Should Online Shops Outsource E-Commerce Customer Care?

Closing sales marks only the start of your real journey with your customers. What happens after the purchase determines whether that relationship will continue in the future or not. The good news is that you can make them come back for more. You must first have the ingredients to pull your existing customers back into your business to make it possible.

Essential ingredients for customer success

Customer success isn’t made overnight. It is an outcome of small efforts that, when mixed, produce a remarkable product.

It begins with a single idea that was developed and enhanced through the collaborative minds of the team. Once that idea is ripe enough for the market, the next thing that you should do is create messages that will effectively communicate your brand to your target audiences. Then, the selling part will follow — the beginning of the journey with the customer.

The customer will determine if they would still want to continue doing business with you again based on these three essential elements:

• Quality

  E-commerce is the most convenient way of shopping. At the same time, it can also be the platform that deceives people into buying through false promises. If you want to receive high reviews that attract more customers, ensure you meet their expectations. Strive to improve the quality of your products. You wouldn’t want to get known as a cheap online store that sells substandard products, would you?

• Price

  Do you think your price is reasonable enough for the quality of your products? Proper pricing is essential when meeting expectations.

• Pre and post-sales e-commerce customer care

  Treating your customers before and after a transaction is critical in determining if they’ll choose your business again. It is vital to update customers on what happens after they pay, when an item will get shipped, where it is, and what you say after the sale. To achieve this, you need an excellent email customer support service.

Providing e-commerce customer care is a necessity.

The reason why it’s called e-commerce customer care is because you need to take reasonable and proper care of your existing customers. It is a business responsibility. To understand the importance of customer service, try to look at it through a different lens. Like any real-life relationship, you have to fix any issues before they become a huge problem, which can cause the other party to go away and never return.

Are you not convinced yet? These numbers can change your mind.

The Boston-based global management consulting company said that if you try to increase your retention rates even by five percent, you can also receive an increase in profit anywhere from 25 percent to 95 percent. Harvard Business Review revealed that you can also save more money because it is five to 25 times cheaper to retain customers than to find new ones.

Another survey released by Forrester Research revealed that 69 percent of U.S. online adults shop more with retailers that offer consistent customer service both online and offline. This means that you should stick to online channels alone, not because you are in an e-commerce business. Genuine customer service means being available for them anytime, using the most convenient communication mode.

Is outsourcing a good option?

Should you keep your e-commerce customer care in-house? Or should you outsource it instead?

If you prefer to keep it in-house, you have complete control over your customer communication. It also means you must shell out an additional budget to pay your staff and add equipment to accommodate all support requests.

Meanwhile, outsourcing shoulders those concerns for you. Their service fee is also cheaper. Because call center companies train their agents before onboarding, your customers will receive excellent customer service.

Customers can immediately forget the product that you just sold them. What sticks in their mind is their experience doing business with you, which could result in good or bad publicity or word-of-mouth marketing. Make yourself a name in the saturated industry by creating first a mark on the heart of each of your customers.

Do you believe it’s time for your online shop to outsource e-commerce customer support? Contact us now!