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We got a chance to interview another one of our customers about their Smartsupp live chat experience. This time it was David, the founder of Schmicko, an on-demand booking platform for mobile car detailing and mobile car wash services, based in Sydney. They have been providing Sydney car owners with amazing service for about a year and a half now and have been with Smartsupp from the very beginning.
What made you think you needed to provide your customers with more support and why did you choose Smartsupp?
Choice is usually a positive element when it comes to customer behaviour. Also, as we are growing, it only made sense to introduce more communication channels to facilitate this.
Smartsupp became an obvious decision for our business because it just ticked many boxes for us. The main reason for our transition to Smartsupp was the ease of use. It was so easy to get everything set up and customised, literally just a matter of 15 minutes. I felt that Smartsupp had a very strong foundation and understood what businesses needed in terms of the ideal live chat system i.e. collecting customer information, chatting, customised automatic messaging and so on.I must admit though, your website looked nice and presentable – which is always a great first impression for me.
Did anything change after you started using live chat on Schmicko website?
Smartsupp allowed us to interact with the different customers in our market, as some people prefer chatting to calling or emailing. We can capture customer enquiries during all parts of the day which we find very useful, eg. questions late at night are not ignored and can be responded to immediately the following morning. Because we were able to introduce a new channel of communication, we were able to collect more customer enquiries and ultimately increase our sales revenue i.e. bookings. Now, 20% of all our bookings come from Smartsupp live chat.**
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What is your favourite Smartsupp feature and why?
I am a big fan of the automatic messages. The ability to trigger a specific message based on the page visited or number of visits added a degree of granular targeting. Not only did this give a human-touch to the website, but it allowed for us to create a message that would be more relevant to the customer’s needs. For instance, we use an automatic message for a customer looking for an interior car detail. The message provides stats about how much bacteria can be found in the car. This creates a sense of realisation of why an interior detail is needed and shows that we are experts and know our field well. We educate the customer before offering the solution to them.
What other channels did you use before and does live chat stand comparison with them?
Prior to Smartsupp, we had the usual email and phone as channels for communication, which we still do. Chat is better than email due to shorter turnaround times. The customer is addressed instantly instead of waiting hours in a chain of emails with a simple question.
As for phones, customers are able to interact with us at their work desk rather than inconveniently walk away to talk. Or if they are in a public place, such as the train, they prefer to talk via chat so as to not disturb others. Of course there are pros and cons to each channel, but the best thing we can do is to offer multiple communication channels to handle all of these various situations.
What do you do to improve your customer support?
Our goal in Schmicko is to reduce waiting times and missed conversations, delivering a better customer experience. Sometimes, it can get quite busy and customers can be left waiting. So we are considering an analysis of our busiest times of the day to ensure that we can allocate enough resources to meet customer enquiries.
You have to constantly improve, you know. Our customers return to us, because they were happy with our service and know they can rely on us. But for the initial booking to be placed, the first impression has to be perfect.
And finally, what do you think about the new features we are preparing – multi-channel dashboard and chatbot?
I am very keen to try the new features, especially the chatbot. I believe it can open more opportunities for customisation and catering to customer needs to a greater detail. More automation, less manual work, higher effectiveness - I am all for that.
The multi-channel dashboard will add an additional layer of convenience, so it can only help make our communications systems more efficient. Saves the trouble of switching from platform to platform.
Still confused? Contact us via the chat box in your dashboard and we’ll be happy to get in touch with you. Please note that customer service is included only in paid packages.