The customer service process It is something that should have priority within your business. Customer service can sound like a complicated concept, especially when dealing not with buyers in person, but through digital platforms. When dealing with people remotely, it can seem more difficult to create a close relationship between your company and your client, but really you just have to know how it works and the best practices to avoid making mistakes.
After finishing this article you will have a much clearer perception of how to approach customer service in your business, regardless of its size. In addition, you will understand the customer service process in an e-commerce.
What is the customer service process?
The customer service process is the set of operations that a company carries out with all its employees, integrating different departments to guarantee a solid and satisfactory experience for each customer. This includes all the development, from meeting and assisting customers with their requirements ―fluid dialogue, quick and effective response to their requests―, to detecting needs to propose improvement actions.
Remember that the trust of your customers must be renewed continuously and with each purchase, request for information, complaint or query.
So, as you can guess, each process is different depending on the company where it is developed because each business has different needs. Although there are parameters that help implement customer service processes successfully.
Why should you have a customer service process in your e-commerce?
Ensuring the satisfaction of your customers should be one of the main objectives of any business. For this you need to take into account some things such as:
- That your support area understands perfectly how your company works.
- The customer service process must be standardized.
- That you guarantee that the support flow is agile internally to resolve the most frequent queries.
Remember that when you have a customer service process it shows and when you don’t, it shows more.
Some benefits of having a customer service process are:
- Loyalty and
- Improve the reputation of your business and build trust in it.
- Combat the price difference between competitors.
- Gives other competitive advantages.
- Increase the morale of your workers.
Customer service is vital for e-commerce. If you have doubts about this, visit this article if you want to know in depth, as well as its advantages and how to make one. 🚀
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What are the phases of the customer service process?
Remember that customer service is vital to the reputation, sales, customer experience, and long-term growth of any business. One of the biggest challenges of customer service is, without a doubt, how dynamic the process is.
Although most people think of customer service as the area that receives customer complaint calls or emails, there is much more behind the complaint and suggestion box.
Next, you will learn about the phases of the customer service process and how to handle each of them correctly.
pre-contact
Customer service begins long before customers make a purchase, ask a question, or call to complain about a service or product. Customer service starts with your website and online availability, with your social media presence and brand, with the avenues of communication you’ve provided and made available to them.
Here are some ways to reinforce your pre-contact stage:
- Training: inform your collaborators about receiving messages, doubts and complaints.
- Knowledge of your customers: know what their most frequent doubts are and how to solve them.
- Accessibility: that your customers know how to contact you to resolve any claim.
Contact
The contact stage of a customer relationship is one of the most important aspects, if not the most important. While preparing up front will help you get things off to a good start, it really comes down to the first moment of contact for you to set the tone with your customers.
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Here are some tips to make sure your contact phase is successful with your customers:
- Personalize the experience.
- Empathize.
- Communicate clearly and respectfully.
Obtaining information
Collect customer feedback or feedback. You can do this through surveys and other tools such as a complaint and suggestion box. The goal is for you to listen to the voice of your customers and understand 100% of their demands or problems.
- Analysis: already with the feedback data from your customers, analyze what could be the best way to resolve doubts.
- Troubleshooting: No matter what kind of problem the user has had, this is the phase where it gets fixed. You must take into account ‘the what’ (what problem there is) as well as ‘the how’ (how to solve it). Something very important to consider at this stage is that, normally, clients do not get upset because you make mistakes, as long as they see that your business and staff are willing to solve them as soon as possible.
- Completion – At this final stage, you need to confirm that the issue has been resolved and that you are satisfied with the resolution. In addition, there must be a dismissal process following an established protocol. At this point, satisfaction surveys about the problem resolution process can be entered.
- Post-contact follow-up: It is always a good idea to write to your customers even when their problem has been solved. We recommend doing it after the process is finished. Yes, this contact should happen even if the conversation ended well. Ask them how they are or how they felt about the offered solution. They will feel valued and you can reinforce that the resolution was successful or get more information. In addition, they will believe that their problem was important and that they are not just a transaction for your business.
Tips for applying the customer service process in your online store
Customer service in a can be the determinant to be a success or fail. Although you should focus on the quality of your products, marketing and customer loyalty; Without good customer support, all your efforts in other areas could be in vain.
Take into account the customer service process to deal with any complaints or problems and if you still have some doubts about how to apply it to your e-commerce business, do not panic! Here are some aspects that will make your life a little easier.
According to Price Water House Coopers, consumers consider these when it comes to customer service in a digital business:
- Speed: quick fixes
- Convenience: it is easy to contact the business
- Utility: problems are solved through various help channels
- Kindness: respectful and attentive treatment
Although offering close customer service in an online store may seem like a challenge, it actually also has many advantages that you can take advantage of. We recommend using technological tools to respond actively and even immediately to your customers.
Use these channels to offer good customer service:
live chat
75% of consumers prefer to use chat over the phone, especially younger generations who shop online. However, many others believe that bot responses are impersonal, so if you use bots, you’ll want to make sure issues are resolved quickly and vigorously.
This is a very common channel used by companies of all sizes. On the one hand, it has some advantages, since the response is not expected to be immediate. To implement an email marketing strategy, we recommend having templates to give fast and consistent attention, which always has the same tone, but, at the same time, can be customized to the problem of each user.
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Social networks
Many online shoppers, especially millennials and Generation Z expect to be able to receive some form of customer service through social media. However, this has disadvantages such as the difficulty of keeping messages in order, as well as problems receiving sensitive or confidential data.
We recommend using social networks for the first contact and then channeling it to another method such as email or chatbots, or using a management method that allows you to organize messages from various channels in a single tool.
Phone calls
Some of the largest e-commerce companies offer support through phone calls. Through the telephone, an immediate response and much faster resolution of problems can be offered.
Some things we suggest to implement:
Have multiple support channels
As mentioned above, we recommend having multiple ways to contact your customer service agents. Implement chats, email, telephone and contact through social networks.
Create response templates
Good customer service must be consistent. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is through customizable templates. We recommend making multiple versions of the same response so your customers don’t notice that you’re using templates.
These are some of the answers you should write: for shipping problems, for returns, for discounts and to respond when there are products in poor condition.
Offers options for self service
Some customers prefer to solve their own problems before contacting you. You can implement a tab on your social networks, online store or website where you answer the most frequently asked questions. Other more sophisticated options are to implement processes and systems where they can track their shipments, submit complaints or speak with a representative.
Personalize responses
We already mentioned it, but it bears repeating. Personalize the answers with the name of your client, in this way they will feel that they are being taken into account and the impersonal feeling of remote contact will disappear.
Respond quickly to messages and comments on social networks
To gain the trust of your customers, it is always better to have a quick response to positive and negative comments on your social networks. If your clients contacted you through direct messages on your social networks; do not leave them hanging waiting to see if one day you will answer them. Do it quickly and if you don’t usually solve problems through this channel, direct them to the right place to raise their ticket or complaint.
As you can see, the customer service process is extremely important when you become, regardless of the size of your e-commerce business.
Although processes can…
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