When you shop online, the first place you look before purchasing an item is the reviews — both for the product and the company. If you come across numerous bad reviews and complaints about customer service, then it’s only natural that you will become wary of your possible purchase. Continuous bad customer service will impact your business’ reputation like a domino effect towards other buyers. Don’t let it get this far and start strategizing how to improve customer service quality for your eCommerce business. Let’s look at how you can accomplish this together.
Why eCommerce Customer Service Matters
You may be wondering why customer service is such an important aspect across various niches and all around the world. On a global scale, over 60% of consumers indicated they stopped using a brand because of a negative customer experience. One negative customer service experience that is left unaddressed can have an impact on company reputation. For example, consider an extreme scenario when you promise full refunds on products but when a shopper requests a refund you tell them that you only support exchanges. This one discrepancy can turn into a stream of negative reviews and a bad reputation across multiple channels. Not only will you lose current shoppers, but you’ll need to do twice as much work with your marketing to establish new shoppers. If you don’t want your business to end up in a downward spiral, let’s look at how to improve eCommerce customer service in your business.
Common Customer Service Issues in eCommerce
Before we get into the best customer service strategies that we know of, it’s important to be aware of what problems you are aiming to resolve. Common issues are:
- Service is significantly slow — if it takes your company 6, 10, or even 24 hours to respond to emails, calls, and any other customer inquiries, then chances are your customers are not too excited about that.
- Your customer service is not empathetic towards the customer — mishaps happen, it’s natural and inevitable! For this reason, it’s important that customer support is empathetic towards their situation, whether it’s via online or face-to-face communication. If the customer had an unpleasant experience and is about to leave your company with a negative perception, then customer service should be motivated to offer them alternative perks to lighten their frustration.
- Difficulties with international customers — going international is a large step for businesses, but it requires constant consideration for your customer service. If you are unable to address language barriers, handle overseas packages effectively, and fall short on providing 24/7 service, then your company will be at risk.
Digi-Tip: Some customer service issues can be easily resolved with the implementation of new technologies that are readily available and used by your competitors.
Successful Customer Service Strategies
If you’re looking for exceptional customer service ideas for your eCommerce business, here are a handful of methods you can implement:
- Live chat — You’ll certainly visit more websites where a live chat will pop up than not. These are efficient in answering visitor questions immediately if they cannot find the answer to a burning question any other way. It’s quicker and easier than contacting by phone or email. Plus, you can then use this information to navigate what questions arise frequently that your clients do not have immediate access to and review this in the customer journey map.
- Self-sufficient help — One of the ways to improve the eCommerce customer experience is to hand the information to your visitors and clients before they have the chance to form it into a question. FAQs, frequently asked questions, are among the most common approaches to this. Additionally, you can add guides, tutorials, and ebooks around your website if there are more elaborate processes within the scope of your niche.
- Implement customer service scoring — Improving your customer service may not always be reliant on your plans, but rather on your individual employees. How can you ensure they utilize their most efficient customer service skills? Implement a customer service scoring or feedback system. How to increase customer service scores? Your team will be inclined to follow better customer services practices in order to earn more points.
- Expand to social media — If you want to innovate your customer service, which you should, then expand your customer service efforts to your social media platforms as well. Enhance customer service experiences by being available in private messages and under comment threads of your social media accounts — and be quick about it. Customers will expect a response in minutes, up to an hour at most, to receive an answer.
Key Components of Outstanding Customer Service
In brief, here are a few characteristics that customers are looking for in your business to ensure they refer to your business as “my best customer service experience!”
- Positivity — “service with a smile” never gets old, whether the customer is talking with a bot, through live chat, or on the phone with the customer care center.
- Quick-paced response — if a question or concern can be attended to within minutes, then there is no reason why it shouldn’t be. Aim for speedy response times.
- Informative — from guidelines on your website to questions asked during live chats, your customer service should aim to always provide helpful information to aid the customer.
- Problem-solving — nobody likes a problem that hangs in the air and isn’t resolved. Address the problem in a timely manner and with an approach that ends up with the client leaving your business with a positive impression of it.
Before you can look at how to improve eCommerce customer service, you need to be able to objectively analyze the shortcomings of your current strategy. Take a look at common complaints and where customers struggle most in the customer journey map. Afterward, adjust your efforts accordingly by implementing new technology, tactics, systems, and approaches. We hope that after all of this, you’re no longer wondering “how do I get better at customer service?” Dive into it starting straight from tomorrow morning and strategize your new approach to customer service for your eCommerce business.
Should you require further assistance with eCommerce-related services, feel free to reach out to us anytime.
