In the fast-paced world of ecommerce, customer support is a critical element for providing exceptional customer service. With technological advancements, ecommerce customer service teams can deliver top-notch assistance to customers worldwide. However, more than simply relying on technology alone is required. Understanding customer support and its goals is essential, as is choosing and tracking the right key performance indicators (KPIs) and implementing best practices to improve customer support efforts. This blog will discuss ten customer support best practices to implement in the new decade.
1. Understand Customer Support and Its Goals
Customer support is more than just resolving customer complaints or providing technical assistance. It’s about understanding the nuances of customer support and its goals.
Ecommerce customer service is reactive and aimed at assisting customers who require special assistance with products or services. It’s crucial to differentiate between customer support, customer service, and customer success.
Customer support is a transactional process that begins and ends with the customer’s interaction, while customer success involves working collaboratively and proactively toward achieving the customer’s long-term objectives.
The purpose of customer service is to address customers’ immediate and long-term requirements with the proactive involvement of the business. To improve customer service, it’s important to deeply understand its goals and align them with your overall business objectives.
2. Choose and Track Your KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) provide insights into the performance of your customer support team. They can range from the number of cases worked on and the time spent per case to customer feedback. You must choose the KPIs that align with your business objectives and track them regularly to identify improvement areas for impeccable ecommerce support services.
3. Make it Easy for Customers to Contact
Providing easy and accessible channels for customers to contact your support team is crucial for making your ecommerce support services perfect. They should be able to contact your team without any hassle.
Ask yourself questions such as: Can customers contact you through multiple channels like email, phone, or live chat? How long do customers have to wait for a response? Providing prompt and efficient support can help you build customer loyalty and prevent customers from abandoning their purchases due to unresolved issues.
4. Respond Faster with Live Chat
In today’s fast-paced world, customers expect quick responses to their queries. Live chat support can be a game-changer in improving response times and customer satisfaction in ecommerce support services. Live chat enables real-time communication, allowing customers to get instant assistance, and it can also be used as a sales channel to upsell or cross-sell products.
5. Let Customers Find Solutions to Common Issues
Repetitive issues can consume a significant amount of your ecommerce customer service team’s time. Creating resources for customers to find solutions to common issues can save time and effort. It can be in the form of an FAQ section, a detailed help portal, or a support community forum where users can assist each other. Ensure these resources are easily accessible and user-friendly to help customers find solutions quickly.
6. Use Customer Support As Fuel for Product and Service Improvements
Ecommerce customer service can be a valuable source of feedback for improving your products or services. Your customer base is the best feedback source, so collect and analyze customer data from customer support interactions to continuously improve your offerings. Identifying and communicating common customer issues to your product development team can lead to permanent solutions.
7. Create Sub-Teams for Customer Support
For larger businesses, dividing your ecommerce customer service team into sub-teams with specialized expertise may be beneficial. For example, you could have one team that handles technical support issues and another team that handles account billing issues. It allows your team members to focus on their specific areas of expertise, leading to more efficient issue resolution and improved customer satisfaction. Categorizing incoming issues and routing them to the appropriate team can also streamline the support process.
8. Hire the Right Support Staff
The importance of hiring the right support staff for ecommerce customer service cannot be overstated. Your customer support team members are the frontline representatives of your business and interact directly with customers in need of assistance. Hiring individuals with strong communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and empathy is crucial. A poorly trained or unprofessional ecommerce customer service team member can damage your brand’s reputation and result in lost customers. Invest in thorough training and ongoing development to ensure your team is equipped to provide excellent customer service.
9. Collect Customer Data
Customer support interactions can provide valuable data that can be used to improve your business. Collecting customer data from support interactions can help you identify trends, preferences, and pain points and tailor your products and services accordingly. Implementing a customer support tool that integrates with a powerful CRM platform can help you collect key customer data. For example, Moment, a fully featured CRM platform with live chat and email integrations, offers these features in its free plan.
10. Take Advantage of New Technologies
Advancements in technology can greatly enhance your customer support strategy. For example, integrating browser recordings into your support flow lets you directly view users’ experiences and identify any issues they may face. It helps resolve their immediate concerns and provides an additional source of valuable customer data. Stay updated with the latest technological innovations and leverage them to improve your customer support efforts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, exceptional customer experiences with ecommerce customer service require a strategic approach beyond just implementing technology. The ideas and insights presented in this blog have been inspired by the informative YouTube video titled “10 Customer Support Best Practices for 2020”. The creators of this video have shared valuable knowledge and practical tips on how businesses can provide exceptional customer support in today’s ever-changing landscape.
Outsourcing ecommerce customer service to Vserve allows organizations to focus on their core competencies and leave the customer service aspect to the experts. Vserve is your trusted partner for exceptional 24/7 eCommerce customer support, giving you valuable time to focus on critical tasks. With our expert help, you can confidently delegate your customer service function, allowing us to handle it seamlessly in the background while you stay focused on your core responsibilities.
