With just a few clicks, online shoppers have a world of choices. Admit it or not, most online and retail services and products tend to serve the same market or offer similar solutions. When it comes to finding alternatives, customers don’t really have a small field to choose from. So how do you stand out? Here’s the answer: It’s in how you assist customers that you can differentiate your retail brand.
Mediocre online retail customer service? A flat no. Here’s why:
- Frustrated customers can easily share their negative experiences with others. This can impact how potential customers see your brand. In fact, 86% won’t do business with a company with negative reviews.
- Without a positive and personalized touch, online retail shoppers feel like they’re just another number and they don’t matter to the business.
- If they’re left feeling frustrated, clicking away and browsing the web for alternatives can be a breeze.
Treat this article as a quickstart guide in your journey to online retail support. We’ll guide you with the strategies you need to elevate your customer service game and build lasting customer relationships for your online business.
First things first: definition of key terms
Before we move any further, it’s important to align on what a few key terms mean. These will appear numerous times as you go through this article.
What is retail service?
Retail service refers to the processes involved in selling goods or services to individual consumers.
What is a retail customer?
A retail customer is an individual who purchases goods or services from a retail establishment. Therefore, they’re the end consumers of products and services offered by retailers.
What is retail support or what is retail customer service?
Retail support is customer service in the retail environment. This refers to the assistance provided by retailers to their customers before (answering customer inquiries or sharing product information), during (resolving issues or complaints), and after a purchase (processing returns or exchanges, and offering technical support).
For this blog, we’ll take everything mentioned online. In short, this is all about online retail customer service. Its market share is getting bigger and is projected to reach USD 8.48 trillion by 2029
Strategy #1: Understand your customers
When it comes to servicing the retail customer, the first step is understanding your customers. As long as you are aware of what your customers are looking for, you can tailor your service to meet their expectations. But the big question is this: how do you truly understand them?
Identify your target market
This goes beyond basic demographics like age and physical location though. Analyze even their psychographics (interests and lifestyles), and behavioral data (website interactions and purchase intent in adding items to carts and abandoning carts) so you can build a clearer picture of who you’re serving.
Create customer personas
After collecting that information, we enter the second part of this strategy—crafting detailed customer personas. The truth is, 60% of companies with customer personas are more profitable. Personas, in a nutshell, are fictional characters that represent your ideal customer. Marketing and sales teams
Here are some simple tips on how to build them:
- Ground them in a comprehensive mix of qualitative and quantitative customer data.
- Provide a descriptive name and photo to make the persona feel human. Then outline details like age, location, job, family status, income level, interests, values, goals, challenges, objections, and shopping preferences.
- Map out their goals, thought processes, potential stumbling blocks, and touchpoints.
Extract insights from customer feedback
Mine customer feedback so your online retailer support never loses touch with your audience’s evolving expectations. Regularly gather data through customer surveys, reviews, support interactions, and social listening. But don’t stop there—dedicate time to analyze this qualitative data to extract key themes like friction points that limit customer satisfaction.
Never forget: understanding your customers is an ongoing commitment. Revisiting personas and continually studying customer feedback guarantees your online retail service stays on top of ever-evolving customer preferences.
Strategy #2: Build a customer-centric culture
Exceptional customer service isn’t a one-person show. Even in online retail, making your customer a top priority should be the main focus across your whole company. If this mindset thrives within the organizational culture, it becomes the pillar of a customer-centric environment. Here are some reminders:
Empower your team
Start with your customer service team. Train them to understand customer needs, how to communicate well, and how to solve problems. And that’s not all—keep coaching them and offer refresher courses so their skills keep improving.
Give them tools like help desks to customize service for each customer situation. That’s more efficient than sticking to scripts. Truth is, connecting is more important than following scripts. Provide your employees with an environment where they can develop empathy for your customers.
Fostering empathy and rewarding excellence
- Consider rotating employees through different departments like marketing so they can get a better understanding of what customers go through in these departments. The more personal, the easier to anticipate customer needs.
- Organize workshops where service reps can role-play customer scenarios and learn more about customer frustrations and expectations.
- Include customer satisfaction scores as a part of employee reviews and pay. This accountability emphasizes how crucial taking care of customers is.
- Celebrate employees who go above and beyond for customers. Recognize them publicly through things like bonuses, awards, or promotions. This shows that exceptional customer service really matters. Moreover, these organizations are 12 times more likely to achieve strong business outcomes
Strategy #3: Streamline communication channels
In today’s fast-paced world, convenience is king. So, when it comes to online retail support services, streamlining communication channels is of utmost importance. Customers want support in whatever way is easiest for them, and through the channels they prefer. In fact, 90% of consumers expect an online portal for customer service.
Here’s how you can make this happen:
Offering multi-channel support
Don’t make your customers jump through hoops to reach you, so stop sticking to one method like email or phone. Over 57% of consumers prefer digital media like email over voice-based support. Instead, leverage different platforms allowing customers to choose how to interact—social media, chat, SMS text, and self-service knowledge bases. The more choices, the better you can cater to different preferences.
Implementing live chat
Live chat is a must-have for providing instant assistance. Customers can get help resolving issues in real time without waiting on hold or for email responses. It can actually catch hesitant shoppers before they abandon their carts, providing instant support and potentially securing the sale.
Pro tip: Have more knowledgeable agents available during peak hours.
Optimizing response times
Nobody likes waiting for a reply when they have a question or concern. Set clear response time targets for every channel and monitor these regularly. You can also explore tools like auto-responders for basic information or FAQs to acknowledge inquiries while you work on a response.
Strategy #4: Personalize the customer experience
The one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it when it comes to earning customer loyalty of online shoppers. It gets easily drowned out by the competition. But with a personalized experience, you demonstrate that you value your customers not just mere transactions.
So how do you make each customer feel like your only customer?
- Leverage data to tailor interactions. Have a data-driven approach. Data is the fuel that powers personalization. Use of all the customer information —from purchase histories and browsing behaviors to geographic locations and communication preferences. For example, if a customer always browses your site’s sales from their mobile device in the evenings, you can time promotional emails and push notifications according to when they’re most likely to engage.
- One of the biggest opportunities for personalization is customized product recommendations. Move over, generic sales pitches. 49% of customers purchased items they didn’t intend to buy after receiving personalized recommendations from brands. Leverage algorithms that analyze individual buyer preferences, items they’ve “wishlist-ed” or added to their carts, and even lifestyle indicators. Displaying hyper-relevant product assortments on your website, in emails, and even retargeting ads, directly increases sales by putting the right products in front of the right customers at the ideal moments. That’s upselling and cross-selling at its best!
- Be consistent. Every time you communicate, be personal. Use customer names and data like locations or birthdates across your messages. You can even automate custom messages by setting up triggers based on specific actions, like a cart abandonment email or win-back campaign for lapsed customers.
Key takeaway: delivering true one-to-one personalization at scale requires both human insights and sophisticated technology working cohesively.
Strategy #5: Resolve issues effectively
No matter how excellent your online products are, customer issues are inevitable in online retail.
- Say a customer received the wrong item they didn’t order due to a warehouse fulfillment error.
- Or perhaps their delivery was severely delayed because of a logistical error.
How you handle those problems, however, can make or break customer loyalty. Done effectively, it can turn frustrations into positive experiences that reinforce trust in your brand. Here’s how:
1. Empower your frontline staff
Your customer service representatives are the face of your brand. So, when things go wrong-they’re most affected. Empower them to be true problem-solvers by providing the proper authority, resources, and mindset.
Let them apply their own situational judgment rather than being bound to rigid scripts. Allow them to proactively offer resolutions like refunds, credits, or bonus perks without needing multi-level approval. Having this ownership instills confidence.
Also, give your online retailers support team with updated knowledge to accelerate their research and solutions.
2. Handle complaints with empathy and care
The first thing to remember when talking about complaints: They’re not curse words, just “especially packaged valuable feedback”.
So, train your support team to not take them personally and validate customer’s frustrations. But of course, you should sort out which issues need to be escalated. Simply turn negativity as an opportunity to underscore your commitment to service.
3. Always follow up to ensure satisfaction
Don’t consider a case closed until confirming with customers that they’re fully satisfied with the resolution. Set a follow-up procedure like transactional satisfaction surveys, or phone check-ins for higher-severity issues.
Additionally, carefully analyze patterns of recurring issues and re-evaluate root causes and resolutions. Incorporate feedback into improving policies, product enhancements, and even staff training.
Strategy #6: Embrace innovation
In the dynamic world of online retail, complacency is a surefire path to being obsolete. Continuous innovation and optimization are fundamental for delivering customer service that keeps your brand ahead of the curve.
So, embracing new technologies, trends, and feedback loops allows you to constantly evolve experiences to meet rising customer expectations.
How embracing relentless innovation becomes your ally?
Investing in transformative technologies
Don’t just adopt new technologies for innovation’s sake—carefully evaluate solutions based on their ability to directly enhance the customer experience. AI, chatbots, automation, and more can streamline processes and boost efficiencies.
For example, chatbots can provide instantaneous self-service for common requests like order status updates or FAQs. AI-powered analytics can analyze sentiment across surveys, reviews, emails, and more to proactively see specific needs and identify sources of friction before they become systemic issues. According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023, 72% prioritizes expanding AI and chatbots across the customer experience.
Staying ahead of evolving customer trends
Staying stagnant is a recipe for customer service mediocrity—and we don’t want mediocre customer service. What customers expect is for you to be always at par with new societal and technological norms. Maintain monitoring shifts in behaviors and preferences across your industry.
Join professional communities, attend events, and follow influential voices to keep a pulse on burgeoning trends before they become mainstream requirements.
Incorporating the voice of the customer
Perhaps the most valuable source of innovation comes directly from your customer base. Regularly solicit and analyze feedback to identify experience gaps and areas for service enhancements.
Use surveys, social listening, crowdsourcing campaigns, and other methods to understand shifting needs and desired new offerings. Leverage user experience studies and prototype testing to validate ideas before investing in full solutions.
And when all possible inputs are in? Close the loop by communicating how customer feedback directly impacts your product roadmap and service improvements.
Strategy #7: Measure success
You can’t effectively manage what you don’t measure. Implementing a robust measurement system is critical for understanding the efficacy of your online retail customer service.
Here’s how to build a culture of data-driven customer service excellence:
Setting customer service KPIs
Setting clear KPIs is like setting up a target. It gives you a defined direction and lets you gauge how well your customer service team is hitting the mark. Common service KPIs include:
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) – Ratings of service experience quality
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Likelihood of customer to recommend your brand
- Response Times – Average speed of response across channels like email, chat, phone
- First Contact Resolution (FCR): Measures the percentage of issues resolved on the first interaction.
- Resolution Rate – Percentage of cases resolved on the first interaction
Then what will you do with your set metrics?
Implementing measurement tools to analyze the metrics
By analyzing your KPIs, you can uncover areas where your customer service shines and pinpoint opportunities for improvement. Leverage integrated helpdesk platforms, surveying tools, call tracking software, and other solutions to systematically capture KPI data across every customer touchpoint.
Just those data are clean, complete, and consistent by standardizing reporting practices. Also, it’s a great practice that you establish clear guidelines for your online retail sales associate and service agents on properly logging resolutions, conversation details, and customer ratings.
Celebrating milestones and achievements
Finally, if you hit your target: celebrate. Not alone but with your service team. While KPIs illuminate areas requiring more focus, it’s equally important to celebrate successes and motivate continuous progress. Publicly recognize teams or individuals who exceed benchmarks through bonuses, shout-outs, or awards.
Attract and retain online shoppers with your customer service
The magic trick to differ from others in the competitive online retail landscape? Provide exceptional customer service. That’s your ticket to attracting online shoppers and retaining them into loyal customers.
By implementing the online retail customer service strategies above, you’ve equipped yourself with the techniques to transform your one-time shoppers to your regulars. A few benefits to your online business:
- happy customers lead to positive reviews, repeat purchases, and a boost in customer lifetime value (CLTV)
- minimize customer churn and retain customers
- organic growth and increased sales
So, what are you waiting for? If you need exceptional customer service in the online retail industry, check out the LTVplus team. We understand that every client interaction is an opportunity. Book a free call and discover fast, efficient, and scalable retail customer service.
