Ecommerce Customer Experience

"A complaint is a chance to turn a customer into a lifelong friend."~ Sir Richard Branson, Founder -Virgin Group

What is customer experience?

Customer experience is the impression that your customers have for your brand as a whole in all aspects of the buyer’s journey. It results in their perception of your brand and the effects of factors related to your bottom-line including revenue. Two key touch points create a customer experience are people and product.

To create a positive customer experience, create a customer journey map, create buyers’ personas, build good customer relationship, ask for and act on feedback, create useful content, and build community.
The below mentioned factors helps for a great customer experience:

1. Customer Support
2. Customer Service
3. Customer Success

1. Ecommerce Customer Support:

Ecommerce customer support is a service provided to help customers solve any technical issues they may have with a product or service. It focused on solving customer problems and challenges quickly by applying a set practices and procedures.

The common channels that are been used for effective customer support are via phone, live chats, tickets, email and social media.

Customer support is very important to your long-term business because if you need to fuel the growth of your company's product and services, you need happy, honest and engaged customers, and customers who provide constant feedbacks that leads to improve your product and services.

Customer Support Responsibilities:

• Answer to customer calls.
• Use live chat on your website with customer requests.
• Manage, triage, assign, and work on tickets to the customer support queue.
• Answer email requests and questions.
• Respond to social media comments, direct messages and requests.

Customer Support Skills:
Product Expertise, Empathy, Mindfulness and Patience, Enthusiasm, Time Management, Problem Solving, Adaptability.

2. Ecommerce Customer Service:

E-commerce customer service provides the framework for supporting shoppers via e-commerce platforms and throughout their life cycles. It refers to the services you provide to online consumers. If visitors have questions or need help with purchases, these features help them navigate your site and achieve their goals. Ecommerce customer service allows reps to meet customers where they are to make the process of support simple and efficient.

Key Elements contributing a Great Customer Experience:

• Quick Problem solving.
• Getting the issue resolved in one interaction.
• Dealing with a friendly customer service representative.
• Being able to follow up the same person if necessary.
• Being able to record, print, save a copy of interaction.
• Having some form of follow-up afterwards to make sure that you are satisfied.

3. Ecommerce Customer Success:

Customer success is the process of anticipating customer challenges or questions and proactively providing solutions and answers to those issues prior to them arising.

Customer success helps you increase customer satisfaction and retention, increase your revenue and customer loyalty.

Importance of Customer Success:

• Customer success is critical to the success of your business.
• It promotes customer satisfaction and loyalty - by helping your customer succeed, they will become your main promoters and advocates.
• Customer success is tied directly to your bottom line as it helps you reduce churn prices, improve renewal and satisfaction, and therefore, increase revenue.

Customer Success Best Practices:

• Rally everyone around the customer.
• Help your customers how they want to be helped.
• Solve for short- and long-term needs.
• Take time to understand customers.
• Provide personalized solutions.
• Hire the right amount of staff.

Customer Support Vs Customer Service Vs Customer Success

Customer support is reacting to your customers needs when they tell you, "I have a problem".

Customer service is saying to a customer, "I have something for you" instead of a customer saying, "I need something from you". 

Customer success is saying to a customer, "let's be partners", and working proactively together to achieve their long-term goals.

Customer Success vs Customer Service

Customer Support vs. Customer SuccessCustomer Support Team Structure

Ecommerce Omnichannel Customer Service

What is an Omni Channel Customer Service?

Omni channel customer service can be defined as a synchronized operating model in which all of the communications channels are aligned to deliver consistent support.

• In an omnichannel approach, businesses effectively operate as a single channel, delivering high value customer experiences across all the touchpoints.
• Implementing omni channel strategy helps businesses in better understanding the customer lifecycle, their conversation history to deliver personalized support by integrating the reactive channels with the digital channels.
• It is a multichannel approach to sales that focus on providing seamless customer experience whether the client is shopping online from a mobile device, a laptop.

Key reasons that prove the worth of omni channel customer service:

• Faster Resolution rate.
• Enhanced customer experience.
• Simplify the customer journey of a better understanding.
• Reduce customer churn.

Ecommerce Customer Service Best Practices

• Develop an omni channel customer support strategy.
• Create a knowledge base for customers.
• Focus on quick customer response.
• Provide personalized customer service.
• Track your customer satisfaction and customer feedback.
• Provide real time assistance with Live Chat.
• Help desk software helps customer service representatives manage customer enquiries better and respond to them faster.
• Engage customers through social media allows you to communicate directly, build relationships and brand loyalty.
• Make key information available online (FAQ).
• Provide proactive customer support.
• Track entire customer journey.
• Focus on customer retention.
• Integrate your ecommerce platform with other tools.
• Build a great e-commerce customer support team.
• Act on customer feedback.
• Strengthen Your Customer Service Team.
• Track Performance of Your Customer Service Representatives.

Ecommerce Customer Support Workflow Diagram

Final Thought:

Your customer service can say more about your business than your brand personality does. When done well, it can turn your casual website onlookers into loyal customers that spread the good word about your business. The essential elements of direct customer service are to be positive, helpful and to go the extra mile which should be the same for ecommerce. While your personality can't shine through as much as face-to-face, there are a number of ways to make sure you leave a lasting impression on your loyal customers and not for the wrong reasons. So, it’s crucial to have a strategy to ensure customers have a positive buying experience with your brand.