Boost Your eCommerce Business With Better Customer Service

Improve your eCommerce business through your customer support.

The performance of your customer contact service center is more crucial than ever to your eCommerce success, judging by the results of Deloitte’s latest annual Global Customer Contact Survey. According to the survey, 85 percent of organizations now view customer contact experience as a competitive differentiator.

More than 50 percent regard it as playing the primary role in customer retention, and 43 percent regard it as playing the second most important role. If you want to maintain your customers and keep them from going to the competition, it’s imperative to make sure your contact center is following best practices to deliver superior customer satisfaction.

Provide Multichannel Support For your eCommerce site

Supporting multiple channels has become a requirement to meet customer expectations. Two thirds of online shoppers have used multiple channels to make purchases, according to a Loudhouse survey of 7,000 consumers in seven countries. The survey found that speed and consistency are two aspects that matter to customers no matter the channel they’re using. However, most said that if an initial inquiry by another channel failed, they would try calling.

Adopting a cloud-based customer support center is the most efficient way to manage multiple customer support channels. Integrated cloud-based solutions such as Aspect Zipwire enable you to manage all your customer contacts from a single platform no matter what type of media you’re using to serve your customers.

When providing multiple support channels, make sure your customers can find all of your channels. Some companies have gotten in the habit of hiding their phone contact information on their websites as a cost-cutting measure. This increases customer frustration and defeats the purpose of providing multichannel support. Display all contact information options prominently in a place where customers can easily find them.

Deliver Support Through Social Media

Your omni-channel customer support strategy should include social media. West Interactive research shows that 17 percent of customers expect brands to respond to customer service inquiries on social media. When it comes to complaints expressed on social media, 72 percent of customers expect a response, and 42 percent expect it within the hour. However, on Twitter, 59 percent of questions and complaints go unanswered. When everyone on your Twitter feed is talking about your customer service issues except your representatives, you have a problem. Make sure your customer service team is following what customers are saying about you and to you on social media.

Support Self-Service Options

Forrester’s roundup of customer service trends in 2015 identified web self-service as the most popular emerging customer service preference. For the first time, more customers prefer handling their own service problems via the web to voice support. Providing robust self-service tools, such as video tutorials and FAQ guides, keeps your customers happy while reducing the load on your support team.

Provide Live Chat Support

Live chat is also emerging rapidly as a preferred support channel, according to Zendesk research. Support delivered by live chat delivered higher customer satisfaction ratings than any other channel. It received 92 percent compared to 88 percent for phone and 85 percent for web forms and email. Customers like live chat because of its conversational style and its promptness. Live-chat response times average 1 minute and 36 seconds, providing customers with fast answers to their problems.

Handle Customer Inquiries Promptly

The speed of live chat lends itself to supporting another pillar of superior customer support: promptness. Forty-one percent of customers say the most important key to satisfying service is getting their issue resolved quickly, according to Parature’s 2014 State of Multichannel Customer Service Survey. Customers care equally about both speed of response and speed of resolution, Zendesk found. Set benchmark response time goals in both categories and track your contact center’s performance. If you find your response time is slow, identify where the bottleneck is and make adjustments to speed up your customer service procedures.

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