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4+ Must-Use Channels For Ecommerce Customer Service In 2021
By Guest Author | Ecommerce
We are no strangers to the fact that consumers are willing to pay more for products that provide top-notch customer services. Think of yourself. You are a consumer of a bevy of products and services, and if you don’t get a timely response for a specific need, you might end up looking for alternatives.
The global pandemic has not only changed the purchasing needs of consumers — it has also been impacted by the culture of remote working in many businesses. Whether you’re working from the office or home, you might want to unlearn and relearn the best possible practices and channels to achieve your core business goals.
Most importantly, your priority must be to make use of the best possible techniques and technologies that are cost-effective, easy to measure and help you cut through the clutter to get noticed.
Before I dive in, let’s skim through some of the legit facts and figures about the need for effective customer service in ecommerce:
I can keep adding more, but presume these facts and data are enough to validate the necessity for a better customer experience across all your ecommerce platforms. Now, let’s push through the haze and check out some of the most potent channels that can do wonders for your customer service efforts.
Don’t you find it reassuring when someone from a concerned support team picks up your call just to get your issue resolved? Providing customer support over a phone call is a traditional yet effective way to connect with your customers.
Customer care call support is a must-have channel to add to your growth strategy because it not only helps you gather first-hand feedback or grievances from your customers but also ensures a well-trained customer support team.
Now how can a telecommunication strategy supercharge your customer call support team? Cloud telephony is the key. If you are already aware of this, it’s high time you integrate it into your existing customer communication setup. For the uninitiated, it is a cutting-edge yet cost-effective system that enables business communication on the cloud or the internet.
Besides minimizing your costs with an IVR business number, you can have complete control of your call center construct. You will be able to monitor your team’s performance by keeping a close eye (and ears) on all the recordings of incoming calls and outgoing calls to get a fair understanding of what’s going on.
Besides tracking your call center operations, this will also aid your sales managers in the training and development process of their team.
Concerned about data security? Look out for cloud telephony providers that come with an assurance of protecting your team’s credentials.
It can also save a lot of your business hours as it captures and controls operational data including bulk call traffic, call timings and durations, inbound and outbound calls, and a lot more. Your live agents will also thank you for reducing their work hours as cloud telephony systems can be easily integrated with ERP/CRM and they could make or receive a phone call with just the click of a button.
Gone (mostly) are the days when you are hit up with a pesky notification right in the middle of your phone screen. Now, you can make use of mobile/desktop push notifications which often come with an eye-catching image or an apropos messaging to update your customers on the same.
Whether you are a startup or an established setup, your ecommerce business would be inconsequential without your presence on the Google Play Store or App Store. And what are the prime benefits to having an app? I’ve listed them below:
In other words, there are plenty of benefits to creating your own app and push notifications.
In this mobile-first world, you should put your A-game into curating the best possible modes of communication to stay in touch with your customers and potential prospects. Communicating with your customers on WhatsApp is a great way to break the ice and make an indelible impression.
I’ll share my own experience here.
Recently, I purchased a product from Amazon but it arrived damaged. I immediately requested a replacement. Later that day, I received a message from the seller on my WhatsApp where they enquired about my concern and how my honest feedback is important for them to improve. I was about to give a poor rating on Amazon but that conversation stopped me. This is just one instance but I can vouch for the nuances of customer psychology here.
It is important to enable real-time conversations and enhance the shopping experience of your customers. Like push notifications, you can also share updates on offers and deals to grab attention more quickly.
Now there are two ways of doing this. You can either make use of WhatsApp business API, or you can ask your team to initiate a conversation where the customer has already granted you permission to do so.
Have a quick question on a specific product? Or maybe you simply want to know the status of your order but don’t have all the time to make a phone call? This is where LiveChat comes to play. With the dwindling attention span of the majority of your customers, it’s important to put up with their immediate needs to learn more about a product.
Integrating a live chat pop-up in your website and social media channels can take you miles.
Flesh out an engaging chatbot script or make use of a live agent who would be able to address your prospects in real-time. This is a great way to save both your team’s and your customer’s time. You can also make use of a chatbot where you can automate and align the most frequently asked questions with apropos responses. Let’s run through the most commonly asked concerns:
There are many more you can add to this list and most often the issue gets resolved even without the intervention of a live agent.
While you sink your teeth in mapping out a foolproof strategy to provide the best customer service, you should not leave aside two more important channels in your roadmap.
This is a no-brainer. Most of your customers are spending their time on social media and you should be well prepared to answer in a jiffy. Whether it’s responding to their comments or attending to their concern in your inbox, you need to make use of this well-oiled marketing channel to stay relevant.
This is another essential channel, especially if it’s a B2B undertaking. Most business decision-makers prefer email communication over anything else, so you would want to leverage the best email communication practices to keep your ecommerce business out of the wood. For B2C, it’s an essential channel to help your customers focus on specific products or deals where you can redirect them to relevant landing pages. This is an indispensable practice since your website must be inundated with tons of CTAs and that might baffle a lot of users.
So, that’s it for now. I hope that the channels I discussed here can help you provide better customer service and experience for your ecommerce business.
Author bio: Dipannita Das is a journalist turned content marketer, currently working as a content lead at MyOperator. An OTT content fanatic, she mostly juggles between professional writing and occasional graphic designing.
