Customer expectations for more personalized Service and better Support has been on the rise, a trend that is expected to continue in 2021. It’s all about a good and positive Customer Experience (commonly called CX) throughout their journey at your online store, and businesses will need to prepare themselves to meet expectations in the post pandemic world.
Every digital interaction, conversation and suggestion needs to leave a positive imprint on the customer. Good CX at the store can create a good impression and develop a longer term relationship with your brand.
Merchants aiming for revenue growth and profits must keep such emerging trends in mind and make the necessary adjustments to their service standards/ policies so as to match their customers’ expectations as they plan for a successful 2021.
Read on as we highlight the emerging trends in customer service and what you, as a merchant, could do to help create a better CX in 2021.
Know Your Customer to Serve Him Better
Use Google Analytics and your Shopmatic dashboard to collect detailed and personalized insights about the preferences and buying habits of your customers. These insights can be used to engage more meaningfully for upselling or cross selling to help grow the average order value of transactions at your store.
Data collected about visitors to your website also help with demographics and behavioural insights that can be used to develop more effective service strategies
In order to match customer expectations of an enhanced CX, empower the customer service staff by using regular training to keep them updated with how to collect and use available resources, information, data and tools to know the customer well.
In addition, set guidelines and extend some authority so that they can make decisions that would allow them to help the customers better.
With more data and information at their disposal, the service officers that engage with customers feel more confident about the support they can offer. This translates to a distinct competitive advantage and therefore more sales for your business.
So it’s time to remove those traditional silos at your ecommerce store and adopt a more integrated approach in serving the customers. Unify your data and make it easily accessible to the people who provide support service to your customers.
Offer Alternative Ways to Connect
No customer likes to be kept waiting…be it at the other end of the line or at a queue at the store. The customer wishes to reach you when he wants, and must be able to connect with you through his preferred channel of communication. Despite all the advances in technology, there are still some who like to call in and speak to a real human being or perhaps drop an email – so keep these channels alive.
This requires your store to have an omnichannel customer service that accommodates the different devices, behaviours and preferences of every consumer.
In fact, take this a step further. Customers even want to be able to buy from you directly over social media, chat channels or other convenient ways.
Use the Shopmatic ‘choose how you e commerce’ way to offer options to your customers.
This will easily let you connect with buyers who would rather chat with you on social media channels like Facebook, Whatsapp or Messenger apps like Telegram and Line to seek their solutions.
Being there, where your customers are, and showing your products, offering them the ability to buy directly as with Shopmatic’s powerful Single Checkout Link, and answering their queries shows them that you care and is the key to making your customer happy.
Increase Efficiency by Introducing Chatbots
AI chatbots are becoming increasingly popular and are here to stay. They can go a long way in improving the CX at your store and connect with your brand through simulated conversations. Chatbots are programmed to be friendly and approachable, give instant responses to simple queries through easy communication and are available 24/7.
They are widely used for responding to simple customer queries, giving service agents more time to focus on value added interactions. The ideal situation would be a combination of introducing bots to help customer service agents- not replace them; as human interactions are still appreciated by many.
These bots have a lot of potential and can be used in various aspects of customer service. For example, they can proactively educate prospective customers and preemptively answer their questions, can provide simple navigation information and operating hours for your website.
Apart from improving operational efficiency and improved response rates, chatbots can also help get rid of language barriers. AI and machine learning power the bots, making them capable of approximate answers to queries for which they have not received training.
Lastly, the cost factor cannot be overlooked. According to market data, adoption of such bots can help merchants reduce customer service costs by up to 30% which is substantial!
Maintain Quality and Consistency
Quality and consistency in service/ support can go a long way in building trust and loyalty towards the brand among its customers. Customers call/ message for a host of reasons. It could be something as simple as more information on the product that they see on their screens, to delivery and payment options to more technical stuff when the product they bought from you is not working (just to mention a few). The customer service/ support thus needs to be well trained and equipped to handle a wide range of issues.
Customers value a friendly, efficient and personalized customer service experience. When a happy and satisfied customer has that positive experience at your store and writes a good review about her experience and posts it on social media, it’s the best validation that you could get! What can be a better marketing/ advertisement for your brand than a positive customer testimonial?
However, such visibility can be a double edged sword that requires you to ensure that the service/ support that you are offering is good and consistent and not let the customer feel let down.
If complaints and negative feedback do show up, develop a strategy to handle them with an open, friendly and positive approach for best outcomes.
Remember,
In 2021, businesses need to ramp up their customer service /support efforts to live up to their customer’s expectations and offer a great experience to remain competitive.
There needs to be a greater focus on Customer Experience and this can be achieved by empowering the Service agents with more data, information, tools and authority to serve their customers better.
Leveraging technology and introducing Chatbots can help increase efficiency and reduce costs related to customer service.
Offer various channels for buying and engaging to your customers.
An Omni Channel communication platform is encouraged to cater to all customer profiles.
A positive CX at the store not only results in positive reviews, but also helps develop customer loyalty and grow revenues.
For more on Customer Service / Support ideas, check out
https://blog.goshopmatic.com/how-to-build-effective-customer-support-for-b2b-in-ecommerce/
https://blog.goshopmatic.com/10-skills-that-drive-customer-service-for-online-stores-2/
