Customer service takes on a whole new meaning—and whole new importance—when it comes to online shopping. Here are a few must-haves for providing your eCommerce customers with a seamless and hitch-free online shopping experience.
- Electronic Payment Processing
The first essential customer service consideration you must make when it comes to a satisfying eCommerce shopping experience are digital payment options. Credit cards should be the foremost important form of electronic payment your store should accept. Depending on your eCommerce platform, there are a few options for you to choose from when opening your merchant account.
Since eCommerce is an exclusively card-not-present industry, getting a merchant account, and having it stay open can be a challenge. eCommerce merchants must know the reliability of their merchant account before they sign on to their payment processor of choice. Many of the quick and easy processors like PayPal, Stripe, or Square can be finicky with certain types of card-not-present businesses because of the high rate of chargebacks and fraud.
Seeking a dedicated merchant account that is set up to accommodate your exact type of eCommerce business can help you keep your credit card payment processing. Aggregate merchant account providers have the ability to freeze your merchant account, making purchases through your shop would be impossible. Before you open your shop, make sure you have reliable online credit card processing that won’t get terminated unexpectedly.
- Personalization Software
Personalization is the name of the game when it comes to providing great customer service. Your goal should be to make your client feel as though they’re the only one you’re serving at any particular time. Businesses, especially those centered on eCommerce, don’t have the luxury of face-to-face interaction, so it is vital to customize the user experience on your website in any way possible.
This kind of individualized client care isn’t a one-person type of job—it is a job for applications. There is software that allows you to automatically record and track clients during crucial points in their interaction with your eCommerce shop. You can use event triggers to automate emails, send payment receipts, and segment triggers to automate emails to clients who have been abandoned carts or haven’t revisited the website in a while.
It’s important that your software go beyond just simple automation; it has to be set up to tackle customers based on certain events. There’s nothing worse than marketing a product to your customer who just bought it. You’re demonstrating that you pay attention to detail by carefully arranging your automation by stage of the user’s purchase journey.
- Immediate Chat Availability
Clients not only need their customer service interactions to be personalized, but they also need these connections to be speedy and immediately gratifying. If a sales agent is available while someone is buying in a brick-and-mortar store, reps should be available on the website while a client is shopping. The simplest way is to install chat software.
A phone number, while helpful as a last resort, should not be the very first line of contact. It’s a sin to ask customers to pick up the telephone and invest more time and money, or to make them wait for an email reply, when a client is about to click the purchase button. Chat software and plugins provide customer support in real time. Make sure that your chat software is installed on your site, and familiarize yourself to ensure you’re making the most of this opportunity.
- A Process for Dealing with Online Reviews
With any eCommerce business, responding to online reviews should be part of your daily process. All reviews demand recognition—both positive ones as well as the unwanted ones. There should be a systematic process of dealing with these reviews economically and fast.
You should reply as promptly as possible, and always within 24 hours. Favorable reviews can and must be utilized to the benefit of your business. Follow up with the client, thank them for their feedback and see whether you can draw more information about the shopping out. It is possible that the customer has a story about how your company or products have helped them. These testimonials can evolve and grow organically.
Negative reviews may be used as feedback to improve your company. These are also an opportunity to grow. Respond to the review with sincerity and attempt to take the conversation offline as quickly as possible. Business owners and employees feel more invested in their company, so initial instincts may be defensive. There is nothing to be gained from debating with an unhappy customer—in fact, there is a lot to be lost from engaging in an argument. Concentrate on rectifying the situation. If you can handle the customer’s complaint in a responsible way, that negative review may turn into a positive one.
- A System to Assess Customer Support
Customer service is never static. It should constantly be improving, and you can’t improve something unless you have a way to measure it. Consequently, an evaluation system for your customer service efforts is vital.
Customers appreciate being asked about their experience. This can be as simple as an automated, post-purchase survey sent via email. An evaluation should also be sent out each time a customer interacts with a customer service representative. This information will help you monitor staff progress and ensure the best performance at all times.
Customer service is something we can all appreciate, and it’s just as important with online stores as it is physical ones. Think about times when you received excellent customer service and what made it wonderful, then try to recreate those factors for your business. These 5 elements will take your customer service strategy from good to great and leave you with some very happy customers.
