How To Provide E-Commerce Customer Service

Regardless of your industry or market, most business owners understand only too well that one of the major keys to long-term business success is excellent customer service.

However, if you’re running an e-commerce business, top-quality customer service is a lot more difficult to accomplish. It’s not easy providing great service when there’s no human interaction so it can be difficult understanding what your customers are looking for. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done! In this post, we’ll be looking specifically at e-commerce businesses and how they can provide excellent customer service.

Achieving customer satisfaction comes down to four things: accuracy, availability, speed, and thoughtfulness.

It’s not easy providing great service when there’s no human interaction so it can be difficult understanding what your customers are looking for. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done! In this post, we’ll be looking specifically at e-commerce businesses and how they can provide excellent customer service. Basically, achieving customer satisfaction comes down to four things: accuracy, availability, speed, and thoughtfulness.

A complete help desk, inside Gmail?

Keeping turns your Gmail into a fully featured help desk. It's not magic, but it feels magical.

See How in 2 Minutes

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done! In this post, we’ll be looking specifically at e-commerce businesses and how they can provide excellent customer service. Basically, achieving customer satisfaction comes down to four things: accuracy, availability, speed, and thoughtfulness.

Accuracy

 Excellent customer service means preventing mistakes before they occur. To the very best of your ability you need to ensure that all the information on your website is 100% correct and that all transactions can proceed smoothly and securely.

Keep in mind that running a successful business is not just about selling goods or services; it’s about building an honest and real relationship with your customers.

In addition, always follow through on promises, meaning that you should be open and honest with your claims. Keep in mind that running a successful business is not just about selling goods or services; it’s about building an honest and real relationship with your customers. Your customers should absolutely trust that they’re getting what they paid for. Let’s face it: you want them to become repeat customers, right? The only way this will happen is if your customers trust you and if they have a positive experience with your business.

Availability

Most dealings with e-commerce businesses involve a telephone discussion with a company representative, and that’s why it’s so important to ensure you always have a customer service team member available to handle enquiries. Consider offering hours to benefit your customers. This will typically mean extending hours beyond the usual 8am to 5am office hours. E-commerce businesses can potentially deal with many time differences, so a definite advantage your e-commerce business can have over others is to be available to respond to queries beyond normal working hours. Just another way of offering great customer service!

Speed

To get your e-commerce business to the top, and keep it there, speed is imperative. There’s so much competition out there in the marketplace that, if you’re not at the absolute top of your game, your existing or potential customers will simply take their business somewhere else. Remember that you’re competing with businesses like Amazon! Let’s say you specialize in a certain type of product, so you need to remember that Amazon specializes in everything! Not only that, they offer 24-hour customer service plus free two-day shipping for Prime members. That’s what you’re competing with!

For an e-commerce business to achieve great heights of success the customer must receive what they want, when they want it. This means responding quickly and efficiently when contacted, and shipping their items as soon as possible. “Same Day Delivery” is a very successful shipping company, and their motto “If you want to impress your customers, deliver their product before they need it” explains this concept perfectly. Consider using canned responses in Gmail to quickly reply to your customers in a consistent way.

Thoughtfulness

Every business should treat its customers the way they themselves like to be treated – with honesty, fairness, and respect. Be considerate of your customers and do everything within your power to establish good relationships with them. Be thoughtful and considerate when offering customer service: you’re dealing with human beings who have feelings, just like you. Step into your customer’s shoes for a moment and ask yourself how they must feel when trying to resolve a problem with a staff member who not only won’t listen to their side of the story, but has no intention of budging an inch.

Be thoughtful and considerate when offering customer service: you’re dealing with human beings who have feelings, just like you.

Everyone loves the sound of their own name, so personalize your conversations by using your customer’s name. Let them know you are listening, that you understand their concern, and that you intend to address their problem. And remember the manners you were taught as a child: the words “please” and “thank you” always make a good impression and go a long way to letting customers know they’re important to you. Always leave the door open to allow customers to contact you in the future should they have any queries.

What is great customer service?

Great customer service is simply treating each and every customer you come into contact with, with honesty and respect. When you do this, and in conjunction with your great product or service, you’ll find your customers become repeat customers. Why would they want to shop anywhere else?