Does ecommerce distance businesses from their customers? It doesn’t have to if you get Ecommerce customer service right. All too often, however, Ecommerce businesses lose touch with their customers. This guide will look at what you need to do to provide good customer service even though you’re doing business remotely.
Before getting started, a look at customer service for ecommerce is in order. The important thing to remember is that customer service means helping clients before, during, and after purchase. Some of this help is achieved through design features. AI can play a role. And, when neither of these offer customers what they need, human interaction takes over.
Why Ecommerce Customer Service is Important
Although most people making a purchase, whether at a brick and mortar business or online, are perfectly happy to help themselves, there will be times when they need some assistance. If, at any point, the help they need isn’t available or is hard to access, opportunities will be lost.
- If they need help before choosing a product and can’t get it, customers will not go through with the purchase.
- If they encounter issues during a purchase, customers are likely to abandon the process unless help is at hand.
- If there are questions or problems following a purchase, customers will not buy your products again. Their reviews and negative word-of-mouth reports will deter other people too.
Excellent, easily-accessible service, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. By providing it, you’ll get those sales, repeat business and positive comments that encourage other people to buy your products.
Ecommerce Customer Support Channels
When choosing your channels, remember that different customers have their preferred options. The more channels you can offer, the more customers you will satisfy. Your options are:
Self Service
Self service options are perfect for people who prefer to help themselves. However, they may not cover all eventualities. Searchable resources, FAQs and tutorials may help customers seeking information, but be sure to offer alternatives.
Some people don’t mind waiting for answers. The downside of service via email is that customers’ intent to purchase has time to cool down while they wait for replies. And, if you need to clarify their queries, there will be further service delays. Some customers would prefer more immediate service, so be sure to offer options that allow for even faster responses.
Social Media
Some customers prefer to reach out on social media, and if you’re marketing your products there, you should expect pre-purchase enquiries as well as customer feedback across the platforms you use. Be sure to monitor all the social media platforms your business uses and respond quickly.
Live Chat
These days, live chat is usually AI first. If you’re doing this, be sure to make it easy for customers to request live assistance. AI is great at answering routine questions, but it often struggles with more complex enquiries.
Phone Support
Customers who want answers from a human being without having to peck away at their keyboards will appreciate a phone-in option. Ensure that your agents are well-trained and empowered to deal with enquiries, and never leave your customers waiting on hold. At their best, phone interactions have strong relationship-building potential.
Best Practices For Ecommerce Customer Service
Some of the best practices for Ecommerce customer service are pretty obvious, others less so. Here’s a comprehensive list:
- Ensure efficiency: Customers prefer transactions that run so smoothly that they aren’t left with questions or problems. Efficiency is, in itself, a form of customer service that impresses customers.
- Go omnichannel: Allow your customers to choose how they want to contact you and use software that allows you to relate customer histories to their current enquiries.
- Don’t make them wait: Regardless of the channel, customers want quick, efficient service.
- Use skilled, informed, and empowered customer service agents: First call resolution is a great target to aim for. To achieve it, agents need to know your business and its products well enough to solve problems in a way that aligns with customer expectations and your business’s internal policies.
- Be proactive: Some customers may be in need of help but won’t ask for it. Keep them informed about order progress, offer assistance, and follow up after purchase.
- Invite and respond to feedback: Invite ratings and comments. If customers aren’t entirely satisfied, get in touch, thank them for alerting you, and see how you can turn bad experiences into good ones. Customer feedback may also indicate a need for changes that will eliminate future issues.
Customer Service: The Uncomfortable Truth
80 percent of businesses say they offer good customer service. Only 8 percent of customers say they’re getting it. Following this up, researchers sent email enquiries to several companies. 44 percent never responded. Only 11 percent provided relevant answers. The average response time among those who replied was 15 hours. 99 percent failed to follow up.
According to McKinsey, companies are doing a little better on social media. About 40 percent meet customer service expectations here. All the same, that means 60 percent don’t. McKinsey notes that companies who don’t respond on social media have a 15 percent higher customer churn rate overall.
As for chatbots, The Wall Street Journal observes that most companies like them – and most customers don’t. You’ve probably had your own experiences with chatbots. Unless your query was very straightforward, we doubt you were overjoyed with the service you received.
As for customer care lines, people have mixed experiences. While some are very happy with the help they got, others complain that agents weren’t knowledgeable enough to help them or made promises they didn’t fulfil.
What to Do About It
Broadly speaking, there are two primary problems with customer service from a business perspective: capacity and quality. With customers expecting rapid-fire responses to their queries around the clock, few businesses have the capacity to constantly monitor and deal with communications.
Quality issues occur when businesses rely too heavily on self-help and technology, recruit the wrong people, fail to train them adequately, or outsource to companies that offer sub-par services.
But, for some ecommerce companies, customer service outsourcing isn’t just a buck-passing exercise. They’re willing to look for quality, and they expect results. You should do nothing less than this.
Back Office Support From RSVP: How it Works
At RSVP, we offer you a promise we’ve never failed to meet. In-house customer service equivalence is the first step – and often the easiest one. The next step is to offer your customers far better service than they’ve ever enjoyed in the past.
We achieve this by developing a real partnership with you so that we understand exactly how your business works. With a little help from tech tools, we’ll offer your customers that round-the-clock, omnichannel service they want. And, because we can scale our resources in response to customer needs, we never leave them waiting.
Apart from keeping your customers happy, we offer you valuable market intelligence that you can use to guide your business strategies. In essence, it’s just like having an in-house team that’s constantly on duty to field those emails, attend to chat, monitor your socials, answer those calls, and report back to you.
But there’s more. From admin to credit control, fulfilment support and data management, RSVP is here for you. Boost your customer service efficiency with our back office support solutions. It all starts with a conversation. Take the first step and get in touch!