The Many Benefits of Customer Service and Support for Ecommerce Brands

Did you know that 78% of consumers will do business with a brand again, even after a mistake, if the company’s customer service is excellent?

What’s in it for you and your ecommerce brand if you offer dedicated, thoughtful, and automated customer support? Find out updated statistics + unique benefits of customer service and support in our post below.

There’s an inside joke that many people create a Twitter handle ONLY to complain about poor customer service.

There’s no denying that your eye will linger longer on negative reviews compared to many more positive reviews, and poorly handled complaints (don’t get us started on ignored) will immediately lead to drop-offs. 

Where will they go next? Usually to your competitor.

Who with their solid customer service strategy will have them coming back for more. 

Repeatedly. 

All ecommerce brands run on similar models- inventory or marketplace. Products are often also very similar; currently, wellness products are trending.

What most ecommerce companies differ on is tech – how the website is coded (design, functionality) & most importantly, the service they provide. 

Money spent on creating the website, manufacturing products, and employing your marketing team (who spend money on ads) goes down the drain if you can’t convert a semi-interested customer into purchasing. 

If you have poor customer service, even if you convert them, it can keep them from coming back.

Customers have become informed of their rights and options and see no issue in taking even a small issue and criticizing it on social media- even one negative review poorly handled leads to loss of revenue and brand reputation. 

Many alternative brands exist- leading to a loss of ROI on ads if you don’t deliver till the end of the funnel – which is no longer considered the traditional end anyway. 

These reasons show how important it is to offer a well-rounded customer support and strategy across mediums, 24×7.

Need more convincing?

Let’s Talk Numbers

You have a good product. So what?

What your customers remember is how you treated them.

52% of consumers say they have made an additional purchase from a company after a positive customer service experience.

You can increase your revenue by 35% if you provide proactive, personalized customer support– 4-8% more than your competitors!

In a customer support survey by Hubspot, 90% of leaders reported that customer expectations have increased to an all-time high.

According to Microsoft, 96% of consumers say customer service is an important factor in their choice of loyalty to a brand.

If their expectations are not met, or your brand delivers inconsistent customer support, 58% of customers show little hesitation in moving on to your competitor.

33% of them abandoned loyalty because personalization was missing.

72% of consumers expect the agent to “know who they are and what they have purchased and have insights into their previous engagements when contacting customer support.”

How can these statistics translate into success for your brand?

Benefits of Customer Service and Support

If you’re looking to create a strategy from scratch, don’t forget to read this section in our post- What is Ecommerce Customer Service and Support.

It offers many options that will help you pick out your strategy-

• Offering omnichannel support
• Optimising with data on your customers
• Offering personalised support and communication
• Using a single helpdesk to track and respond to all queries for seamless brand-customer communication
• etc

And in turn, all of these can lead to the below benefits.

Increased Customer Retention

Attracting a new customer can be 6-7 times more expensive than retaining an old one. Read that again.

So when your internal ad and marketing teams have done their best to get customers on to the site- your customer service and support HAVE TO do their best to ensure they can navigate your store.

You can do that by working on your UX AND prompting them with helpful navigation pointers through a live chat widget. 

If they have added something to their cart but haven’t finished checking out, be ready to prompt them with clarification, or share positive product testimonials, to convince them to purchase. 

You can do this via a live chat widget OR respond within a minute to their query on any social media page your brand is on. 

Don’t forget post-purchase support. For example, sending delivery updates or timely reminders to refill- all of this will help in retaining them.

Seamless Omnichannel Brand Reputation

Want to see how a brand’s reputation gets battered in merely a few hours?

Keep an eye out for Twitter trends- you will see how customer activism can lead to a huge loss in brand reputation.

Today, Tik Toks that review a brand’s customer support go viral in hours. 

What’s the upside? Stories of good customer support have it in them to go viral too.

Don’t discount word of mouth- a good shopping experience from your brand will influence friends, family, peers, and colleagues and bring in more sales.

These days a brand has to be present across multiple mediums and often deal with the same query on different channels.

Make sure your brand enables a seamless, unified experience across all touchpoints. Again, you can do this successfully through a single helpdesk.

Plus points if they’re optimised for ecommerce brands!

Increased Confidence = More Sales

An easy and very obvious benefit of customer service and support is that when your customer sees you value their presence, they will trust your brand more. 

Even if you make a mistake. 

Customers are far more likely to forgive and forget and buy again from you if you make them feel confident you are there for them throughout their consideration AND post-purchase journey.

And if your ecommerce brand offers customer service and support round the clock, then expect sales in all hours of the day and night!

CSAT score

CSAT or Customer Satisfaction Score measures how happy your customers are with a purchase or interaction.

Measuring it can require you to run a simple survey (Are you satisfied with your purchase?), or you can look at different metrics like repeat rate, positive versus negative reviews, or evaluate their responses. 

Choosing a good helpdesk built for ecommerce brands will help make this process easy and automate it- so you put more effort into running the business!

Get Unique Customer Data

How often do your customers buy from you in a month or a year?

Which tier city customers make up more of your customer share?

Are they likely to buy on the weekends or weekdays?

Gathering unique insights is one of the many benefits of customer service and support to help you target better. Think more ROAS from your marketing activities, producing focused content- your strategy will get better results when you can flesh out your customers in detail. 

Collect each customer’s interaction with your brand through a single help desk to reduce confusion and overwhelm!

Reduced abandoned cart

Offering support by clarifying doubts about shipping, delivery dates, and available discount offers will help reduce drop-offs. 

Giving reassurance across channels like your website, chat apps, or social media, especially through sharing testimonials or expert guidance, will also help you achieve more sales.

The hard part is already done- they’re on your website and seriously considering purchasing from you- all you need to do is convince them that their initial decision was a good one, and they can count on you for support!

Reduce Returns and COD Failure Rate

Did you know that using SMS, messenger, DMS, or even live chat to reconfirm orders and phone numbers has decreased return and COD failure rates?

Taking that extra step through your help desk and sending automated notifications can be key to increasing your sales and reducing the load on your logistics by preventing these errors.

Scaling Rapidly Without Increasing Overhead Costs

Planning a sale? Getting a series B investment?

With automated customer support via live chat and ecommerce help desk, you can deliver customer service and support irrespective of having a small CX team. 

Your marketing spending and efforts are primed for success and more sales, no matter a sudden rush of traffic or planned PR activities!

Using a chatbot-powered live chat widget created for ecommerce brands, you can deliver support consistently at scale because 70% of all queries can be answered by simply checking with your back-end data.

This way, your core CX team can concentrate on resolving high human interactions and feel more empowered in their responsibilities.

LimeChat- An Omnichannel Help Desk Uniquely Made for ECommerce Brands

Our human-level AI is our signature chatbot made for ecommerce brands only.

Our attention to how the chatbot learns and answers queries specific to the ecommerce industry has led to us empowering 125+ D2C brands through conversational marketing- purely through word of mouth.

Are you looking for Shopify ecommerce service providers? We have 20+ customizable templates optimized for eCommerce with strong integration with Shopify apps.

Our Smart Agent Escalation can proactively identify unhappy customers and connect them with human agents, whereas our retention campaigns have helped boost retention by over 30% with proactive customer support. 

Ready to give us a try? Book a demo here, and we’ll love to have you set up immediately- yes, faster than you expect!

Want to know more about how has customer support evolved + the impact of AI? Check it out here!

This post is the second in our Masterclass series on Ecommerce Customer Support & Service, where we go through an in-depth understanding of the current expectations and strategies some of the best D2C brands use and how to execute them in simple, actionable ways.