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With the advent of digitalization and the evolution of e-commerce, the shopping concept has grown a lot in terms of consumer buying patterns to customer expectations. Customer support has also changed from the reactive channels to omni channel support to deliver better consistent e-commerce customer service experience.
As technology continues to change, so do business practices and marketing strategies. When it comes to customer service, e-commerce businesses are expected to deliver the highest quality experience. Below are some of the best practices an e-commerce must follow:

1. Adapt an omni channel strategy
Omni channel strategy merges all the customer contact points across the customer lifecycle under one platform, to engage them across their buying journey and deliver a consistent experience.

In the recent reports of 2020, PWC found that the number of companies investing in the omni-channel experience has jumped from 20% to more than 80%.

So, you should focus on three core elements to make the customer experience as frictionless as possible.

• Identify the touchpoints preferred by your customers
• Understand your customer journey and create a strategy to engage them across those touchpoints
• Deliver a reliable experience throughout their customer journey

2. Provide proactive customer support
Research says that 83% of customers need help to complete an online purchase. And 70% of sales depend on how they feel they have been treated by a brand.
Keep your customers well informed of the issues before they notice themselves. For e.g. availability of products, order fulfillment status, delayed shipment, late pickup, etc.

Follow up with your customers to ensure that they’re happy with the product, this can done by an email or even a quick phone call.

Keep an eye on your social media conversation as customers nowadays, jump on to it to voice their opinion about their service experience.

Identify the frequently reported issues by the customers that can be fixed easily to reduce the number of support calls and improve customer satisfaction.

3. Help your customers help themselves
Customers prefer to scout the web or use any other self-help option rather than talking to a service agent. Therefore, to deliver exceptional proactive service, you should provide your customers with the best self-help option possible.

Build FAQ pages that cover information on topics such as:

• Provide answers to most common questions about price, guarantee, shipping and delivery
• Policies on returns and refunds
• Easy to understand the terms and conditions of your business
• Advice to troubleshoot basic issues

4. Build a great e-commerce customer support team
Customer support is more about customers engagement than the processes. It is more of a human interaction that every customer demands. The customer service team is a frontline engineer and represent your e-commerce business engine. So, having an excellent customer support team is vital for your business to acquire and retain customers.

In order to deliver outstanding e-commerce customer service, you need to focus on following three key areas,

• Training: First key area is to train your customer support team with your business policies and guidelines. So, that they are all well equipped to deliver a better customer service experience.
• Tools: To meet performance KPI’s the support team should use effective tools to deliver outstanding customer service. Kayako, Zendesk, Intercom and Freshdesk are some of the widely used and effective tools.
• Processes and System: The e-commerce customer service team should have right knowledge about your business process. They must be able to deliver correct information related to return & exchange policy, shipping details, refund, deals, and offers.

At Aress, we understand the value of the strategies that build an e-commerce business and provide optimum support 24/7 to add more value. To know more get in touch with us; we would love to hear from you.