Table of Contents
Online consumers will continue to grow in the coming years. While this means a higher bottom line, it also gives rise to potential bottlenecks and backlogs in the customer service department.
To succeed in the e-commerce business, you need excellent customer service to support this increase in traffic.
This article will discuss why you must consider hiring a call center for your e-commerce business, what it can do for you, and how it can help you keep up with the growing customer expectations.
Why Is Customer Service Important?
The 2016 Microsoft State of Global Service Report notes that 61% of consumers see customer service as essential in selecting an e-commerce company to do business with.
A remarkable customer experience allows you to build trust and encourage customers to repeat the purchase. On the contrary, a poor customer experience leads to decreased revenue, loss of sales, negative reviews, and a mangled reputation.
Sixty percent of consumers worldwide admitted that they stopped patronizing a brand because of one negative customer experience. The percentage grows even more to 68% for customers aged 18 to 34.
On top of that, attracting new customers is five times more expensive than retaining existing clients. For that reason, keeping your current pool of customers happy is vital to the long-term success of your business. Customer service should matter to you for the simple reason that they matter to your clients.
The Role of a Call Center in E-commerce Customer Service
E-commerce is one of the most challenging industries due to the high number of competitors. However, one company delivers consistent e-commerce customer support, and that company is Amazon. Amazon is the globe’s most customer-centric company thus far, and it has maintained such solid attention to ensuring customer satisfaction from day one.
Customer support should be at the center of your e-commerce business strategy following this company’s lead. And this is where a call center for e-commerce comes into play. Call centers help you deliver a consistently positive experience to all your clients.
Why You Need a Call Center for E-commerce
A call center for e-commerce can boost sales, answer customer questions, and rectify problems and issues pre- or post-sale. Building a call center can help your business improve customer experience, keep existing customers, and fortify brand loyalty.
The primary function of setting up a call center for e-commerce is customer support, service, and sales. Depending on your operational needs, you also have the choice to establish a call center with more than one function.
Using call center software and the best cloud-based business phone system makes it possible to transition to a contact center where several communication channels are available for the sake of customers’ convenience.
The analytics tracking that a call center for e-commerce provides allows you to determine performance metrics for a deeper insight. Altogether, this helps you take steps toward a better customer experience.
The Benefits of Having a Call Center for E-commerce
A call center for e-commerce offers you the benefit of working with trained experts who are 100% dedicated to helping your customers. Instead of keeping an in-house team to manage your customer service, you can have seasoned call center agents who are experts in addressing your customers’ needs.
A call center for e-commerce offers you the following benefits:
Higher First-call Resolution Rates
A call center has access to cloud-based phone technologies such as call queuing, call transferring, and interactive voice response (IVR). All these methods help with call transfers to the right agent. As a result, the agent can address issues immediately, increasing first-call resolution rates and improving customer satisfaction.
Consistent Customer Experience
Customers are more likely to support your company if they get consistent high-level support. Working with a call center gives you access to the most up-to-date tools and experienced call center agents so that you can provide support consistently.
Improve Brand Loyalty
Satisfied customers are more likely to repeat purchases. Improving your customer service with a call center offers you a chance to cross-sell, upsell, gain referrals, and repeat sales.
Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity
With the right call center for e-commerce at your disposal, calls are picked up and taken care of faster. You need not bother your employees to answer customer calls, so they can focus on core business functions.
Important Factors that Determine Good Customer Experience
What does good customer service look like in 2022? Having outstanding customer service means quickly and efficiently responding to customer inquiries and concerns. Excellent customer service calls for the effective use of live chat, email, and social media.
Six things differentiate remarkable online customer experience from the rest:
- Having the issue addressed quickly and immediately
- Having the problem resolved in a single interaction
- Talking to a respectful and friendly customer support representative
- Having the ability to follow up with the same customer service representative if needed
- Having the ability to save a copy, print, or keep a record of the interaction
- Receiving a follow-up regarding the inquiry to ensure customer satisfaction
Dealing with the Growing Customer Expectations
Clients’ expectations for customer support are continuously changing. We are in an era of heightened convenience where consumers want everything instantly.
A survey conducted by HubSpot shows that 90% of consumers view a quick response as a sign of professionalism. Now, more than ever, consumers want immediate answers to their questions.
That said, take a look at the strategies you can use to improve your e-commerce customer service:
1. Establish Multichannel Support
A study shows that e-commerce businesses with clear-cut multichannel support experience a higher customer retention rate of 91%.
A multichannel support strategy requires knowing where and how your customers prefer to interact with you. That could be through live chat, Instagram DMs, WhatsApp, and the likes.
By developing several channels for communication, you are telling your customers that you are willing to help them across different channels. With this, your customers do not need to download a new app or look for a different platform to contact you.
As an e-commerce company, aim to deliver consistently high-quality customer support all over your channels. And working with a call center for e-commerce will help you do precisely that.
2. Make Sure That Customers Do Not Need to Repeat Themselves
Did you know that 33% of customers find it frustrating to wait on hold? Also, 33% of customers find it frustrating to repeat the same information to different customer service representatives?
Repeating the same problem to different agents has probably happened to all of us at one time or another, and it certainly is a waste of time for the two parties.
Ensuring that your clients don’t have to repeat themselves and wait for days just to get a response from you is a vital part of excellent customer support.
3. Keep a Record of Customer Satisfaction Score
If you aim to improve something, you need to measure it. The same is true for customer satisfaction. Keeping track of your customer satisfaction rate allows you to check whether your interactions with your customers are effective.
There are several methods you can use. The most popular metric is the Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). This survey measures consumer satisfaction with your product or service.
Surveys like this often have questions like, “How satisfied were you with your experience with our customer support agent?” and customers can rate their experience on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10.
4. Have Live Chat Support
Live chat enables customers to receive responses to their questions immediately instead of waiting for 20 hours or more to get answers via email. Faster response time helps with keeping customers satisfied and happy, thus keeping them loyal to your company.
Maintaining live chat support is often cheaper and more cost-efficient than phone support since customer service representatives can have several ongoing chats simultaneously.
A call center for e-commerce offers 24/7 live chat support. Depending on your provider, you can also receive support in multiple languages to help your customers who speak a foreign language.
5. Utilize Help Desk Software
Having a call center is just as valuable as selling quality products and having the right processes in place. Call centers offer you tools such as help desk software, which is vital for keeping and making customers happy.
With the use of help desk software, customer support agents can efficiently navigate through several inquiries at the same time and respond to them more quickly. Help desk software can also connect with your website contact forms and social media platforms.
6. Take advantage of Social Media
Providing customer service using social media platforms is increasing in popularity. When clients can’t contact you through phone or live chat, they often revert to social media. And with social media interaction, you need to be highly responsive.
Do not ignore social media when it comes to customer service, as this is often the place where consumers voice their frustration and anger about companies they do not like. However, if used correctly, social media can be a great medium where loyal customers can sing your praises whenever you go above and beyond.
A call center for e-commerce will help you leverage the power of social media by assigning a dedicated team of agents who will manage your accounts and promptly reply to every customer DM that comes your way.
7. Make Sure Key Information Is Available Online
One of the most annoying things about buying a product online is not finding the information you are looking for. And most of the time, customers forgo purchasing altogether.
To avoid this from happening to you, your website needs to have a comprehensive knowledge base and an FAQ section containing all the critical information consumers might be interested in. Examples of this information exchange and return policies and warranties.
Self-help customer support has recently seen an increase in popularity; many customers prefer not to talk to a representative to get the answer they need. Having a knowledge base not only helps you minimize customer support queries, but it is also a good SEO strategy.
8. Hire Seasonal Employees
The fourth quarter of the year is the busiest time for many e-commerce businesses. The increased number in sales also means an increase in returns and customer support queries. It is essential to take proactive measures to mitigate the increased demand for customer service.
A slower response rate often leads to lost sales or, worse, lost customers. So consider hiring additional help to address the increased workload and retain high-level customer support.
An external call center for e-commerce will help you find additional staff for seasons with increased workloads. Outsourcing to a call center means that you can scale your customer service up or down depending on your need and exactly when you need it.
There is no need to hire full-time employees if you need them only for a few months. Hiring a third-party call center for e-commerce will also help you save on overhead costs.
The Bottom Line
As the ideal online shopping journey and customer expectations rise, customer service continues to prove its importance in the competitive landscape that is e-commerce.
Redesigning the online buying experience will pay off. It will help you retain clients and increase your pool of customers, which is paramount in any industry.
We hope that you find this post helpful and that it has given you ideas on how to enhance your e-commerce customer service. If you’re looking to take the next step forward, we invite you to connect with us. We can help you develop a call center for your e-commerce business and improve customer satisfaction along the way.
