about the issue
  • Look for common questions and answers that come up and add them to your database.

Step 2: Compile and organize the data

You can use a spreadsheet or similar tool to export your chat transcripts and review all your customer service log data.  Start with the top 10 most common customer issues and solutions. Over time, this list will grow, it will help you to keep track of customer questions so you can improve your product or service.

Step 3: Create an article database

Once you’ve got your 10 (or however many you choose) customer issues, begin creating brief articles for each. Ideally, these articles will introduce the issue, offer the solution, and answer any frequently asked questions you saw during your review of customer chat logs.

Here’s how to save time on this potentially lengthy process:

  • Use the unedited answers provided by your customer service agent as a foundation for your article. Feel free to copy and paste as much as you like. Just remember to format the information into a standalone article rather than leaving it in its original unedited state.
  • Take your original information and turn it into a series of articles. If your business has the resources, you can contract a professional contact writer, this might provide a well written set of articles with optimize SEO
  • and possibly save time.
  • Have each customer service representative write up a few different articles. However, your customer service reps may be better at speaking than writing. Make sure to have a qualified editor review every article.

Once your articles are written, put them on your website on an easily accessible database such as a knowledge base. Train your customer service team so they know how to search and access this database without delay during their live chat sessions. Connect your chatbots to your knowledge base for an optimal self-service tool and make it available to your customers via searches in the knowledge base portal.

Step 4: Make this accessible to your customers

With so many benefits of live help software, including an opportunity to upsell the customer, you may wonder why you want to make this information publicly available. Won’t customers go to your solution database instead of using live help?

While some of your customers will take the time to find this resource, search it, and find their own solutions, most won’t. Incorporating some of the live help best practices (such as using proactive live chat and chatbots) will also allow you continue to provide the help your customers need when they need it. Keeping customers happy should be a goal for your customer centric strategy.

Another reason it is beneficial for your customers to have access to this is that it can provide insights into the quality of your resources. If a lot of your customers choose to clarify their issue to live chat after reading an answer, it could be because your solution wasn’t clear enough or didn’t adequately resolve their inquiry. By refining your solutions, you have the potential to improve your live chat conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

Summary

A database of FAQs is a powerful tool for managing customer interactions. It can help you keep track of customer questions and concerns, as well as provide valuable insights into your customers’ needs and wants.

Additionally, a well-organized and accessible database of customer questions provides a resource for developing marketing and customer support materials. FAQ databases can also be used to generate reports that show how well your company is doing in terms of customer service and support.

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