Providing proper customer service to your online shoppers

Image by ijmaki from Pixabay

By Henry Brown

If you’ve recently expanded your online efforts to include a retail portion on your website, it’s time to offer proper customer service to anyone who uses your online portal. After all, they’re a big part of your profit margin, and it’s incredibly important to do as much as you can for someone filling an endless virtual basket with as many of your products as they want to.

But how do you go about offering a proper form of customer service to someone you can’t even see? Well, with the ideas below, we hope to help you build up the customer service portion of your online business for bigger and better success in the future.

Offer availability 

Availability is a big thing in the online world. Never before have we been able to stay in contact with other people, places, and organizations in such a hyper vigilant way. The internet never goes down, or goes offline, and it certainly never sleeps! And because of this, you could have customers coming to you at all hours with queries, feedback, and complaints.

Being available at all times means you maintain a constant presence, even if you’re not around. Allowing customers to self support, for example, with FAQ pages and automated return options, ensures you’re around as and when someone needs you.

You might want to set up a ticket support system, (an automated help desk) for the people who shop with you. If someone has something they need to say, regarding their experience or the product they’ve ended up with, a ticket system ensures everyone is seen to, and no one is missed. No more slipping through the cracks, especially if you’re not the one in charge of dealing with customer service.

Offer delivery options

Customer service is all about offering as much as you can to a person after they’ve completed their transaction with you, and that’s why a good part of customer service is all about ensuring the product gets to them.

Delivery needs to be diverse; it needs to be on time, and items need to arrive in good condition, but there also needs to be some choice about how and when a delivery is made. Make sure you offer multiple options to your customers; courier, basic delivery, and try to offer next day, even if only as a premium option that’s part of a membership.

Even forking out for your own delivery service could be of use here. Don’t worry, a delivery option of your own can be budget friendly, as long as you know where to source your company fleet, as well as some cheap lorry insurance, if those are the vehicles (although with a lorry, you’ll probably only need one for a small operation like yours) you choose to invest in.

Proper customer service is hard to perfect, but you can certainly make a good effort by starting with the tips we’ve touched on above. Your ecommerce website deserves to see success!

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

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