Having optimized E-commerce customer service is absolutely essential today. Here’s why. 

Nowadays thanks to e-commerce businesses, the world is at our fingertips. Customers can purchase what they want directly on their smartphones, which makes it incredibly important that they have seamless, enjoyable experiences while doing so. That’s why you should be focusing on optimizing your E-commerce customer service. After all, 95% of customers have said that good customer care is vital to make them loyal clients. And that’s what we all want, right? 

So exactly what elements do you need to include in your E-commerce customer service to make it optimized? We’ll show you our top 3 tips for the ultimate E-commerce customer service, as well as:

  • What is E-commerce Customer Service?
  • Elements to include in your E-commerce Customer Service
  • Customer Support in E-commerce

Ready? Let’s go!

What is E-commerce Customer Service? 

E-commerce customer service happens when you assist your customers, be they new or existing, during their customer journey. They may run into roadblocks or have questions, so it’s super helpful both to your customers and also for your business to provide a seamless customer experience.

You can assist them while monitoring multiple channels, like your website, social media, emails, or phone calls, and it’ll help you create a unified voice that stays the same throughout every channel. You can address common issues that are key to your success, relating to your product, delivery, return policy… This means that your customers will come accustomed to a certain type of care that will make you stand out from your competitors. Loyal customers = better conversion rates.

Having good E-commerce customer service leads to: 

  • Customer loyalty. When customers feel taken care of, they feel more inclined to subscribe to newsletters, make repeat purchases, or sign up for promotions. 
  • Customer attraction. Word of mouth is the sweet spot – if your customers have good experiences with you and your product, they’re more likely to spread the word. 
  • Conversion rates. The most important aspect of them all! Good customer service will nudge potential buyers into finally deciding to buy what you’re offering, improving your conversion rates. 

Now that you understand why providing good customer service is important, let’s see the different types of customer service there are for e-commerce.

Different Types of E-commerce Customer Service

There are many ways an E-commerce customer service employee can and should assist a customer, but it can be boiled down to these three: 

  • Resolve technical issues: Sometimes issues happen that are outside of your control. It could be a malfunction of the site during the customer journey or a glitch that needs to be fixed. The important thing is that you have a customer service agent ready to resolve them in an efficient and quick manner!
  • Answer any questions related to a product or service: Shopping online has many advantages, but it’s true that sometimes the experience lacks that human touch: walking up to an employee and simply asking a question. So it’s super important that you have a customer service team that’s well-trained and ready to assist your customers in whatever issue they have.
  • Support during pre- and post-purchase: Helping your customers during their shopping experience is as equally important as assisting them if they want to make a return or an exchange. The process needs to be as easy and seamless as buying it was, because the goal is, even if they’re returning a product, to make them want to keep coming back in the future. A customer service employee should be there for the customer as a guide, helping them figure out a solution to their dissatisfaction.

Elements to include in your E-commerce Customer Service

There are some key elements you can include in your E-commerce customer service that will level up your overall process and wow your customers. Better yet, Product Success Platforms (PSP) like FROGED provide you with all the tools you need to optimize your support strategy in one place.

1. Focus on Resolution Time

We’ve all been there: having to explain the same issue again and again, to four different agents. Frustrating, right? That’s why focussing on resolving a customer issue as soon as possible is vital. 

You can start by utilizing an omnichannel communication strategy that centralizes all communication and allows your agents to work at the same time, so they can respond to customers quickly and efficiently. As a result, you can get your Average Resolution Time right down, leaving your customers super satisfied. 

2. Provide Proactive and Self-Service Support

Did you know that, nowadays, 69% of consumers first try to resolve their issues independently before contacting a support team? Yes, that’s right, customers prefer trying to resolve their issues themselves. That’s why having self-service support for your customers is gold. 

Optimizing your help center, knowledge base and FAQs is a simple yet effective way for customers to have everything they need at their fingertips, without having to speak a sentence to a customer service agent. Neat, right?

3. Guide Users to the payment

Let’s face it – all of your efforts will be useless if the customer doesn’t ultimately buy the product – after all, that’s the end goal of any e-commerce store. 

But don’t fret just yet! You can easily implement tools like product flows on your website, to guide users to the checkout page and make it seem like a seamless experience. You can identify exactly where your customers are in their journey and exactly where they are encountering friction within your e-commerce website. Then, you can create personalized in-app messages to solve this, and carefully guide them to the checkout and bag that purchase!

Customer Support in E-commerce

Ultimately, the goal of every e-commerce store is to nudge the customer (existing or new) to buy the product, so it’s super important that they feel taken care of during their customer journey. 

Good customer service is all about streamlining and optimizing your strategy to ensure you can resolve technical issues, answer product questions, and assist during the buying/returning/exchanging process of your customers. And there are some seriously simple but effective tools and features you can implement to help you, especially through PSPs like FROGED!

Thinking of optimizing your E-commerce customer service? Book a demo to learn more about FROGED’s versatile and proactive customer support solution!