Ecommerce Customer Service: 5 Tips to Stand Out of The Crowd

⏱ Reading Time: 6 minutes

To offer extraordinary customer service is important across all industries, and eCommerce is no exception. Yes, products and prices are important, but customer service or better yet, customer experience is, often the decisive factor in purchasing products. Amazing customer service will make your customers loyal leading to more word of mouth recommendations.  And good recommendations lead to an increase in brand reputation. 

On the other hand, if you offer bad customer service, the same customers might turnover to a river of negative social reviews. Whether with their colleagues or on social media platforms, it is a damage business nowadays should not afford. 

So let’s learn more about the effective practices of eCommerce customer service. 

🚀Read Ecommerce Guide – Introduction & How to Start an Ecommerce Business? 🚀

What Is Ecommerce Customer Service?

Customer service at its core is the support businesses offer to their customers before, during and after they have purchased the goods or services. Narrow it down to customer service in eCommerce, which is best defined as providing support to customers in the online stores. 

In a highly competitive world, eCommerce business owners invest in the customer experience and customer service strategy to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. eCommerce customer service strategies often involve omnichannel customer support, live chat, and personalized buying experience. The ultimate goal of these businesses is to provide eCommerce customer service which will grant them with loyal customers, better conversion rates and higher customer lifetime value.

Providing customer service in eCommerce

Did you know that the estimated cost of customers switching due to poor service is $1.6 trillion? That is massive. And according to Saleseforce, 67% of customers will pay more for a company that provides them with excellent customer service.

Also, according to 99Firms by 2040, around 95% of all purchases are expected to be via ecommerce.

Which, when you consider, is a quite small number. And the essential to this number is bad customer service.  So, with all these statistics in one place, it is clear to say that customer service should and needs to be a huge part of your eCommerce business strategy.

Easyship, global shipping software for eCommerce pointed out 4 main benefits of implementing customer service into eCommerce:

1. builds trust in your brand
2. makes your brand more popular
3. can serve as the basis of your marketing campaign
4. gives you an edge over the competitors

5 Ecommerce Customer Service Best Practices

Let’s help your eCommerce business to grow with these eCommerce customer service best practices.

1. Multi-channel eCommerce customer service

To choose the right customer service channels that fit your eCommerce business and offer quick help is inevitable. But, more importantly, it is essential to gather the knowledge of where your actual customers are concentrated. Customer journey mapping and defining buyer personas is a good way to start the search for the right set of channel mix. 

 Here are the most important channels:

• Social media platforms
• Text message
• Email
• Live chat
• Phone calls

Customers interact with businesses through these channels on a daily basis. According to McKinsey & Company, American worldwide management consulting firm: „75 percent of online shoppers expect help within five minutes.“

So it is important to provide immediate support on each one of these channels. A business should not afford itself to lose a customer because of the slow replies.

As Xsellco, eCommerce Helpdesk pointed out: „For small online businesses, in particular, multichannel selling is a key driver of growth.“, which is definitely true.

Related: Omnichannel Guide for Digitally Advanced Brands

2. Implement knowledge base

Besides these platforms, what most business still doesn’t have is a strong knowledge base. As the picture below says:

Picture 1. Knowledge base statistic

This statistic is only proof that the knowledge base is inevitable. It can be such a huge benefit for your eCommerce company as you will have all the needed information in one place. It is a great thing both for customers and employees, as customers can find the information they need by themselves, and employees can focus more on some other important stuff.

Simply, the knowledge base means faster customer service. 

Also, if you want to read more about the knowledge base, check our other article: Importance Of Knowledge Base.

3. Live Chat plays an important role among channels

Picture 2. Live chat statistics

If you need quick and accessible support, live chat offers just that. Besides immediate support, it can also help you increase your conversions. WebFX, full-service Internet marketing, and SEO company explained how:

„You can have a live chat window pop up automatically if a customer has been stuck on the same page for a long time or has an item in their shopping cart they have been waiting with for a few minutes.“

If you are looking for a software that will help your business to offer superior customer service, or you are a startup or entrepreneur who is managing first live chat channel, then consider Paldesk – Live Chat & Helpdesk Software. 

This software helps businesses to proactively chat in real-time with visitors and customers to their website. Some of the benefits that Paldesk has to offer are a customizable live chat for your websites, it increases online conversions, integrates with other communication channels, and simply, provide fast and friendly customer support. So if you haven’t already found software that fits your needs, we are sure Paldesk is a great fit!

Picture 3. Paldesk review

Related: What is Live Chat?

4. Customers want personal experience

Did you know that 71% of customers feel frustrated when a shopping experience is impresonal? That is quite a big number. If you haven’t already include personalization in your ecommerce business and ecommerce customer service, now would be the best time. 

Since nowadays it is easy to track customer behavior, that means you already have a chance for great personalization. With all the collected data about the customer, you will be able to talk to a customer in a much more personalized way. Plus, you will create a relationship with customers that eventually turns into loyalty.

When talking about loyalty, if you want to learn how to build brand loyalty and connect with your customers, even more, check our other blog post about it: How to Build Brand Loyalty?

5. Feedback is important

Yes, customers share their experiences with other people. But it is important that the company asks customers about the experience they had. Because most of the customers will not leave feedback unless you actually ask them. And that feedback can sometimes help the person who is unsure about some products you offer for example. All big online retailers rely on customer feedback.

So after purchasing, send follow-up emails and ask for feedback. You can even offer some discounts on future purchases, which will surely intrigue customers. The feedback you will get can be both positive and negative, and it is important to answer both of them, and not ignore the negative one. Because negative feedback can sometimes help you to see a mistake your business previously hasn’t noticed, and to correct it.

Picture 4. Teaming up to achieve great feedback

Wrap Up

To conclude, we hope these eCommerce customer service practices will help you to improve and maintain your eCommerce business. Because extraordinary customer service should be provided no matter what, and keeping your customers happy. And when customers are happy and satisfied with the service and products you offered, they will continue doing business with your company. 

Have you already implemented some of these eCommerce customer service practices? Which one helped you the most? Let us know in the comments below!