In a perfect world, chat sessions would always end with a happy customer closing the chat window, their need for service sated. And your agents can seamlessly move on to the next set of chats without issue.
Sadly, the world isn’t perfect.
Sometimes, chatters stop engaging with your agents. The chat session idles, with no new messages sent by your customer, but the session itself not actively closed.
That’s where WhosOn’s chat auto-closure comes in.
What is chat auto-closure?
Chat auto-closure is a WhosOn feature designed to help you deal with inactive chat sessions. It ends inactive chat sessions to help you optimise your chat management.
This feature allows you to create rules for handling those chats where the customer has stopped replying, but not closed the session. It lets you do this by setting timeframes for both an automatic inactivity message, and automatic chat closure.
The feature allows you to toggle and personalise your settings. So, you can choose how long chats can go inactive, and the message that’s sent automatically.
This means your operators aren’t stuck chasing up inactive chatters manually. Instead, they can focus on active conversations.
Who uses it?
Your agents passively use chat auto-closure throughout their day. As an automatic feature, it triggers and completes on its own whenever a chat is inactive for too long. Your agents, therefore, enjoy the benefit of not needing to spend time dealing with dead chats.
Your chat admins set up the feature to perform in the way that you want. By accessing your WhosOn settings, chat admins control the feature. They can toggle both the inactivity message and the automatic closure on and off. They can also write the message that will automatically send to an inactive user.
Meanwhile, chatting customers will experience the feature when they leave their chat idle for too long. That is, when they receive a triggered message and/or their chat session ends.
How does chat auto-closure work?
Chat auto-closure works based on your chosen settings — meaning that you’re in control.
You can choose whether inactive users will receive an inactivity message. And, you can specify exactly what you want this inactivity message to say.
For example: “Did you still wish to continue chatting?” Or: “This chat session will now end due to inactivity. Please get in back in touch if we can help again in future.”
You can also set a timeframe for this inactivity message to trigger. For example, after X seconds of inactivity. If a chat idles for the time you specify, then WhosOn will automatically send your message, without an agent needing to get involved.
Then, from the same settings location, you can also toggle the auto-close feature. If enabled, WhosOn will automatically end the idle chat for your agents.
Why is it useful?
Inactive chat sessions harm your productivity. They slow down chat queues and present hurdles to your agents.
When a chat becomes inactive, it clogs up your support team’s availability. Every agent can only handle so many chats concurrently. So, because the idle chat is still technically active, they can’t help a new chatter. Which means longer wait times for new users waiting to chat to your team.
Meanwhile, agents are also unable to help the current user who has abandoned the chat.
Plus, chasing after inactive users is often frustrating, time-consuming and repetitive. Chat auto-closure takes that annoyance away from your team.
WhosOn features
Chat auto-closure is a handy addition to your live chat toolbelt, there to assist your chat management.
There are plenty more helpful WhosOn features to power up your live chat service. Why not explore them, with a 30-day free trial?