What is deflection?

From the definition, deflection means to draw attention away from something. In our case, we will discuss the deflection of customer communication from other channels to the Web Chat. As a practical example, imagine a scenario in which you have 100 000 email conversations a month with no automation and you do not have Web Chat at all. Each email conversation costs you 1 EUR for simplicity. This yields 100k EUR monthly cost. After seeing this number, you have decided to implement Web Chat with automation. Web Chats can draw as much as 25% of the communication from other channels. In our case, that counts to 25k Web Chat conversations monthly and leaves us with 75k Emails. From experience, we can automate 80% of all the chats. That makes it 20k automated conversations and leaves 5k to the Customer Service operators (let's keep the price the same so 1 web chat conversation = 1 EUR). Leaving us with an astonishing 20k EUR monthly savings.

Why should you care about deflection?

Increasing the deflection of your customers will lead to less overload of your customer care team as the Web Chat can automate a big part of the communication.
Less overload = fewer costs or increased quality of your service as your team can shift their focus to the customers that need it the most. In the following section, we will cover the critical aspects of deflection.

Launcher

When it comes to the Web Chat launcher, it is one of the main aspects that can draw user attention. This should be discussed with Amio team to give you some tips and tricks to boost the deflection. In general, the design of the Web Chat should match the design of your website or brand.

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TIP

1. Avoid red color as it can invoke a feeling that the Web Chat is offline
2. Make use of the 'wideButton' parameter to draw more attention and make the Web Chat more noticeable

Start opened and Website button to open the chat

The 'startOpened' parameter is very powerful regarding website pages where users look for contacts. Typically, on these pages, you want to either start with the Web Chat opened to draw immediate attention to the Web Chat or incorporate a CTA button to open the chat within your contact information.

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Implementation of these parameters is described here.

Proactive outreach

Another way to draw user attention is by using Amio Events feature. Based on user behavior trigger different types of events with different messages/goals. It is less interfering than the Start Opened method and with proper implementation can be very useful. Not only you can use events to deflect but also upsell or cross-sell your customers!

For example, the Web Chat can show pop-up messages like this one:

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If you are using Google Tag Manager, implementation of these events typically takes a few minutes.

External links to Web Chat instead of contacts

Often in the footer of promotional emails, you can find contacts. People often underestimate these and do not pay much attention to them.
Try to put a Web Chat icon into the footer as well with a simple redirection to a site where the Web Chat is running. A very simple quickly implemented, and effective way to deflect users.

Adjustment of the web itself

We often see that websites have contact information (email and phone number) everywhere on the web page.
Not only it is not user-friendly but it also draws attention. Feel free to hide these and rather implement a nice CTA button to open the Web Chat. If the user really needs it, he can either find the information on the contact page or ask the Chat Bot to provide the info!

Look at this very simple implementation, with a big CTA to open the Web Chat, in the first place within the contact page!

In-app chat

Another excellent case for Amio web chat is an application. You can either have the web chat implemented directly in the application (same as on the web) or use our libraries to create the chat as a part of the app. This can greatly increase the deflection as clients within the app have no other choice to contact you than over the phone or email.

Conclusion

Deflection can play a huge role in your customer service team. Try to implement these easy steps and measure the effectiveness! Deflection can reach up to 20-25% of the other channels' traffic, averaging at 15% per client.

Feel free to ask us to help you with the implementation.