It definitely feels amazing to have your ecommerce store, where you have the freedom to sell the products of your choice without worrying much about return policies or commission fees. But, the journey is not that easy. The customers won’t simply come to your store, look at the product & place an order, they may have certain questions about the products or your services.

The complaints can flood in before conversion or post-placement of an order. It is crucial to address these concerns at both stages. You may add policies, set the product details right, add FAQ pages. Still, you have to think of more ways to let your customers reach you in real-time.

Here we are talking about the prominent ways that you can adapt for your ecommerce site & streamline the task of customer handling.

• Offer multi-channel support:

For a customer to navigate to your store, there are endless possibilities. Some of your customers may directly search for your brand name, others may navigate from social channels, search for products on the web, or redirecting from reseller platforms, and so on. With so many user cases, the preference of interaction with the user will totally depend upon the path taken.

Enabling omnichannel support to your customers helps them connect with you & resolve their queries efficiently. Keep in mind that channel is not the priority, it is customer satisfaction.

• Enable live chat:

Give your buyers a window to talk to you about their product demand just like they do when visiting your store physically. If you are yet to add live chat on your ecommerce store, connect it right now. When customers have the option to communicate about their concerns in the live mode, they will hardly have the queries to fill voicemails or email boxes.

Live chat support is a lot profitable for businesses offering product customization, as customers can easily connect & share their preferable choices & budget. This will reduce the merry-go-round of your potential buyer & you to connect & search for comfortable timing to connect. Such software is also capable of collecting leads when you are offline. You can automate the responses & request the visitor to share their contact details to connect further.

• Telephonic support:

There is no alternative to real phone calls. Believe it or not, customers are more satisfied when they are communicating with the other person in real life. The human voice makes them feel connected & this improvises the trust in the relationship with customers. Be it an old school thing, and now there are plenty of options to connect with your buyers, but not everyone is tech-friendly & adaptable to changes.

By enabling telephonic support, you make people believe that there are humans involved, and they have someone to reach in any negative circumstances. You can deploy voicemail software to address customer concerns in your working hours only, for the rest of the time you can have the complaints locked in voicemail.

• Automation of customer service:

We know that you are really trying your best to address the complaints raised by each of your customers. Still, there can be loopholes, and you accidentally leave one of them unanswered. This mostly happens when the flow of the traffic on your site increases & customers connect with you for more enquiries, then just visiting at your store. As you know that even one dissatisfied customer can be dangerous for your brand’s reputation, you can’t just let the things move in their own fashion.

You can address this concern wisely by automating the process. The CRM software deployed and live chat support system used if integrated, the ticket generation will happen automatically & this will help you sort the queries from customers with a lot of ease.

• Streamline order fulfilment process:

Once the customer has placed an order, the maximum enquiries are about the delivery time. Since the marketplaces are offering the option of product delivery within 24-48 hours & regular intimation about different stages of order fulfilment, now customers have higher expectations. Automation of order fulfilment will reduce half of your customer complaints. The periodic email notifications to your customers about different stages of order fulfilment & especially when the product is out for delivery will improvise the reliability of customers on your brand.

• Develop a feedback mechanism:

Don’t be afraid of the customer responses! They need the product, and that’s why they placed an order. Now, you must ask for customer’s feedback, if that’s an old order like a month ago, you can simply connect to enquire if that’s working well & share the tips to improve the product’s life. People will definitely appreciate your initiative of care & post-order services.

You can ask your customers for feedback about your services or about the new services/products that you are adding. When you walk with the advice of your customers, they feel valued and more connected with your business.

• Create a hierarchical customer support system:

As a startup, you need not worry about the management & closing of customer complaints at various stages. You will be taking the lead with your partner or customer handling associate to resolve the customer complaints. But, as you grow & your business flourish, you have to increase the team size & distribute their roles. Creating a hierarchy-based system will ease the complaint tracing and help you optimize the complaint closing rates.

Sometimes, a customer may ask for the refund of the product, once the return is delivered, when it’s your website, you have to manage all these things at your end. You can create the policy of 75-80% cost of the product returns, or customer to pay for 1-way shipping charges. That’s something to be addressed in your policy pages, but such concerns come in your inbox; they will affect the ROI of your business. The delegation of separate teams at different stages will help you streamline things with ease.

If you are counting on the live chat software, here we have the major ones listed for easy decision making. Remember that customer service is the top priority & you better not take the things for granted. More will be the count of happy customers, the good words about your business will float in the market.