Online Customer Service: Make it a Top Priority

Imagine this scenario: You have booked a highly-rated restaurant for your special Sunday brunch. You walk into the restaurant, and it takes half-an-hour for the waiter to seat you at a table. You then wait for another half-an-hour before the waiter arrives to take your order. How would you rate the experience?

Even if the food was delicious, would you return to the place? According to recent market studies by New Voice Media, 51% of customers will never do business with a company after just one bad experience.

Customer service is like the icing on the cake. You may have a snazzy product, a brilliant marketing campaign, but without excellent customer service to back it up, your business will fail to deliver. It’s what makes customers seek your brand again and again.

Customer service is as important as offering a great product or service. If you aren't prioritising online customer service, it's time to take action. Lousy customer service not only makes you miss out on sales but can even tarnish your brand image.

Why Should You Prioritise Online Customer Service as a Small Business Owner?

• One of the biggest benefits of online selling is that it has levelled the playing field. Today, it’s possible for small businesses to compete for head-on with the biggest corporations in the world, thanks to digital marketing and online selling.
• The biggest hurdle for small businesses is that they don't have the deep pockets and enormous resources available with the big guys. This is where excellent customer service comes into the picture.
• Today's customers are no longer satisfied with a bland buying experience. They are seeking highly personalised and individual shopping experiences. It's not just about buying a product. Instead, it's all about the entire customer buying journey.
• In the highly competitive business world of today, excellent customer service is what makes your brand stand out and win customer loyalty. With your competitor, just a Google search away, you need to keep your customer happy and extremely satisfied to keep them coming back again and again.
• As Maya Angelou very wisely said, “People will forget what you said to them, what you did for them, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” While she may not have used those words to represent online customer experience, it very well applies to this scenario. The customer experience is the key distinguishing factor that makes your brand stand out among dozens of other similar brands on the market.
• Customer service is not just important, but you have to prioritise it.

Let’s explore the top reasons why small businesses should make online customer service a top priority.

• It increases revenue – If you excel at customer service, people will be willing to pay extra for your products/services. According to a study by American Express, customers are willing to pay 17% extra on businesses with excellent customer service.
• It builds customer loyalty – With similar products and services available by the dozen in the market, you need to provide your customers with an extra reason to choose your brand over others. This is where customer service comes into play. By providing your target audience with personalised online customer service, you appeal to them and seal their loyalty to your brand.
• It helps acquire new customers – The best marketing is the one that you don’t do. When you enthral your customers with excellent customer service, they are likely to recommend your business to their friends, family and even on their social media pages. 69% of customers are likely to recommend a brand after a positive experience. This is great word-of-mouth marketing, making it easy to acquire new customers.
• Stand out from your competitors – You may offer the same product/service at the same price as your competitor. But, you have a better chance of capturing the market and winning new customers by providing a standout experience.
• Gain useful insights – Customer service is not just beneficial to the customer. It's a two-way street. Good customer service involves listening to feedback. It helps you understand the pain points of your product/service. Using this feedback, you can make the right changes to better serve them. This enables you to improve your product/service.
• Build a happy and satisfied customer base – Happy customers are key for a positive brand image. In today's era of online reviews, it's easy to unravel your brand image with negative reviews. When you prioritise customer service, you build a tribe of happy and satisfied customers who have got your back.
• Reduce customer churn – Customer churn is the number of customers who leave your brand after making a single purchase. Churn is an excellent metric to measure customer satisfaction. While it’s true that products have flaws, services have issues, by offering a seamless customer experience – before, during and after-sales – you can keep your customers happy. It helps to prevent them from switching to a competitor.

Now that we've seen the top benefits of prioritising online customer service let's take a look at expert tips to nail online customer service right.

6 Smart Tips for Small Businesses to Knock Online Customer Service Out of the Park

Online customer service is crucial to the growth of any business. If you don’t wow your customers with an exceptional experience, they will likely switch to another brand that offers them individualised attention.

Here we share some of the best tips to improve online customer support, win customer satisfaction and loyalty, and boost your revenues.

#1: Ensure Real-Time Customer Support via Live-Chat

Live-chat is one of the most popular ways to provide 24x7 support assistance to your customers. Studies reveal that nearly 1 in 2 people (46%) prefer live-chat customer support compared to 16% who prefer customer service via social media and 29% who prefer support via email.

Here are the benefits of implementing live-chat customer support on your site/app:

• Faster resolution – Live-chat helps to resolve customer issues quickly, thereby reducing wait times significantly. This helps in eliminating customer drop-outs, thereby increasing sales.
• Proactive conversations – Live-chat helps your customer service team reach out to potential customers proactively, offering them guidance at specific stages. This helps to resolve customer doubts quickly, helping them make purchase decisions faster.

#2: Provide a Seamless Omnichannel Customer Experience

Today, customers connect with businesses via several channels – social media, Whatsapp, mobile app, website, physical store, contact centre, etc. You need to provide the best first impression to your customers, irrespective of the channel they use.

Streamlining all customer interactions across channels helps to offer a seamless, personalised experience to each customer. Here are some tips for building an omnichannel customer experience:

• Understand the customer journey – You need to distinguish between customers. New customers would like to know more about your products, whereas repeat customers would like to know what's new. Providing an individualised experience, irrespective of the channel used by the customer help in customer retention.
• Leverage social media for the best customer experience – Listen to customer concerns on social media and respond quickly. Keep a watch out for your brand mentions and proactively offer assistance and support to customers, even before they ask for it.

#3: Work on your FAQ and Help Pages

FAQ pages are the first thing that a customer looks for when they have troubles. Improve your FAQ pages to provide detailed and precise answers to all common customer issues. This helps to reduce the effort needed by the customer. If they can find the solution for what they are looking for quickly, they don't have to take any extra steps to reach out to you.

A detailed FAQ and Help section improves customer satisfaction. Here are some tips to boost the efficiency of your FAQ pages:

• Keep on updating it to include questions that are repeatedly asked by customers.
• Offer help sections on familiar topics like how to return an item, process refunds, etc.

A well-written FAQ page builds customer trust in your brand, helping them feel confident to go ahead with their purchase decisions.

#4: Work on your Team’s Customer Service Skills

The right customer service team can make or break a sale. Even if you have the best products, a poor and misinformed customer service team will not drive sales. Here are the qualities to build in your online customer service team:

• Knowledgeable – Ensure that your customer support team is up-to-date with your products, services and other info that customers need.
• Empathetic and Patient – At the end of the day, your customers want to feel respected and valued. Your customer service team must be equipped to make each customer feel valued and important.
• Clear Communication – It's not just about good language skills. It's about the ability to listen and comprehend what the customer needs and present the solution clearly.

#5: Ask for Customer Feedback and Learn from It

Customer feedback is a great learning experience. It’s an honest way to evaluate whether you’re meeting customer expectations and learn about your customer needs. You can gather customer feedback using the following methods:

• Ask customers to fill out a product/service survey. You can ask them for honest opinions on how they feel about the product, what could be improved, what they’re looking for, etc. You can even provide small incentives like a 5% discount on the next purchase for filling out these surveys.
• Ask for product reviews, star ratings, etc., to know what they feel about a product/service.

Use the feedback you gather to learn. Pass on the info to the relevant teams and improve your product/service to meet customer expectations.

#6: Invest in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Tool

A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool is a must for businesses of all sizes. It helps you access all customer details in a single place. Every time a customer reaches out to your business, the CRM shows the entire customer journey so far. The customer service representative will see the customer's previous purchases, preferences, troubles they experienced with your product/services, feedback, etc. A customer relationship management tool helps you deliver a seamless and highly customised customer experience.

Final Thoughts

Online customer service is no longer merely a good option to have. It has become mandatory. It doesn't matter whether you own a B2C business, a startup or a B2B company; online customer service is a crucial aspect of the business growth journey.

Stellar online customer support increases customer happiness, boosts your brand image, and ultimately drives sales and revenues. So, use the tips listed here to enhance your small business's online customer service.

Also read:

1) 10 Best Ways to Promote Your Small Business
2) How Many Social Media Sites Can I Promote My Online Business On?
3) Online Business Ideas You Can Start Quickly
4) 8 Online Business Ideas That Could Make You Hit Gold in 2020
5) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

FAQs

Q. Do I have to provide 24 x 7 customer support on social media?

Ans. While 24x7 customer support is a great choice, it can be costly, especially if you’re a small team. So, if you cannot afford 24x7 customer support on social media, what you can do is reply to after-office hour customer messages with an automated reply. A simple message like, "Hey, we're not available now. Our team will get back to you at 9:00 am tomorrow", is a great way to keep customers in the loop. You can also include your email id or other channels where customers can contact you after-office hours.

Q. What is the easiest online customer service support that small businesses can implement?

Ans. Here are the easiest (and cost-effective) online customer support channels that all small businesses can implement quickly:

• FAQ Pages and Help Sections
• Social Media Support
• Email Support
• Whatsapp Support
• Video Tutorials and Online Guides

Q. What are the best practices for an online chat?

Ans. Online-chat is a great way to increase conversions. Here are the best practices to follow:

• Make sure that the online live-chat widget is easy to find. You don't want customers getting frustrated, trying to locate it.
• Make it easy to get the conversation started. Don’t ask customers for unnecessary details like email id, mobile number, etc. Just their name is enough to get the chat started.