An organization’s customer experience depends on customer service in the digital business world. Providing poor customer service can damage a brand’s reputation by causing terrible social media disasters. Optimizing the e-commerce customer service of a company must be the top priority of its business development goals. 

Why are customer support services essential?

In a Microsoft report entitled “State Of Global Service,” 62% of e-commerce business owners consider “customer service” one of their most crucial business functions. E-commerce Customer service is anticipated to overtake prices and products as the primary brand differentiator in 2022. Excellent customer service enables customers to return time and time, building trust with your company. However, an unsatisfactory customer service experience can cost the company sales loss, negative online reviews, and damaged brand reputation. 

Approximately 70% of customers globally said they stopped doing business with companies. But why? It’s because they don’t provide a satisfactory level of service. In other words, if you want your business to succeed in the long term, keeping your customers happy is crucial.

E-commerce customer service

What is an e-commerce customer support service? The answer is simple. E-commerce customer service is how businesses assist their customers. An e-commerce customer support service provides seamless purchasing and problem-resolution across all online platforms. 

It is one of the most challenging aspects of business development, driven by instant response and convenience. 

Each brand has a different way of engaging its consumers via customer service. The aim, however, is the same, which is to create an outstanding customer experience, keeping the brand’s promise. 

Pivotal elements of exceptional e-commerce customer service this year

What does outstanding customer service mean in 2022? Simply respond to your customers through social media, live chat, or email, and you’ll be able to solve the problem in real-time.

Here are the top 6 elements that make up exceptional customer service this year. 

• Quickly resolving customer issues.
• Resolving concerns in a single interaction.
• Friendly customer representatives.
• Same customer representative for follow-ups.
• Save copies of the conversation via prints or emails.
• Follow-ups even after resolving the customer issues. 

Difference between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar customer service

A few fundamental differences between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar customer services are as follows:

Opening hours

Brick-and-mortar stores have fixed opening hours, so we cannot expect the employees to be available 24/7 for assistance. However, the internet runs constantly to contact customer service around the clock, resulting in late responses. 

Face-to-face interaction

While brick-and-mortar services run on face-to-face interaction, e-commerce customer service, unfortunately, lacks it. Therefore, the e-commerce customer service teams try to overcome this weakness. They replicate the face-to-face value by using live chats, phone calls, and chatbots available 24/7 for assistance. 

High expectations

Large brands’ quality of customer service has encouraged people to expect more from smaller businesses. Therefore, small e-commerce business owners may have to work harder. As a result, they try to bring their customer service up to global standards. 

Customer service techniques for e-commerce businesses

E-commerce businesses should adapt to timely changes in the buyers’ landscape. Being at the forefront, an e-commerce customer service guide plays a vital key role in gaining consumers’ trust and building healthy relationships. For this reason, creating good e-commerce customer service can become a game-changer for your e-commerce business. 

Let’s dive into some of the best practices that a business can do to improve its e-commerce customer service. 

Create an omnichannel approach

As an e-commerce business, you must be present across every communication channel, such as websites, social media, calls, emails, etc. Therefore, only one or two communication channels are not enough. Instead, it would be best to be everywhere, where your customers are. 

So, what should you do? The best way is to create an omnichannel approach. This strategy would help unify all the customers’ touch points under a single platform, delivering a consistent experience. 

How to build an omnichannel strategy?

To build an omnichannel strategy, you should focus on three key elements to create a seamless e-commerce customer service experience. 

• Identify consumers’ touch points.
• Engage them across the touch points by understanding the customer’s journey.
• Deliver a seamless customer experience. 

Your e-commerce brand can guarantee a stable and long-term relationship with your customers by creating the right strategies.

Deliver support instantly with live chat

A report says that 80% of consumers prefer live chats because of the immediate response. By integrating a live chat option into your e-commerce website, you can deliver instant support to your customers. This reduces the response time and thus increases conversion rates, sales, and customer satisfaction. Some benefits of live chats are as follows:

• Instantly accessible: Live chats help consumers to connect instantly. 
• Multitasking: Live chats help the customer representatives to chat with more than one customer at one time. 
• Live chats are majorly preferred: The majority of the customers feel more comfortable via instant messaging for customer support.

Offer self-service-based e-commerce customer support

Around half of your customers prefer resolving issues by themselves instead of contacting customer service. For this reason, they might surf your website and use the self-help option, if available. Therefore, being proactive when providing customer service is essential. It is, basically, one of the finest ways to offer a seamless customer service experience. 

How to offer self-service-based customer support? Here are a few options.

• FAQs provide customers with all the information they may need. Therefore, adding an FAQ page to your website with every basic information is essential.
• Chatbots can offer instant customer service to consumers 24/7, even when any customer service representative is unavailable.
• Product descriptions can also provide a little assistance to a customer in need. Adding the “how to use” option for your products would be a great idea to improve your e-commerce customer service. 

Maintain consistency in providing customer service

When your customers have a satisfactory experience with your customer service, it is evident that they would expect the same level of service in future interactions. Therefore, it is vital to offer consistent customer support across every business communication channel. Consistency in providing customer service is essential because:

• The average response time is reduced.
• You achieve a high FCR (first contact resolution) rate.
• You build a reliable and trustworthy relationship with your customers. 

Promote a call-to-action culture in your e-commerce service

A satisfied customer does the best advertisement. How?

Customers satisfied with your services tend to recommend your products to others and endorse your brand with positive reviews. As a result, customer reviews are one of the most important aspects of a growing e-commerce business. Customer feedback in a company is essential because:

• The quality of the company’s products and services gets better.
• It offers a seamless customer service experience.
• Customer loyalty increases.
• You can measure how satisfied customers are.

Not only a customer’s feedback is essential, but immediate action on the issue is also equally necessary. The most accurate time to ask for a customer’s feedback is right after the interaction you had with your customer. As the conversation is already going, it is natural to ask for reviews. 

Advantages of good e-commerce customer service

It is no longer considered enough to sell affordable or high-quality products. Customers today also expect a high level of customer service experience. Following are some benefits of providing outstanding customer service to your consumers in the e-commerce business. 

Customer Loyalty

It takes five times more investment to spend on a new customer than retaining an old one. Therefore, good customer service enables the customers to be loyal to your brand, thus making further purchases. 

Profit Increment

The customers’ long-term relationship can make your e-commerce business more profitable. Companies are said to increase their sales by 5% to 8% if they offer better customer support experiences. 

Increased Sales

Good customer service helps businesses quickly turn their leads into sales. By building customers’ confidence, it’s safe to say that a great customer experience will help you improve conversion rates. 

Improved public reputation

A brand’s public image and the customer service it provides go side by side. If your e-commerce customer service is excellent, you can expect a positive impression of your brand from your target audience. Around 80% of customers are more likely to let go of a brand’s mistake only if they offer an outstanding customer experience. 

Customer Recommendation

If your customers are satisfied with your business, they are likely to recommend it to others. Around 90% of customers tend to recommend a company to others if they are offered a perfect customer experience. This, in turn, increases the sales rate and the business’s credibility. 

Parting Ways

The products’ qualities, features, and pricing aspects have been saturated because of the global cutthroat competition in today’s world. Customers are no longer delighted with excellent product delivery only. E-commerce businesses need to stay ahead of the game by offering something unique and different from the rest of others. Therefore, providing stellar e-commerce customer support to your customers through your website or other communication channels would help you achieve precisely what you aim for! Happy selling!

The post Ways to Enhance Your E-commerce Business Customer Service Effectively appeared first on ECARTIZE.

To meet customers’ expectations and keep them loyal, e-commerce businesses must step up their customer service game. To do so, they’ll need to first develop a solid e-commerce customer support strategy. However, before delving into that, let’s talk about customer support in eCommerce.

What is Customer Support in E-commerce?

E-commerce customer support lays the groundwork for assisting customers on e-commerce platforms and throughout their lives. It’s all about assisting customers with anything from online purchase decisions to problem-solving, all while maintaining a consistent customer experience across channels and platforms. Customer service for online businesses must take into account the distinct problems of serving digital customers with:

• Frequently asked questions about products, fulfilment, and returns.
• The need for several channels to be monitored at the same time with quick response times
• Lots of service and support requests

Customer experience remains supreme amidst these issues. Your customer service team is tasked with becoming the brand’s voice – the only human touchpoint in this digital world. 

How Can Customer Support Impact E-commerce Businesses?

The importance of customer service to an eCommerce business’s success cannot be emphasized. As a result, 95% of consumers believe that providing excellent customer service is critical if you want to earn their brand loyalty and retention.

However, following a single negative experience, 32% of consumers will abandon a brand they enjoy (not just any brand, but one they currently enjoy using their product or service). That means that even if they like your products, 32% of them will never buy them again if they had a terrible experience with your brand.

On the plus side, 86% of customers are willing to spend more for a superior customer experience. This means that if you get it right, you’ll get more visitors, more sales, and more revenue since customers would rather buy from you than from someone else. 

Top E-commerce Customer Support Channels

Every industry has a preferred mode of communication. Live chat is the most popular method of customer support in the eCommerce industry. Social media, email, and phonecall may come in second place depending on the age range of your target audience. For instance, older customers usually demand phone service, whereas younger customers expect assistance through your brand’s social media channels. The golden rule of eCommerce customer support is to meet them where they are.

Live Chat

75% of customers prefer live chat to phone service, and this number is steadily increasing as more Gen Z buyers enter the market. When chatting with a chatbot, however, only 40% of customers expect the issue to be fixed quickly. This provides you with a fantastic opportunity to surprise and delight your consumers.

Social Media

Many online shoppers (especially the younger generation) expect to receive some type of assistance via social media, which is currently regarded as one of the most popular customer service platforms. There are several drawbacks to incorporating social media into your customer support approach, including tracking issues and the inability to respond with confidential data. When your staff handles social media support successfully, it’s an opportunity to demonstrate to followers and potential clients the excellent customer experience you deliver. 

Email

In comparison to a live chat, email is the primary medium for managing customer service at many major and successful eCommerce organizations. This is because email does not pretend to be instantaneous.

However, just because your customer service team uses email doesn’t imply they don’t require innovative technologies. Automations, integrations, and templates can all be used to improve email response times.

Phone Call

Older folks, as previously stated, prefer this style of communication. To keep up with customers’ demands, big eCommerce websites usually provide phone support. Moreover, phones offer a quicker means of resolving issues. As a result, eCommerce businesses that provide phone assistance have an average resolution time that is 34% faster compared to the ones that doesn’t. 

Best E-commerce Customer Support Practices You Should Implement 

Let’s take a closer look at each of the key strategies for improving your eCommerce customer support:

Use a Reliable CRM

You can improve your customer support process by using reliable Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Customer queries may be disseminated over several channels if you don’t have a good CRM system in place. This may cause additional issues, as customers may not receive timely responses to their questions. Furthermore, a disorderly approach may cause them to repeat their problem, resulting in a bad customer experience.

CRM software keeps your business organized and helps you retain customer relationships. It will simplify your team’s job and bring your business closer to your devoted customers.

Offer Real-Time Support with Live Chat

When potential customers are browsing through your e-commerce website, they may feel unsure about receiving answers to their queries. Using a live chat window to provide immediate assistance will help you get the task done. According to Econsultancy, 79% of customers prefer live chat to other channels because of the immediacy it provides. Hence, you can save costs by minimizing the time it takes to respond to customers with a live chat and thereby enhance sales and conversion rates. Some of the reasons why live chat is considered a great eCommerce practice include:

• Customers can get help from your live chat employees in real-time.
• They can even handle many chat sessions at the same time, which isn’t possible with conventional channels like phone support.
• Create possibilities for upselling and cross-selling.
• Maintain customer engagement for a more personalized and connected experience.

Analyze and Optimize Relevant Metrics

Analytics can tell you a lot about how customers feel about your customer service and what they think when they connect with your online store. Customer-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as customer happiness, average response time, churn, total discussions per day, and average resolution time are all important metrics to track when it comes to customer support. Therefore, when your customer service level is high, your sales conversion rate rises.

Ask for Feedback

One of the most important aspects of business development is customer feedback. Feedback provides a clear picture of how well your company is doing. Did you know that only 1 out of every 26 customers make a complaint, while the rest remain silent? Asking for feedback is the best method to determine if your company is doing a good job. The absence of negative feedback is an indication of customer satisfaction for many businesses.

Customer service is essential to a company’s success in the following ways:

• Enhance your products and services
• Improve the customer experience
• Enhance customer loyalty
• Improve your customer communication
• Measure customer satisfaction

Outsource Customer Support Service

Outsourcing your customer service to a third-party company can save you a lot of time while also increasing your support scalability. Outsourced customer support, for example, allows you to keep up with the demand of customers’ inquiries while staying within budget.

When you expand internationally, outsourcing your customer support is also a good option. Having a varied team and localized customer support, especially in areas where English isn’t the native language, can help your company develop and retain customers.

Focus on Proactive Customer Support

According to statistics, more than 60% of Americans prefer automated self-service to deal with minor issues, such as through a website, smartphone app, or other channels.

These self-reliant clients, led by the younger generation, prefer to solve problems on their own before contacting a customer service agent with questions. Remember that anything that assists your customers in finding answers on their own can improve their experience and increase sales.

To provide excellent eCommerce customer support, you must anticipate customers’ issues and resolve them before they become more serious.

Automate Your E-commerce Customer Support Process

Automating specific aspects of your e-commerce firm is a terrific approach to increase efficiency. Agents must deal with a plethora of support difficulties, constant pressure, deadlines, and demanding consumers, so e-commerce customer support isn’t always easy. This is where an automated customer service system comes in handy, allowing you to skip over the tedious, time-consuming manual tasks. Every eCommerce company should use automation in their daily tasks.

What Customer Support Brings to the E-commerce Sector?

When done correctly, excellent customer support can be a competitive advantage. Even when the market becomes congested and a slew of identical businesses pop up here and there, sticking to solid customer support practices will help your eCommerce business stay relevant. It can also motivate your loyal customers to stick with you while you continue to exceed their expectations.
If you’re seeking a reputable outsourcing company to help you with customer support, visit the Ecartize E-commerce Customer Services page. Our well-trained and professional team strives to provide great service that is tailored to your company’s specific requirements.

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