E-commerce customer support outsourcing is one of the core aspects that business owners must prioritize. The end goal of an e-commerce business is simple: to sell products to customers. Everyone knows that the lifetime value of a returning customer is a hundred times a lot more than just one sale. Your customers deserve to be heard, appreciated and prioritized. If your customers are happy, they are more likely to continue buying from you and share their experiences with your brand.
Customer support is about establishing trust that improves the shopping experience of your customers. Unlike buying in a brick-and-mortar store, online shoppers do not have access to full information from the product, refund policies, shipping, to the payment processes available to them. They will want to know more about the products and other things that you offer. Building a loyal customer base is not a simple task. Customers want to know that you’ve got their back with each and every purchase and that you will be there to provide further assistance if and when they need it.
Nowadays, it’s so easy to shift from one e-commerce platform to another. There are a lot of factors in customer support that establish trust such as consistency on brand tone and voice, a fast turnaround time, multi-platform coverage, personalization, and a lot more. These factors enable your customers to engage with your brand on a deeper level and develop a loyalty towards your e-commerce platform.
Additionally, with incredible customer support, you can transform first-time customers into valuable returning shoppers. More sales come in when you surprise and delight your customers and give them the attention and support that they deserve.
Key Factors In Providing Exceptional E-Commerce Customer Support
Know your data
Identify where you customers are, their situation, culture, buying behavior, purchasing habits, basket sizes, and motivations. Your customer data is highly valuable and will dictate your every move to keep them engaged and subscribed with your platform. In addition, it allows you to provide a great experience to your customers when your support team directly engages with them. When you consider the similarities and differences from your customer data profiles, you will be able to identify and understand what your customers expect, what their experiences are, and how they want to be treated.
Through analyzing content peaks and historical interactions, you can improve customer support efficiency. Having a reliable customer support team will make your e-commerce business stand out above other platforms.
Be where your customers are
Identify the platforms where your customers are interacting with your brand to get support. One factor contributing to customer churn is slow and inefficient customer service. If you are not in the platforms where your customers are, it is highly likely that they will shift to another platform that can provide answers to their questions.
There are several channels that your customer may reach you. It can be through your website, through phone calls, live chat support, emails, social media, mobile messaging apps, and many others. Instant support and suggestions given to your customers through these channels allow you to be omnipresent.
Don’t rely on a single mode of communication. If you offer multiple modes of communication, you will make it easier for your customers to contact you. When first-time customers reach out to your brand through any of these channels, they’re buying intent is much higher and they are ready to make the purchase anytime as soon as their inquiry is answered. Fast response times allow a prospective customer to get a clear picture of what they are buying, therefore, helps you increase your conversion rate.
Strengthen and empower your customer support team
Being a customer support agent can be tough but rewarding. It is important that e-commerce business owners know and understand the needs and challenges of the customer support team. They have to prepare and motivate their teams to provide an exceptional experience to their customers. Your support agents are the voice of your brand. They have direct contact to your customers and they are crucial to building real relationships with them. They have access to valuable insights from customers that will help you effectively strategize on growing your business.
Build a scalable customer support team
An e-commerce business must be prepared to scale especially during content peaks and high-traffic situations such as holidays, large campaigns, and global events.
In the event that your in-house support team suffers from the immense pressure of managing overflowing support tickets, marketplace SLAs and piling customer requests coming from different platforms, it is time to outsource. As your business grows, it will become impossible to single-handedly manage a 24/7/365 demand of support requests.
Outsourcing customer support is the key to long-term success. It is imperative that customer support be instantly scalable, especially during seasonal peaks. It is highly likely to overwhelm your support team, decrease your customer satisfaction overnight, and ruin your hard-earned reputation because of lack of preparation.
Customer support takes a great deal of time, and can make for plenty of sleepless nights filled with worry or interruptions trying to please a customer. When it is outsourced, this time is suddenly free to focus on other aspects of the business. When you outsource customer service instead of hiring this to be done in house, you save time and money on tools, training, and hiring as well as operational costs. Instead of being responsible for all of this expense and training time, you avoid the hassles by hiring a knowledgeable and experienced outsourced team.
Choosing the right outsourcing partner that can help you understand your customer support data and can seamlessly integrate with your in-house support team will allow you to scale your customer support efforts effectively, avoid suspension from marketplaces and fulfill the on-demand support that your customers need with ease.
Being available 24/7, 365 days a year assures your customers that they will get the support they need on every platform when they need it.
A great customer experience is the key to e-commerce success
When you provide an unforgettable experience and make the buying process easy for your customer, they will spread the word and let others know. Great experiences are amplified when people see you treat customers well and that there is a community rallying behind your brand.
When you nurture your customers from the beginning, you transform them into lifelong customers that will advocate for your brand. Each individual customer has a network of family, friends, and followers with whom they will share their experience.
Don’t lose your customers through mistakes that could easily be solved with the right help. When you understand the potential that great customer support brings for the future of your company, you will be successful in scaling your e-commerce business.
Scaling customer support means making things better for your customer support team.
Scale Customer Support is the process of making your support team more efficient by refining existing practices, fixing customer support scaling issues, and empowering them!Scaling your customer support is a must!
And that’s exactly what this read is all about!
Companies that are experiencing rapid growth and an expanding customer base are usually attracted by it.
There are many advantages that businesses can get from outsourcing customer support.
Below I have discussed the top 5 advantages - Lower Cost of Operations The cost of hiring employees, paying for their training, and of course their salaries can take a toll on your company, especially if you are small.
Availability of Tools & Technology A company that handles contact center services has various software like Dialer, CRM and sales software as well as quality auditing tools.
The alternative would be you buying all these software licenses and then training your employees to use it.
It’s certainly more expensive and time consuming.
Ecommerce outsourcing helps to focus on your core business and expand your business globally. You can easily gain access to quality services, take the benefit of time zone differences and pay attentions to those things what cannot be managed without you.
Advatix is a renowned Supply Chain and Logistics consulting firm, Advatix offers advanced technologically powered services to help the clients grow.
At Advatix we handle all the aspects of fulfillment, Inventory, supply chain, and Logistics Management.
We provide unique and customized strategies and systems that can optimize the inventory levels and improve the financials.We believe a strong and focused approach in designing the supply chain can keep the organization going.
At Advatix, we focus on implementation-oriented designs to ensure that every step of the project addresses the key factors required for our client’s success.
We also apply our unique techniques to rapidly improve supply chain and logistics, benchmark against the best in class companies, and provide metrics to measure success.
We have a dedicated team of customer service executives who work at our CX mission help desk but under the label of the clients.From Customer Service, Dispatch, Order Tracking, to provide real time notifications to customers regarding the shipment and delivery, everything is managed by us.
