Customer service standards continue to become harder as the margins shrink in the current e-commerce industry. The competition for market share becomes harder each year.
One important competitive advantage to stay ahead of competitors is superior customer service and relations. Good customer support sets you apart in a crowded market, whether your goal is to win new customers or retain existing ones.
Your e-commerce business’ reputation is paramount, especially nowadays when social media is the universal source of information and online word-of-mouth directs customers to look for peer-to-peer reviews. Here at Unity Communications, we understand the risk of outsourcing customer service and interactions.
That’s why we value keeping our e-commerce clients’ brands safe. We have a reliable track record working with various e-commerce businesses. Our goal is to become a direct extension of your e-commerce brand, customer service, and marketing department.
To put it simply, building positive e-commerce customer service gives your business a competitive advantage. If your e-commerce business is one of a kind, consumers will have no other choice but to buy from you. But this is rarely the case.
You will find competitors with similar pricing and offerings. A single poor customer experience from your company might cause your shoppers to leave you for another even if they like the product you’re offering.
Your clients are the driving force of your business regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C e-commerce company. Customer service should matter significantly to you for the simple reason that it matters to your customers.
E-commerce centers drive up sales, increase the response rate, and help clients resolve problems before or after a sale. Establishing a call center can improve customer experience and reinforce brand loyalty.
You can establish an e-commerce call center with the primary purpose of customer care, support, or sales. Depending on your operation, you can build a contact center with more than one function. Cloud-based phone systems and e-commerce call centers allow you to offer multiple communication channels for your customers’ convenience.
If you spend more of your time replying to customer queries than growing your business, it’s time to hire some help. Entrusting your front-line customer interaction to an e-commerce call center seems like a leap of faith.
But for most e-commerce businesses, customer service outsourcing is a wise decision. The benefits are reduced costs relating to staffing and training, space and infrastructure, and pressure on your internal team when hiring and onboarding employees for roles with high turnover.
E-commerce companies that no longer want to endure the burden of having in-house customer support can consider several outsourced solutions, such as voice and email outsourcing. Selecting the best call center partner for your business needs should be a strategic decision.
Here are some qualities to note when looking for a call center for e-commerce:
Flexible Pricing Model
E-commerce businesses that outsource customer support can expect to pay only for what they need. It’s not atypical to outsource bits and pieces of customer service operations. You might choose to retain certain functions and outsource only seasonal overflow or coverage for off-hours.
Or you might keep phone support in-house and outsource only interactions done via live chat, email, social media, and other channels. Since solutions come in different shapes and sizes, it’s important to discuss with your call center partner exactly what you’d like them to manage.
Discuss your needs and requirements so that they can create the right-size solution for your specific operational needs.
Cloud-based Contact Center
The recent social climate has shown everyone how vital cloud-based systems can be. Many on-site call centers completely shut down when governments started mandating closures in the past year.
Cloud-based call center solutions provide resilience during disasters. Cloud-based systems are considerably inexpensive to scale up. Deployments with these systems also happen easier since they can readily integrate with existing systems.
Operational Cost Savings
The end goal of customer service outsourcing is to free up company resources so that a business can focus on revenue drivers. To get the best bang for your buck, understand the cost savings that come with outsourced customer support and how they contribute to your bottom line.
Start by assessing how much you’re spending on all facets of in-house customer service. Understanding exactly how much your company runs in-house customer service costs helps contextualize outsourcing as a value-added proposition.
Then when it comes time to work with an outsourcing partner, you are on a better footing for fitting a service level agreement into your business requirements.
Integration-friendly
An external call center is an extension of your business. The partnership combines the technical components—business platforms, systems, client database—and, even more importantly, supports the brand philosophy and culture of the client company.
Typically, during the early stages of the partnership, you explore discovery sessions. This is where operations managers from both companies meet and decide on specific business needs and requirements.
This is an excellent opportunity to discuss in detail the vision for the brand, the definition of brand excellence, and the role that customer support plays within the larger context of a company. Moreover, you need to answer some questions. What makes up the brand voice, and how do you want consumers to perceive customer experience?
You need to be ready to communicate a clear picture of what this looks like and expect your external customer support department to reflect that image in its day-to-day operations.
