Most complaints are broken expectations, not bad service
Read enough poor chat ratings and a pattern emerges: the answer was usually fine, but something implied differently. The visitor expected an instant reply and waited four minutes. They expected a refund and got a policy. They expected a follow-up and heard nothing. In each case the service was defensible and the expectation was not managed.
Say what happens next, every time
The most valuable sentence in chat is the one that tells someone what to expect: how long you will be, whether you are checking with someone, when they will hear back. Silence gets interpreted as neglect within about thirty seconds, and an agent quietly researching an answer looks identical to an agent who has wandered off.
Set the wait expectation before the wait
A visitor told "we usually reply within two minutes" waits calmly for three. A visitor told nothing gets restless in sixty seconds. The same applies to research pauses inside a conversation — "give me a moment to check that" costs nothing and buys real patience.
Be explicit about what chat can and cannot do
Some things genuinely cannot happen in chat: authorising a large refund, verifying identity, giving regulated advice. Saying so plainly, early, is far better than an agent stalling until the visitor works it out. Scope stated up front reads as professionalism; scope discovered late reads as a runaround.
Do not promise on behalf of another team
"Engineering will fix that this week" is a promise the agent cannot keep, and it converts a satisfied visitor into an angry one seven days later. Commit only to what you control: that the report is logged, that it is with the right team, that you will confirm when you know more.
Close the loop deliberately
End conversations explicitly rather than letting them fade — confirm the issue is resolved, or state exactly what will happen next and when. An ambiguous ending is the most common reason a visitor comes back annoyed, and it costs nothing to avoid.
How MyLiveChat fits
Welcome messages and pre-chat forms set expectations before the conversation starts, and canned responses make the "here is what happens next" sentences consistent across a team. Operating hours and offline messages keep availability honest, and post-chat surveys tell you whether the expectation you set matched the one the visitor actually had.