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Delivering excellent customer service for e-commerce can be challenging due to the absence of face-to-face interaction. Still, it is just as paramount as in any client-facing business.
Online retail, although convenient, falls short in certain aspects. The most noteworthy is the inability to deliver the same level of customer service seen in physical retail stores.
However, you can surpass the competition by hiring a customer service call center for your e-commerce business. In this article, we’ll talk about five ways to enhance customer support and improve clients’ shopping experience through outsourced e-commerce call centers.
5 Ways You Can Improve Customer Service For E-commerce
Whether outsourcing your customer service or doing it in-house, you must perform it excellently. Gaining clients’ trust and building good relationships with them takes time. But, once you succeed, the result pays immense dividends. Here are some ways to enhance customer support for your e-commerce call center.
1. Ask Customers for Feedback
You and your customer service team must practice asking for feedback. Although customer reviews do not always sing your praise, they are, nevertheless, helpful.
If your ultimate goal is to deliver the best customer support, then understanding how your customers see your brand, goods, and services is highly important.
2. Stay Proactive
The customer journey does not start on the spur of the moment. Your customer service team must proactively contact current and prospective customers. You can advertise your brand on social media, use email blasts for marketing, or set up promotional campaigns.
Social listening is another way to generate and connect with potential customers. Brand monitoring solutions search for and contact consumers who message or @mention your brand on social media. Additionally, you can program social listening to look for consumers who mention specific keywords or phrases in their posts.
Social listening software can respond to customer queries and concerns that support reps might have missed by keeping hold of selected words. It can even transfer the relevant details to the customer service team to consider potential problems and frustrations your clients might experience.
3. Utilize Multiple Messaging Platforms
The fact that many consumers are shopping online proves that they like having options.
Regarding customer service for your e-commerce call center, you need to make sure that you allow your clients to choose their methods of contact. Rather than giving them a single communication platform-say a contact form- why not expand your messaging channels? You can provide additional support via instant messaging, live chat, or social media.
Here are messaging channels you can employ to make your customer service for your e-commerce call center more accessible.
Web Chat
Consumers visiting your website will likely have many questions; you can respond in several ways. However, nothing beats the reliable and fast omnipresent web chat solution, which is typically located on the lower right side of your website.
Online shoppers are looking for a quick response when adding items to their cart or in the middle of completing an order. In the absence of web chat, customers might postpone their purchases for another day or forego buying altogether. An instant messaging channel ensures that consumers are assisted in every aspect of the customer spending cycle.
Social Media Platforms
Modern shoppers now convey more magnified feedback through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. That’sThat’s why over 90% of e-commerce companies possess some social media presence.
A customer service call center for e-commerce can connect with consumers across these platforms to showcase your brand on a broader market base. Social media allows you to interact with shoppers more intimately, talk via direct messages, and be a part of the conversation. Social media is where most conversations occur, so you need to be a part of it.
Chatbots
Chatbots are available 24/7 to reply to pre-or post-sale queries, help customers shop, show order and shipment information, and answer FAQs. Chatbots are truly bringing customer service to another level to boost sales and become an integral part of the support strategy of your e-commerce call center.
Chatbots are proving their importance, particularly for companies with high-traffic support tickets that can be answered with bots. It’sIt’s a clever idea to entice customers with promotional codes and upcoming specials.
The best customer service call center for e-commerce does not stop at merely sending outgoing messages. They should prepare for automated responses. Research shows that the demand for chatbots will increase to 9.4 billion by 2024, with an estimated growth rate of 30%. This indicates that chatbots will only become more popular in the near future.
Outbound Messaging
Outbound messaging is an effective way to reach customers, especially if they check text messages with a 98% read rate. Given the amount of attention, it pays to make use of 2-way interactions where clients can reply and have reps or bots stand by to answer queries.
4. Incorporate Personal Touch
Just because you are in e-commerce does not mean you shouldn’t make an effort to get to know your customers more intimately. Knowing your customers on a deeper level allows you to personalize your service and remind customers that your brand isn’t programmed.
Here are three effortless ways a customer service call center for e-commerce can personalize support:
- Teach agents to ask for customers’ names during the start of the conversation, whether the interaction is through a phone call or chat support
- Train customer service representatives to actively listen to and understand the customer’s queries. Ask them to show sympathy for the customer’s concerns.
- Educate reps to collect as much information as possible about the customer’s preferences. This could mean products they like, their availability, and the communication platform they prefer to use when interacting with your business.
Information like this helps create personalized marketing messages and anticipate future support services, ultimately helping you foster stronger relationships with your clients. When customers feel heard and valued, they are more likely to come back and make repeat purchases.
5. Always Be Available
Part of delivering excellent customer service, and a necessary step to keeping clients satisfied, is ensuring they can always reach you. For example, if you are located in an area with a different time zone from your customers, always be available on their time. Doing so pushes greater trust in your business.
Customer service deserves your major point of emphasis, even though it may not be the favorite activity of most companies. When you want to improve your customer service, your call center agent availability is one of the areas you should prioritize.
Besides being available, following up with customers after the problem has been solved is another way to boost satisfaction.
It’s crucial that your customers feel as though you are on their side when they stumble into an issue. Following up to make sure the problem was appropriately resolved or that their questions were answered entirely, or to determine satisfaction with the service are terrific ways to reinforce the relationship.
To do this, contact the customer via phone or email or have them answer a customer feedback survey. Whatever you do, the goal is to let them know you are on their side.
Indicators of Good Customer Service in a Call Center for E-commerce
Certain indicators show whether or not your e-commerce call center provides good customer service.
If you’re a small to medium-sized enterprise owner or an online retailer, then you know how challenging it is to maintain excellent customer service for e-commerce. When planning to improve your customer support and experience, you must first determine the areas that require your attention.
By answering the following questions, you can determine how well you’re doing in terms of providing good customer service:
- Is your e-commerce website functioning correctly? Is the UX design mobile-friendly, accessible, and responsive?
- Do you currently have a comprehensive knowledge base or FAQs? Does it contain substantial information about your goods and services?
- Do you support multiple communication platforms? Do you have a set schedule for answering customer queries? This could be phone and email support with standard operating hours or round-the-clock support.
- Is it easy to locate the contact information, such as your customer service department’s phone number and email address?
- Do you provide trial periods for your products and services?
- Is there an intuitive way to complete the purchase or return items if customers are unsatisfied?
- How easy or hard is it to ask for a refund or alterations in the transaction?
- How simple is it to check out when buying a product? Do you support multiple payment methods such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Visa Checkout, Stripe, etc.?
- Do you follow up with clients post-purchase or service?
- Do you utilize customer feedback to upgrade your customer support experience continuously?
Ultimately, good customer service for e-commerce means providing a user-friendly and functional place where customers can shop. It also relies on the following factors:
- Variety of payment and delivery options
- Ensuring your e-commerce site is secure
- Streamlining the website and disabling pesky plugins that slow download times
- Providing a direct link for customer support options
- Communicating transparent pricing, delivery, and return policies
The Real Value of Good Customer Service For E-commerce
Customer service has a vital role in almost every purchase you make. Suppose you are considering purchasing an item that multiple brands offer for almost the same price. What would be your main differentiator in selecting the store from which to buy the product?
Although brand familiarity and equity affect consumers’ decisions, the choice often boils down to how fast you’ll receive the product, the type of support accompanying it, and brand accessibility. These factors represent customer service and imply the importance of selling the asset to consumers instead of mere products.
Good customer service not only makes you stand out positively in the market but also ensures you don’t get left behind by your competitors. Although providing good customer service for e-commerce is more challenging than it is with brick-and-mortar stores, doing so offers incredible benefits in the long run.
- With good customers, e-commerce shops receive fewer complaints and issues from customers.
- Customers who experience fewer problems while shopping tend to experience increased satisfaction.
- As satisfaction increases, customers have an incentive to keep coming back. Thus, good customer service for e-commerce reinforces brand loyalty and client retention.
- Providing shoppers with a fantastic buying experience helps increase sales.
The Bottom Line
Investing in the right strategies ensures that your customer service call center for e-commerce operates efficiently and at high quality and provides value to your business.
Unity Connect gives e-commerce companies of all sizes an intuitive and innovative way to build longer-lasting customer relationships. With a reliable team of support agents performing at an exemplary level, we help you establish a stellar customer service e-commerce team at a price you can afford.
The value of excellent customer service in an e-commerce call center depends on its ability to strengthen customer loyalty and generate repeat purchases. It is even better when they bring new clients to your store and boost sales. Keep in mind the tips we provided for improving your customer service for e-commerce, and you can expect happier customers and an increased bottom line.
Are you ready to take your customer service to a new level with unrelenting personalized support for your e-commerce call center? Contact Unity Connect now to discover how our industry-leading BPO can help.
