The best and worst parts of customer service on an eCommerce site come from the way in which the site is set up for the customer. Each of the three examples for the best and worst are ways in which a business should, and should not, organize their site.

When the site is organized properly, the business makes customers happy. When companies make poor choices, they drive customers away.

The Best

1. Multiple Avenues of Contact

Giving customers more than one way to get in contact with the company is key. When a customer feels compelled to make a phone call, they should be able to call.

When the customer wants to send an email, they should be sending the email to a real person and not a service. The best company gives emails of real people and phone numbers that connect the customer to a live person.

2. Splitting Payments on Purchases

When customers have the chance to use an e-check for part of their purchase and a credit card for the rest, they can make the financial transaction they want to make. This gives customers financial options that other companies don’t offer.

3. Making Purchases as Gifts

When customers get to purchase items and send them as gifts, they are given the chance to bless the people in their lives with things that they could not get any other way.

Sending gifts is something that everyone wants to do, but they will go somewhere else when the company does not give the customer a way to send gifts.

The Worst

1. The Customer Service “Service”

When customers are made to call or email a customer service “service”, they are not even dealing with the company when they have problems.

Using some kind of strange customer service website just makes customers angrier than they already are because they are not even dealing with the company and they do not get any direct communication with the company.

2. Waiting on the phone

Waiting on the phone is something that nobody wants to do when they want answers about their purchases.

When these questions must be answered soon or the customer is using their lunch break to make the call, the company that does not manage to pick up the phone is going to lose business and earn themselves bad reviews online.

Not only will the customer go somewhere else, but they’ll tell everybody who will listen that they were made to wait on hold forever.

3. Bad Shipping

Bad shipping options for the customer are not only unpleasant, but they are extremely unsettling.

When the company gives the customer only one shipping option that is expensive, this leaves the customer with few choices if they must get their shipment faster.

Some people may not trust a particular service, or they may need the item soon. When these are not options, the customer will go elsewhere.

Without quality customer service, the company will lose customers everyday while they are too busy to answer the phone, offer better shipping options or answer customer emails.