Picture this: You’ve spent the afternoon shopping online and have finally pressed the fateful “Complete my order” button, only to tragically realise that you’ve ordered two of the same item. Who do you turn to for a quick and painless fix?
Customer service, of course.
Customer support is an integral building block for any eCommerce business—so integral that 90% of consumers globally say that quality customer service is directly tied to their sense of brand loyalty. The good news is that a solid customer service strategy can help you improve your customer experience and your online business's overall success.
What is eCommerce customer service?
Ecommerce customer service is the framework to assist shoppers via online platforms and throughout their life cycle journey.
It’s all about helping customers with everything, from making online purchase decisions to offering solutions to their problems while providing a seamless customer experience across platforms and channels.
Online customer service is not only essential but also a prerequisite for success in the eCommerce world.
By delivering excellent customer support, your eCommerce business will always find it easy to meet the customers’ sky-high expectations and win their trust. `
So how do you set your store up for a customer service gold star?
The importance of eCommerce customer service is meeting customers’ expectations and giving them a WOW experience. Delivering the best eCommerce customer service with your eCommerce business can do wonders to make your brand stand out from the competition.
Luckily for you, we’ve got a few ways for you to get it right.
Well-defined communication channels
You can provide customer service through a variety of communication channels. But you have to pick those channels wisely—after all, you can’t be everywhere all at once.
Choose support channels that fit your online store’s strategy and scope. For example, smaller businesses can opt to provide email support only, while a more established business may also include support via social channels.
A clear, user-friendly interface
A clear, user-friendly interface makes it easy for consumers to find what they want. Essentially, you want to make it easy to get in touch with your customer service team. This means building intuitive navigation and on-page user experience on your site.
A self-service option
The most successful eCommerce businesses offer online shoppers a way to solve their problems independently before escalating to a customer service agent. You can quickly reduce the number of support questions by building a resource—a Frequently Asked Questions page or a Help Center—that covers both the basics and the most common queries.
A personal touch
More often than not, online shoppers appreciate personalisation. According to PwC’s study on customer experience, 71% of Americans would rather interact with a real-life customer service representative than a chatbot.
Every eCommerce business can approach the idea of personalisation differently. It can mean providing email or phone support from a real person (not a bot!) when things go wrong or online shoppers have questions. It can also extend to specific customer service phrases and post-purchase follow-ups, such as small gestures like including stickers or notes in your packaging or sending personalised emails.
Clear expectations—and the ability to meet them
Online shoppers expect brands to meet or exceed their expectations. So much so that in its 2020 State of Global Customer Service study, Microsoft found that 58% of customers are willing to sever their relationship with it if a brand falls short. This could mean being hard to reach when a customer has a question or taking too long to resolve a return.
The solution is simple: Set clear expectations around your response times. Then, meet or beat those expectations. If your phone support is limited to a specific time frame, be upfront about it. And if response times are longer over the weekend, be clear about that too—or better, make an exception to meet a customer’s needs every now and then.
What if there was an app that did this for you?
There is. And it goes by the name of Gorgias.
What is Gorgias?
Gorgias is the person at the front desk ready to make your customers feel at home, answer all of their questions and go the extra mile in any shape or form – except it never clocks off. Especially designed to facilitate eCommerce businesses, Gorgias prioritises communication with your customers when you can’t through prompt, personalised interaction that leaves each person feeling like they’re the only one in the world.
It has been designed to make your communication with your customers as easy as possible by integrating all the channels they can contact you on into one easy-to-use app, including email, Facebook, Instagram, SMS and messenger.
The data from each of your apps is extracted into a customer profile on the app as ‘tickets’. The helpdesk then uses these tickets to assist them with anything they need (for example, amending a subscription). The helpdesk will contact the customer to resolve their query.
Automatic responses can be set up to the consumers’ most frequently asked questions. 60% of eCommerce support requests are the same as those asked in the past, so by setting up automations, the customer gets their answer straight away, and the merchant has freed up their time to focus on the more difficult questions. 2000 Shopify stores are now using Gorgias, which are constantly growing.
Blend x Gorgias
We’re lucky to have a front-row seat in seeing Gorgias completely enrich and support the customer experience and bring online merchants loyal consumers who consistently boost sales! We encourage you to dive in and explore how this intuitive app can add extra hours to your day and prioritise parts of your business that you don’t always have the time to – and we can help you do that.
If you’d like to learn more about integrating this app with your store, get in touch with us and we’ll get you there.
