Clickatell, the leader in mobile communications and chat commerce, has announced the launch of its Chat Desk and Chat Flow solutions delivering a superior customer experience through chat.
Clickatell combines the power of Chat Desk, a live-agent digital contact centre solution, with Chat Flow, a chat commerce workflow builder, providing automated chat with drag-and-drop, no-code, functionality. With this holistic solution, consumers will connect with brands through Chat Flow automated chat, also known as unassisted chat, and then if the consumer needs additional support, they seamlessly shift to a live agent or assisted chat, through Chat Desk.
By making customer service accessible with popular chat apps, brands eliminate long hold times for agents in contact centres, and meet consumers’ needs faster and more conveniently in chat apps that they already use daily. The adoption of chat is growing faster than any other digital channel with WhatsApp having over 2 billion global users and Facebook Messenger over 1.3 billion users.
“Clickatell’s Chat Commerce takes the wait, the frustration, and inconvenience out of the customer service experience for our clients,” said Cerika Henning, Business Development Executive at Company Partners (www.CompanyPartners.co.za). “Our customers are reassured quickly and conveniently that their inquiries will be taken care of through chat. Adding the chat channel as a method to engage with our consultants has been extremely effective and a great way to build trust with our customers.”
Chief Product and Technology Officer at Clickatell, Jeppe Dorffsaid: “Chat Desk and Chat Flow working together or separately make it easy for brands to meet consumers where they are consistently – on chat apps – enhancing customer experience while reducing friction associated with contact centre customer service. A number one reason consumers leave brands and abandon payments is due to bad and frustrating customer experience. Adding chat apps as a channel in contact centres makes brands easily reachable and prevents frustration. Added to this, chat increases customer engagement, creating an opportunity to up and cross sell to customers, turning a cost centre into a profit centre.”
In addition to the seamless integration between Chat Desk and Chat Flow, Clickatell has added several new features to Chat Desk including Pending Chats, a feature that enables agents to mark live chats as pending when waiting unusually long for the customer to reply, effectively putting that chat “on hold.” As the agent may be dealing with multiple chats simultaneously, this effectively declutters their chat queue, helping the agent to focus their attention on chats that are currently live.
Also the Customer Surveys feature can be presented to a customer when a chat ends. This can be used to gather valuable feedback about a brand’s products and/or services and about the customer’s interaction with the agent, helping contact centres’ managers better manage their support teams. Either an NPS (Net Promoter Score) or CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) survey can be configured.
With the Auto Responders feature, custom messages can be displayed to end-users in certain scenarios, such as when all agents are busy or when a customer has reached a business outside of support hours.
Chat Flow has also been redesigned for a cleaner, fresher, more user-friendly experience and has the following new features and enhancements:
- A new ‘Settings and Shortcuts’ menu was added.
- Workflow nodes can be sorted according to type, most used, or alphabetically.
- Users of the Clickatell Portal can approve and deploy their flows themselves instead of relying on Clickatell’s help.
- Bi-directional location sharing is possible for Chat Desk customers via Chat Flow and One API.
According to Dorff: “To join the mobile chat revolution, brands with existing contact centre solutions don’t need to rip and replace, but instead can add or up-level their customer service by adding chat as an additional channel with Chat Desk and Chat Flow to boost productivity and customer experience. By doing so, brands put themselves in consumers’ contact lists right next to friends and family, and engage with consumers when they want to engage, which boosts the customer experience.”
Since chat is asynchronous communication, consumers can reach out from anywhere, anytime, get the company’s response, and then chat back at their convenience. With the seamless flow from automated chat to a live agent, consumers no longer have to repeat themselves because the chat content and history is there for the consumer, agent, and supervisor to see.
With Clickatell, consumers can now connect with brands to find goods and services, make purchases, track orders, and resolve issues with a simple text or chat. No need for cash, phone calls, in-person interactions, or apps. Founded in 2000 with now over 10,000 customers, Clickatell is powering the digital commerce transformation through Chat Commerce. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, it has offices in Nigeria, South Africa, and Canada.
