The single biggest mistake in webchat

My Love/Hate Relationship with Webchat

I love webchat. It's so convenient. I don't have to wait on hold for someone to answer my call. I can multi-task while I'm engaged in the back and forth. It's familiar like text messaging or WhatsApp. And I don't actually have to talk to anyone (I sound like my teenage sons!).

I hate webchat. It's very often staffed by people who can't actually help me. I have to put up with the endless barrage of messages asking me how my day is going, thanking me for being a customer and asking me if I want to upgrade something or other.

I'm sure I'm not the only person that feels this way. Webchat feels like a missed opportunity for so many companies. For me, webchat looks like this...

I still remember my first experience with webchat back around 2015 - and it was a positive one. My family and I had recently arrived in the US. And like so many others, that meant a trip to Ikea. We were living in Boulder Colorado, and the only Ikea store near us was in Centennial, outside of Denver, approximately an hour's drive away. So it was an outing. Especially with 3 and 6 year old boys.

When we got home with our flat-packed purchases, my wife and I began the unenviable process of assembly. We'd done this many times before. We just needed a Philips Head screwdriver, Hex keys and a glass of wine.

But, for the first time in my many years of Ikea engineering, I found I was missing a part. I'd never encountered this before. What to do? I certainly didn't want to drive an hour back to the store to find out they didn't have it. And I didn't want to phone the call center. So I hoped on the Ikea US website and low and behold, there was a webchat option. So I thought I'd give it a go.

It worked beautifully. They apologized. Confirmed the replacement was in stock and told me exactly what to do to resolve my issue. A thing of beauty (but still involved a 2 hour round trip...so I bought more stuff at Ikea while I was there, like meatballs to cook at home...as you do).

One Insurance company got Webchat right (I mean nailed it!)

After the Ikea experience, I felt like my subsequent experiences with webchat were, well, disappointing. They always took too long and were quite often unable to help me.

Around this time - I was working with a commercial insurance company in the US (they insured businesses, not individuals). The firm specialized in excess and surplus lines of insurance. I'm not going to explain that here as its not important. But what is important is their customer base. The insurer dealt exclusively with insurance agents ('brokers' in another parlance). They had an established relationship with these agents. But that didn't guarantee they would get the business. It was still competitive.

So a typical scenario the insurer was dealing with was an agent, sitting in their office, talking to a business owner. The business owner asks a question about their policy that the agent can't confidently answer immediately - so they revert back to the insurer. And that usually means a phone call, and waiting, while the business owner sits patiently looking for an answer to what they thought was a simple question.

A digital innovator at the insurance comapny suggested they implement webchat for this kind of interaction with the agent. There were non-blievers for sure (it was the early days of webchat). But our innovator pushed ahead and got approcal for a pilot. But he did two things differently to most webchat deployments.

1. He dispensed with all the niceties. Now that doesn't mean being 'rude' or 'curt'. But I don't need anyone asking me how my day is going. I'm an insurance agent with an important client sitting in front of me. Time is important.

2. The webchat was staffed by underwriters, not call center agents. The insurer recognized that these were valuable time-poor clients (agents) and giving them quick answers was important for many reasons.

The result - spectacular!

Agents would answer questions and get almost immediate answers from trusted underwriters. The following is an example of a typical interaction. Compare this to the one above.

The solution had 3 somewhat unintended but fantastic outcomes.

1. Agents started using it more and more - meaning less impact to the valuable time of the insurer's underwriters. Taking a phone call is time consuming and disruptive. Typing into a chat session is quick and easy.

2. Agents cited the webchat as a reason for staying with the insurer - as no other carrier was offering such a fabulous way to get answers to questions.

3. Agents recommended to other agents that they should place business with the carrier becuase of the brilliant webchat solution - so business grew.

Happy clients. Retained business. Growth. All from a simple webchat offering.