Today, there are numerous e-commerce stores on the market and new ones are being launched every day. It’s safe to say that the online market has grown to become quite competitive and overcrowded. This has resulted in some major changes in consumer behavior. As a matter of fact, consumers are nowadays no longer concerned solely about product quality e-commerce businesses have to offer. They are also focused on the quality of customer experience an online store can provide.
With that being said, customer support plays an essential role in determining an exceptional customer experience. The quality of customer service and support will in many ways influence how customers perceive your business and whether or not they’ll be satisfied. If you wish to ensure customer retention and even loyalty, you will have to improve customer support. Otherwise, you will lose your competitive edge and customers will simply choose another store to do business with. With that in mind, here are a few ways to improve your e-commerce business customer support.
Implement live chat
Customer support revolves around helping customers sort out any inconveniences or issues or helping them get the right answers to their questions. What’s interesting is that consumers prefer it when they can get support straight away when a problem occurs. In addition, they prefer when companies are more available to them and can provide them with such support. BPO in the Philippines provide a variety of options for customer support. They answer their clients’ concerns through phone and email support, self-service content, and live chat support.
In order to be more available to your customers and improve your customer support, you should strongly consider implementing a live chat feature on your e-commerce store. The main reason is that 79% of consumers find live chat more convenient because of its fast response rate. What’s more, 46% of consumers believe that live chat is one of the most efficient communication methods. By including a live chat feature, you can allow customers to contact support staff immediately and have their issues resolved almost instantaneously.
Get customer feedback
One of the best ways to improve your customer support is to see what your customers have to say about it. The key to ensuring a seamless customer experience on your e-commerce store is to cater to customer needs, and you simply cannot achieve that if you don’t know what those needs actually are. Therefore, don’t hesitate to ask your customers for feedback and analyze that information to determine which aspect of your customer support could use some improvements.
In addition, you can conduct a customer satisfaction survey regularly to see how customers react to your improvements. Doing this will not only help you improve your customer support but it will also make your customers appreciate you more, as well as help you ensure their engagement, retention and loyalty. The fact of the matter is that consumers do, in fact, prefer companies that actually listen to them.
Provide self service
Nowadays, self service is a popular trend among consumers. In other words, consumers want to get informed on their own and will contact support only if they absolutely need to. If you want better support, you should provide customers with a self service option.
That includes implementing a FAQ page (Frequently Asked Questions) or a knowledge base where customers can look up any relevant information regarding your e-commerce business. Make sure you provide information regarding your policies, payment options, shipping costs, delivery periods and so on. That way, consumers can get informed about your business dealing and will resort to customer support only if there’s an issue they cannot resolve themselves.
Use social media
Another thing consumers prefer, these days, when it comes to customer support is having more than one way to contact you. That includes channels such as email, phone, live chat and even social media platforms. Yes, social media can be an excellent way to not just provide exceptional customer support and service to customers but also improve your overall support efforts.
You can engage with customers on your social media profiles and even collect feedback from them in the process. Customers can post questions or voice their opinions, as well as their concerns and you can provide them with immediate assistance. Simply put, you combine your marketing efforts alongside with customer service and support on social media, in order to ensure a seamless customer experience with your e-commerce store.
Customer experience has become a vital factor for business success these days. With that being said, there’s no exceptional experience without proper customer service and support. That’s why it’s important to take care of your customers’ needs so that you can ensure a competitive advantage for your business.
Dan Radak
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and a regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.