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Why & How of Customer Support for E-Commerce?
Why is customer support important for e-commerce?
Many people see online shopping as money and times saving activity, but the often hesitate due to the physical distance they have between them and seller. It has been observed that many people don’t but expensive stuff till they have some personal assurance from the seller side.
A customer can need help at any step of their buying cycle.
Providing an excellent customer service is an integral part of every e-commerce business.
It can be used as a marketing strategy, customer retention technique, as well as a way to raise awareness for your brand.
In this article, we will go through- what a customer expects from customer support, how to make your customer supports system better and how your customer support team can market your brand. Customer support for Ecommerce helps in making a good impact of your business in customer’s mind.
What do online shoppers expect from customer support?
Every customer wish for a customer support service which can solve their problems in nearly no time. Remember that your customer can need your help at any stage and if you are not quick in responding then you are losing potential customers. An efficient customer service is a sign of trustworthy brand. The longer you take in responding your customers’ queries the more doubt about your product you are creating.
A customer can make any type of query at any point but it is your responsibility to attend it, however, stupid or simple it seems. Customer like service your promptness increases a customer loyalty.
From a survey, it is found that 83% of shoppers need help in buying a product. The picture below shows how much a customer waits for help.
Image source: econsultancy.com
Till now you must have understood the importance of an efficient customer support system.
The Importance of Multi-channel Customer Service
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As an e-commerce store, you yourself know how important it is for you to be technically and socially updated. The coming modern world revolves around the internet only so, having just a call center or email support is not sufficient for providing an excellent customer service.
These days if anyone has a query they do not call they just pick their smartphone and post it on their social media platform. It is important that you are active on multi-channels. It’s just as important as defining your brand.
Multi-channel customer service is a strategic way to manage all customer related questions about your business. You can take advantage of email, social media, phones and many other platforms to do this.
You can take advantage of some different tools to make sure you are able to cover all of your bases through multi-channel customer service.
In this post, we’ll go through a few different channels interact with your customers. Not all are necessary when just starting out as a small e-commerce store, but it’s important to know which ones are available should you look to expand your support channels with your business.
Here’s what we’ll take a look at today:
Use email as your basic support system. It is the simplest way to be in contact with your audience. You can simply put a contact form or on your store front or can print your public email-id on your page.
There are few services that let you have a custom email address.
For example, you could open up an email account for yourname@yourstore.com, support@yourstore.com and more
These are few services that let you have your custom email address.
Social Media
If you are yet to make your social media support account, we suggest to do it fast. Social media support is the latest trend all the big companies are more responsive on their social media than other channels because they understand the sensitivity of it.
News travel fast online so, you do not want any negative review about you degrading your brand’s image.
The best part about using social media platforms for customer support is that when you satisfy one customer their happiness can be seen by many meaning free publicity for you.
A survey shows that 32% of customers who voice their concern on social media platforms expect a response within thirty minutes and 42% expect a response within the hour.
Helpdesk
Helpdesk is the one of the old and still most effective method for customer support. An online helpdesk serves as a platform where your customer can go to see commonly asked questions which can be very helpful to you as well. Not only the customers will get their answers quickly but it will also help save your time. You can use that extra time in marketing and sales.
There are a few different helpdesks software available online nowadays. You can try and choose the one which suits your needs best. These are some good helpdesk software
Phone Support
Having a phone support system in an e-commerce store is very important, it has been observed people tend to make phone calls more frequently than writing an email.
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It is important that you have an organized set up where your customers can reach you quickly. It can be a difficult task if you give your personal number for this purpose, you must have some sort of call center training as dealing with different people can nerve wrecking so times.
The main purpose of using multichannel support system is to give customers quick and efficient service.
Should you outsource your customer service?
As an entrepreneur you tend to do everything yourself, every small thing is personal and you want to be responsible for fulfilling it. Nowadays customer service is not just limited to attending calls there is a lot more things that need to be focused upon. You have to monitor your emails, social media platforms, help desk, orders, and queries, etc.
Whether you should outsource your customer service or not totally depends on at what stage your business is. Having a customer support is a must.
You should analyze your business and see if you are in need of outsourcing your customer service or not.
Pros of outsourcing customer service
Cost Effective
Outsourcing customer support can be a lot of money saving than hiring an employee for the purpose.
Customer support is not a one man game if you go on hiring yourself you will need at least 3 to 4 employees, whereas you can easily outsource a more efficient and trained team in lot less.
You can hire them seeing your weekly need rather than having an employee permanently.
Can Provide Immediate Support
As an online store owner, you already have so many things on your plate that even though you think you can manage customer support yourself but you cannot take out time for that.
Outsourcing is beneficial as you won’t need to stop all the important work you are doing to solve a query. The can handle the customers more efficiently s their sole priority is customer support only whereas you have so many different responsibilities too.
Reduce your office stress
Customer support is an integral part of e-commerce business, in countries like India where online shopping is still a very new options people like to have an extra assurance from business representatives themselves.
Outsourcing reduces the stress customer service can be for your employees. You can freely focus on your marketing and sales without the stress of dealing with different customers anytime.
Cons of outsourcing your customer service
Will Initially Require Training:
It can be a problem in initial days as you have to train the outsource team all about your product. They will need to understand the ins-and –outs of the product so that they can handle any queries or request made.
It may be helpful to provide a script for basic inquiries; however, the customer service rep should be knowledgeable enough to be able to go off-script when necessary.
Confidentiality of Your Customer Data
It is hard to establish a line of trust where you can be fully confident that your customers’ data is safe with the outsourced support company.
Especially for bigger clients, this is one of the most worrying aspects of hiring third party service providers. Before signing a contract look for the data security measures in place and try to find some references from other clients of the contracted company.
Customer Support is also helping you make money
Customer support is important part of your e-commerce business setup. You should not take any risks with your customer service, try making it as pleasant as you can. A happy customer is all you need to grow your business.
Keep coming back to learn more about how you can grow your E-Commerce business to connect and engage with customers and more people.