Glossary of Terms

What is Chat?

Chat is text-based digital messaging technology that allows users to communicate in real time. Organizations frequently deploy chat capabilities on their websites to provide sales or service assistance. Consumers consider chat to be an effective and convenient support channel and adoption is increasing among both businesses and consumers. In a typical customer service chat session, the customer initiates the session and is connected to a chat agent who has been trained to handle their issue type. They then have a “conversation” consisting of typed questions and responses. A transcript is generated that provides a record of the chat interaction. At the conclusion of the chat session, the customer might be invited to complete a survey that assesses their satisfaction with the interaction. Contact centers that support multiple channels, including chat, should strive to offer omnichannel customer experiences (CX) that allow customers to seamlessly switch channels within the same transaction. That would enable, for example, a customer to begin their interaction in chat session and switch to phone support. Because the experience is omnichannel, the phone agent would have access to the chat transcript so the customer doesn’t have to repeat the details of their issue. Organizations are increasingly using bots in their chat experiences. Bots leverage artificial intelligence to understand and mimic human speech. This allows them to interact with customers and answer their questions or conduct simple transactions for them. If the issue is too complex for the bot the chat session can be transferred to an agent for resolution.