Customer service in e-commerce

COMTRUST implements SAP Contact Center for e-commerce. First impressions? Moving sales to the virtual world companies move there a high level of service and take care of excellent customer experience. They know that the Internet is a very important sales channel and poor service or systems brake-down can be very costly. In the case of the largest e-stores in Poland losses could be more than 25 000 EUR per hour. The online shopping centres hotline is not a source of costs, but a profit department. How to do this? The following Best Practices from our SAP Contact Center implementation gives some tips how you can achieve it.

In the virtual business it is not so easy to build relationships with customers. E-commerce focuses on products and their delivery. Communication is primarily via email which is often automated. It does not make sense to make the communication with customers as the only responsibility of IT system. There are some worse examples: sometimes online stores even avoid direct and personal contact with customers giving them only pages with FAQ. Sometimes it is very difficult to find any contact information at sites. However, this approach “how to escape the personal contact with customers” carries a huge risk. Without the human element it is not possible to build customer loyalty and sale.

Investments in marketing bring customers but do not keep them. Investments in omnichannel contact center – definitely do.

The team in the contact center online store generates profits and starts to be the new additional sales channel. The question is: how to take care of customers if the contact and relationship is purely virtual? The answer is: you should implement tools which help customers to contact and create every contact more personal and friendly.

COMTRUST gives tips for coustomer service in e-commerce

1. Not only e-mail. Start customer service across all communication channels (phone, chat, SMS, video) and integrate them into one centrally managed system – as Omnichannel SAP Contact Center is.

2. Open hotline. This is a simple and intuitive way of contact with your e-shop and team.

3. Skype – YES! It is an important communication channel for foreign buyers. You should integrate Skype with your contact center system. Thanks to that you can create queues, monitor events, record conversations and create reports.

4. Remember about IVR – it is benefit for customers and you! For the customer: because he can check the status of his order or complaint in the IVR. For you: because firstly you do not waste your time (time is money) for responding when the systems gives dates automatically and secondly – with IVR and queues you can monitor and report customer interest in specific products or topics.

5. Chat. It is import to integrate chat with your web site. This allows you to follow your customer’s path at the virtual shelves. When your customer starts conversation with the contact canter department the agent knows where the customer is and what he did before. SAP customers suggest to offer customers chat only when someone is able to handle the request quickly. Such functionality SAP Omnichannel Contact Center offers.

6. On-line sales goes non-stop. If you are not able to handle customer inquiries in 24/7/265 regime you should open additional features like Voice Mail and Call Back. Calling back to the customer you can not only solve his problem but also use the call to additional sales.

7. Collect data and information about customers, purchases and interactions. The bigger the database is the better for sale and service. Small online stores do not need to invest in advanced CRM. For them solutions which manage tasks and customer cards are enough.

8. Recognise your customer. Identify customers and give them priorities, find VIP customers. It is also important to personalize service and direct the customer to the same preferred agent. To do so you need to know who contact your e-store. To identify customers you need IT system which collects this type of data (CRM, Ticketing Management).

9. Take care of niche customers. They are seemingly invisible but become a source of profits. Examples are deaf-mute. COMTRUST integrated SAP Contact Center with Migam translator. Thanks to this integration deaf-mute can communicate with call center!

10. Outbound and telemarketing – definitely yes! If you do not want to use them for sale they will certainly help you to clarify orders (eg. purchases by partner e-shops – if your shop is integrated with ebay.com or Allegro platform, you can create a special outbound campaign which will be supplied with previous day shopping data).

If you want to keep customers in your online store you should invest in advanced omnichannel contact center software. The more complex your products are more often customers call to clarify details. If you sell across both channels: online and retail you definitely need this kind of system because customers call to arrange a personal collection or for additional information. Agent skillfully guiding the conversation can closed it with a deal or encourage the customer to buying more products.