2024 Key Performance Indicators for Customer Service: Missed Chats 

The rise of live chat 

Live chat has become the go-to channel for 63% of customers who seek assistance. And why not? It is quick, easy, free, and it takes out the awkwardness that often happens when customers speak to a human agent on the phone. The ease of just typing in an inquiry then sending it really is more appealing to consumers. 

But not all companies are capable of answering live chats with the promptness that customers expect it to have. Missed chats is a KPI metric that tracks the number of chats that are initiated by customers but don’t get to an agent. Reasons why customers choose to abandon chats include frustration, long wait times, or difficulties in using the chat support system. Each abandoned chat is a lost opportunity to help a customer. So the higher the number of missed chats, the more obvious it becomes that a company’s live chat offering is just not living up to customers’ expectations. 

You can learn more about missed chats and other CX KPIs by downloading our 2024 Key Performance Indicators for Customer Service ebook. 

Benchmarks 

Review your customer service team’s performance and compare it with the benchmark figures below for the best, average, median, and worst missed chat rates. How do they compare?

Consider doing these tips to reduce your missed chats 

Perfect your schedule. 

Coverage and scheduling are a big part of keeping FRT low. Larger teams typically use Workforce Management (WFM) software to optimize their schedules, but smaller teams can use a queueing model, which can calculate an optimal schedule based on your desired KPIs, your ticket volume, and the typical timing of incoming tickets. 

Don’t overextend yourself. 

Chat support is the exact opposite of the idiom “go big or go home.” It’s tempting to think that you have to offer chat support for business hours or 24/5 when you’re starting out. But you can offer chat support strategically, targeting the 2-4 hour block where your customers are most active to create an amazing experience for them. You may also only offer chat to a select segment of customers. 

Hire multitaskers. 

Chat support often requires handling multiple chats at the same time or managing chats in combination with other tasks. When you have lulls in chat volume, it’s easy for agents to get absorbed in another task and miss a chat because of that. During your recruiting process, look for people who can balance multiple tasks or priorities well. 

Incorporate chatbots to reduce volume. 

Newer bots can resolve a majority of the tickets they receive. This makes it easier for your team to respond quickly to the smaller volume of tickets that remain. At Peak Support, we recently optimized a client’s Zendesk chatbot so it could answer 95% of the tickets it received, reducing chat volume by 75%.

BPOs can lower your missed chats 

Peak Support is one of the top BPO companies in the world. Our team’s ability to consistently deliver excellent customer experiences allows us to satisfy our clients’ needs by ensuring that their customers are happy and well taken care of. Do you need help assembling a world-class outsourced support team? Would you like to learn more about the services we offer? Our sales team will be more than happy to answer all your questions. Contact us today so we can discuss why partnering with Peak Support will be the best decision you can make. 

Whether you already offer live chat as a customer support channel or are still considering it, our Guide to Live Chat for Customer Support can help you. It is a comprehensive guide that lists live chat’s different benefits, and it also features steps on how to effectively implement live chat customer support.