Why customer service is one of your most powerful eCommerce tools

Customer service is crucial for eCommerce as it helps to build trust and loyalty, leading to repeat business and positive reviews. Good customer service also helps to resolve issues and complaints, reducing the risk of negative feedback and potential damage to a brand's reputation. But it’s so much more than that - you can leverage it to improve your eCommerce business and drive more growth. 

Did you know that 42% of customers would pay more for a friendly, welcoming experience? In this article we’re going to explore all the different ways you can use customer service as a tool to grow your eCommerce.

Customer service is more than just answering questions

Customer service is an integral part of the customer journey, and it can greatly impact how customers perceive a brand. Customer service should be a conscious effort across all the various stages a customer goes through when interacting with a brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase follow-up. Here’s why customer service is so important:

First impression

Customer service is often the first point of contact that a customer has with a brand. The way that a customer service representative interacts with a customer can greatly influence their first impression of a brand, making it important to ensure that representatives are knowledgeable, courteous, and responsive.

Customer retention

Customer service plays a crucial role in customer retention. A study by PwC found that 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after just one bad experience. By providing quality customer service, brands can foster a sense of loyalty among their customers and encourage repeat business.

Resolving issues

One of the primary functions of customer service is to help customers resolve issues they may be experiencing with a product or service. By providing prompt and effective solutions, customer service representatives can not only prevent negative feedback but can also turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal advocate.

Brand reputation

Customer service is a reflection of a brand's values and can greatly impact its reputation. Brands that prioritise customer satisfaction and invest in quality customer service are more likely to be viewed positively by customers and can benefit from increased word-of-mouth referrals.

Personalised interactions

Good customer service involves taking the time to understand a customer's needs and preferences. By providing personalised interactions, customer service representatives can help build a relationship of trust and understanding between the customer and the brand.

So customer service is important but how can it lead to actual growth?

Let’s get to it - how exactly can investing in customer service bring actual revenue and value to your eCommerce business? While it’s hard to exactly estimate how much revenue you can generate by using customer service as a resource, there’s no doubt you can extract a lot of insights from it and use them to optimise various areas of your eCommerce, improving KPIs. Let’s dive into some ways you can leverage customer service to facilitate growth.

Increase conversion rates by personalising the users’ experience

A study by Epsilon found that 80% of customers were more likely to do business with a company that offered personalised experiences. Customer service is a bottomless well of insights about your customers’ needs and preferences. By leveraging those to personalise the shopping experience you can greatly increase conversion rates as well as the AOV and repeat purchase rate.

Let’s take a look at an example: let’s say your eCommerce sells bikes and cycling equipment. Your customer service team receives a lot of messages asking which water bottles will fit with the bike they purchased or are looking to purchase. Using this insight, you implement an upselling module that recommends water bottles that go along with the bike the user’s looking at. This will not only help them make the choice to purchase from your eCommerce (because you understand their needs) but there’s also the additional element of increasing the AOV in the process.

Turn customers into brand ambassadors

According to a survey by BrightLocal 81% of consumers are “likely” or “highly likely” to leave a positive review if they feel the business went above and beyond to ensure an exceptional experience. And reviews are still one of the most important decision factors when it comes to online purchases. Customers who had a positive experience with your eCommerce are not only more likely to come back but also to leave a positive review and recommend your business to others. By investing in customer service and ensuring your customers have a positive experience you will increase the ROI on customer acquisition and leverage existing customers to gain new ones.

Optimise your eCommerce and collect insights for product and service improvements

You’re already well aware how expensive market and user research can be. It takes time to collect data, analyse it and then ideate possible solutions. Whether you keep those processes in-house or outsource them to an external partner, it takes up resources. Customer service can be the answer. Across different channels, your customer service collects valuable insights about technical glitches, product ideas, improvement suggestions, pain points and much more. By tracking those you get user-generated feedback about your eCommerce specifically, meaning you can speed up the research process and get to implementing changes to create better experiences for your customers.

Creating the perfect customer service experience

With all that said, you can’t fully reap the benefits of customer service if you first don’t invest in it. That’s where the Frontkom team can help you - we have eCommerce experts on board who can help you choose and implement the right customer service tools and then create processes for collecting and analysing insights from your customers. If you’d like to talk about how we could grow your eCommerce business together - contact us and let’s get started!