8 ways to offer best customer services for ecommerce

eCommerce customer service has a significant impact on the success or failure of your business. A study by Microsoft reveals that 66% online customers are ready to spend more on a website if it provides satisfactory customer support. On the other hand, 60% customers leave their purchase midway if they are not satisfied with the customer services offered on the web store they are considering. 

The report also suggests that it takes 12 positive customer experiences to revert the damage caused by one negative customer experience. Apart from the conventional wisdom, this report is reason enough to start focussing on building a strong customer support environment for eCommerce.

Source: Business Insider

When you create an online store, you should start focussing on your support services right from the start so you build up an environment that fosters growth and helps in improving your brand reputation and sales.

Following are some tips on improving your support services for long-term customer satisfaction:

1. Easy ways to connect

Customers always have queries and hence offering multi-channel eCommerce customer support is imperative for a successful online business. At various points during a sales cycle, customers might have different sets of queries.  Depending on their urgency to purchase they explore various mediums to connect with the team of the online store they are considering. 

For eg; A customer is surfing sites to buy a product and get it delivered fast. He might drop mails to ascertain delivery time or wish to contact a real person if he needs an urgent delivery. Customers prefer sites that offer multi channel support and easy connectivity and 90% customers use more that one support channel while completing a purchase.

2. FAQ and Help Center

When you create an online store, you should also aim at providing 24 x 7 support to your customers. Wondering how to fit this in your small budget during the initial stages of your business? It’s simple. Create FAQ section and a Help Center for your webstore. This would offer an instant answer for common questions and would be there as your 24 x 7 support service. Having these sections also help in faster conversions and reduce the workload of your sales and support team to a great extent.

4. Strong Social Media Presence

Having a strong social media presence can have double benefits when you  build online store. Apart from creating your brand presence this channel can also be used to listen to your existing and potential customers and their requirements.

Customers increasingly search the social media for product reviews and also engage in real time social media conversations before making their final purchase decisions. Having a strong social media presence where your support team answers customer queries in real time boosts sales and also builds a positive brand image.

5. Send out Feedback Mailers

Don't wait for your customers to come to your ecommerce customer service with their complaints. Instead, show them you care for them and value their feedback. Gather inputs from your customers by sending out feedback mailers periodically. 

Create a simple form with multiple choice options which hardly takes a couple of minutes to complete. As a final question give the customers a choice to add detailed comments. You can also offer some brownie points like free shipping or gift coupons for getting a feedback. This way you can keep a check on all the loopholes of your product, services and operations and prevent many disasters.

6. Negative Feedback, Positive Changes

Negative feedbacks give you the best insight into the pain points of your customers. They also offer an opportunity for the ecommerce customer service training of your team. By understanding the customer's perspective and offering a timely solution for the issue you can actually use the situation to your benefit. Remember, if you are able to retain an angry customer by offering a workaround for his issue, he can turn out to be one of the most loyal customers of your business.

7. Minimize Response Time

Online buyers are known to switch to competitor sites if they land up on a site that takes slightly longer to load.  Similarly, if the queries of buyers are not answered in a minute 43% of them would turn to other sites and would not come back for further purchase on the site that offered delayed ecommerce customer support. On the other hand, if their queries are answered within a minute or get a phone call to resolve their issues 84% buyers would complete their purchase on the same site.

With response time having so profound effect on customers, it becomes imperative that you minimize your response time across your support channels.

8. Offer Online Chat  

Live chat offers the online buyers connectivity with a real person which brings online shopping experience closest to shopping in a brick and mortar shop. By answering customers queries precisely and on time using live chat online businesses can track customers in real time and convert them easily.

Offering customer service in e commerce via live chat gives you an edge over your competitors who might not be offering this service.

9. Personal touch to Customer Service

If you wish to make your customers loyal to your business offer them an experience they have not witnessed ever. Give a personal touch to your support services by assigning support managers to your customers who follows up with them during and after ordering process. Train your staff to understand the customer issues with empathy and resolve it in the interest of the customer without compromising your brand objectives.

Offering  beyond expectation customer service in eCommerce can win you longstanding customer trust which in turn ensures the success of your store.

Conclusion

Offering a good support experience to your customers can have a profound impact on your business and can take your sales graph higher. StoreHippo offers you many automated tools and features(abandoned cart follow up, email and SMS notifications, social media integration etc) that help you connect easily with your customers for  providing them awesome ecommerce customer support. 

Start StoreHippo’s 14-day free trial store and explore the advantages of our platform.