9 Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat

Chatting has become a staple in our day to day life. It makes communication much easier than any other communication method. When it comes to customer service, there are so many ways to assist the customers. The majority of businesses are using emails and support forms. In addition to that, many companies provide telephone assistance as well as chat assistance.

Customer Service Through Chat

It is a trend that, when we open any website, a chat head will pop up and ask how to assist us with an automated message. This makes it more convenient and comfortable to ask a question to them if we have a doubt. When it comes to new customers, it is the easiest way to start a new conversation as presale communication and inquiries.

For assisting existing customers also the same method can be used. Maybe they are having a doubt regarding the newly purchased product from your eCommerce store, or a service they recently subscribed to and so on. Or they may be stuck in doubt and it needs to be solved as soon as possible. Waiting for an email response or composing a formal email may take a long time when it comes to urgent support requirements.

So, incorporating a chat platform into your website will be really helpful. In WordPress websites, it is easy as you can add the chat using handy plugins. In this article, I would like to discuss with you the steps to enable WordPress customer service chat.

Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat

If you are searching for a chat plugin, you can easily find one from the long list of WordPress chat plugins. But each plugin has different specifications and functionalities. If you are searching for a chat plugin that comes with the below specifications, you can choose WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat Plugin.

  • High security of data
  • Supports WooCommerce
  • AI integrated for triggering automated replies
  • Mobile optimized chat widget
  • Customizable theme and widget colors
  • Initiate chat to live visitors of your website
  • Pre-chat form options
  • Unlimited agent profiles
  • Unlimited chat history, etc.

To know more features of the plugin, and how to configure it in detail, go through an article: How to Set Up WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat Plugin?

Let us check the steps to set up a customer service chat platform with this interesting plugin.

Step 1: Subscribe, install, and activate the plugin.

Go through the product page and get to know about the overall feature of the plugin. Purchase the plugin, install, and activate the plugin in your WordPress dashboard. For more details, you can refer to its documentation.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat PluginStep 2: Set Up the Live Chat Widget and Other Features.

For setting up the chat on your website, go to WSChat > Settings > Chat Settings.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | WSChat-Chat-Settings

Here you can find a lot of advanced options.

You can choose a desired chat notification sound for both agents and customers when they receive a new message. And enable the live chat option when the widget needs to be visible for the customers. You can also show your status online or offline.

Chat Access

The chatting option can be made available only for specific user roles. You can choose the roles according to your needs. Similarly, you can display the chat widget on the selected pages of your website.

Font and Header Settings

You can choose a font type for your chat widget. By default, there are 5 fonts available such as Sans-serif, Monospace, Fantasy, Roboto, and Cursive besides a default auto font. You can display a custom text to be shown on the chat header. And set up options need to be available on the chat header for the customers. By default, there will be a mute option for them. You can add 4 additional features. They are:

  • Attachment: An option to attach files.
  • Video Recorder: Record and send a video instantly.
  • Send chat history: Send the whole chat history to an entered email ID.
  • Chat rating: Buttons to like and dislike the support service.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | Chat Widget header options

You can also set an automatic reply to be triggered to the customer when you are offline.

Step 3: Setting Up Pre-Chat Form.

The pre-chat form is really important to not miss any chat thread from the customers. If you are not available online, you can leave the form to collect important details from the customers including contact details. Using these details, you can contact them later.

By default, you can use 3 fields such as name, email, and phone number. You only need to activate them. If you need custom fields to be added, you can add them accordingly with the required field type. In addition to that, you can make the fields mandatory to be filled by the customers.

For letting the customers know what needs to be done with the pre-chat form, you can show a label on the widget.

You can make this pre-chat form available only when you are offline if required. But it will also help you in online mode as you can take the details of registered or guest users.

Step 4: Set Up Colors for Chat Widget.

It is important to make the chat widget perfectly sync with your website theme colors. This plugin allows you to set up chat widget colors according to your interest.

Go to WSChat > Settings > Widget Appearance.

You can simply choose the colors for each option. You can change the colors of the following chat widget options.

  • Header Background
  • Header Text Color
  • Chat Background
  • Agent Message Background
  • Visitor Message Background
  • Message Text Color

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | widget-colorsIf you want to use the default colors, you can simply click the button to reset to default colors.

Step 5: Setting Up Agents.

Since agents are the problem solvers and assignees to reply to the customers’ queries, you need to add the agents accordingly. This plugin is very agent-friendly as you can add unlimited agent profiles. You can easily import agents from your helpdesk system, if you are using WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System Plugin.

Go to WSChat > Settings > Agents.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | Creating-an-Agent-Profile (1)You can create agents by adding their email ID and password.

Step 6: Set Up Email Notifications.

You can set up an email notification to be triggered to the customers from the pre-chat form. You only need to provide details like a sender name, sender email address, and a common subject line. By enabling the ‘Email Notification’, an email notification will be sent to the configured ‘from’ mail ID when a chat is initiated.

Go to WSChat > Settings > Email Settings.

Step 7: Set Up Automated Responses to Customers.

This option is really interesting and engages customers more efficiently. This feature is effective if you are offline, or if it’s not your working day and agents are not available.

This option is basically for triggering automated replies to customers when they ask queries. You can achieve this using Google’s Machine Learning tool Dialogflow. In this tool, you can feed the training phrases, which are likely to be asked by customers. And you can set up corresponding responses to be triggered. The responses can be in the form of text, video, image, audio, document, or any file format.

After configuring the requests and replies into the Dialogflow, you can take the project ID and Google service account private key file and add it to the plugin for linking them.

For that, got to WSChat > Settings > Chatbot AI.

To know the configuration process and the setup steps of Dialogflow, refer to an article:  Detailed Guide on Setting up Dialogflow – Artificial Intelligence Based NLP, Optimized for the Google Assistant and Chatbot Development.

Step 8: Initiate Chat From Your Side.

To initiate a chat from your side for making the customer – business bond more personal, send a message to the customer even before they approach you.

Go to WSChat > Active Visitors.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | live-chat-visitorsThe details available on the tab are as follows.

  • User’s unique code
  • The IP address
  • The URL of the page on which the user is currently active
  • The logos of the user operating system and browser
  • The total uptime.

To initiate a chat, click on the desired user’s unique code, and initiate a chat from your side.

Step 9: Start Chatting and Track Customer Information.

After setting up the chat widget and other options, you can start the conversations with your customers. For that, go to WSChat > Live Chat > Active tab.

There you can find the list of messages received and the active users. If you couldn’t reply when they are offline, you can take up the conversation from the missed chat conversation section.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | incoming-chat-from-customers

Click the ‘Join’ button when you receive a chat. This can be done by the agents. After joining the chat, it will be notified to the customers.

Tracking Customer’s Information

You can monitor customers’ information such as their name, last seen, email ID, phone number, location, the current page they are viewing on your website, and the date & time in their country or location.

Click on the 3 dots on the right side of the dashboard.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | Customer-details (1)If your store is a WooCommerce store, you can track the products in their shopping cart and their purchase history and check all the previous orders done by the customers. And there is an option to suggest products to the customers from the agent’s dashboard itself.

You can search and send the products.

Steps to Enable WordPress Customer Service Chat | Sending-products-to-customersIf you have integrated WSChat – ELEX WordPress Live Chat plugin with WSDesk – ELEX WordPress Helpdesk & Customer Support Ticket System plugin, you can invite the agents to assist the customer and send the conversation to an entered email ID. You can easily convert the chat into a ticket if the queries need to be solved more technically.

This is how you can enable a WordPress customer service chat on your website.

To conclude,

You can follow the above steps to set up the live chat on your WordPress or WooCommerce website. Since customer service is essential for the smooth running of your business, it is important to provide customer support services in the most convenient way.

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