Customer Service and Communication is Key to Success of Online Business

 

5 Ways to Take Charge of Your Ecommerce Customer Service

Providing exceptional customer service is an essential part of every ecommerce business.

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The Importance of Multi-Channel Customer Service

It’s important to understand that providing an exceptional service experience in a timely, professional manner is critical to the success of your business long term. Multi-channel customer service is a strategic way to manage all customer related questions about your business. You can take advantage of email, social media, phones and many other platforms to do this.

By taking advantage of different tools, you can make sure that you’re able to cover all of your bases through multi-channel customer service.

In this post we’ll go over a few different channels interact with your customers. Not all are necessary when just starting out as a small ecommerce store, but it’s important to know which ones are available should you look to expand your support channels with your business.

Here’s what we’ll take a look at today:

·       Email

·       Social Media

·       Live Chat

·       Helpdesk

·       Phone Support

Our main goal with using these different channels is to be able to deliver to our customers in hopes that they’ll return as a repeat buyer, or share their experiences with friends, family and social networks.

What is a WOW Experience?

1. Use E-Mail Support as a Simple Form of Contact

Providing an email contact for your customers is the easiest way to get started. Often if you’re dealing with a few requests per day, it can be tough to work with threaded conversations, and you may forget to respond to a customer’s question.

Delivering a WOW experience via email: make it easy for your customers to contact you by adding a contact page to your store. Be sure to have a separate email account for support related requests.

2. Communicate with Customers on Social Media

It offers a form of interaction with customers who are either asking about your product or business.

Of all of the different forms of social media, one of the most effective forms of providing social media support is through Twitter.

Delivering a WOW experience on Twitter: be as active and responsive as you can across all of your social media accounts. Make an effort to answer any questions in under an hour.

3. Instantly Communicate with Customers Using Live Chat Services

Adding live chat functionality to your ecommerce store is a great way to let your customers get in touch with your team. If you can, always have someone available to answer any immediate questions by being online during regular office hours.

Delivering a WOW experience on live chat: try and find a service that lets you be mobile and still answer live questions. If that’s not an option, get started with a live chat platform that doubles as a contact form on your storefront so no requests are missed.

4. Use a Helpdesk Center as a Community FAQ

Having an online helpdesk where your customers can go to see commonly asked questions can be extremely helpful to you as a ecommerce store owner. Not only will it answer the customers question(s) quickly, but it will also help to mitigate support debt.

Delivering a WOW experience with a Helpdesk: build up an online portal that acts as a forum, contact area, and frequently asked questions page to help mitigate support debt.

5. Take Customer Calls with Inbound Phone Support There are a lot of great advantages to offering quality, personal phone support:

It’s a great way to learn: Especially early on in a new business, there’s no better way to understand your customers than by talking to them directly.

Faster service: Few things resolve an issue or get a question answered faster than a phone call.

Easier to build rapport: Talking directly with a person allows you to build a rapport and then turn a potential lead into a life-long customer.

Builds trust for high-priced items: Selling $4,000 diamond-studded fingernail clippers? You’d better have a phone number! The more expensive the items, the more likely your customers will want to talk to you before pulling the trigger.

Delivering a WOW experience over the phone: set designated office hours that customers can reach you for a phone call. If you can, try finding a service provider that acts as a call forwarding and voicemail provider as well.

 

Advertising and Promotion: Discuss the channels used to reach out to customers

Social Media – Building Success Story

Initial Promotion

The initial launch is a very critical time. The opening of the website and the launch of the services need to be done with a loud sound. With web and app based services. There are certain tools and platform which needs to be taken into consideration. Social Media plays a key role in performing the launch of the services and getting in likes, hits, viewer, followers and last but not the least THE CUSTOMERS.

The TARGET

And further 20% of which are expected to be our initial clientele that will go ahead by shopping from the website.

• FB - Promotions

The FaceBook (FB) promotion is an essential medium for attracting buyers as it has a huge global presence is linked to various other mediums of marketing as well. Creation of page and account on Instagram is an essential feature to be used.

• Key promotion strategy for FB

• Facebook fan page set up and design

• Targeted audience acceleration strategies

• Content generation and moderation

• Regular reporting on all KPIs

• Facebook Advertising Management

• An Initial budget for the First month is estimated to be $12,510. The split for which is as follows:

• Instagram

Tailored Instagram services

• Create your page

• Set up and/or customize

• One or more post per business day with pictures provided by client

• Monitor and respond to follower interaction (comments, photo/video tags) once a day

• Post 1 – 2 interactions per day

• Add new followers weekly

• Link Instagram account to Facebook page – Twitter only by request, or live events.

• Google – Promotion

Google is now a days being used as synonym to search, which is a key factor and tool for promotion for any business. Google Ads is an essential tool for marketing not only the website and mobile app, but also the products and services.

• Advertise on Google

• Ads will appear alongside or above Google search results, in sections marked "Sponsored links”

• Pay only when people click on ads, and start and stop advertising anytime

• Set ads to appear to potential customers searching in a particular city, region or country, regardless of whether they're searching on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Search engine optimization is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines.

Searchandizing

• The word is a combination of search and merchandizing. It is an electronic commerce term used to describe using your own site search to promote products when users search for certain keywords or phrases, akin to merchandizing a retail store for up-selling, cross-selling or promoting specific merchandise. Also called multi-faceted search. Creating the content of the website and the application with relevant tags for the products that will generate

Importance of SEO

• 90% online user uses search engine to find products and information. Your website will constantly feature on page one of the search results for terms that best describe your business Natural search receives 250% more traffic that paid search 1st page of SE results get at least 80% clicks

Benefits of SEO

Get more Customers to website, business and products Brand visibility, site popularity, Quality sales leads, active buyers.

Importance of The Power of Video Content

Consider that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, approximately 33% of all online activity is spent watching video content, and that 75% of users visit a marketer's site after viewing a video. Furthermore, four out of five internet users remember the video ads they watch online and 64% are more likely to purchase a product from an ecommerce site after watching a related video. Creating simple and viral video content that will lead to more hits and creation of community.

YouTube is Embraced Equally by B2B and B2C Marketers

• One of the most fascinating findings in this study is that YouTube is used by 55% of B2B marketers, and 55% of B2C social media marketers who participated2.

Other Media

• Besides the key media such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, several other adhoc media will be used significantly in order to promote the website, app and products.

• Twitter, Local newspapers, magazines, tele-marketing, web news portals (Arab times, zawya, layalina), Cinescape

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will be used in order to received optimized results for achieving the desired sales target.

Other relevant apps like Kilshay, Pinterest