Customer Service in E-commerce & Dropshipping: Best Practices and Tips

Share this page:
The e-commerce market is constantly evolving. So do the customer expectations for the ideal online shopping experience. How can you meet them and close more sales? Check out our tips on how to deliver top-notch customer service.

In 2020, e-commerce was one of the few industries that were positively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Statista, worldwide "buy online" keyword search volume increased from 18,100 monthly online searches in October 2019 to 22,200 in June 2020. As the same resource says, retail websites saw unprecedented online traffic across the world - 22 billion monthly visits in June 2020! This figure surpassed even traditional holiday season peaks.

However, this increase in traffic (and sales) hasn’t been as rosy as it may seem. Customer expectations have increased as well. As the recent survey from PwC states, speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service are what nearly 80% of US customers value the most when interacting with your brand. In the US, 59 % of respondents said they will walk away after several bad experiences with a company, even if it would be the brand they like. In Latin America, customer expectations turned out to be even higher: 49 % of respondents said they’d leave the brand even after one bad experience. As dropshipping and ecommerce are one of the fastest growing and most competitive industries, customer service dropshipping customers provide should always be first-class to avoid customer churn.

All these figures imply that it is the quality of service that can help you to stand out from the competition in this market. That’s when your customer service department comes in handy. Employees of your eCommerce customer service call center are those who can gather valuable insights on how to expand and develop your assortment of goods as well as define the features that persuade clients to choose your company and your products.

So, what is the customer service dropshipping companies have to provide to ensure customer satisfaction and excellent customer experiences? Are there any specific requirements for dropshipping customer support, and how to provide dropshipping customer service in a way that will make customers happy? Can drop shipping customer service be automated? How can you benefit from using dropshipping call center?

Learn best customer service dropshipping 2023 practices and tips.

What Is E-commerce Customer Service?

Ecommerce customer service includes all the activities that the customer service department does to support your online shoppers both before and after purchase:

  • Customer care. Customer care describes the treatment consumers receive when dealing with your brand before, during, and after a purchase. It helps you to build a trustworthy, emotional connection with your customer base by understanding their emotional needs. 
  • Inbound call processing. Customer service teams handle all the incoming calls from your e-commerce customers that require their assistance. Simple requests and repetitive questions can be handled through the self-service options we will describe below, and studies state that happy customer is a customer who gets self-service options to answer common questions.
  • Outbound sales. In outbound sales, your customer service team (or sales teams) initiate conversations with potential buyers who filled out forms, sent you emails, or called previously. Sometimes, outbound sales involve cold calling leads but, in most cases, it means contact with those customers or prospects who have already interacted with your e-commerce business.
  • Proactive customer service communication. In customer service, proactive communication means identifying and solving customer issues before they become problems. It also means initiating live chat conversations with your website visitors. Your agents can do that if they see that a visitor browses a checkout or FAQ page longer than average. It doesn't seem intrusive and can reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate. Proactive customer service generates loyal customers, helps to provide positive experiences, avoid getting frustrated customers and generates positive reviews.

Ecommerce Customer Service Best Practices

Now let’s take a look at the best practices you should implement in your e-commerce contact center and how Voiptime Contact Center software can help you in doing that.

  • Thought-out business processes. You have to consider all the interactions customers have with your e-commerce business via the contact center: from taking calls and other types of customer contacts - customer service emails, sales with chat, and so on - to confirming orders and processing complaints and returns. Our versatile call center solution for e-commerce can help you in different situations. For example, using a call script and client card from your CRM with purchase details, your agent can check the delivery address and make an upsell. Complaint processing can be automated as well. Your agent can fill in the questionnaire and this data will be automatically sent to the email of the corresponding department right after the conversation. Customer emails - follow-ups especially - can also be automated. 
  • Personalized process. Customers like personalized service, because non-personalized service in 2023 is synonymous with poor customer service. Satisfied customers appreciate it when you greet them by name and don’t ask about details of customer queries they’ve informed you of during previous calls. When you save the complete history of customer interactions with your company it allows you to solve their queries as quickly as possible. Our Interactive Voice Response system (IVR) identifies clients using their information from CRM and routes them to the qualified agent who is more likely to solve the problem. It allows you to reduce the number of call transfers and improve customer satisfaction, and this will save you from negative reviews and other kinds of negative feedback. 
  • 24/7 answering service. Your customers won’t wait till some of your agents become available - this is a vital aspect of business model we are talking about. Moreover, their expedient questions about purchase delivery status or date can be solved after business hours without your employees’ involvement. Our IVR can become an answering service that works 24/7. All that your callers need is to choose a relevant option from the voice menu and enter the order’s number.
  • Multichannel customer service. Phone calls remain relevant, especially when handling complex issues but you need to take into account preferred channels of different generations. Give them an opportunity to contact your company through many digital channels: webchat, email, messengers, social media, etc. Voiptime Contact Center allows your company to make your agents multiskilled - they will be able to handle emails, live chats, and calls in a single interface without having to switch between different systems.
  • Automated self-service options. IVR system isn’t a single self-service tool you can use to give more information to your customers. Chatbot in a webchat widget on your website is a good option as well. It allows you to quickly gather information on the topic of your customer’s request and gives them answers to standard questions. Our cloud contact center solution also has a chatbot that performs these tasks to handle customer communications.
  • Regular customer loyalty surveys. Your existing customers spend much more money than new ones, so their customer feedback is also more essential. Moreover, it’s cheaper to retain those who have already bought from you than those who have just seen your advertising. That’s why customer loyalty is important to survey. Voiptime Contact Center can help you in two ways. The first is agentless campaigns via IVR. A customer answers an automated call from you and hears a message that asks them to evaluate their experience with your company by pressing some digits on their phone. The second is a call scripting feature that allows you to create call scripts with question blocks. You can ask customers about their experience with your brand and then upload answers to external tools as a .xlsx file. Thus you can get the information about your customers’ preferences that can be used in some marketing campaigns or other activities.
  • Reducing the average speed of answer. Customers don’t like listening to beeping during their customer phone calls instead of your agent’s voice. Too much on-hold music may also drive them up the wall. So their calls have to be answered as quickly as possible. The golden standard is 80/20 - 80% of calls answered in 20 seconds. Our Automatic Call Distribution system can help you to reach this goal by intelligently distributing your calls between specific groups of agents.
  • Constant analysis and improvement of metrics you track. These may include Cost Of Customer Acquisition, Average Handling Time, Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction Score, First Call (Contact) Resolution as well as call center metrics. To learn more, read our guide on call center KPIs.

How to Achieve Success in Ecommerce and Dropshipping Customer Service as a Small Business

Use Every Chance to Surprise Your Customers

Let’s take a look at Zappos. They have made exceptional customer service a crucial part of their culture and it is what sets them apart from their competitors. Some of their rules may really surprise you. For example:

  • Unlimited call times
  • 365-day return policy
  • Free shipping and returns

In his book "Delivering Happiness. A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose", the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh wrote that their customer service representatives tried to help customers even when they were finding items the company was out of stock: “In those instances, every rep is trained to research at least three competitors’ Web sites, and if the shoe is found in stock to direct the customer to the competitor. Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time”. Helping competitors may seem a preposterous idea so not every company is ready to train its employees that way. But it’s also a chance to stand out from the competition and attract new customers simply by word of mouth.

Automate Everything You Can

Business process automation saves you time and money. A wide range of tools can help you do that - from chatbots on your website to IVR and ACD systems in your call center software. Dropshipping servicing can also be handled via chatbots, and clients can easily find answers to their inquiries on social customer portals or in the knowledge bases you provide them with. Moreover, such a tool as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can be used to automate numerous tasks, such as order confirmations, lead management, customer follow-ups, delivery and payment reminders, customer status management, and much more. Furthermore, your CRM software can be integrated with a call center solution - that’s why you don’t have to worry about losing time on switching between two diverse solutions or training agents to work in two separate interfaces.

Think Out Order Confirmation Process

An order confirmation is very important as it reassures e-commerce customers that you will deliver a product or service. That’s why this process has to be clearly organized. For example, when your customer orders something in your online shop, an agent contacts them via phone to confirm the order details (delivery date and address). Also, the customer receives a confirmation SMS or an email after the call. When creating a confirmation message, inform customers about how to add new products to their order, change the delivery address, make a complaint or return. All these are signs of top-notch e-commerce customer service.

Also, not all customers want to be contacted by phone calls to confirm the order - customer service for dropshipping should be assembled and focused on providing consistent customer experiences, and that’s why you have to implement an automatic confirmation procedure, by using the CRM software or integrating it with call center solution.

Reduce the Time to First Contact

As a rule, your customers browse several websites when looking for what they need. They request callbacks on these resources to specify the details of goods and continue their search. Your task is to call them back as early as possible that is no more than 10 minutes after the request - that’s one of the most important rules of customer service for dropshipping. Otherwise, they may simply forget about their request or lose interest in buying your product because their attention can be caught by your competitor - customer service for dropshipping industry is all about speed and efficiency, even more than it is for other niches. That’s when technology can be a great assistant. Voiptime Contact Center solution has a Web Callback feature for customer service for dropshipping that helps you to contact your website visitors almost immediately after leaving a request or filling out a form. You can set a time when our software will automatically dial a prospect or client's number and connect them with an available agent. When? It’s up to you - even 30 seconds after leaving a request, so you can be sure that you won’t lose any potential customers!

Upsell

Upselling is a sales technique you can use during customer service dropshipping procedures, where you can invite a buyer to purchase more expensive items than they are currently looking for. It can be done via a website (using features like “Customers who viewed this item were also interested in these...:”) or during calls or live chats. The product you upsell should have additional features that make it more valuable for a customer. Upselling allows you not only to increase your revenue but also shows that your company cares about customers by offering them what they really need.

Сross-sell

Cross-selling is another sales technique that can be used while providing customer service for dropshipping, and its main goal is to sell additional goods to a customer who has already made a decision to purchase a “main” good. Imagine a simple sample - a man, who is looking for a grill, should definitely need a meat thermometer or smoker, so you can offer these goods as an additional offering to a customer who is looking for a grill only. How does it work in the case of customer service for dropshipping firms? First of all, customers will call you to learn more about the grill, its features, and its size, and you can start convincing customers to purchase a smoker that is integrable with this grill for a discounted price.

Increase Customer Retention by Delivering Excellent Ecommerce Customer Service and Dropshipping Customer Service

Existing customers cost you cheaper than new ones, and that’s the main reason why customer service for dropshipping is vital. It’s especially true for e-commerce businesses with fierce competition in this industry. So companies go to great lengths to retain and re-engage their customers. You can use the following customer service for dropshipping strategies to increase your customer retention:

  • Customer accounts. It’s a comfortable way to give your customers easy access to their history of purchases and pre-filled shipping information. It can be created automatically, after making the first order which saves the shoppers’ time. Surely, you need a tool for customer service for dropshipping to automate this process, and there’s an option to get a contact center solution with CRM integration.
  • Improved customer support. Use multiple channels for customer service for dropshipping for interaction with online shoppers and deliver excellent training to your agents, especially on how to deal with angry customers.
  • Loyalty programs and discounts. Give customers opportunities to save extra money with your brand. Small rewards for their loyalty and discount on the next purchase will attract them to your website again.

Conclusion

Back in 2010, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote: “Looking back, I attribute most of our growth over the past few years to the fact that we invested time, money, and resources in three key areas: customer service, company culture, and employee training and development”. If it’s true for one of the key players in the e-commerce market, why wouldn't it be true for you?

Both for customer service for dropshipping and ecommerce, these words determine the current (and definitely future) trend of investing more effort and resources into customer service. There are many factors that created this trend - from tough competition inside the industry to growing demands of customers who are now familiar with excellent customer service dropshipping and ecommerce industry players provide them with, so there is no way back - only further improvement of customer service practices and quality.

Contact center solution is exactly the tool that can cover all needs of customer service for dropshipping, for companies of all sizes and niches. Moreover, call center software can become an all-in-one working environment due to its powerful integration capabilities with such vital tools for customer service for dropshipping, as help desk software, CRM systems, and so on.






Tanya Gonchar

Expert in call center process automation, Head of Marketing at Voiptime Cloud. Interested in customer service, B2B sales, marketing, business analysis.

We use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience, analyse site traffic, personalize content, and serve targeted advertisements. Read about how we use cookies in our Privacy Notice.

Customer Contact Central