Introduction
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!