Thanks for your patience as the Carnivale of Customer Service is a little bit late today.  I meant to create the post last night and have it scheduled to be published this morning, but that was before I found out……

Thanks for the comment and the link!

I think you misunderstood my post to some extent. When I said three chats, I meant in the time the phone call could have lasted. If it takes 10 minutes for a chat, 5 minutes for an email, etc. and the phone call is a half hour – it is therefore the least efficient method.

In my experience, a qualified, knowledgeable, and experienced representative can very comfortably handle two chats at once. Many can handle three, but it varies more from person to person and the type of issue.

I agree with you that for many things the phone is appropiate, but as the post here at Service Untitled mentions and you acknowledge in the post on the eStara blog, a majority of their phone calls were about the same 25 issues.

Service Untitled raises an interesting issue today regarding call deflection.  According to this post, th……

This is something that should really be looked at carefully. As many analysts have noted, despite promises to the contrary by chat vendors, most agents can not realistically handle 3 simultaneous chat sessions without having to rely heavily on canned or automated responses.

While chat may be good in certain instances, if an agent is handling too many at once and relying on canned responses, the level of service deteriorates and the average handle time for each of those sessions starts to creep up.

Deflecting the wrong kinds of inquiries to chat or email could result in an even more irritated customer when they’re forced to escalate to a phone call because their needs were not being met by email or chat options.

If the goal is to convert a sale or handle a complex service question, the phone is still the preferred method of contact for most customers.