The demand for fast and reliable services is growing at a tremendous rate—even more so for eCommerce. Online shopping has become one of the fastest-growing eCommerce sectors, thanks to the endless demand of customers from all over the world. In 2021 alone, the industry hit an all-time high at 5.2 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, and experts are expecting the figure to grow further in the coming years.
How can eCommerce businesses keep up? The answer is simple, yet a bit more nuanced and difficult to achieve—provide the best possible eCommerce customer service. Here’s what you need to know to do just that.
Understanding eCommerce Customer Service
The rise of online and metaverse shopping has brought a new set of challenges for businesses, especially regarding customer service.
eCommerce customer service is no longer just about answering phone calls and emails; but providing round-the-clock support through covering multiple channels, handling complex processes, and ensuring unwavering customer assistance.
eCommerce customer service has two distinct channels, namely voice and non–voice support—to accommodate more customers. Examples are:
- Live Agent Phone Support
- Email Support
- Chat Support
- Social Media Support
- In-app Support for mobile users
- Self-service Support (e.g.,Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section)
To further provide seamless customer experience, eCommerce call center companies have personalized and dedicated channels for their VIP patrons through loyalty programs.
eCommerce customer service is a crucial aspect of any online business as it determines customer satisfaction and loyalty. Understanding the nuances of support channels, response times, and resolution rates can help businesses provide efficient customer support.
Importance of eCommerce Customer Service
Customer service is a vital part of running any eCommerce business, and is absolutely essential not just for customer satisfaction but also for your company's reputation. Here are some tips for creating effective customer service that will make customers feel satisfied, appreciated, and encouraged to return for more:
- Build customer trust and loyalty. By providing prompt, effective, and helpful customer service, businesses increase customer satisfaction and build trust, leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
- Improve customer satisfaction and experience. Providing excellent customer service, managing customer expectations, and addressing complaints with efficiency and empathy can aid in customer retention.
- Up-sell and cross-sell according to customers’ preferences. By delivering excellent eCommerce support, businesses can generate revenue by up-selling and cross-selling products and services to shoppers through customer service interactions and a robust omnichannel eCommerce strategy.
Best Practices To Improve eCommerce Customer Service
Improving eCommerce customer service is crucial in building customer loyalty and growing your business. Here are some tips and best practices to help you best serve your customers:
- Respond quickly: 90% of customers expect a prompt response when they seek help. Aim to respond to all customer inquiries in less than 24 hours.
- Personalize your responses: Train call center eCommerce support teams to always use the customer's name and address their specific issue/s. This shows that you care about their experience in finding a tailor-fit solution.
- Provide multiple channels for support: Offer a variety of ways for customers to reach out for help, such as email, phone, live chat, and social media. This allows customers to choose the best and/or most convenient channel for them even without reaching out to an eCommerce call center.
- Make it easy to find answers: Create a comprehensive FAQ section on your website and consider investing in a chatbot to help customers find answers to common questions. By doing so, call center support teams can manage urgent tickets more efficiently.
- Empower and continuously train your team: Provide your eCommerce support team with the resources and training they need to provide the best possible experience for customers, including required refresher courses and/or tests.
- Listen to customer feedback: Call center eCommerce representatives should regularly solicit customer feedback through surveys, social media, and direct conversations with customers, utilizing the gleaned data to improve your customer service.
Despite these best practices and innovative technology, companies still experience pain points in establishing a strong eCommerce customer service presence.
From floundering customer satisfaction to high employee turnover rates, eCommerce call centers are quick to find remedies. To address these problems, companies opt to outsource eCommerce customer service to third-party providers. call center outsourcing companies help businesses to scale quickly and seamlessly.
The Benefits of eCommerce Call Center Outsourcing
Choosing to outsource eCommerce customer service to a call center can provide many benefits for businesses.
- Dedicated support team. Partnering with an experienced eCommerce call center allows businesses to tap into a highly skilled and dedicated support team and advanced technology and processes to handle inquiries and resolve issues efficiently.
- Increased flexibility and scalability. Businesses outsource customer service teams to scale their support operations and meet changing demands. This is especially important for businesses that experience spikes in customer inquiries during busy seasons.
- Reduced cost and increased efficiency. Cost-effeciency is one of the driving factors why businesses choose to outsource eCommerce customer service. It eliminates the need for businesses to hire and train their customer support team.
Choosing to outsource eCommerce customer service improves customer satisfaction and loyalty, and allows businesses to focus on their core operations. call center outsourcing is a cost-effective and scalable solution that can help businesses grow and thrive in today's competitive eCommerce landscape.
Experience excellent eCommerce outsourcing with Us
We at TaskUs are leading the charge in delivering exceptional digital customer experience for the Retail + eCommerce industry. Recognized by the Everest Group as the World’s Fastest Business Process (Outsourcing) Service Provider in 2022 and highly rated in Gartner Peer Insights Review, our team of experts leverages advanced technology and the magic of the human touch to provide seamless, personalized, and end-to-end client support.
Highlighting our commitment to providing world-class service, we assisted a multi-brand eCommerce retailer in boosting their revenue and increasing customer order amount during peak season.
CASE STUDY
Driving World-Class Customer Experience while Maintaining Revenue
Download the full case studyWe re-visited the over 1200 Calls, more than 650 emails, and 600+ chat transcripts collected from the previous season to further quantify and summarize additional insights around Closing More Sales, Commonly Asked Questions, and Technical Support inquiries from the last season.
TaskUs also:
- Proactively addressed post-sale drivers
- Improved and refocused training on product, process, and policy
- Initiated automation and chatbot to address initial and one-off questions
- Made improvements to queue management
As a result, our Teammates achieved:
- 1^E-commerce worldwide - statistics & facts
- 2^Live Chat Exposes a Fatal Flaw in Your Go-to-Market
