One of the most important tools for businesses, creators and customer service teams is chat. Whether you’re answering enquiries through a website chat bot or handling client DMs on social media, your ability to connect with people in real time can make or break their experience.
Nobody wants to feel like they’re talking to a robot. So if you’re chatting with fans on a subscription based platform, you want to make sure that things are engaging rather than sounding stale or automated. But how do you make them? So let’s take a look at some people first tips to help your online chat interactions stand out and resonate with your audience in a genuine way.
- Start with personalization. Whether you’re a customer support Rep or one of the many professional Onlyfans chatters, building rapport with subscribers, the magic begins with personalisation. Using someone’s name can instantly make them feel seen.Referencing past conversations, orders, or preferences also shows that you’re paying attention rather than just spitting out templated responses. People want to feel like they’re talking to a human being who remembers them, not starting from scratch every time.
- Be quick with your response, but not robotic. Speed matters when it comes to chatting online, but speed alone doesn’t create a good chat experience. A fast but generic reply can feel cold, but a quick and thoughtful response feels attentive and helpful. Keep your sentences short but friendly and match the tone of the user. If they’re being formal, then mirror that, but if they’re being playful, mirror that too. Don’t copy paste answers word for word unless they’ve been crafted to sound human.
- Add emotion through language. Even in a professional chat, tone matters. Adding warmth and energy to the conversation with agreeable speech and emojis, especially when used sparingly, will help to convey tone. A thumbs up, a smiley face, or a wink can help to prevent misunderstandings and add a little bit of personality, especially in a casual platform or a creative industry. Be sure to read the room, though, you’re not likely to send thumbs up to someone who is in a business setting.
- Ask questions. If you don’t want to sound robotic and you want your experiences online to be engaging, you need to avoid one word answers and dead end chat. Open-ended questions can help you with this. If you ask questions that invite opinions, preferences, or feedback, you can make conversation feel like a two way exchange rather than a transaction. It’s also a very subtle way to gather valuable insight into what your audience may be thinking.
- Mirror your customers’ energy. If someone is messaging you with a casual introduction.It will be off to reply with something professional. Matching tone of voice shows empathy and understanding. If they’re using a relaxed tone then you should be using one too. This way it sounds more like a conversation rather than talking to a robot. If they are being formal or concerned, be clear and professional with your response. Mirroring can build the connection you’re looking for because it tells the other person that you understand them.
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- Use their name but not too much. If you’re using their name in every single response, it’s not a good idea. Using the person’s name early in the conversation and then occasionally throughout can really help, but just don’t overdo this. You want the balance to be there rather than making it feel unnatural.
- Add value to your responses. You shouldn’t just answer a question with yes or no. If someone’s asking a basic question like whether you ship your products internationally, expand your answer as to where you ship and how much it costs, or whether you have any free shipping available. By offering more than just a one word answer, you can turn a basic interaction into an opportunity to delight, inform and upsell. And you can do it without sounding pushy. Always think to yourself how you can make this chat more helpful than expected?
- Know when to use voice or visuals. Sometimes words aren’t enough. Visual aids like screenshots or quick screen recordings can make things much clearer sometimes. There are apps like Loom out there that allow you to record and send short walkthroughs. You can even use voice messages if the platform allows, and these can add warmth, urgency, or clarity to more nuanced topics. Not every chat requires visuals or audio, but these are tools that you can use to elevate the conversation.
- Follow up with your conversations. You don’t have to end your chat interactions with a robotic response. Wrap up the chat with warmth and clarity, because the end of the chat is your last impression, you should make it as positive as possible. A follow up message later on, whether automated or manual, asking how everything’s going, shows that you care.
- Continuously work to improve. Your best teacher is going to be your past conversations. Quality control is important here. Take time to regularly review your chats and your team’s chats and look for common questions people ask and responses that lead to good engagement. Using this insight, you can create better response templates, train your team and fine tune your voice.
If you want to make your online chat interactions engaging, then you need to make sure that they sound and feel like real conversations, not transactions and not scripts. It doesn’t matter where you fall in the line of succession with the business, mastering the art of online chat is about being present, responsive and human. Outsourcing this to an agency can help if it’s not your strongest point, but not only will you be able to hold people’s attention, you’ll win their trust, loyalty, and a smile if you play the conversations correctly. At the end of the day, good chats aren’t just about typing, they’re about connection.
