Suggested Standardization for eCommerce Customer Service

May 10, 2016/ David Lampe /

Consumer Expectations Set the Standard for eCommerce Merchants’ Policies

The basic principles governing customer service haven’t changed significantly over the years. Friendliness, speed, efficiency and reliability are just as highly valued now as always. However, while the principles of customer service remain static, consumer expectations do not.

The current ‘Age of Customer,’ rising from an expectation of instant gratification, has forced businesses to change the way they engage with their customers.

Consumers’ heightened expectations must now serve as the standard for ecommerce customer service.

Brick-and-Mortar Norms Replaced with Tech-Driven Consumer Demands

The pillars of customer service developed over several centuries between sellers and buyers in the brick-and-mortar realm. When technological advances brought us into the age of ecommerce, those basic ideas morphed to the new environment with limited success.

In general, there seems to be more dissatisfaction than satisfaction. That’s because new technologies have ushered in a new set of norms, and current consumer demands have made old standards insufficient.

It’s easy to summarize the new ecommerce customer service expectations with a single consumer preference: instant gratification.

The invention of the internet created a sense of entitlement among consumers, as well as a disregard for brand loyalty. Merchants who are unable to appease these new shoppers will fall to the competition.

 Using Consumer Preferences to Create New Standards

The desire for instant gratification has done away with brand loyalty. When consumers’ needs aren’t met, shoppers will simply move on to the next site that has what they are looking for.

The new standards for customer service have proven difficult for many merchants to adhere to. However, in order to maintain sustainability and longevity, merchants need to accept these realities, reevaluate the ROI, and make the necessary changes.

1. Be Responsive to Social Media

Social media serves as an incredibly powerful disruptor in terms of changing the dynamics of the merchant-consumer relationship. With social media, everyone has a global platform with a potential audience of millions. Consumers feel more empowered than ever to talk about their experiences with poor customer service, and other consumers are listening.

The White House Office of Consumer Affairs offers these figures as a glaring highlight of the impact negative word-of-mouth can have:

• It takes 12 positive experiences to make up for just one negative experience.
• After a negative customer experience, the average consumer will tell 8-16 people.
• After a positive customer experience, the average consumer will only tell 4-6 people.

Allowing customer satisfaction to fall by the wayside can quickly evolve into a PR disaster.

Practical Implementation

• Post regular updates to all of the social media platforms of which you take advantage.
• Check for new comments and messages every day.
• Sign up for notifications to inform you of new interactions, or to let you know if anyone mentioned your organization in a comment.
• Reply to messages promptly.
• Avoid sarcasm, as well as generational or regional humor. While a merchant might believe that he or she interacts in a friendly, personal manner, the customer might not see it that way.

2. Provide Continuous Live Support

Our culture of instant gratification, inspired by the newfound convenience of the digital age, means consumers want an answer to their problems immediately. Consumers expect to find the information they need quickly, without navigating a labyrinth of menus and impersonal prompts generated by an IVR.

In the last year, 67% of customers have hung up the phone out of frustration at the fact that they could not talk to a real person. Additionally, 75% of customers believe it takes too long to reach a live agent. Those customers expect to be able to reach a human on the other end of the line, and they want to do so within two minutes or less.

A similar principle holds true for text communication as well. Between 2008 and 2015, customers’ expectation for email and social media response time dropped from six hours to just one hour.

The most frequently requested improvement to the customer experience was better human service. Therefore, merchants have to be ready to provide the level of effective human engagement their customers demand.

Practical Implementation

• Do not rely on IVR or voicemail.
• Employ an after-hours call center to ensure non-stop human engagements.
• Answer the phone within six rings.
• Don’t make wait times for customers’ phone calls longer than two minutes.
• Take advantage of live chat.
• Respond to all emails and social media messages within the first hour after receiving them.

3. Offer High-Quality Human Engagement

It is important to note that poor human service is no better than tech-driven customer service. Customers expect services to not only be fast, but also efficient and friendly.

Despite 78% of consumers saying that competent service reps are an integral part of a happy customer experience, agents failed to answer half of their customers’ questions.

Many customers are under the impression that businesses maintain a comprehensive database which can instantly provide the answer to any question, for example stock quantities, delivery dates to any destination, and records of every transaction. In short, consumers are not willing to accept excuses if customer service representatives don’t have the answers they seek.

Round-the-clock service administered by live humans will not be sufficient if the individuals providing that service are not competent or properly trained.

Practical Implementation

• Set standards for customer experiences and enforce them consistently.
• Ensure that staff members are trained thoroughly and given all of the information they will need to effectively assist customers.
• Perform regular reviews to ensure employees know how to assist customers effectively.
• Provide agents with communication logs, buying habits, preferences and any other information for each customer who calls. This will help create a more personalized, unique experience.

4. Be Mobile-Friendly

More people now use mobile devices than desktop devices, and that shift affects consumers’ perception of service quality. This is especially true in newer, still developing consumer markets like China and India, where mobile device ownership drastically outpaces desktop ownership.

For example, according to Ecommerce News, nearly 80% of Chinese consumers make at least 25% of their consumer purchases (counting both brick-and-mortar and ecommerce) via mobile devices. At the same time, China and India are the two countries in which consumers are most likely to buy from international sellers if it is faster than purchasing domestically.

Developments in consumer technology, coupled with rising economic prospects around the world, offer a tremendous opportunity for ecommerce merchants. However, with the entire World Wide Web open for shoppers to explore, these new opportunities place even greater attention on customer expectations than ever before.

Practical Implementation

• Create a mobile-friendly website.
• Be sure the site functions intuitively and effectively from a variety of different devices.
• Do not use autocorrect for customers’ information fields.
• Use dropdown menus when possible to limit the amount of typing on mobile devices.
• Ensure buttons are large enough to eliminate the challenge of “fat fingers.”
• Consider introducing a shopping app to improve customer retention.

5. Focus on Customer Retention

Loyal, repeat customers are ultimately worth ten times the cost of their first purchase. It’s important that merchants focus not just on converting shoppers, but turning them into regular, repeat customers.

More than 90% of displeased customers will not willingly do business with the same merchant again. That statistic, coupled with another, shows the potential damage to customer retention: only 4% of dissatisfied customers voice their concerns to the merchant. That means for every complaint a merchant hears, there are another 25 they don’t hear.

However, 70% of dissatisfied customers will return as repeat buyers if the merchant resolves a complaint in their favor. Merchants can’t rely on brand loyalty or scarcity to keep customers coming back. Instead, the key to retaining customers is to keep them happy.

Remember that when it comes to customer service, perception is reality. If customers believe they’ve been slighted, they will have no problem complaining about the matter online where other potential customers will listen. With 58% of Americans performing research on a product before purchasing, merchants have no choice but to take their reputation seriously.

Practical Implementation

• Follow up with customers after the initial purchase, as well as after any subsequent communication—never let the customer be the last one to speak.
• Maintain a high-touch, friendly relationship with your customers.
• Offer incentives for repeat customers, such as coupons or a loyalty program.

7. Meet Order Fulfilment and Delivery Demands

From the consumer’s perspective, it’s no surprise that the best shipping is free shipping.

Shipping costs were once a universally accepted component of ecommerce. Now, however, major retailers like Zappos, Amazon and Newegg have challenged that reality. Rather than view discounted shipping as an added bonus or special offer, consumers now expect merchants to offer some form of free or reduced-cost shipping on all orders.

Additionally, instant gratification has led shoppers to expect prompt delivery, sometimes calculating arrival times in a matter of hours. For example, Amazon promises one-hour delivery on more than 25,000 items. In most situations, this service is offered free of charge.

Services such as these offered by mega companies present obvious challenges for smaller businesses who hope to compete.

Practical Implementation

• Provide the most rapid delivery options possible.
• Offer free shipping as an incentive for customers to complete transactions.
• Use tracking to give customers an immediate sense of security and confidence.
• Use delivery confirmation to ensure that the package arrives at the correct address.

8. Take an Omni-Channel Approach

In many cases, current customers will access a business from multiple different channels before finally completing their transaction. Thanks to convenient technologies like Google and Siri, customers have a trained expectation that all information be instantly recallable.

Customers might want to begin shopping via phone, but then switch to a tablet in order to enter their payment information. Creating an omni-channel environment allows customers to move seamlessly from one device to another without missing a step. This drives conversion, reduces friction and discourages shopping cart abandonment.

Practical Implementation

• Create a strategy that takes a holistic view of all aspects of the business.
• Integrate all physical, desktop and mobile channels to give customers a frictionless shopping experience.
• Deliver consistent experiences from one platform to the next.
• Allow customers to employ multiple communication channels simultaneously and interchangeably.

The New Standard for Ecommerce

At one point, merchants might have been able to work with relatively loose attention to standards and customer expectations. Now, however, merchants absolutely need to be tuned-in to what their customers are thinking as they work through the customer experience.

Our society is deeply entrenched in the ‘Age of the Consumer,’ meaning customer expectations of merchants constitute a new standard of quality for the ecommerce environment.

Last Update: May 11, 2016