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Sashank RavindranathExceptional customer support is not an option but a necessity.
Especially if you’re part of an e-commerce business, there can be no second thoughts when it comes to a great customer support service, as it plays a huge role in positive customer experiences (CX), which then further leads to repeat purchases.
However, high order volumes, increased customer support requests, etc, can be a burden in your commitment to provide a quality support service.
This can cause trouble to your business in more than one ways.
- Increased volume of support tickets and associated costs due to anxious customers reaching out with order status requirements.
- Customers frustrated with lack of support response for issues, taking their complaints to social media and tarnishing your brand’s reputation.
Thus, the verdict is clear.
Offering stellar customer support can bring in plenty of benefits for your e-commerce business.
To know the benefits, let us get to know how you can provide customers with a superior support experience, particularly in the post-purchase phase.
Why specifically addressing the post-purchase phase, you ask?
The post-purchase, comprising of order delivery and returns is an often left out part due to many businesses depending on the already strained shipping carriers to take care of them.. But the truth is that, carriers neither have the interest nor the commitment towards your customers’ post-purchase experiences.
Thus, it is time for you to take control of your post-purchase, let’s start with quality customer support techniques.
How to Provide Great Customer Support in the Post-purchase Phase
1. Automate chats to handle frequent and repeated customer queries
People expect fast replies from businesses. Many people are more willing to leave a bad review about a poor customer service experience than over a
— Andrew Spence (@AndrewSpenceIM) March 23, 2021
suboptimal product.
Live chat, FAQ's, robots, social media can all help with this.
One of the quickest ways to get started with a great support experience is to automate your response to frequently asked questions from customers in order to reduce wait time and overall ticket resolution time.
Set frequency levels for different questions asked by your customers and incorporate questions with high volume into a chatbot that can respond on your behalf.
Keep in mind that, nothing impresses customers more than the realization of talking with a human at the other end. Therefore, keep your chatbot sound as human as possible. Also, human-back your conversations, so that your support reps can take over where necessary.
And last but not the least, have a designated FAQ page with answers to all possible questions from customers so that they do not have to ask these questions in the first place.
All of this can help you reduce ‘thankless’ tickets and provide increased customer satisfaction.
2. Provide omnichannel customer support service
Your customers can reach you via any of their preferred channels such as social media, phone calls, website chats, etc. Therefore, you must be prepared to reach them at any of them and not miss out or provide a delayed response. Because not doing so can result in weaker relationships and customer churn.
The key lies in leveraging your help desk tool that lets you take an omnichannel approach while resolving customer queries.
Viewing all interactions with your customer across channels and touchpoints enables your support agents to initiate contextual communication and provide a consistent and seamless customer experience.
3. Make meaningful interactions with customers during the post-purchase phase
Customers are highly anxious while awaiting their orders and bombard you with WISMO calls, and stress about what is going on with their orders (particularly when they sense their orders are likely to be delayed).
A bleak post-purchase customer experience can be the result of poor engagement, thus, it is important to not only frequently engage with your customers without missing out on any touchpoint, but also to keep the engagement meaningful and contextual.
Apart from regular shipping transactional event notifications such as order shipped, in-transit, and delivered, you can also keep your users updated on uncommon occurrences such as delayed in-transit, failed delivery attempts, suspected loss, etc., and keep them in the loop of their orders.
You can communicate the updates via Email and SMS notifications and let them know that you are in a position to handle issues (if any) and are committed to providing them with a great support experience.
4. Identify and proactively resolve delivery issues
Customers are aware that delays and other delivery incidents (not just the ones that are a result of the supply chain crisis) are inevitable and occur due to no fault of yours. But at the least, they expect the business they shop with to be proactive and empathetic towards their situation.
You can keep up or even exceed their expectations by notifying them of such incidents before they occur and being empathetic enough to offer alternatives to ease the situation.
Create a list of FAQs on your customers’ frequent needs and common questions during the Holiday season such as WISMO and keep a track of all these issues regularly. Once you’ve identified these issues, you can then empower your support team to leverage this data and proactively step in to resolve them.
Proactive delivery issue resolution during the order delivery phase is usually offered via timely order updates.
5. Make order tracking and returns self-serve
A great order tracking and returns experience boosts loyalty.
And the most seamless experience you can provide your customers while they are tracking their orders getting delivered or being returned is to make it as easy and fast for them with zero interactions with your support agents.
Self-serve tracking paired with proactive updates keeps your customers in the loop effortlessly and eliminates blind spots about the whereabouts of their package.
Such seamless tracking experiences can also help in revenue retention via repeat purchases.
Bottom Line
Following all the above steps can help you empower your customer support team and further result in:
- Demonstrating a strong commitment to the high standard of customer experience you offer
- Showing empathy towards your customers’ issues and
- Ultimately building a loyal customer base
Making use of a post-purchase and returns management solution such as LateShipment.com will strengthen the hands of your support team and help you do the same.
Once you’ve implemented these hacks into your support model, you can be confident that your support experience is optimized and you’ll be confident of your customers choosing your business repeatedly.
Try these out and let us know your experience in the comments below!
