Globally, the past few years have witnessed the birth of an increasing number of e-commerce businesses. These new-age firms founded by young techno-entrepreneurs have ventured into almost every domain and category of products and services possible including electronics, grocery, appointment scheduling, digital wallets, travel booking, and what not. Today, almost every need of an individual consumer is being serviced online by various e-commerce firms.
At an elementary level, the business model of most e-commerce firms is identical. They either operate on a marketplace model or run their own inventory-based model. So in spite of having a more or less similar business model, what is it that distinguishes a successful e-commerce venture from an unsuccessful one? While technology is a non-negotiable determinant, experts cite –
“After-sales support and customer service are some of the most significant factors that decide the success of e-commerce businesses.”
Hence, prompt and efficient customer support is critical for the success of an e-commerce business. In the current era of heightened consumer activism, a single discontented customer can heavily dent an organizations’ reputation with a single update on widely consumed social media platforms. Adapting the best practices of customer relationship management is therefore crucial for organizations wanting to gain a competitive edge in this highly competitive business environment.
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While it is possible for e-commerce firms to build their own in-house customer support function, most prefer to outsource it to a call center service provider to deliver a seamless experience to its customers. This arrangement provides multiple benefits to an e-commerce firm.
1. Improved Focus on Core-Business - Ecommerce customer services outsourcing provider helps e-commerce companies free up their internal resources to focus on core business functions like engineering, accounting, marketing and sales, data mining, and analytics.
2. Industry-focused services – Outsource eCommerce customer service involves the adoption of new-age technology tools and specialized skill-sets. E-commerce portals require a multi-channel customer support contact center that includes voice calls, live chat, e-mail support, and SMS to provide a seamless experience to its customers. Outsource eCommerce customer support providers will have the necessary technology tools and resources to deliver such services flawlessly to their clients thereby increasing overall customer satisfaction scores.
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3. Access to the specialized workforce: Customer service is a specialized function and requires experienced professionals to manage it efficiently. To outsource eCommerce customer service helps e-commerce companies gain access to experienced customer service professionals without the need to hire and train them internally.
4. Round-the-clock support – 24x7 support helps in delivering quick response to customer queries and complaints thereby improving brand image. This also helps the companies in greatly increasing their customer retention rate and in adding new customers to their customer base.
5. Better management of customer feedback- Some outsourced customer service for eCommerce providers also ensure managing customer reviews and feedback across all social media and consumer networks. These eCommerce customer service outsourcing providers train their employees to track the responses of customers, resolve their queries immediately, and make them feel valuable across all social networking platforms. In the era of social networking, where one status upload or tweet can bring substantial harm to the revenue generation capabilities of business firms, it is very important for all e-commerce companies to maintain a healthy reputation.
Moreover, eCommerce customer service outsourcing providers have certification policies for their employees regarding troubleshooting, complaint handling, request registering, and/or order processing. To outsource eCommerce customer support services from trained and certified professionals helps e-commerce companies to deliver exceptional service experiences in a timely and professional manner.
Even e-commerce giant Amazon says that 3rd party sellers must respond to customer inquiries within 24 hours, all 365 days per year, and while 24 hours isn't that fast anymore, the speed of your reply plays a key role in providing an excellent customer experience and retaining customers. It is another reason why you must use outsourced customer service for eCommerce. So, to offer your customers the best experience and help your business generate bigger revenues, you must consider using a reliable and trusted outsourced customer service eCommerce.
India is one of the leading destinations for outsourcing such services. By outsourcing customer support services to call centers in India many established business organizations have achieved their business objective. This has led new e-commerce companies and even some start-ups to follow their footprints.
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