eCommerce has been growing at an exceptional rate and shows no sign of slowing down. Countless companies have been set up to capitalize on this. That breakneck speed doesn’t mean every online store will be successful, however. While some will succeed, others will inevitably fail.
One of the determining factors in this is customer service. The more you put into this, the more customers you should see. They’ll also be happier and more likely to engage with your business again. Figuring this out could be difficult, however. You’ll need to know how to look after your eCommerce store’s customer service to properly achieve it.
As much effort as great customer service takes, it doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s a matter of using the right strategies and focusing on the right areas. With a little time and effort, you’ll see happier, more engaged customers, which should help in other ways.
It’s worth diving deep into this.
What Is eCommerce Customer Service?
Before diving into how you can look after your eCommerce company’s customer service, it’s worth looking into what this actually is. It can be a little different from traditional customer service, as you might expect, but the end goal is the same. It focuses on making sure your customers are satisfied with how you interact with them.
In eCommerce, it focuses on offering a seamless customer service across multiple channels. It’s a prerequisite to success in this digital work, and focuses on making sure you treat your customers right while resolving any issues that could arise. In many cases, it also involves being proactive and making sure no problems come up.
Why Look After Customer Service In eCommerce
With what eCommerce customer service actually is, it’s worth focusing on why it’s important that you focus on it. It could be a major part of how successful your company ends up being. It’s been shown that customers have extremely high expectations when dealing with any companies, and that doesn’t change when it comes to eCommerce businesses. At least 54% of customers have these sky-high expectations.
What does this mean to you as an eCommerce company? If you don’t have great customer service, then you risk losing out on your customers. Those you do draw in aren’t likely to come back, and you’ll lose out on much-needed repeat business.
Then there’s the fact that happy customers are more likely to buy from you again. It encourages brand loyalty, which has a domino effect on your revenue. Satisfied customers cost less to sell to again compared to new customers, so you’ll see a greater return on investment long-term.
In short, great customer services offers:
- Greater brand loyalty
- Increased customer retention
- Better word-of-mouth marketing
- Increased sales
- Better revenues
With that, there’s no reason not to look after your customer service. You’ll need to know how to look after your eCommerce store’s customer service to accomplish this. Doing this doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Instead, it can be relatively straightforward. Using the right strategies is essential to this.
Seven of them stand out. Not only should they make your customer service better, but they’re quite practical and easy to implement. They’re worth diving into.
How To Look After Your eCommerce Store’s Customer Service: 7 Top Strategies
1. Measure & Optimize
Once you have a customer service strategy in place, you might think it’s set in stone. It shouldn’t be. Instead, you’ll need to look for ways to continually improve. That involves measuring the effectiveness of everything and making adjustments as needed.
Take in as much data as possible when you’re doing this. It’ll let you make informed decisions about what you need to change and how you can improve them. While this takes ongoing time and effort, it’s more than worth the hassle.
2. Install Live Chat Functionality
Live chat is practically essential for eCommerce companies. If you don’t know how to set up live chat on website, then it’s something you’ll need to learn. The functionality lets customers speak with your customer service team as they browse your website and troubleshoot any issues.
It makes the customer journey much easier, and usually ends up in a sale being made, especially if the problem is checkout related. It’s more than worth putting the effort into this.
3. Improve Response Times
One of the main benefits of eCommerce to customers is speed. They’ll spend much less time browsing through products and finding what they want. They expect that everything on your end will be as quick as possible, so you’ll need to make sure your response times are appropriate.
The faster these are, the better it is for your customer, and your business. Everything from how quickly your customer service team responds to them to how fast their order is delivered needs to be taken into account with this. Make it as quick as possible without compromising on quality.
4. Meet Customers On Their Terms
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to eCommerce or customer service. That’s especially true when you consider the personalization that many customers expect. You’ll have to meet customers on their terms for you to succeed. Since they can have ever-changing demands and expectations, this can be difficult to achieve.
It could mean needing to change and adapt regularly, but it provides more than a few benefits. There are a few broad strokes that can help with this. Live chat, as mentioned above, could be a great way of doing this. On the other hand, social media, email, and over-the-phone support can all be essential. Make sure you offer these.
5. Be Organized
Being organized is one of the more important aspects of running a business, and it matters quite significantly to your customer service. Without it, things could start falling apart. You and employees could overlook things, while others might be lost in the shuffle. That’s not something you – or your employees – will enjoy.
No matter how motivated your team is and how efficient your processes are, disorganization will prevent you from getting everything done. Using the right tools and carefully mapping out processes and customer service steps is an important part of this. Take the time to get this right from the get-go, and everything else should start falling into place.
Some practical ways of doing this include:
- Having saved replies for more commonly asked questions
- Having a shared inbox for your customer service team
- Giving access to necessary resources across your company
While this might take a while to set up and perfect, it’s more than worth your hassle. It’ll reduce customer wait times, and your employees will be able to more effectively deal with any problems or questions that come up.
6. Use Reviews
Potential customers take a lot of information into account when they’re deciding whether or not to buy from a company. They’ll want to establish trust in your business before they actually buy. They’ll be giving you their money, so they’ll want to know it’s being spent well and they’ll get what they ordered.
Go out of your way to make them trust you. One of the more useful ways of doing this is to use reviews on your websites. Testimonials from real customers are some of the more trusted ways of highlighting how well your company does business. It’ll show your potential customers they can put their faith in you.
7. Personalize The Experience
There’ll be plenty of times where customers want answers to typical questions. As mentioned above, you could have saved replies to deal with these as they come up, especially if there’s a large amount of volume for them. That doesn’t mean there aren’t times where you’ll need to personalize things.
In contrast, plenty of these will come up, and you’ll have to go out of your way to make things personal. Take the time to communicate with your customers and figure out what they actually want and need. In many cases, they’ll look to you as an expert in your field, and could need advice and recommendations based on that.
Make sure you give it to them. By treating them how you’d like to be treated, you’ll improve your customer service better than you’d expect. Not only will your customers feel listened to, but they’ll be more likely to come back and buy more from you.
How To Look After Your eCommerce Store’s Customer Service: Wrapping Up
Figuring out how to look after your eCommerce store’s customer service doesn’t have to be a complicated process. Instead, it could be relatively straightforward, but you’ll need to make sure you’re focusing on the right areas and using appropriate strategies.
Meeting customers on their terms, improving response times, installing live chat functionality, among other tips and tricks, will all help with this. While they’ll take a little time and effort to get done, there’s no reason not to.
With how important looking after your customer service can be, it’s vital you take care of this from the start. The success of your eCommerce store could rely on it.
