Does acquiring the best customer service strategy seem like a pipe dream? Like a quest for buried treasure that you’re a few years into, and the ‘X’ in the sand is nowhere to be seen?
If you can relate, don’t worry, we understand – and we’re here to tell you that as painstaking as it feels, there is a solution…you just haven’t stumbled across it yet.
So, continue reading to equip yourself with all the latest tactics ecommerce customer support leaders are using.
Time is Money
When it comes to satisfying online shoppers, you need to provide quick and helpful customer service. Otherwise, you’ll lose valuable business. Period.
Fail to meet your customer’s expectations, and they’ll click away into Google’s abyss.Don’t take our word for it, here are a few stats to illustrate exactly what we’re talking about:
- 71% of online shoppers aged 16 – 24 say quick customer support drastically improves their customer experience.
- 90% of consumers say receiving an ‘immediate’ response is ‘important’ or ‘very important’ if they’re asking a question, 60% defining ‘immediate’ as 10 mins or less.
- 73% of shoppers say valuing their time is the most important thing a brand can do with regards to customer service.
These are just a few of many statistics – but they all sing from the same hymn sheet. Time is of the essence when it comes to high-quality customer service.
What’s the Solution?
Yes, you need to respond to customer support queries and fast. But, you and your team can’t be glued to your laptops day and night. This is where a Shopify live chat widget could help you meet the ever-increasing demands of your customers.
If you’re not already offering customers live chat feature support on your website – this needs to change. Studies show this comms channel delivers high customer satisfaction (73%) – more than any other customer service channel. When used to the fullest, live chat significantly enhances the customer experience.
Here’s a quick case study to illustrate how you could also utilize live chat apps to up your customer service game:
Marine Layer
Marine Layer is a hugely successful lifestyle brand, with an immensely profitable Shopify store and over 40 brick and mortar shops to boot! Interestingly, Marine Layer credits its seamless customer experience as one of the driving forces behind its success.
In 2018, the brand installed a live chat widget on its website, aiming to replicate the quality of an in-person salesperson. As part of this strategy, Marine Layer runs “ice breaker” campaigns, which popular different messages depending on:
- Where on the website the customer is
- Any previous communications they’ve had with the shopper
- The amount of time the visitor’s spent on the website
Taking the above factors into account, a message automatically pops up, inviting the website visitor to take a specific action.
On top of that, Marine Layer also uses macros to blend its communications and speed up response times. If you’re unsure what ‘macros’ means -it’s just a fancy term for a trigger that prompts pre-populated messages for your reps to send (or go out automatically). The content of which depends on the context and objective of the communication.
The result? Marine Layer has improved its response times by 68% and seen a 75% increase in online orders.
The key takeaway: Marine Layer uses live chat proactively. They don’t wait for customers to initiate a conversation. This is a wildly different approach to the majority of companies using live chat. In fact, almost a quarter of brands don’t even respond to live chat messages!
Software like Gorgias detects when someone’s on your website. Then after a specified period, a chat message appears, and one of your customer support reps is notified. From an easy-to-use dashboard, agents can see the exact page the customer’s browsing, so they have the necessary context to offer relevant and useful advice.
Integrate Live Chat with Facebook Messenger
Depending on your target demographic and marketing strategy, integrating your website’s live chat with Facebook Messenger, is another way to potentially speed up response times. Take Ellana Cosmetics as an example. The majority of its customers shop via social media, so they started using Gorgias to recognize its Facebook users and match them to customer data pulled from their eCommerce platform.
Now, 90% of Ellana Cosmetics’ support messages come through Facebook Messenger, and the company’s resolution time is 54% quicker!
Using Email As An Integrated Support Solution to Provide a Consistent Customer Experience
It’s not just live chat that enables fast and efficient customer service. These days, online shoppers expect a variety of contact options to choose from.
It doesn’t matter whether customers are shopping via your online shop, social media, or your high street store. Customers crave consistency and personalized experience – which is what integrated customer support software enables you to offer.
Try the World is a fantastic example of a food-based subscription service who’s excelling at this. With only 20 employees to their name, they may be small, but with a multi-million dollar company, they’re undoubtedly mighty! And with that level of success, comes lots of customer support queries – in the case of Try the World, over 100 a day!
So, Try the World upgraded its customer support software so reps could view customer communications records from one dashboard. Being able to manage their Shopify, Chargify, email, and chatbox conversations from one screen was a breath of fresh air. Before this shift, they could only resolve 80 tickets a day. In contrast, they now handle as many as 120. Plus, their response time has dropped to less than 24 hours.
Needless to say, this also resulted in a boost in customer satisfaction. After all, there’s nothing more irritating than speaking to a different customer support agent every time you interact with a brand and then having to re-explain the situation for what feels like the millionth time.
This is why furnishing your customer service team with the info they need (like Try the World) is instrumental in providing customers a consistent and seamless shopping experience. Again, with Gorgias, when a customer contacts you, all this info displays next to the support ticket. This supplies your support rep with vital details like what the consumer last ordered and when, the shipping status of their pending delivery, etc. You can even view data from other apps you’ve integrated with, like loyalty scores and subscriber tags.
Drive meaningful change in your ecommerce
Monitor & improve what matters.
Gorgias’ Secret: Automation
When it comes to running a profitable online business, automation is everything – and customer support is no exception. Take ‘Love Your Melon’ as an example of an apparel brand using automation to the fullest. Love Your Melon only has three customer service agents handling anywhere up to 300 support tickets a day, which wouldn’t be possible without the power of automation.
In short, they use customer support software to create and send pre-populated responses to frequently asked customer service requests with just a click. For example, a shopper might have a question about when their order will arrive. Using Gorgias’ macro, just click a pre-written template that compliments your customer’s requirements (i.e., one with the macro for order status). Then, the macro pulls the order status from your online store (by integrating with whatever online store builder you’re using) to create a quick yet helpful response tailored to the specific needs of the consumer. How simple is that?!
Love Your Melon now automates a quarter of its support tickets, reducing response times from ten minutes to just a few seconds (even during busy periods)!
The Key Takeaway?
Online shoppers are demanding more from digital brands now more than ever, so your customer support strategy needs to rise to the task of fulfilling those needs. Throughout this ebook, we’ve hinted at how you could begin optimizing your customer service methods.
But, they all hinge on one thing. Whether it’s integrating your website’s live chat with Facebook Messenger or unifying your customer service campaigns for a consistent shopping experience – you need the right software. This is where Gorgias comes into its own. Interested? Sign up for free today.
