I consult and workshop with e-commerce brands all the time. I am constantly shocked by those who are doing $20k, $100k, even $250k/m across e-commerce or e-commerce and light channel sales, yet their customer service, support, and help functions are still… a form.
Customer service should be highly prioritized for e-commerce stores, especially newer ones.
In these conversations, a lot of entrepreneurs feel:
- that they didn’t want to add yet another tool
- they were unsure about who was going to manage the customer service support function
- that putting together a Helpdesk would be a massive undertaking
- that they didn’t know the the world of CX, customer success, or retention and felt it was for bigger organizations
These are all fair objections, but they come down to a lack of information and someone to help point you in the right direction.
And that’s where this article comes in.
COMMIT
First, let’s discuss getting buy-in to commit to customer service and support.
Forget any of the more tactical points, CX is a PROFIT CENTER:
- Helpdesk and resource centers raise conversation rate
- Every communication point with customers in the CX process can lead to an upsell
- Positive customer service and support experiences increase brand affinity
- Negative support experiences can bring down overall lifetime value
BUILD
A CX experience at its most basic can consist of:
- A “help center” with organized data on common questions
- A chat experience (which should ideally be live, but also automated or semi-automated)
- A ticketing system to actually assign and manage support inquiries
- Tools to receive feedback on the customer service experience
If you want to take it up a notch:
- Automate information gathering via email
- Handle CX via text message, which is the experience most consumers actually want
- Aggregate support from social media to a central location
- Include recommendations, discount-based upsells and more in your process
- Link sentiment from consumer feedback to sales automation in email and sms
GETTING STARTED
No matter what size your business is I’d recommend implementing Live Chat and actually having key team members (including founders), man it and interact with customers. It will raise conversion rate and let you learn about your customer.
Recommended tool: Tidio – $39/m+
If you want to take it up a notch and really embrace support, my hands-down recommendation is Gorgias (only for Shopify, though). They have the complete suite of features, and I love that their pricing offers unlimited users. I’m a huge advocate that every person at the company should be involved in customer support. Don’t let price be a gate to that vision!
Recommended tool: Gorgias $50-75/m+
If you’re looking to focus on saving money, and want to build a lot yourself, there’s always the omnipresent Zoho. The UX is… aight. The functions are.. okay. But Zoho really does work with everything. You can do everything you want and the price is always low.
Recommended tool: Zoho Desk $23/agent/m ($6 for light agents)
Thanks for reading!
– Oren
productworld.xyz
