Menu Close

The Business of eCommerce Podcast – Delivering Differentiated Customer Service

5 MINUTES TO READ
The Business of eCommerce Podcast – Delivering Differentiated Customer Service

We have talked many times about the need to deliver excellent customer service in the Online world but how do you differentiate yourself in this space.  The answer comes with a manical focus on creating the right helpful content for customers and a service team that is motivated to help not just go through the motions.

Joining us today are

Linda Waters from Learnovate.ie

Daniel Connolly of Seneca Digital

for a discussion that starts by asking how to answer customer’s questions and deliver great service and evolves to a conversation on how online education is related to this topic and some learnings about being successful selling on Amazon (or not).

We’ve just finished delivering the Ratings and Reviews project for a customer and I was reading some of the commentaries around Customer Service – practically all good thankfully in this case which made me think about content and Customer Service.  We have talked a lot about content on product pages being your key selling aid or your online sales assistant but content for service and how you deliver that is also critical to the overall customer experience and one of the fundamentals to building a successful and sustainable online business.

When it comes to delivering really good customer service the good news is that there are multiple ways to do it and the bad news is that there are multiple ways to do it and you probably need to adopt several of them.

It starts with some old-fashioned ones.   Like the FAQ.  Frequently asked questions is a great way to add a lot of rich content that is very SEO-friendly to your website.  It just needs to be organised well.

Just make sure you are answering all the relevant questions.,  Have your Customer service reps constantly add the questions they are coming across to the list – but make it searchable so that people can find those answers easily.

Your eMail channel – one of the great benefits of Online shopping is that you can do business 24/7.  Of course, most people do not expect a business to be immediately available day and night.  But If I have a problem at 11:00 at night to be able to send an email looking for that help and to have an answer the next day generally is more than enough.  It is really important to handle eMail queries, in a timely fashion – even if that is a placeholder.  Your Customer service reps need to be empathetic and helpful and if at all possible knowledgeable about the specific customer or the query they are dealing with.  There is nothing that drives customers wild more than having to repeatedly explain what their issue is.

Increasingly today people will also use your social channels to be in contact, to ask questions and report problems.  We often only think of social as a means to push out our content or target customers with advertising.  The web is a two-way channel and if you don’t deal with the inbound queries you are missing a trick and could end up in trouble.

The customer service team needs to monitor these and respond to them.  It’s also a good idea to have created content that you can share via these channels to help like How To’s,  Saved Snippets for answering chat questions, or short videos to share via links.

That folds neatly into onsite Chat.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Chat On Websites.  When implemented well it is very immediate and powerful but there are so many bad implementations out there that it beggars belief.  From instances that are very disruptive to, chat sessions that never have anyone answering to chatbots that are worse than useless. They sort of remind you of the Youtube video of two Scots trying to use a voice-recognition lift in Glasgow.  It didn’t end well.

Finally, we are much more used to consuming video these days on all our devices, video is not expensive to produce with a little thought and effort this can be created and shared easily.  It can be webinar content, How-to Style, UnBoxing Videos, Product demos.  Again it needs to be accessible and searchable or delivered via the right (or all channels) at the right time.   A good and well organised library of content makes a huge difference in doing this effectively.  It needs to be accurately signposted so that the customer knows what they are getting.

So when it comes to delivering service as usual we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the customer. How can we help answer their questions in a timely, empathetic, and effective way? If we focus on that question with the tools that are to hand today then we are on a good footing

Enjoy the listen.

 

 


Error: Your Requested widget " execphp-6" is not in the widget list.
  • [do_widget_area before_footer_blog]
    • [do_widget id="execphp-6"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-1]
    • [do_widget id="text-2"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-2]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-3"]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-6"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-3]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-4"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-4]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-5"]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-7"]
    • [do_widget id="nav_menu-8"]
    • [do_widget id="text-19"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-5]
    • [do_widget id="media_image-3"]
  • [do_widget_area footer-6]
    • [do_widget id="custom_html-3"]
  • [do_widget_area grid_view]
    • [do_widget id="execphp-4"]
  • [do_widget_area home_posts_1]
    • [do_widget id="execphp-2"]
  • [do_widget_area list_view]
    • [do_widget id="execphp-5"]
  • [do_widget_area mega-menu]
    • [do_widget id="media_image-4"]
    • [do_widget id="text-3"]
    • [do_widget id="text-4"]
    • [do_widget id="text-5"]
    • [do_widget id="text-6"]
    • [do_widget id="text-7"]
    • [do_widget id="text-8"]
    • [do_widget id="text-9"]
    • [do_widget id="media_image-5"]
    • [do_widget id="text-10"]
    • [do_widget id="text-11"]
    • [do_widget id="text-12"]
    • [do_widget id="text-13"]
    • [do_widget id="text-14"]
    • [do_widget id="text-15"]
    • [do_widget id="text-16"]
    • [do_widget id="text-17"]
    • [do_widget id="text-18"]
  • [do_widget_area sidebar-1]
    • [do_widget id="search-2"]
    • [do_widget id="recent-posts-2"]
    • [do_widget id="archives-2"]
    • [do_widget id="categories-2"]
    • [do_widget id="meta-2"]
  • [do_widget_area sidebar-2]
    • [do_widget_area testimonial_slider]
      • [do_widget id="execphp-3"]
    • [do_widget_area widgets_for_shortcodes]
      • [do_widget_area wp_inactive_widgets]
        • [do_widget id="recent-comments-2"]

      Don't stop the learning now!

      Here are some other blog posts you may be interested in.


      Error: Your Requested widget " execphp-2" is not in the widget list.
      • [do_widget_area before_footer_blog]
        • [do_widget id="execphp-6"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-1]
        • [do_widget id="text-2"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-2]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-3"]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-6"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-3]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-4"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-4]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-5"]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-7"]
        • [do_widget id="nav_menu-8"]
        • [do_widget id="text-19"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-5]
        • [do_widget id="media_image-3"]
      • [do_widget_area footer-6]
        • [do_widget id="custom_html-3"]
      • [do_widget_area grid_view]
        • [do_widget id="execphp-4"]
      • [do_widget_area home_posts_1]
        • [do_widget id="execphp-2"]
      • [do_widget_area list_view]
        • [do_widget id="execphp-5"]
      • [do_widget_area mega-menu]
        • [do_widget id="media_image-4"]
        • [do_widget id="text-3"]
        • [do_widget id="text-4"]
        • [do_widget id="text-5"]
        • [do_widget id="text-6"]
        • [do_widget id="text-7"]
        • [do_widget id="text-8"]
        • [do_widget id="text-9"]
        • [do_widget id="media_image-5"]
        • [do_widget id="text-10"]
        • [do_widget id="text-11"]
        • [do_widget id="text-12"]
        • [do_widget id="text-13"]
        • [do_widget id="text-14"]
        • [do_widget id="text-15"]
        • [do_widget id="text-16"]
        • [do_widget id="text-17"]
        • [do_widget id="text-18"]
      • [do_widget_area sidebar-1]
        • [do_widget id="search-2"]
        • [do_widget id="recent-posts-2"]
        • [do_widget id="archives-2"]
        • [do_widget id="categories-2"]
        • [do_widget id="meta-2"]
      • [do_widget_area sidebar-2]
        • [do_widget_area testimonial_slider]
          • [do_widget id="execphp-3"]
        • [do_widget_area widgets_for_shortcodes]
          • [do_widget_area wp_inactive_widgets]
            • [do_widget id="recent-comments-2"]
          Menu
          Close