Millennials make up a substantial pool of buyers in the digital age and have specific tastes when it comes to how they want to be treated.
In 2020, personalized service is an essential strategy for establishing and scaling a sustainable e-commerce brand.
In this article, you’ll discover the important role of personal customer service in building and growing eCommerce brands. We’ll also leave you with some tactics to implement within your business today.
Make it Personal with Customer Service
Personal customer service is understanding who your customer is and what their needs are. Their behaviors, where they are in the buying cycle, and their intentions for reaching out are all keys you need to better serve them. Personalization makes for more meaningful interactions, establishes trust, and will lead to more sales in the future.
The elements of effective customer service include:
- Quick resolution to issues
- Resolutions within a single interaction
- Friendly service and ability to followup with the same representative
- Documentation of the interaction
- Follow-up after the interaction to gauge satisfaction
Personalization improves the effectiveness of your customer service strategy.
How Personalization Puts Money in the Pockets of eCommerce Brands
Many marketers claim they see an increase is sales by 20% when they use personalization approaches. As mentioned above, personalization involves knowing your customer’s behaviors and intentions. Common tactics include using their name during interactions and keeping their previous requests in a single place.
Here are a few ways better customer service increases your revenue:
Customers Spend More for Better Service
It’s proven that customers will pay more for an inferior product even if they know the product is subpar. In fact, 73% of customers say they are willing to pay more if they love your brand. This will allow you to reprioritize capital to support revenue-generating activities.
Why? Customer service is the difference maker. More and more customers are buying things online. U.S. companies lose an equivalent of 1.6 trillion in lost customers due to poor service. These are millions of customers left feeling frustrated with their online experience.
This isn’t permission to create a substandard product. What it actually shows is that customers value their time and experiences and are willing to pay more for them.
Establishes Brand Loyalty and Trust
About 44% of customers say they’d become repeat buyers after a personalized shopping experience with a company. Customer retention increases the value of a single customer for a company over a lifetime. This mutual relationship is a gift that keeps on giving.
Actively creating personalized experiences is one way to improve customer lifetime value. Measuring your customer’s value shouldn’t be the focus, however. The best eCommerce brands continue to add value to customers through better content and better service.
Supports Cross-Selling and Upselling Efforts
Customers are more likely to respond to cross-selling and upselling with personalization. Personalized cross-sells are so common that customers actually expect it. They want to see recommendations for new products based on their previous purchases.
Gaining new customers can cost hundreds per person. Personalized customer service is one strategy to decrease customer acquisition costs. By improving customer service you improve your customer’s experience. Better customer experiences lead to retention and higher sales whether you are B2B or B2C.
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Tactics for Improving Customer Service
All the information in the world is useless if you don’t know how to properly use it. Your customer service strategy should involve every level of your organization.
Here five actionable ways to improve your customer service:
1. Level Up to Multi-Channel Support
One major frustration among customers is slow response time. Your response time only increases when you have a bottle-neck in how your customers can reach out. 65% of customers are using mobile devices to interact with brands on a monthly basis. Make it easier for them to reach out via your social media pages, website chatbox, and email.
This allows them to contact you in a way they feel most comfortable. It also helps them to get their answers without facing long hold times. Using social media as a tool for customer service also shows others how you handle problems and how quickly you respond.
2. Drop Some Knowledge for Self-Service
Many customer questions are simple, non-specific, and repetitive. Not only does this create an unnecessary bottle-neck, it frustrates your customers with long hold times. You spend valuable time solving the same problem while reducing your chances of creating an enjoyable experience.
Many customers prefer to solve an issue on their own before contacting the company. Creating a knowledge base or FAQ is a great opportunity to reduce your response volume. Customers are then able to find a solution on your website without reaching out.
3. Ditch Your Pride, Apologize
If something goes wrong, acknowledge it and apologize. 45% of customers are willing to remove a negative review after an apology. Negative reviews are an inevitable part of doing business online. A major portion of eCommerce brand management is reputation monitoring. This involves monitoring feedback and responding quickly.
Though negative feedback can be jarring, try to parse out the core of the complaint. After solving your customer’s issue, followup via email or other means. This helps you monitor if your solution actually helped and increases customer satisfaction.
4. Don’t Make Customers Repeat Themselves
The second major complaint customers have about customer service is that they have to repeat their problem several times. 76% of customers expect you to have a record of their contact info as well as their service history. Bouncing around departments and representatives is frustrating and reducing the chances of having your problem solved.
If your customers have this complaint it indicates a major disconnect among your departments. Using a software program that aggregates correspondence helps you to keep track of how a customer’s issue is progressing. If possible, restrict the interaction to one representative throughout the solution.
5. Use Surveys to Leave Your Customers Satisfied
The starting point of all endeavors is knowledge. To properly please your customers, you first need to know who they are. Understanding their likes, dislikes, and demographics can help you to anticipate their issues before they arise.
After an interaction, followup with a short customer satisfaction survey. These usually measure customer happiness with your exchange on a scale of 1-10 or 1-5. There are several free and paid resources for creating email-list surveys.
E-Commerce Brands that Win
The eCommerce brands that build sustainable growth and recognition are the ones that are diligent over the details. They understand the value of customer interactions and use feedback to continually improve. Start with your customer in mind for every new business endeavor. The more value you offer, the more value you get in return.
An eCommerce branding service can help you establish your place in the market, build customer value, and focus on the long-term. Good consultants are selective with who they choose as clients. Schedule a call with us today to see if you qualify.
