One of the most critical assets to your eCommerce business is your customer. Without them, you’d run out of business. Customer service can make or break your brand. Around 74% of people are likely to switch brands if they find the purchasing process too complicated.
Not to mention after one negative experience, 51% of customers will never do business with that company again.
Excellent customer service isn’t something that you should do because it’s expected, but because it builds customer loyalty and increases sales.
When customers feel appreciated they’re more willing to spend more, advocate for your brand (on/offline), and repeat purchases. As a group, Millennials are willing to spend the most (21% additional!) for excellent customer care.
Today we’re going to show you five expert ways to increase your eCommerce customer service to help your brand increase customer loyalty.
1. Get Organized Before You Start Helping
Before you start investing in tools and making big changes in your eCommerce customer service, you’ll need to take inventory of what you’re doing and the opportunities you’re currently missing.
The first step is to make yourself accessible to where your customers are reaching out to you the most, one every online platform possible. Add your contact details to your social media profiles and website. Take a look at how Sephora displays their contact details:
Website
Once you’ve covered the basics, it’s time to give your customer service a swot analysis. A swot (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) report allows you to look inside and outside of your business to find new and better ways to deliver your customer service.
Sparklight Business breaks down their customer service swot analysis with these simple but effective questions:
- Strengths: In what ways do your customers think you deliver better customer service than your competitors?
- Weaknesses: What areas of service do customers think you need to improve?
- Opportunities: What is happening outside of your business that could help you better serve customers?
- Threats: What is lurking out there that could throw a wrench in your customer service levels?
When you’re answering these questions, remember to be as honest as possible. Then evaluate your next steps with your swot analysis with the following tips listed below.
2. Use Live Chat to Push Real-Time Resolution
As an eCommerce store, simply providing email for customers isn’t enough. Consumers now expect live chat to be a part of your eCommerce customer service.
Consumer Think found that customer satisfaction ratings for live chat are often higher than all other support channels, likely because of the speed and conversational nature.
Simultaneously, when it comes to live chat consumers are far more demanding because they expect faster response times than email — the average wait time for chat is 45 seconds.
Realistically offering live chat support may require a larger team than email-only support. Live chat is also a major financial and time investment for your business. However, the upside is quickly resolving issues and increasing customer retention tenfold without having customers living your site.
Another alternative is to invest in chatbots. With advanced AI, you can manage your eCommerce customer service with a small team while allowing your chatbot to resolve the commonly asked questions and issues customers may have on your site.
Five Best Live Chat Apps & Tools
1. Crisp Chat
2. Slack
3. Facebook Messenger
4. LiveChat
5. Acquire
Feel free to check out our guide on How Expensify Got 5X More Customers with Chatbots.
3. Provide Customer on Social Media
Next to live chat is using social media as an extension to your eCommerce customer service. More people than ever use social media to get help from businesses, and those numbers will only continue to rise.
Around 67% of consumers have engaged a brand’s social media for customer service needs. As a result, 42% of consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes or less.
With tools like Facebook & Instagram, you can now give automated or quick replies. Instant replies allow you to automatically answer customers as they reach out to you or have saved responses to cut downtime on resolving their issues.
To turn on instant replies on Facebook you can follow these steps below:
To turn on instant reply for your Page:
Click Inbox at the top of your Page.
Click Automated Responses in the left column.
Click next to Instant Reply below Greet Customers to turn instant reply on.
To change your instant reply message, click Edit Message in the middle.
Update the message, then click Save in the top right.
Or you can use the diagram below:
To save your replies on Instagram, follow the example below:
4 Best Ways Brands Can Respond to Haters on Instagram
4. Create a Responsive FAQ Page
An FAQ page is a helpful eCommerce customer service tool when your customer service team isn’t online or educating customers who want quick resolutions on their own. Your FAQ’s job is to make your buyers process as smooth as possible.
FAQ’s help to build customer loyalty because they quail purchasing anxieties, proactively present solutions to customer complaints and questions, and show that your brand is trustworthy.
eCommerce Example: Death Wish Coffee
If you don’t have an FAQ then here are some helpful tips for building your own:
- Incorporate questions that customers seem to ask or email you about recently to address them publicly and prominently.
- Place questions that will answer each stage of the buyer’s journey, including shipping, order processing, return process, etc.
- Give customers a reason to trust you by adding your best features and contact information in your FAQ
eCommerce Example: Pepper
Dive in deep on creating an FAQ page with Shopify’s Guide: The FAQ Page: Why You Need It, How to Build One, and 10 Great Examples.
5. Improve Your Response Time
No matter how optimized your eCommerce customer service maybe if your response time is slow, customers will still leave with a bad taste in their mouth.
If you’re struggling with providing a faster response time, you’re not alone. It turns out that 62% of companies don’t even respond to customer service emails, ignoring them altogether. When they do respond, it’s an average response time of 12 hours and 10 minutes. Yet 88% of customers expect a response from your business within 60 minutes.
Three Tips to Increase Response Time
1. Set Response Hours: As much as customers want your team to be online 24/7, it’s impossible. Set response times or open hours when customers can expect your team to be online. Place a disclaimer when your team is offline, so customers aren’t caught off guard by late responses or a chatbot.
2. Use Automated Replies: Turn on automated responses so that once customers message you, they’ll be informed on your response time.
3. Reevaluate Your Customer Service Team: Find out what times or days customers are more active online and ensure that your team is online.
Summary
Providing eCommerce customer service should be taken seriously. Customers rely on you to provide the best possible service online.
When you do, you show them that you’re a brand worth investing in. This brings customer loyalty. The most coveted marketing and brand element each eCommerce stores seek.
Once you’ve mastered the right methods and tools to provide your customer with excellent customer service, you’ll need to be consistent. The better your customer service, the better your reviews and online mentions will be to attract prospects.
To help, here’s a recap of the five expert ways to increase your eCommerce customer service:
- Get Organized Before You Start Helping
- Use Live Chat to Push Real-Time Resolution
- Provide Customer on Social Media
- Create a Responsive FAQ Page
- Improve Your Response Time
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Victoria Taylor.
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