5 Cost-Efficient Ways to Provide Better Customer Support in Ecommerce

The retail industry is a very specific one. If anywhere, this is where customer support plays a vital role. That’s exactly why all the big brands have on-going strategies to improve customer support. Meanwhile, technology rapidly evolved and the internet became more accessible.  Today, even startups in the ecommerce industry can deliver exceptional service and support to their customers via cutting-edge technologies such as live chat and the best skype bots.

The only questions that remain are which of the methods are cost-efficient and which ones provide the best results. Today, we are here to answer these questions exactly. We give you 5 cost-efficient ways to provide better customer support in ecommerce.

Devise a Multi-Channel Strategy

 In the old days, customers could either contact businesses directly while they were in their shops or via a telephone. Those days are long gone. Today, customers have a lot more options. And, each one of them prefers one option over the other.

If you limit your customers to just one communication channel, you risk missing out on opportunities to impress them. This is why you have to consider a viable multi-channel strategy.

We are not sharing this out of a whim. This study confirms that this actually works.

Why is this a cost-efficient approach? The answer is simple – you won’t be hemorrhaging money on channels where your customers are not, but focus on channels that your customers actually prefer. Thus you will bring customer support to them instead of leaving them out in the open.

The best course of action? Work closely with your support and marketing teams to identify whether your customers prefer Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or any of the other communication channels.

Streamline Communication With the Best Skype Bots

We live in an era of chatbots. These little buddies are developed to work tirelessly to bring customer support directly to your customers and make it more accessible. When it comes to cost-efficiency it doesn’t get better than this.

The best Skype bots are brought for free by one of the most prominent chatbot building platforms, Snatchbot. What’s even better, you can integrate one bot on as many channels as you want and it will still operate 24/7, serving multiple customers at a time.

These bots are very easy to use and integrate so you won’t have to spend additional resources on IT specialists to get the job done. You can also use them in specific scenarios. For instance, you can use one of the best Skype bots to triage your customers in distress, rectify simple issues in an instant, and divert more complex ones to your human agents.

Give As Much Information Beforehand

Customer support is reactive in its nature. If you want to make it more cost-efficient, you should add a proactive element to it.

Customers don’t have problems right at the start. First, they experience some issues. Then they try to find a solution by themselves (at least 50% of them do) and, finally, if they fail, they feel frustrated and get under the impression that they have a problem with your product, service, and ultimately your brand. And that’s something only experienced and professional customer support agents know how to deal with, and they cost money.

Fortunately, there are a few ways to prevent this and they can all be categorized as proactive efforts.

First of all, all the information that you provide via product description should be accurate and to the point. Don’t restrain from describing packaging as well. Furthermore, you should leverage your blog section and address the common issues your customers experienced in the past. And lastly, you can build informative FAQ pages and publish a help center to help your customers resolve issues by themselves.

Introduce Live Chat

There is no better way to strike two birds with one stone then introducing live chat to your ecommerce website. The two birds here are customer service and customer support.

Live chat tools are very cost-efficient. First, they are very cheap, even the ones with many features. And, second, your agents will be able to handle multiple customers at a time. Not to mention that you can integrate your chatbot to offer the service in different time zones and after hours.

Live Chat offers solutions to unique problems. For instance, how would you help customers having challenges shopping on your website? These customers won’t stay long and will quite often go and shop at your competition’s.

WIth Live Chat tools, you can engage your leads as soon as they land on your website, offer your assistance and help them make an informed purchasing decision. Besides, this is yet another great point of contact for customers in distress.

Use Customer Relationship Management Software

You can measure your customer support efforts by gauging the number of returning customers. But how do you know which of the returning customers decided to stay because you efficiently resolved one of their pain points? This is why you need a tool that streamlines data monitoring, recording and storing.

Statistics tell us that customer relationship management software is a good investment in terms of developing cost-efficient customer support strategies. How and why?

With this tool in your hands, you will be able to see the complete history with your customers, both in terms of interactions and purchases. More importantly, you will be able to send follow up emails after purchases or after they contact customer support and find out what they really think about your efforts.

The success of your customer support strategies and optimization depends on the assets and resources you deploy. Some of them are more, while others are less cost-efficient. Offering support across multiple channels, deploying the best skype bots and live chat, and learning from CRM data records are paramount for your success and, at the same time, some of the most cost-efficient actions.