No matter what you sell, how you market your e-commerce site or how slick your website is, the service you provide customers will ultimately determine if they return to your store in the future. What’s more, bad customer service is no longer a matter between store and shopper: negative social media posts by someone who’s been burned can ruin an e-commerce business.
Want your customers to love every step of their purchasing process? Here are some tools and techniques to keep in mind.
1. Be social-media savvy. More and more, customers are turning to social media to share what they love – and don’t love – about their shopping experiences. Social media allows you to continually interact with shoppers – and the more responsive you are, the more they’ll respond back. Make sure your e-commerce business has dedicated Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest accounts, and check them frequently. Consider integrating these accounts to make managing them easier via services such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, etc.
2. Set up your site so email is your first mode of contact. Particularly for issues involving longer responses and initial questions, customers prefer email communications vs. the phone and other methods. Whether you provide a contact form on your website or list an email address on the Contact Us page, make sure your customers can easily reach you about your products and policies. Have a dedicated business email address so you can quickly and easily recognize notes requiring an immediate response (Bonus tip: If you seem to be answering the same queries over and over, consider creating or updating a FAQ page for your site.)
3. Be reachable via phone. Despite the convenience of email and social media, there’s nothing like having a conversation on the phone to understand your customers’ preferences and needs. Decide on “office hours” for taking business calls and specify those hours on your website. Make sure to set up a dedicated business line, and look for a provider that can forward calls to your personal line if needed.
4. Offer live chatting. Customers love live chatting – it allows them to get detailed information in real-time and they don’t have to wait for an email response. Recent studies have shown that live chat has the highest level of customer satisfaction of all communication methods, so consider adding it to your site. For an extra punch of customer service, use a service that allows you to live chat on mobile platforms.
The Bottom Line
Keep in touch with your customers by giving them plenty of options to reach you. By offering multiple channels of communication, you’ll ensure that you can address any customer-relations issue swiftly, thoroughly and personally.
