There is a lot of competition when it comes to e-commerce and online shopping. If you have a store then you need to always be looking for the next online business trend and looking for ways to undercut the competition. There is never enough traffic and your conversion rate will require constant optimization of your store to keep you making money.
One thing that often gets overlooked when it comes to staying ahead of the competition is customer service. When you offer your visitors a superb shopping experience and are there to help them when there is a problem then you will find yourself with loyal fans instead of one-time customers. In this article, we will go over what it takes to run a good customer service program.
1 – Quick returns
When a customer has a product that is not what they ordered or it was defective then they expect it to be resolved quickly. It is best to offer a quick return to get the situation resolved as soon as possible. People expect things to arrive the next day thanks to Amazon. Even small stores have to offer the same kind of service.
This means that you may need to call in a delivery service like Reliable Couriers to come and pick up the product and deliver it as soon as possible. It’s not good enough to wait until your usual shipping provider comes to pick up other packages. The faster it gets out of the warehouse the more likely you are to satisfy the customer. This leads to long term customer retention.
2 – Quick response time
One of the benefits as a shopper is that the store is open 24 hours per day. Unfortunately for the store owner, these customers may have questions during hours when your office is closed. They won’t wait until the next day to have their question answered. They will simply click away from your store and onto another one where they will make a purchase if the other store can answer their question.
Have a chat feature on the website with a chatbot that answers a lot of common questions. If the query is too complex for it to answer it can tell them they will get back to them in the morning. They are more likely to wait if they feel like there is somebody there that is looking into the matter.
3 – Follow up
After a customer has had a problem, the situation isn’t fully resolved. It isn’t resolved until there has been a follow-up and you have made sure that the customer is happy with how the problem was solved. There could still be an issue and the customer has decided they would rather just let it go and shop somewhere else in the future.
If you follow up then they are able to see that you are actually interested in their satisfaction and will be more likely to continue on with the resolution and shop with you again later.
