What is the most important element of your ecommerce business? Some out there might be thinking that the obvious answer is the products they sell, or the speed of their site, or they were thinking that before they saw the title of this piece. Having quality customer service really is one of the most important aspects of running a business, and this is true whether you are online or offline. If you hope to make your customers happy, and you want them to become repeat customers, then you certainly need to make sure that you are providing them with the best quality customer service.
Here are some tips you can employ in your business to make sure that you are on point for your customers.
Provide Contact Information on Your Site
This should be a no brainer for companies, but it might amaze you to realize that many companies do not have proper contact information on their site. They might have their contact and customer service info on one page only. It needs to be on all of the pages, generally in the header or the footer. It has to be easy to see, as well.
In addition, you should have a number of different types of contact channels from which the customers can choose. You will want to have a phone number, email, and perhaps even online chat that they can use right from the site. Another thing that quite a few companies are doing is offering customer service through social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. This is something you will want to consider doing, as well, because when you help a customer in a public forum such as those social media sites, it comes across as a PR win for you, and some free publicity.
Again, no matter how you offer your customer service, it needs to be easy for the customers to find.
Respond Quickly
When it comes to customer service, many companies have good intentions, but they don’t always have the knowledge or the staff to handle the questions and issues they get. This can lead to people waiting for days for a reply email, or being put on hold for a long time. Both of these things can irritate customers. They will not like feeling as though you are putting them off rather than helping them, and they will take it out on you on the social networks in many cases. When working with email or social media services, try to come to a resolution in a few hours at most. When on the phone, the resolution needs to come even more quickly.
You should have a good piece of customer service software that can help you, along with enough staff to deal with the issues that might arise. If you feel you should outsource to be able to provide around the clock help, it could be a good idea.
Keep on Top of Issues
Naturally, people talk on social media sites. Sometimes, they will say great things about your company. Other times, they will voice their complaints on your page or on their own pages. It is important to make sure you are monitoring your social media so you can locate those issues and resolve them.
Listen to your customers, too. They may have suggestions about things that you could do differently when it comes to your customer service. See if the customers to your ecommerce site who have had issues might be willing to fill out a short survey that could tell you ways you could improve your service.