Customer support is essential when you are running an eCommerce business. Because it allows you to come in direct contact with your customers. So, you have a solid chance to woo your customers.
Bad customer support results not only in frustrated website visitors but fewer eCommerce sales. 90% of customers said that they won’t buy from eCommerce brands after having a bad customer service experience.
What’s more interesting is that 60% of customers share their unpleasant experiences with their network. That means a brand with poor customer support gets further reprimanded in word-of-mouth marketing.
In this age where there are thousands of eCommerce businesses born every day if an online store does not serve customers properly, the customers have got a lot of other online stores to buy from.
Robust customer support gives a competitive edge to any eCommerce brand in the industry. Therefore, we are going to share the steps to improve customer support and improve brand reputation and delight more customers.
So, let’s begin.
1. Develop an Omnichannel Brand Presence
Customers are everywhere. This is not the age where people are active only on Facebook or Orkut. They use LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Email, and Google.
Today, social media and other online platforms are mature. The population on any leading channel is increasing each passing day thanks to more access to the internet and digital devices.
More platforms mean more channels to interact with customers.
That means, as an eCommerce business owner, think about serving customers across all the platforms and ensuring that they get concurrent experience everywhere.
You cannot put a blindfold to any platform that your target customers use daily.
Other eCommerce businesses know the power of multi-channel and that’s why, as noted in the report of PWC, the companies investing in the omnichannel experience have jumped from 20% to over 80%.
2. It’s High-time to Use Live Chat Support
Live Chat support is like a customer representative who is available round the clock to serve visitors.
To help visitors, product descriptions are effective in making a purchasing decision.
However, each visitor comes with unique requirements and cognitive intelligence. Buyers want to determine whether the product is the right fit before they hit the checkout button.
That’s when you can interact with them through the chatbot or live chat support.
63% of visitors visit the site again that use live chat. It shows how much people are fond of live chat.
Believe you me, if you can get customers to return your online store, you are halfway there to make them your customer.
However, keep in mind that 75% of customers prefer having a human interaction rather than replying to an automated response from a chatbot.
So, the chatbot helps automate communication for the eCommerce business. But the business should have an experienced individual sitting at the backend to answer special queries and give solid customer support.
3. Leverage Email Marketing
If you think you have plugins or tools that schedule targeted emails for you, then you must pay a little more attention to your email activities.
Sending automated emails is not effective in email marketing anymore because most businesses are doing so.
To stand out, personalize your email marketing conversations to get an unprecedented advantage in your niche.
Simply scheduling scripted messages won’t work to optimize customer support through emails.
You need to understand customers’ psyche and make highly targeted email responses that startle your consumers.
Here’re some tangible tips that go a long way to use email for customer support.
- Respond quickly to their emails
- Customers don’t have time, so keep your replies short
- Speak in their language
- No industry jargons, please
- Personalize your responses
4. Automate Heavy-duty Tasks
Ecommerce businesses have a lot of tasks. They require a lot of energy and resources to think them through.
Customer support is one of the crucial elements of a business. Hence, to operate as efficiently as possible, you need to automate time-consuming tasks.
You can collaborate with order fulfilment partners to handle logistics, sign up for customer support software to monitor, and have virtual assistants to do monotonous tasks.
Once the monotonous tasks are handled, you can earn more time back and work on optimizing your customer services processes to delight buyers and increase profits.
Investing in automation will give you hours back, which is priceless being an eCommerce business.
5. Delight Satisfied Customer
Your existing customers are substantial sources to improve your brand image through customer support. So transform your customers into brand ambassadors by giving discounts, freebies, and custom combos.
When you launch new products, notify your existing customers about them. Let them buy products before you launch them officially.
Such gestures make them feel you value them by giving them early access to your new products.
6. Develop a Quick and Agile System
Ecommerce businesses have to be quick to respond to customers. Every minute you make your potential buyers wait to get a response, you are losing your customers.
Because the internet has a lot of other eCommerce stores where people can buy.
So, it’s the battlefield of delighting customers through excellent customer service.
Plus, a system will help you monitor all the activities of your eCommerce business.
- Where the shipments are reached?
- What is the status of payments?
- How are the reshipments or returns working?
- Who is the delivery agent assigned for a particular product?
- Who fulfils the orders?
It presents all these details to you so you can plan all activities to ensure minimum friction within your teams and guarantee better customer services.
7. Scale Your Team Seasonally
Seasons are important to eCommerce businesses. For example, summer is all about sunscreen lotions. People buy school accessories when the school opens after the summer vacation.
So, for that special duration, ensure that you have enough resources to handle the flow of more orders.
Ensure that you have skilled people in your network. These people can join the team whenever you require.
This will ease the pressure of serving customers whenever you receive an overwhelming response.
Conclusion
The eCommerce industry is going to scale up in the coming time. More eCommerce stores mean more competition. That’s when your customer support plays a vital role in getting a competitive edge in the niche.
Let me know what you think about the points discussed in this blog in the comments below.
