February 18, 2013 at 14:31How we launched tech support online
Exactly a year ago, on hh.ru, we launched technical support for users through online chat: first for customers-employers, and then for job seekers. During this time, we were able to help solve the difficulties of almost 50 thousand users. The first obvious advantage of this service is that the user does not need to have any additional software.
The year seemed to us quite enough to figure out whether it was worth spending money on this service and how much it added convenience to users and technical support.
At the start of the project, one operator worked in it, which could help a maximum of 150 users per day (which, as you know, with a traffic of 11 million unique users is a drop in the bucket), but now there are already three operators. For a year they gained experience and are quite capable of advising up to five hundred users on a different day. And all the same, when there are a lot of people who want to, and the operators are fully loaded, the “Technical Support Online” button periodically disappears from the page. This, by the way, seems to us a logical solution, so as not to “pickle” people in the chat for several hours without an answer.
Before introducing technical support via online chat, we deliberately disabled the address hhsupport@hh.ru (Do not write to it anymore, it is really disabled). For many years, it was so lit up that spam filtering could no longer cope. But our main complaint to the communication of users with technical support by mail is that it is very difficult to quickly solve the problem with a lot of clarifications. The solution of short questions (and we have a lot of them) sometimes stretched for 2-3 days. For example, one of the common questions is blocking a resume. A lot needs to be learned from a person before making the right decision or explaining why a resume is still blocked. At the same time, the user has already come to us with a negative, and by long correspondence we annoy him even more. In a chat, you can quickly put out the fire of anger and find out the details.
The work with technical support operators via chat looks like this: one person works in Yaroslavl from our office, keeps his finger on the pulse, and the other two from home. Such a solution allows the company to reduce costs, and the guys do not have to wander to the office, wrap themselves in a blanket, make mint tea and carry kindness to the masses :) It seems to us that the support specialist must be in a good mood, otherwise he will help badly.
Anyway, we communicate with users by mail - they write to us through the feedback form, and technical support responds with a letter. But with the introduction of chat support, we were able to reduce the flow of letters by 20%, although there were more expectations: we still receive about 7.5 thousand requests per month. It turned out that these are two different audiences: people who use chat do not write in the form and did not write to the post office. So, in fact, now we not only gave a new way to talk about our problem, but also began to help those whom we had not helped before.
If we introduced this service now, we would immediately implement an API for collecting user data, so that the user would not need to enter his data in the window and tell the operator his login (which often met, to put it mildly, misunderstanding on the part of the person). This opportunity did not appear immediately. Now, using the already standard API, which appeared several months ago, we transfer user data as an object with parameters. Operators already know in advance the name of the person who applied for it, the mail and the client number, if it is the employer, and they also have a link to the company profile or resume list in the program. In the near future we will integrate the program into our CRM and will be able to enter the history of calls into our customer relationship database with one click. Now, while such incidents are started manually, which, of course, decently takes time.
From the very beginning, we should put a limit on the number of chats that the operator simultaneously conducts. This did not allow to distribute the load correctly between operators, and people sometimes waited a long time for an answer in an already open window. Now we have fixed it.
By the way, if you implement such functionality on your website, we recommend that you immediately put a button with which the user can evaluate whether we helped him solve the problem or not. The presence of such a button allows us to identify errors made during the dialogue. We analyze the "Shoals" weekly - we take all the negative chats and analyze together, this helps a lot to improve the quality of support.
We tried to reduce the management tips for those who are thinking about launching their tech support in the chat to five simple points:
The technology platform for the service was provided by LiveTex. Among the competitors of the system we launched, it is worth noting netroxsc.ru, redhelper.ru, they are the closest in functionality to what is now working with us. They too can and should be considered as candidates.
And the development of our technical support this year will be aimed, first of all, at creating a full-fledged and competent help-center, that is, at self-service. This does not mean that we will turn off the chat and stop responding to letters, but at least a third of the questions the user can easily solve himself, our participation there will not be required.
The year seemed to us quite enough to figure out whether it was worth spending money on this service and how much it added convenience to users and technical support.
Ship launch
At the start of the project, one operator worked in it, which could help a maximum of 150 users per day (which, as you know, with a traffic of 11 million unique users is a drop in the bucket), but now there are already three operators. For a year they gained experience and are quite capable of advising up to five hundred users on a different day. And all the same, when there are a lot of people who want to, and the operators are fully loaded, the “Technical Support Online” button periodically disappears from the page. This, by the way, seems to us a logical solution, so as not to “pickle” people in the chat for several hours without an answer.
Before introducing technical support via online chat, we deliberately disabled the address hhsupport@hh.ru (Do not write to it anymore, it is really disabled). For many years, it was so lit up that spam filtering could no longer cope. But our main complaint to the communication of users with technical support by mail is that it is very difficult to quickly solve the problem with a lot of clarifications. The solution of short questions (and we have a lot of them) sometimes stretched for 2-3 days. For example, one of the common questions is blocking a resume. A lot needs to be learned from a person before making the right decision or explaining why a resume is still blocked. At the same time, the user has already come to us with a negative, and by long correspondence we annoy him even more. In a chat, you can quickly put out the fire of anger and find out the details.
Crew feel
The work with technical support operators via chat looks like this: one person works in Yaroslavl from our office, keeps his finger on the pulse, and the other two from home. Such a solution allows the company to reduce costs, and the guys do not have to wander to the office, wrap themselves in a blanket, make mint tea and carry kindness to the masses :) It seems to us that the support specialist must be in a good mood, otherwise he will help badly.
Anyway, we communicate with users by mail - they write to us through the feedback form, and technical support responds with a letter. But with the introduction of chat support, we were able to reduce the flow of letters by 20%, although there were more expectations: we still receive about 7.5 thousand requests per month. It turned out that these are two different audiences: people who use chat do not write in the form and did not write to the post office. So, in fact, now we not only gave a new way to talk about our problem, but also began to help those whom we had not helped before.
What should a team take into account at the start?
If we introduced this service now, we would immediately implement an API for collecting user data, so that the user would not need to enter his data in the window and tell the operator his login (which often met, to put it mildly, misunderstanding on the part of the person). This opportunity did not appear immediately. Now, using the already standard API, which appeared several months ago, we transfer user data as an object with parameters. Operators already know in advance the name of the person who applied for it, the mail and the client number, if it is the employer, and they also have a link to the company profile or resume list in the program. In the near future we will integrate the program into our CRM and will be able to enter the history of calls into our customer relationship database with one click. Now, while such incidents are started manually, which, of course, decently takes time.
From the very beginning, we should put a limit on the number of chats that the operator simultaneously conducts. This did not allow to distribute the load correctly between operators, and people sometimes waited a long time for an answer in an already open window. Now we have fixed it.
By the way, if you implement such functionality on your website, we recommend that you immediately put a button with which the user can evaluate whether we helped him solve the problem or not. The presence of such a button allows us to identify errors made during the dialogue. We analyze the "Shoals" weekly - we take all the negative chats and analyze together, this helps a lot to improve the quality of support.
We tried to reduce the management tips for those who are thinking about launching their tech support in the chat to five simple points:
- Carefully read the topic forums and study product demos to determine the pool of companies among which the choice will take place.
- Identify the goals that you plan to accomplish using this online chat system. This will make it possible to specify and formalize the requirements for the supplier.
- Decide what means of your site or other software product will need to be modified for a fully functional online chat, how quickly and efficiently you can do it. The project launch period will depend on this.
- After drawing up the TOR, discuss specific plans for the implementation of certain "chips" that will be needed for the normal operation of online chat on your site (integration, API, etc.).
- Try to write down the terms in the contract in which technical support and online chat developers are ready to assist you and fix bugs that arise during the operation of the software.
Platform and plans
The technology platform for the service was provided by LiveTex. Among the competitors of the system we launched, it is worth noting netroxsc.ru, redhelper.ru, they are the closest in functionality to what is now working with us. They too can and should be considered as candidates.
And the development of our technical support this year will be aimed, first of all, at creating a full-fledged and competent help-center, that is, at self-service. This does not mean that we will turn off the chat and stop responding to letters, but at least a third of the questions the user can easily solve himself, our participation there will not be required.