In the competitive landscape of e-commerce, customer experience is the linchpin for sustained success. Seamless navigation, personalized interactions, and responsive support not only drive immediate conversions but foster brand loyalty, turning one-time shoppers into lifelong advocates. E-commerce stores that prioritize and optimize customer experience not only differentiate themselves in a crowded market but also establish a foundation for sustained growth and positive word-of-mouth referrals.
What is a good customer service response time?
When a customer reaches out you should aim for a first response time of one hour for emails, 15 minutes for social media messages, 40 seconds for SMS messages, and even less than that for live chat messages.
Why response times are important for customer service teams?
Customers today have high expectations when it comes to customer service. This high bar and expectation has been elevated due global marketplaces like Amazon Prime, besides other local marketplaces such as Myntra, Nykaa, Big Basket, Zomato in India, beginning to offer exceptionally quick response times when it comes to customer service.
Learn more about Smarte Digital Customer Experience Services here.
Here are a few of the reasons why achieving fast response times is such an important goal for your ecommerce business:
1. Customers expect quick response times even more than before:
A Hubspot survey showed that 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. According to Gorgias, 60% of people who need support expect customer support in less than 10 minutes.
2. Faster response times lead to quicker revenue for your store:
There are plenty of scenarios where responding to a customer query within a short time frame can lead to your business making more money. For example, if a question arises on a particular fit or ingredient benefit by a customer, responding to them before they move on is critical to make the sale.
If a customer needs to return a product, prompt customer service encourages them to exchange the product and receive store credit. In instances such as these, fast response times that lead to quick resolutions can directly translate to more or retained revenue.
3. Quick responses can boost customer satisfaction:
Good customer service doesn’t mean that you always have to solve a customer’s issue on the first response. In many cases, simply acknowledging their email and keeping them posted that their issue is in process of getting resolved. Just this communication is enough to drive up customer satisfaction and build trust.
Once you have provided an initial response and acknowledged the customer’s problem, let them know that you’ve assigned their ticket to a representative, and provide them with a time frame for when they can expect a resolution
4. Poor response rates result in loss of customer trust and engagement with your brand:
Poor response times can hurt your brand image and result in significant customer churn if prolonged. Encouraging brand loyalty and return customers is a vital goal for any business, and poor response times can make this goal all the more difficult to reach.
5. Slow response result in frustrated customers and frustrated employees:
Achieving fast response times may seem like a lot of work. Many times, though, slow responses can end up increasing the workload of your customer support team resulting in frustrated customers and employees.
This can lead to numerous support tickets, a choked ticketing queue and exhausted customer support agents. It is important therefore not only to optimize your storefront online to cater to customer queries but also optimize your physical store accordingly to ensure seamless communication online and offline.
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How to reduce customer service response times
For all the reasons listed above, responding to customer service emails in the shortest amount of time possible is ideal. Thankfully, there are many different methods you can use to speed up your response times across all your support channels that don’t require huge investments or shifts.
i. Leverage customer service software – given the size and scale of online retail operations, responding to customer emails done manually is a monumental task. Leveraging, help desk software allows your team members to see and reply to customer queries from any channel – like social media, ecommerce stores, WhatsApp, and SMS – from a single centralized dashboard. You can organize them based on factors such as the date and time received, priority, subject matter, and some other categories.
ii. Utilize customer service automation for 24/7 service: Customer service automation can free up your customer support team significantly during business hours. Setting up an autoresponder allows you to send customers an all-important first response any time you like. Most customer support software allows you to send customers an all important first response anytime you like.
iii. Use scripts and email templates to drive up efficiency: In addition to using an auto-responder to send out an automated first response, one simple way to speed up your reply time is to make use of scripts and email templates. To build your scripts and email templates, identify the most frequently asked questions and craft answers that help bring forth a solution or provide information they seek. Also, look at positive customer feedback and see which answers made customers feel really satisfied and heard. For live customer support channels such as phone calls or live chat, you can create scripts for each FAQ that representatives can follow. Leveraging scripts and templates ensures the team is messaging consistent messaging to your customers with the overall goal to improve customer satisfaction, reduce churn and drive-up repeat purchase rates.
iv. Create a scalable system to categorize and segment priority tickets: Some customer support tickets should take higher priority than others. VIP customers, customers who report fraudulent activity and those with complex queries must be prioritized as this is what will result in boosting efficiency for your customer support team.
v. Launch omnichannel customer support: In a world where Gen Z and Baby Boomers both consume media across devices and platforms besides offline physical retail – ensuring omnichannel presence helps a ton. It helps your business connect with your customers at critical decision points where they need a bit of that push to get to the next step in their decision journey. Setting up multichannel customer support options can also give your response teams quicker access to the requests that they receive, allowing them to organize by priority no matter on which platform the request originates.
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vi. Leverage self-service to reduce tickets! Any time a customer can resolve their issue on their own is a success for your business. Customer self-service support keeps your team worry free and efficient besides preventing a unnecessary support ticket queues. Here are some useful resources you can provide customers:
i. Company blog
ii. Product instructions, how-to’s, and video tutorials
iii. FAQ page
iv. Community forum
v. Dictionaries or glossaries
vi. Case studies
vii. Knowledge base or help center
With Gorgias Automate, you can improve your live chat widget with a self-service flows that let your customers track and manage their orders without any agent interaction. You can also enable a chatbot. Customers can type in their question or comments and the chatbot will pull up your content that matches those keywords.
Learn more on Templates and Tips to respond to Frustrated Customer Emails here.
Smarte Digital Inc. is an ecommerce retention marketing partner for modern DTC brands. We offer exclusive pricing offers for our ecommerce strategy consulting services and our lifecycle marketing services such as email marketing, customer experience management services. Want to migrate from an existing help desk to Gorgias or alternatively embrace Gorgias to automate customer support for your store? As agency partners with Gorgias, we offer the best pricing offers for onboarding and migration managed services.
We are also offering a free martech stack audit for Q1 2024. In order, to identify gaps in your tech stack, automate your customer services and optimize your martech stack now. Let’s chat. Strengthen your foundational retention strategy now for growth, book a free 30 min discovery call with us at https://smartedigital/contact-us.
