Irrespective of whether you have just started an e-commerce business or have been in this industry for some time, you would have an idea about how important is eCommerce customer service for your business to prosper.
Just imagine this. You purchased a book from an online store and it gets delivered to you in ways you had never expected. The book is torn, it has pages missing and the print isn’t the best.
And on top of that, when you visit the online store again to check for a customer service number to call up, you don’t find anything.
Now, just imagine your customers going through that same harrowing experience.
No. We are not saying that you send torn books or damaged products to your customers and that’s why you need customer support. However, you never know what challenges the customer may be experiencing with your product.
Therefore, you need to make them feel ‘covered’ and ‘risk-free’, and having someone to talk to (read: Customer support) is crucial for customer satisfaction and for the success of your business.
Also Read: Why B2B Data Cleansing is Important for Business Growth?
What is eCommerce customer service?
eCommerce customer service is when an online store offers its customers every kind of help, right from looking after the pre-purchase queries to assisting them during the purchase to solving all their post-purchase order-related issues.
Don’t forget the return and exchange policies which is where the trust of your customers truly gets built.
Ecommerce customer service is one of the cornerstones of the business. There is more than enough research and data to suggest that any business that is providing excellent customer service in eCommerce will have more repeat customers which means better success rates.
However, it is extremely important to follow the right strategies to provide your customers with the excellent eCommerce customer experience they expect. In this article, we have covered the best practices to improve eCommerce customer service in 2022.
Best Practices to Improve eCommerce customer service
So how can you successfully improve your customer service for eCommerce? Here are a few of the tips to follow!
1. Choose well-defined communication channels
Providing proper communication channels to your customers is the best way to make your eCommerce support count. While you can communicate through a variety of channels these days, however, you can’t be available on all of them at once. Therefore, selecting a few well-defined communication channels should be your goal.
You can drastically improve the eCommerce customer experience if you let your customers know about the channels you can help them through. Various communication channels like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, or Live Chat will give your customers the option of contacting you through the means that are easiest for them.
2. Make your app/website extremely simple
When it comes to online shopping, the customer’s needs and expectations are increasing every day. Since your website or app will be the direct representation of your business, it should not only be appealing and professional, but also helpful, and easy to use so that the customers can easily understand and navigate it.
It helps your customers and you in three ways.
- Your customers will not run away from your website and may get convinced to buy something before leaving the page.
- The customers will not have to call up your customer support to find the best product that suits them. Yes, at times not making them call the customer support is the greatest customer support.
- If yet, they choose to contact customer support, they can easily find it in the app.
3. The organization is the key.
You may have the best team and an efficient process to deal with your customers; however, things are likely to fall apart if you don’t take the structuring seriously. Structuring basically means keeping track of your customer’s conversations and providing your team with the tools to make collaborating with them easier.
This can be done by using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, a shared inbox, or even collision detection to make sure you get to solve your customer’s issues in an organized manner.
4. Enabling self-education through FAQs
The most successful businesses out there completely outdo their competitors when they provide educational content for their customers. This could be in the form of detailed documentation or a comprehensive list of FAQs.
Effectively this becomes like a self-service option allowing them to solve their problems on their own before having a need to reach your eCommerce support.
5. Improve your response rate
Your eCommerce customer support will only be excellent if it is fast and useful for the customers. The reason is that people who are shopping online will never wait for long periods to get assistance from your side. They are likely to cancel you completely.
According to a study, 12% of Americans said that a slow response from an eCommerce website is the most frustrating experience. That number is not low, because that doesn’t include the fact that even if your customer service is fast if it is not useful or helpful it is still a deal breaker. Therefore, being speedy and convenient for your customers is the way to go!
6. Incorporate some personal touches
Running an online business means you are most likely never going to meet your customer in person ever. That is fine, because even without that you can leverage technology and make every interaction a personal one.
Personalizing the eCommerce customer experience will help you craft your marketing messages according to the motivations of your target segments. This way, the customers feel valued and appreciated, which turns out to be a great practice for building long-term customer relations. Some tips for personalizing the eCommerce customer service are:
- First and foremost, your customer agents should ask for the customer’s name, whether they are contacting through text messages or phone. Once entered in your CRM, you will always have it.
- Listen and understand your customer’s queries and concerns while showing empathy. Genuinely, this can be the topic or another blog post altogether.
- Gather as much information as you can about the customer’s preferences related to the products they like, their preferred communication channel, etc.
7. Engage with customer reviews
Today’s customers know how to make their voice heard with the use of social media and review websites. Not only do they want to be heard, but they also want to see other customers’ opinions and feedback about your business’ products and services. A study has shown that brands that allow and accept customers’ feedback are favored by more people, around 77%. Therefore, engaging and responding to customers’ feedback will help you build better customer relationships since you are providing proactive customer service.
Doing this will also kill a lot of curiosity that the prospects may have about your products and therefore, you will have only meaningful interactions coming in into your customer support.
8. Make product specifications available
When customers are purchasing online, one of the major things that are likely to frustrate them is the lack of key information available about a product or a brand. To avoid that, make sure that you have all the necessary information available on your website about the product you are selling so that the customers know what they are getting into.
This might seem obvious, but trust us, we have seen enough good brands not doing this well at all. Hence, this deserved a mention before we signed off.
Conclusion – eCommerce customer service
Retaining current customers and attracting new ones is quite necessary to make your eCommerce business run successfully. Not only will excellent eCommerce customer support retain your existing customers and attract new ones, but it will also improve your overall conversion rates.
Therefore, following the right strategies and tips to provide the best eCommerce customer experience is the way to go. In this article, we have provided you with the major tips and best practices that you can incorporate to improve your eCommerce customer service in 2022.