The Customer is King
There are plenty of business opportunities to go around in this world, but only the successful businesses realize that the customer is number one when it comes to making the business worth something. By providing efficient and exceptional experiences, businesses ensure ongoing loyalty from their customers and continued future successes.
If you want to keep your customers for the long term, you need to roll out the red carpet and give them the VIP treatment. When you walk into a department store to make a purchase, it’s easy to get help from a sales associate. These stores are staffed accordingly to make your shopping experience pleasant and easy. The same standard needs to be held for online e-commerce stores as well. When navigating an online store, it’s easy to get lost in an overload of information. Quite a few people need some sort of support when making an online purchase, which means you need to think about how you can offer that support.
In this day and age, it’s quite easy to engage with the customer. For example, you can have email and/or video chat set up on your site. You can also utilize social media platforms - as you engage with customers, you’re letting them know you offer personalized service however they may need it. This will go a long way in retaining those customers for future business.
Here are a couple of strategies that you can employ to make sure customers know they are of the utmost importance to you.
Meet all their needs. As we said, it’s important to engage with the customer as much as possible in order to further your levels of customer service. It’s advantageous to you to watch which methods of communication work best and focus on those. Do your visitors use a “help” button on your site? Do they utilize live chat? Do they even look at your FAQ or help section? These are the kinds of questions you need to be asking yourself as you comb through your site in effort to make it streamlined for the customer. And remember, whatever method your visitors use to engage with you, make sure it is prominent and easy to locate on your site.
Use a hands-on approach. There is nothing more annoying than receiving an error message during the purchasing process and not knowing how to find the solution. Don’t let your customers get bogged down in the FAQ page. Instead, perhaps it would be better to offer a live chat to engage your customers, find out what the problem is, and find a solution. It’s also important to remember that most people have a mobile device that they use to do research as well as buying products. Make sure you have a mobile site that is easy to navigate and contains rich content. Simply having tools on hand isn’t going to be enough though; stay proactive with your customers and you will gain their loyalty.
Figure out your mobile strategy. People are always on the go and don’t always have the time to sit at a computer and research a product or look for information. It’s easier to whip out the phone and squeeze in a little research when a moment of downtime pops up. Your e-commerce site can easily tap into the market of mobile commerce sales with optimized upgrades and knowing your audience. When thinking mobile for your site, remember to make sure your buttons, fonts, design, and text are optimized for small screens. Also make sure your content has only the most important information needed and is easy to read. Consider offering easy access customer service via chat or phone to assist customers with questions regarding products or purchasing.
The importance of customer service will never go out of date. It’s crucial to any business to treat your customers with the utmost respect and make them feel valued. If you do, they you will have happy customers and will be able to maintain a successful online business.