Having a good relationship with customers is paramount for success. Communication is key, and one essential way you can do this effectively is with multichannel support – specifically chat. There’s almost no other way to speak one-on-one with a customer than using a chat platform. This means the right solution will become invaluable to your business. Using Crisp for business communications can deliver greater user satisfaction across a number of areas.
For this post, we’ll look at using Crisp for business communications, although the app can do much more than that. First, let’s talk about what Crisp is, then discuss how it fits into your workflow.
Understanding Crisp Chat
Customers ultimately drive business. This much can be obvious, but what might be less so is your communication strategy. In fact, you need to be able to liaise with not only clients but internally too. Crisp packages up a suite of tools to help you handle multichannel support, and internal conversations without a negative impact.
As we go through this article, you’ll find out what Crisp can do for your communications. However, here’s a quick summary of its key features:
- Chatbot and widget. You can build a custom chatbot without any code using a visual builder. From there, you can implement it on site using a widget.
- A Customer Relationship Manager (CRM). Crisp comes with a full-featured CRM to help you learn more about your customers and provide them a better experience.
- An internal shared inbox. Central to Crisp is its shared inbox. This collects all of the conversations you have and lets you team collaborate in an optimal way.
There are lots of things Crisp does that the competition doesn’t (or won’t). For example, popular platforms such as TawkTo and HelpScout can’t centralize your communications from social media platforms.
Others, such as Olark and Front, don’t let you implement a knowledge base on your site. Even HubSpot’s Service Hub can’t offer the co-browsing and live translation options of Crisp.
Crisp offers a free tier. However, a premium plan is where the value lies. The Pro tier is $25 per month, per workspace (with four seats available). For the full Crisp experience, though, the Unlimited tier is $95 per month, per workspace with 20 seats available. Throughout the post, we’ll talk about the features and functionality in the Unlimited tier.
The Power of Real-Time Communication
In a nutshell, real-time business communications accelerate decision-making, collaboration, and your all-around efficiency. It can also enhance your problem-solving strategies and optimize your feedback loops.
With Crisp, customers have multiple ways to connect with greater immediacy. Integrating all of your support channels into the shared inbox is a given. However, there’s more you can do. For example, Crisp’s ‘marquee’ offering is its chat functionality.
Given that nearly three-quarters of people like chatbots due to how instantaneous they are, you should implement it without question.
Crisp gives you a visual builder that doesn’t use code but still provides the power and flexibility you need to create real-time conversational experiences around the clock.
This lets you create optimal conversations on a per-channel basis that answer questions instantly. As such, you can generate more leads without the need for forms, automate specific actions such as calendar scheduling, and offer a seamless experience with a human if you need to escalate an issue.
Enhancing Customer Service with Crisp Chat
Your customer service and support may already be good, but with Crisp, you can turn this into ‘great.’ In fact, plenty of businesses use Crisp for business communications and enhancing customer service.
For example, Tractian provides industrial companies with performance monitoring, asset management, and more. Crisp is central to their workflow:
…using Crisp, we are able to provide a better customer experience…
The company can manage a request internally and send it to the right team depending on the query. This will be easy with the shared inbox (more of which shortly).
The ability to view your customer’s screens using Magic Browse is vital. While passive information gathering is useful, British company Hoxton Mix takes over screens when required:
…Magic Browse is something amazing. Being able to assist customers in real-time is a key asset…
This in non-intrusive and collaborative. For an additional level of support, you could even begin a video call in browser. All of this needs no additional plugins and comes as part of the Crisp experience.
Crisp Chat for Team Collaboration
Although a conversation is one-to-one, handling a customer can be a collaborative effort. The Crisp shared inbox can facilitate this:
For instance, you can assign conversations to the right team member, maybe one with particular skills or knowledge. Crisp also lets you write notes that the customer never sees.
This ‘pre-support’ conversation can be vital for choosing the right way to help customers. Even better, those notes are available for all of the team to see.
Because Crisp can integrate your other platforms, this means you can collaborate in ways you haven’t been able to achieve before. For example, lots of business use WhatsApp or Telegram, but these don’t support collaboration.
With Crisp, you can bring those conversations into the shared inbox and deliver better support with greater efficiency.
Integrating Crisp Chat into Your Business
Crisp is compatible with almost every type of website and Content Management System (CMS). For WordPress users, using Crisp for business communications couldn’t be easier. There’s a dedicated Crisp plugin, and you can find it using the Plugins > Add New screen in WordPress. From here, search for the plugin:
Once the installation and activation process completes, you can begin to set the plugin up using the Crisp Settings screen – the button you want is to Install Crisp on my WordPress:
From here, click to link Crisp to WordPress. After this, Crisp will install the live chat widget on your site.
However, in some cases, you may not see the Crisp live chat widget on your front-end. If this is true for you, it’s a good idea to purge your caching plugin (or equivalent).
The Crisp Settings page includes links to your inbox and settings on the Crisp dashboard. Within these, you can find some handy ways to give users more information about your provision. For instance, the Availability Settings let users see when you have a staffed help desk:
For e-commerce sites, you may also want to consider WooCommerce support. This is something you can set up with a plugin inside of Crisp.
Measuring Success with Crisp Chat
Evaluating the performance of your customer support is a perpetual task. Crisp covers you here, as it includes a full-featured and comprehensive analytics section within its dashboard:
This splits all of the available metrics into six different sections. However, we’d focus on some of this data more than others. For instance, the Support Responsiveness calendar view uses a traffic-light system to show you the relative effectiveness of your provision.
You can combine this with the Mean Response Time metric at the top of the Messaging section:
This gives you two important performance metrics with high-visibility on your dashboard. However, the Rating section shows you arguably one of the most important aspects of your support – whether it succeeds with customers:
Once you resolve a conversation, the user gets the opportunity to rate and review your performance. These collate within the Rating section, and you get to see a mean score, whether the customer left a comment, and how that mean rating changes over time.
From there, you can dig into any rating, comment, conversation, or assigned team member to find out more about the interaction:
This lets you understand how you operate on a user-by-user basis – vital to ensure a personalized customer support service.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
It’s time for some quick-fire questions and answers about obtaining and using Crisp. The below should fill in your knowledge gap, although the comments section at the end of the article is always open!
Crisp has two premium plans: Pro for $25 per month, and Unlimited for $95 per month. Both of these are the cost per workspace.
A Crisp workspace is essentially a team inbox. This isn’t tied to a domain, so you can install the same live chat widget on multiple sites and bring them into a single workspace.
Crisp provides a free tier in order to get a feel for the platform. This gives you two seats – so you and a colleague can have separate accounts – along with core functionality.
For example, you get access to the shared inbox, a contact form, mobile apps, and an “unlimited” number of conversations. You can also integrate with Shopify and WordPress.
In our opinion, any company that needs to communicate better with customers should consider Crisp. It’s a solution that gives you a thoughtful feature set and the ability to integrate multichannel support into your business.
However, e-commerce sites will love what Crisp offers, along with businesses with an international customer base.
There are a range of apps to support all types of devices and setups. You can use the web interface regardless of your system. However, there are also apps for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android too. There’s even support for smart watches!
That’s It!
Multichannel support and general business messaging is a key factor for success. After all, if you can’t communicate with customers and your team, your efficiency and reputation will drop. The right platform is, therefore, essential. In our opinion, Crisp is a chameleon – a multifaceted messaging platform to help across your entire business.
Is using Crisp for business communications going to be something you implement, and if so, how? Let us know in the comments section below!