ecommerce customer service

8 Best Practices for Effective eCommerce Customer Service

Online consumption & retailing is the need of time and is on-trend nowadays. The reason for this trend is that it has enabled the consumers to shop 24/7 without any hassle of wasting time in doing outdoor shopping. People can get the essentials at their doorstep with a single click with the help of this tremendous technology of e-commerce.

The online commerce trend is ever-growing with elapsing of time; research conducted in 2018 depicts that about 1.8 billion global buyers consume digitally. The percentage figure of online sales increased from 11.0 to 14.0 percent in 2020. This escalating tendency of buyers towards online consumption urges businesses to become digital to ensure their brands’ presence globally.

Approximately 64% of businesses from minor to larger scales have launched their brands online as well, and this percent is consistently increasing with each passing day. So, in this competitive environment, all brands or businesses focus on many aspects related to eCommerce to stand in the online marketplace and create their brand identity; customer service is considered the primary & crucial factor in eCommerce.

Also, iot software development for working with clients is indispensable if a business owner intends to constantly search for new customers and take care of the loyalty of existing ones to strengthen its position in the market. That is, many entrepreneurs simply can’t do without such software.

What is eCommerce customer service?

Ecommerce customer service is the core ground of any business’ success. It illustrates the way of brand’s interaction with its customers. It is basically the assistance or supports a company provides to its customers for a better buying experience; this is not confined to buying merely, but it may encompass the aid for anything that may steer the customers to make online purchases.

Impact of effective customer service on eCommerce

The success of your business or brand is directly dependent on the quality of customer services you offer to your digital customers. If your customer support service is capable enough to make customers experience a possible & reliable experience with your brand, that would definitely result in the conversion of customers & increased sales consequently.

If you offer poor-quality customer support service, this may damage your business reputation and loss sales; the customers may also leave a negative review or feedback. Feedback matters a lot for new customers primarily. A new visitor to your brand’s channel may rely on earlier feedbacks or reviews in decisions to make purchases. To overcome such pitfalls, you must plan & implement specific effective customer services strategies.

The effective strategy must include the practices to resolve customers’ quires instantly with quicker response time. The conversation tone of your customer service representative must be friendly enough to deal with any kind of customer query nicely. One of the good practices is to follow up the loyal customers to develop a long-term business-customers relationship.

Effective practices for efficient eCommerce customer service

As the importance of effective customer services is already stated earlier, it plays a crucial role in retaining customers and establishing brand loyalty. Customer retention is significant because it may require 5 times more effort to create or attract any new customer rather than maintain the old one. The highly efficient customer service of few larger businesses such as Amazon or Walmart has become an inspiration for small businesses.

Here we have tried to put down the best strategies or practices you can adopt to make your business’ customers service much more effective. You must implement all the stated customer service practices in your eCommerce business processes to achieve your success goals.

1. Social media presence of business

According to an estimate, almost 90.71% of mobile internet users worldwide use variant social media platforms very often and tend to perform digital purchases due to ease of access to the eCommerce platforms. The social media presence of any business is very vital to make your brand visible to the right targeted audience.

You must ensure the social media presence of your business on multichannel as it is the most significant source to keep your potential customers engage with business promotional content with an intent to increase sales. This is the only way you can stay in touch with your loyal customers and result in impulse purchases if managed professionally.

Finding & approaching the right audience can be made relatively more accessible by developing social media profiles on multiple channels. Surveys show that there approximately 2.7 billion monthly active users on Facebook globally. Identify the leading social platform highly influenced by your target audience, then focus on that one main channel and provide the best customer support, thereby instantly responding to customers’ queries.

2. Instant response

Instant response

Instant responses are critical if you really want to retain your customers or increase your sale. For 90% of customers, an instant response to their stated issues or queries is much more important than the real solution to any problem. A survey was conducted recently, which states that the two most frustrating things to customers are either “waiting on hold” or the “need to repeat the same queries multiple times”.

The second situation is more annoying as it depicts that the customer support representative isn’t attentive to your query. The customers always want to get responses instantly in a single interaction. You can use customized automated responding tools also to respond to customers’ queries instantly 24/7.

3. Centralized helpdesk

helpdesk

Organizing the communication channels in a single interface makes things super easy. To meet your customers’ satisfaction level, you must Integrate your eCommerce store with a centralized helpdesk where you can organize all communication channels such as emails, calls, SMS, social media platforms, website’s contact forms, etc., at one place to make instant responses possible even in offline mode.

Integration of a centralized helpdesk with your eCommerce store improves the response time significantly as it enables all the customer service team members to access & entertain customers’ queries readily. You can also integrate a shared box with your eCommerce store to organize & manage customers’ questions in custom folders.

4. Comprehensive product & services details

product & services details

Maximum the consumers tend to make purchase decisions by relying on the information or knowledge already provided on the eCommerce store. Any business intended to enhance its customer service must provide complete information about offered services or products in advance.

You must figure out the things your customer may need to know and then post all the details in the form of comprehensive knowledge afore, in this regard. Clearly explain your business’s terms & conditions and variant policies in advance; create a “frequently asked questions” section to provide the ready responses to common customer queries before shopping.

5. Measure important matrices

Measure important matrices

Tracking the existing matrices is reasonably necessary to improve the quality of services based on previously recorded measures. It’s always considered the customer service practice to measure specific matrices such as resolving customer’s issues or complaints, the customers’ presence on a particular channel, the rate of positive & negative reviews, etc. However, if you are offering a list of eCommerce SEO services then you have to provide excellent customer service.

This will enable you to tackle the downfall or success of the business; it is the responsibility of customer service representatives to take specific measures to improve the quality of customer services in various forms based on measured matrices.

6. Customer-oriented strategy

Customer-oriented strategy

Feedback acts as a core factor in collecting customer’s reviews over your offered services to make specific improvements in services’ feedback, either positive or negative, both leave a visible impact on the brand’s reputation. A good review or feedback can improve the reliability of your business and last a good effect on new customers. It can surpass your net sales to a maximum extent.

Though negative feedback can badly harm your business reputation resulting in a loss of sales, and most expectedly, you would lose your protentional clients too. The business more conscious about their customers’ service opt for customer-centric approaches in terms of feedback or review.

Roundabout 30% of consumers post feedbacks regularly about their experience with a particular site. To enhance your customer service, you must implement an effective strategy to conduct customers’ reviews or feedback.

7. Less dependent on automated tools

Less dependent on automated tools

Usage of automated tools is a pretty efficient option to improve the response time. But relying too much on computerized tools may leave a negative impact on your customer services. The customers may perceive the automatic responses as robotic expressions and may get frustrated over them.

It is a general fact that the customers always want instant responses, but they may get annoyed with hours of waiting time to get an answer over their specific query. If you’re going to carry on with automated tools or bots, then you must opt for custom responses, use a friendly conversational tone, and don’t make customers wait for a longer duration.

8. Gratitude-based expressions

Gratitude-based expressions

Usage of gratitude-based expressions is a way to enhance customer’s relationships with businesses and make them repeat the purchase activities. You must appreciate your customers’ concern over your offered services and should must gratitude towards them on any purchase.

Various surveys show that the customers served with gratitude & appreciation are more likely to make more purchases with the same brand. You can use the “thank you” notes or cards to show appreciation or offer specific discount coupons to increase the customer retention rate.

Conclusion

Customer service quality matters the most in the eCommerce market. The way a business interacts with its client or customers directly impacts the business’s reputation & success. It is a fact that supportive customer service can increase sales tremendously. You must know the tactics to retain customers by meeting their satisfaction level.

This article covered the best practices that you should adopt to enhance your eCommerce customer service. We have emphasized mainly ensuring social media presence and responding to customers’ queries instantly. The bottom line is that showing concern & gratitude towards clients is a way to generate more sales; if you want to increase your business’s reputation, you must focus on the quality of your customer support services.

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