8 Ways to Improve Your e-Commerce Customer Service
In an era where retail shopping is increasingly being replaced with online shopping, e-commerce customer service has become a key focus for most firms.
Thanks to a wide range of social media networks, online shoppers are now able to share their reviews with everyone. With just one negative review, an e-commerce store can take a hit in a matter of seconds. To avoid an influx of negative reviews, it’s essential to focus on providing the best possible customer service.
Getting better and better at customer service should be the focal point of your market-oriented strategies because excellent service equates to satisfied customers. So how does one ensure excellent customer service? Let’s take a look into the key elements that make up the foundation of a solid customer service model for an e-commerce store.
1. Develop an Omnichannel Strategy
An omnichannel strategy is a combination of various promotional and distribution channels, allowing you to influence, connect and establish harmony with your consumers cohesively across the platforms you sell through.
Today, there is cutthroat competition in the e-commerce industry across the globe, so when businesses are unable to determine the best platform to conduct high-quality customer experiences on, they usually experience dissatisfied shoppers.
On the other hand, depending on just one channel and aiming to better the customer service is not the ideal choice either. Long gone are the days when customers were in a limited quantity. A business can now operate worldwide through an online platform.
Developing an omnichannel strategy means that you are where your consumers require you to be. Are they present on Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp? Would they prefer to be contacted by phone or email? The objective is to not make the customers ask for the service.
When you are done establishing all of your e-commerce channels, take into consideration that the customers now know what you are providing them and, most of all, give quality customer service on all the channels you offer.
2. Extend Live Chat
Offering a live-chat function to your customers can be a very simple way to extend one-to-one communication between the service representative and the customer. This can also help resolve the customer’s problems quickly.
Live chat is required by more than 41% of customers today, and these figures can be as high as 50% if the customers are visiting your site from a mobile device.
Consider using an extension, such as the Magento 2 Live Chat Extension, in which you can offer customers the ability to directly communicate with chat agents.
Image Source - Smartsupp
With a live chat feature, consumers can directly contact you when they are looking for a product’s return policy, payment process, product warranty, etc., but with no live chat support, they will swiftly leave your site if they encounter even the smallest of difficulties that can’t be addressed immediately.
If you have already integrated live chat support into your website, check your past conversations with customers and analyze how effective your conversations have been. This exercise will allow you to see where you can become more efficient if needed.
3. Make Use of Individualized Email Campaigns
Ninety-four percent of businesses consider that individualization is vital for their overall success. Still, many firms keep sending customers this type of email:
Image Source - Acquire
Non-personalized emails like the above are easy to ignore and do not directly address your customers. On the flip side, individualized emails like the one below help customers feel recognized and are very effective in encouraging open rates.
Image Source - Acquire
A personalized email is undoubtedly going to be better than a generic one. By just mentioning the customer’s name in the body of the email, you can make the shopping experience more personal.
4. Provide 24/7 Telephone Assistance
In some circumstances, customers are more likely to discuss their problem via a phone call with a customer representative. In this case, try to originate 24-hour phone support to fulfill the customer’s requirements and keep them engrossed.
There are many tools available where you can deliver a voicemail to the customer when not online. However, these tools can be viewed as pre-programmed and robotic compared to 24/7 support. Human interaction is incomparable and has a true impact, so it is important to invest in 24/7 call support and observe your sales to see if they skyrocket with the improved customer service.
5. Measure Your Customer Satisfaction Score
You should measure your customer satisfaction score so that you can assess changes and look for ways to improve it. Measuring it will also allow you to know how effective your conversations with customers are, ultimately giving you insights into how your overall market strategy and customer service is going.
One way to analyze the customer satisfaction metric is through a customer satisfaction survey after each customer support session. If you have customer relationship management (CRM) software, this can be achieved through a support follow-up email asking the customer to rate their experience. This review can not only be shared on your social media or website product page, it can help you better understand what your company has been doing well at and what may need improvements.
6. Show Billing Records
Shoppers require a bill for every transaction they make. Try to make sure that the payments are readily available to them on their dashboards. If there comes a point where they can’t access the payment data, provide them with a proper reason so that they do not get anxious.
7. Connect and Engage With Mobile Customers
In today’s world, mobile shopping has increased to a great extent; therefore, you should extend your customer service support to mobile users as well. Check that your payment processor has support for mobile payments, because if you do not provide payment for these users, you are surely passing over your sales to competitors. In adapting to a mobile-friendly payment option, make sure that the processor you choose ensures secure payment options.
8. Make Use of Storytelling
Apart from sending customers sales emails and blog posts, consider marketing your product via the art of storytelling. Customers love informational and engaging content. Storytelling leaves a lasting impact on the customer and makes them more likely to want to buy your product.
Last Words
If you are looking to enhance your e-commerce store’s customer service, offer your customers a terrific experience. With the help of appropriate strategy, planning, preparation, and strategy implementation, you can provide your customers with a best-in-class experience and lead your business into the path of success.
