Scripting Versus Natural for Website Chat

Website chat is quickly becoming a must-have feature on websites, particularly those that are selling a service or product. People want answers. They don’t always want to make a phone call because of the direct interaction and they don’t want to send an email because it can take time to receive an answer. In the real-time digital world, chat is often the difference between a victory and a defeat on the website end.

There are plenty out there who attempt to handle their own chat. This is fine for companies that have dedicated phone centers or business development centers, but for those who are trying to squeeze in chats whenever they come in while handling other duties, it’s usually a mistake. People go to chat with the hopes of getting instant access to information. Any delays in responses or “chat offline” scenarios are a detriment to the website.

When self-served chat is not practical, managed chat services offer the best solution. The real question between them is whether or not to focus on a solution that offers scripted responses or one that has natural responses from the chat employee. Here’s a quick breakdown of the strengths of each:

Scripted

• Less room for human error
• Consistency in responses
• Ability to test different chat options and train the staff based upon scripts rather than reactions

Natural

• Less generic experience
• Ability to work in personality
• Good sentiment from people using chat when they realize the responses aren’t “canned”

At the end of the day, we lean towards scripted because of the one major difference: testing and improvement. While it’s possible to train people to chat using best practices, it’s not possible to get them uniformly to utilize specific word tracks that have been proven to work. Our natural tendency is to root for human interaction rather than scripts or algorithms, but the reality is that with chat for companies trying to sell something (especially if it requires a visit to the store itself), tested scripts outperform human opinions.