Internet businesses came into existence in 1991 when the Internet became a platform for commercial use. The last 5 years have seen a major growth in the on-line sector and on-line shops and e-business are becoming main stream.
Why is it important to support customers online? 
- Support your marketing process= Improve the return of investment (R.O.I.)
Marketing departments usually focus on the ROI (return of investment) in order to measure the success of their marketing campaigns. The majority of e-businesses are always worried about the % of bounce rates as people visit your site and leave immediately. There are a few reasons for this, they don’t find what they are looking for or they find the site navigation too complicated. By offering these visitors on line support such as Live Chat and e-mail replies you can capture this valuable market research data and hopefully ‘save the sale’ plus make changes to your site to make it more user friendly.
- Support web designers and programmers = Improve usability
Site Evaluation & Customer profiling Your team will be using different techniques to determine if specific pages of your a site drive higher or lower engagement such as an A/B test or by using Google Analytics. Market research and analysis of your entire site will help your web design team to make improvements to the site and ensure your visitors stay longer and purchase at the end of their visit. An Online Customer support function on your site can help you to detect design and programming issues.
- Support your sales process = Increase sales
Customers may have enquiries about products or services. It is ideal to provide a self support service on your site, such as a ‘How To’ page; however, users may prefer to interact with a real person in order to gain a better understanding of your products/services and company.
- Support your customers = improve customer experience
If you provide on-line customer support via live chat & e-mail they are more confident and will interact with your sales support team. Their decision to purchase from you has been validated as they are reassured they are buying from a reputable company. You can also increase your customer satisfaction levels by simply having customer agents available to answer questions. A happy customer will add you to their favorites list and will return to your online portal .
If you want to discover more about customer care on-line for e-business check this whitepaper: http://www.callmanagement.ie/landing/whitepaperecommerce/
Read more: What is Sales Support?