When it comes to reporting, the Live Chat Answer Rate (LCAR) is top of mind for any retailer looking to evaluate the quality of how their customers are being served online. More specifically, the LCAR serves to tell you what proportion of your chats are in fact answered.
So how is the LCAR calculated? In its simplest form, the live chat answer rate can be calculated by dividing the number of chats answered by the number of chats received and is expressed as a percentage. For example, if I've received 10 live chat requests, and I answered 8, my Live Chat Answer Rate is 80%.
Depending on how Salesfloor's chat feature is configured for your program, the LCAR may differ when looking at the reporting for your program as a whole, individual stores, and individual associates. For instance, a Corp Admin may be most interested in the aggregate (or overall) Live Chat Answer Rate, whereby stores & users are most likely concerned about their individual performance KPIs.
So how do you know if overall, your customers are getting the service they need?
When looking at your program's performance across all stores, Management (Level 3) and Corporate Admin (Level 4) users can evaluate the overall performance of all stores in the KPI tab of their Salesfloor Backoffice (below).
In the KPIs tab, the Live Chat Answer Rate is calculated as a measurement of unique chats. In other words, what is the total number of unique chats submitted by customers to all stores/users that are answered? In the example above, we can see that 92.83% of all chats submitted to the program were answered!
How do you evaluate the performance of your individual stores & users?
Here's where it gets a little trickier: In the previous section, we saw that when viewing the KPIs tab, we are looking at a measurement of unique chats. What this means is that if a customer submits a live chat request and 5 users or stores receive the incoming chat notification, that chat request is still counted as 1 unique Live Chat request in the KPIs tab.
Conversely, when looking at the individual store or user level, we're looking at the performance of that specific store or user based on the chat opportunities they've received. Remember that Salesfloor's Live Chat feature, uses dynamic availability routing to maximize the number of stores or users that receive incoming chats (i.e. multiple stores/users can be given the opportunity to answer the same chat).
So how does Salesfloor define answered & missed chats on the individual store or user level? To answer that question, let's look at a few scenarios:
- Scenario 1: The customer submits 1 live chat request and 5 users receive the incoming chat notification, and 1 user answers the chat.
- IF at least 1 user picks up the chat, the chat is considered answered & the responding user will see an increase of 1 in the number of live chat requests they've received and answered
- Similarly, the responding user's store's Live Chat Requests will increase by 1
- All other stores & users that received the notification will not be penalized because the chat was answered by another user and no missed or answered chats will be recorded in their KPIs
- Scenario 2: The customer submits 1 live chat request and 5 users receive the incoming chat notification, but no users answer the chat.
- IF no users answer the chat, the chat is considered missed.
- Once missed, all users & stores that received the live chat notification will see an increase of 1 in the number of live chat requests received, and a corresponding increase of 1 in the number of chat requests missed.
How can my Corporate Admins verify the Live Chat Answer Rate?
As a Corporate Admin (Level 4), you have downloadable Admin exports available in the Salesfloor Backoffice.
Most notably, when looking at the Live Chat Answer Rate, you can use the following 2 reports to evaluate either your stores' or users' performance respectively:
- Download Live Chat Metrics - Stores CSV
- Download Live Chat Metrics - Associates CSV
See also:
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Why doesn't my Live Chat Answer Rate by store equal my LCAR for the program?
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Why doesn't my Live Chat Answer Rate by user (associate) equal my LCAR for the program?