Retail ecommerce sales worldwide totaled $4.28 trillion in 2020 and are projected to grow up to $8.1 trillion by 2026.
These numbers perfectly illustrate how the battle for consumer attention has shifted online.
And you’re probably wondering what your ecommerce business has to do to capture the attention of the shopping masses and stay competitive in the ultra fierce online market?
The short answer to this question is— to level up your ecommerce customer service game.
And we’re going to show you 5 great customer service strategies to optimize your online business’s game plan.
But first, let’s take a closer look at what ecommerce customer service is and the benefits it can have for your store.
What Is Ecommerce Customer Service?
Ecommerce customer service generally refers to providing value for customers by assisting them prior, during, and after a sale.
This type of assistance, which is usually provided by a customer service agent or a chatbot, is to improve the overall customer experience and the relationship between your business and your clients.
In other words, ecommerce customer service is the way your online businesses assist customers with everything from making online purchase decisions to resolving particular issues—all while creating a seamless customer experience across various channels and platforms.
A robust customer service strategy should include:
- how and where you deliver support
- tone and voice to be used by agents
- expectations for response time speeds
- how customer service representatives go about rectifying customer issues
With customers having sky-high expectations in this day and age, customer service is not only good to have but rather a necessity for success. In fact, 90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company.
So it’s clear that customers expect great support experiences from their favorite ecommerce stores. And delivering great ecommerce customer support not only keeps your customers happy but can bring several benefits for your store.
Why Customer Service Matters For Ecommerce Businesses
Investing in customer service is a great way to activate your business’s flywheel.
For example, your loyal customers will help you acquire new ones by convincing prospects to engage with your brand.
Their positive reviews and testimonials will prove to be more effective than any other marketing method you might utilize. And significantly cheaper as well.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s take a look at the 3 biggest reasons why investing in your ecommerce customer support should be a no-brainer.
Customer Retention Is Cheaper Than Acquisition
An increase in customer retention of merely 3% can equate to a boost in profit of over 15%. This is because repeat customers spend 67% more than new customers. Which results in you having to spend less on operating costs.
Simply put, investing in customer service will decrease your business’s churn rate, consequently decreasing the amount you must spend on acquiring new customers.
Customer Service Portrays Your Brand Image, Mission, And Values
Most customers will make assumptions about your brand based on your online presence, ads, content, and other external marketing methods. Which means there’s little you can do to influence their perception.
However, your customer service is one area where you can have significantly more control.
Customer service representatives speak directly to your clients and have the responsibility of representing your brand when interacting with them.
And this medium of direct communication with customers goes a long way in shaping how they view your brand’s values and mission.
Customer Service Has a Huge Impact on LTV
Customer LTVs represent the entire revenue you can expect from a single customer account throughout their lifetime. Growing this number means that your clients are shopping more frequently and spending more money on your business.
Investing in your customer service department is a fantastic way to improve your Customer LTVs.
Think about it this way. Suppose your customers have a top-notch experience with your service and support teams. They’ll be more likely to buy again from your ecommerce business, or at the very least, share their positive experience with friends and family.
And this process makes customers more trusting of your business. Which will allow you to upsell and cross-sell additional products with less friction.
Alright! You now know what ecommerce customer service is and why it matters so much. It’s time to move on to our top five customer service strategies you can implement to optimize the service at your store.
5 Simple Ecommerce Customer Service Strategies You Can Implement
Regularly Track Your Customer Satisfaction Score
If you want to improve or optimize any process, you’ll need to measure it constantly.
By regularly measuring customer satisfaction, you’ll know first hand if the current way of interacting and engaging with your customers is a successful one or not.
There are numerous KPIs to measure this. But the most prevalent due to its simplicity is the customer satisfaction score or CSAT for short.
Customer satisfaction polls frequently utilize the CSAT to assess customer satisfaction with the product and service.
Ecommerce shops often include the question “How satisfied were you with your shopping experience today?” and provide a scale of one to five or ten so that the customer votes and provides feedback.
Getting customer feedback can offer you priceless insight into what is working and what is not, so ensure that you regularly track your customers’ satisfaction score to elevate your customer service game.
Invest In A Multichannel Customer Service Strategy
According to a recent study, ecommerce businesses with a well-defined omnichannel customer experience have a customer retention rate of over 90%.
Nowadays, developing a multichannel customer service strategy is imperative. It means that you need to know where your audience is, whether that’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or any other channel, and be there for them.
Once you establish your channels for customer contact, let your customers know that you can help them through these new channels and platforms.
Being present where your customers are will make them happy. However, you’ll need to make sure you can respond quickly and effectively irrespective of the channel.
If you’re looking for a support tool that lets you manage support from across channels from one single dashboard, check out DelightChat.
Implement Live Chat
When customers have questions for you, they expect answers fast.
And a Live chat option can help you provide customers with instant resolutions to their queries. And for ecommerce stores, this can help boost conversion rates and revenue.
Moreover, it’s convenient and less costly for your business since agents can have multiple conversations going simultaneously.
Personalize All Email Campaigns
Have you ever stepped into a retail store where the staff recognize you from your previous visits and can suggest purchases based on what you bought last? If yes, chances are you probably frequent this store just because of the personalized attention you receive.
Well, the same goes for your email marketing campaigns. Emails without personalization are easy to ignore. Especially considering the number of promotional emails that flood a customer’s inbox.
The more personalized your messages, the more likely it is that customers will engage with them. And with the amount of data you have about your client base, there’s simply no excuse not to.
Enable Self-Service
As the saying goes, “Self-help is the best help”. And today’s customers, especially younger generations, want to find the answers themselves, whether via a how-to-video, an FAQ page, or a knowledge base.
And this is good news for your ecommerce business. Investing in self-service means your agents won’t have to spend time answering repetitive questions and can dedicate their time to solving more complicated issues.
The easiest way to go about doing this is by implementing a knowledge base. It is a section of your website that includes short answers, manuals, and video tutorials, etc. addressing the most repetitive questions received by your store.
This could include details about your products, shipping, and refunds right up to information about your data privacy policies.
Conclusion
Developing a first-class customer service experience for your clients should be high on your to-do list if you want to succeed with your ecommerce business.
And with the help of the strategies mentioned above, you can focus on consistently delivering a first-rate customer experience and set your business up for success.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you deliver unparalleled ecommerce customer service, check out DelightChat. It comes with all the features you need to streamline your support and delight customers like:
- An omnichannel help desk to manage support from multiple channels from one dashboard
- A shared inbox to easily collaborate with your team by tagging each other in tickets, assigning conversations, and sharing screenshots
- Deep Shopify integration to view and edit orders from within the app
And a lot more!
Now go dole out amazing customer support like never before!
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is a guest post from the team at LTVplus, a top-notch customer service outsourcing solution for ecommerce brands that can help make you more money with world-class dedicated customer service agents that integrate flawlessly with your business.
