Study proved that right – “in 2011, 86% of consumers quit doing business with a company due to a poor transaction or service experience”.
These numbers do freak you out, don’t they?
So, if you’re going to take customer service lightly, get ready to go home! And if you truly want to run a prosperous business, investment poured into support staff must be great as well as dead serious.
In this article, I’ll give you some insights of the 5 most popular and vital customer service channels for an eCommerce website via looking into their advantages and shortcomings.
1. Live chat support – one of the most effective customer service channels
Live chat support
Live chat is the best way to engage directly with visitors on your website. Your customers love it more than any other support channels. No wonder why live chat has its dominance in customer’s satisfaction.
As reported by eConsultancy, “of those who prefer live chat, 79% said they did so because they get their questions answered quickly and 46% agreed it was the most efficient communication method”. While your site visitors love getting engaged with your company via direct chat message, your business itself also gains much from this support channel.
Pros
Live chat support is fast and straight to the point. That’s why it taps right on the pain of your customers. They need help and are in urgent situation? Just buzz your support agent via live chat and they’ll have the prompt help to save their life
This support channel also helps your support as well as marketing agents understand customer’s need better, hence, allows them to refine the marketing/support method accordingly. Pre-chat survey or saved chat transcript is priceless weapon in building customer persona and nurturing customer’s loyalty with your brand.
Plus, live chat costs much less time and money than phone support since chat agent can handle multiple chats at once!
Cons
The advantage of live chat is that it is a fast solution for your customers. So, your chat support agent must be very quick and timely in providing instant help. If they fail, the loss will be huge – one customer and more than that, your brand, your customer’s experience… Long time waiting is a big NO in live chat case.
If you offer live chat support, you have to mind the time zone difference too. You can craft a message like “We’re offline. Send us a message” but what is the meaning of “live” chat then? I’m in a hurry and I’ll have to wait for you to online at time when I go to bed?
Tips
You should apply live chat on your website – no matter how big-sized or small-sized your eCommerce business is. Remember to use automate and smart live chat software like Subiz to maximize the advantages of live chat.
Lastly, train your support staff to be highly responsive and well-mannered when it comes to live conversation.
2. Email support
Email Support
Where do they get email support from?
Via your Contact us form and the provided email there.
Email support is one of the most preferred support methods in an eCommerce store. What do you get and what does it take when using email support channel?
Pros
When live chat support needs you to be highly responsive and react promptly to chat request, an inquiry from your contact form will grant you more time to answer. Usually, most businesses provide email support within 12 to 24 hours.
Time zone difference is not a big deal in email support. Just don’t forget that you got your customer’s request in an email then you’re good.
Plus, email is very easy to set up and most of your customers can use it without any stumble.
Cons
Bad things will happen if you forget to answer customer’s email. The disappointment from waiting hours for problem to be resolved in a live chat session is sometimes less harmful than from waiting for several days for an email reply.
And the pain point of email support is that the communication time may increase due to the lack of needed information to resolve the problem. For example, one customer has problem with downloading a file on your site. He asks your support agent, and then support agent needs to email back to ask for his account credential. And then, let’s wait for customer’s reply again. This simple information exchanging may take up to several days, just to acquire information only.
Tips
To fasten support via email, you should clarify the required information and detailed description of the problem for customers before submitting question so they know what they’ll need to provide to get out of the trouble as soon as possible.
Additionally, make sure you have your inbox clearly classified in different folders or categories like “Unanswered”, “Waiting”, “Closed”… for each email so you can process email support smoothly.
Finally, be sure you tell your customers to submit technical related questions only or search for answers in the FAQs before submitting questions, or you’ll be drown in a sea of emails. Common, you need time to do something else, not answering email all day, right?
3. Helpdesk / ticket system support
Helpdesk system support
Helpdesks like Kayako or Zendesk are one of the cost-effective solutions for customer support. Helpdesk usually combines contact area, FAQs, ticket system and submit question form together.
I had experience with Kayako before – it provides knowledgebase where you can build up product-related basic content for customers, plus an effective ticket system for support request from customers (questions are submitted via a form with pre-defined required information) and a simple live chat.
Pros
Multiple sub-places for customers to turn to when they need help – these help reduce the support time if you build an efficient knowledgebase for customers there. It’s a one-stop help for your customers.
Plus, most ticket system has label for the questions like Critical, Minor, Pre-sales, etc. so you can easily prioritize which ones to resolve first. That’s not all. Ticket system also has your support personnel divided into different categories, so each one will be assigned to deal with one type of question automatically.
Besides, you can set up required information fields for users when they submit question, so it helps reduce the information exchanging process.
Cons
Sometimes customers will demand fast support even though their question is not urgent. They choose a Blocker/Critical label for their query. As a result, sometimes you’ll find all the questions need to be answered immediately but actually only about half of them are urgent.
Ticketing system in helpdesk will require the manager to control support team closely because there’s no specific evaluation or report for support quality except for rating – which most customers won’t do. You may only know about a bad support case after customers complain about it somewhere else.
Tips
Require your support personnel to provide daily report for their support cases to keep track of customer satisfaction.
Don’t take knowledgebase for granted! Build a rich knowledgebase and FAQs will help you greatly in deliver fast and precise support for customers.
4. Forum support
Forum Support
Forum support is quite similar to ticket/helpdesk system. This is also where you set up knowledgebase and check the latest questions to answer them quickly.
Pros
You can set up FAQs or most popular diagnoses for customers in specific threads to reduce support burden.
Other greater advantage of forum is that it has the power of a community. You can let your customers join the support with your support agents so they can share the work with your team.
Cons
Like ticket system, as the site owner or manager – you will have to pay close attention to the performance of support staff in forum.
The most painful thing I’ve experienced with support forum is spam. No matter what kind of forum you’re using, there are thousands of accounts generated by spam bots to post spam threads in your forum. The moderator always has to clean these threads and ban automated accounts – which is a time consuming task.
Tips
Just two things: require a daily report from support staff and install a spam prevention method! You’ll be okay.
5. Social Media
Social Media
The last but also one important customer support channel is social media channels.
This is the age of social media and your customer’s presence there is undeniable the reason why you must provide support via these channels too.
Pros
Social media interaction is just as quick as live chat. And it’s a form of communicating with customers effectively like live chat does. Plus, talking on social channels always brings a better and user-friendly experience for your customers.
And above, the nature of social media is sharing. Your customers love to share. So, if they experience a good support service and a good product, they probably tell their friends about you too. You get free marketing from that, isn’t it awesome?
Cons
You’ll need to be super responsive with questions coming from social media channels. Customers will expect you to answer quickly there, especially on platform such as Twitter.
If you do well in pleasing your customers with their query on social channels, the positive review will spread as quickly as wild fire. However, the same applies to the bad review. Social media management will take much effort from you not to fall into the branding crisis trap just because of some bad-mouthed reviews.
Tips
Be responsive and double dedicated when handling questions on social media channels.
Which customer service channel is the best?
We’ve run through the 5 most popular and effective customer support channels. Now I’m gonna ask you: which one will you choose?
What’s your answer? Mine will be: a multichannel strategy. Each channel above has its own wings to lift up your customer experience with your brand and fly you to the land of success. Analyze your business and build up a customer support strategy with the most sufficient channels that work the best for your kind of business.
Share with us your experience and support service strategy! Plus, don’t forget to share the good knowledge around for your support staff or other fellow eCommerce website owners too.
