The customer support industry has seen exponential growth in the last few years, with companies hiring more people to handle the increasing number of calls and messages. This is on top of the regular staffing needed for any business. So why are so many companies investing in customer service? The answer lies in the effectiveness of customer support as a growth driver for eCommerce revenue.
Customer support done right increases sales through up-selling products or cross-selling services. Great customer support serves to build goodwill. Further, it will create opportunities to use data collected about customers’ preferences to tailor future marketing efforts. With these benefits and others, it’s no wonder that today’s leading brands invest in improving their customer experience through better engagement and responsiveness across channels.
This eBook by wrrk, the leading provider of technology-powered customer support solutions for eCommerce businesses, details:
- How customer support influences a customer’s view of a brand and their willingness to return to buy
- The impact of positive word-of-mouth on brand lift
- How to implement a growth-oriented support strategy
- What metrics to track to gauge success
This eBook is for founders, owners, and leaders of eCommerce businesses looking to ignite growth. Customer support and service is a necessary component of an eCommerce business. All too often, founders, owners, and leaders struggle to turn customer service into a source of new revenue. After reading this book, you should have a better understanding of how customer service impacts growth, how to implement customer support as a growth driver for your eCommerce business, and what metrics and data to track to recognize the greatest revenue growth possible.
How Customer Support Drives Business Growth
Brand Equity and “Word of Mouth”
Customer support can have an impact on many aspects of your brand. The primary impact is on brand equity. Brand equity is what people think about your company when they don’t have a transaction in front of them.
Customers that receive great support represent it in a positive light. This manifests through referrals, social media sharing, and reviews. They’re more likely to become advocates for your brand, which can influence other potential customers. Comments and recommendations like these can build brand awareness, trust, loyalty. This results in more traffic to your site, which helps increase conversions. A survey from Blackbox Research shows that 91% of consumers are open to recommending brands that provide exceptional service. This number is even higher among Millennials.
Upselling and Cross-selling
Up-selling is a great way to leverage customer support into growth. Taking the time to understand a customer’s needs or why a previous purchase did not work out can lead to the suggestion of a different product that does make them happy. These up-sells increase the average order value (AOV) and improve the chance of creating repeat customers. Additionally, up-sells occur by offering services like installation, rebates, warranties, and protection plans at the time of purchase.
As important as this growth is though, it cannot be forced. You don’t want to scare customers away by being too pushy with cross-selling or up-selling techniques. Sales as a part of customer support should feel natural and helpful, not the least bit intrusive.
Returns and Exchanges
A customer’s perception of your company is strongly influenced by the ease of the return process. If you don’t make it easy to return something, then they may not be inclined to buy from you again. Be willing to go the extra mile when a product is working properly so customers are more likely to want to do business with you when things break or aren’t quite right.
Furthermore, handling return requests with product knowledge can actually lead to fewer refunds and more exchanges. Consider a customer that is unhappy with the material and fit of an article of clothing they purchased. Accepting the return and issuing a refund can be considered good support. However, some encouragement towards a different size or fabric choice may save the sale. In this case, customer service can have a positive impact on revenue simply by stopping a step backward from happening at all.
Four Programs to turn Customer Support Into a Revenue Driver
Now that we understand that customer support and customer service can play a meaningful role in growing revenue, it is important to put ideas into action. When exploring how to best facilitate customer support playing a role in the sales process, consider which of the following might appeal to your customer base.
Live Chat
Live chat is a seamless way for customers to interact with your brand from any connected device. It works well for providing support and service in a conversational manner that can easily lead to exploring an up-sell or cross-sell opportunity.
Loyalty Programs
Having your support staff guide customers to a loyalty program serves everyone’s interest. The customer has an incentive to become a repeat customer and feel appreciated. At the same time, a loyalty program allows your team to stay closer to customers and provide a better overall brand experience.
“Personal” Shopping and Suggestive Selling
A consultative approach from your support team can not only foster more sales but also make customers feel an even greater affinity for your brand. This requires a mind shift for the support team and support agents. Instead of approaching each interaction or support ticker with the mindset of “how do I solve this problem?” they will need to think in terms of “how do I thrill this customer today?” That includes solving the problem AND exploring new ways to make customers happy. Suggesting new products or services, offering items that align with the customer’s demonstrated tastes…these tactics take more time and energy but result in more loyal customers that spend more with your company.
Save Campaigns
Consider empowering your support team with tools to “save” customers that are exceedingly unhappy or dissatisfied. For example, escalating to a manager for approval of a nominal discount may not be the best use of time. Instead, consider a threshold of benefit (discount, free offer, rewards points) that your support agents can use at their discretion to solve customer challenges. Cable companies and cell phone providers have used this strategy for years to reduce churn and improve customer loyalty.
How to Implement Customer Support for Growth
The goal of customer support shouldn’t be limited to resolving issues for customers when they arise. By listening carefully to the conversations customers are having with themselves about your brand, you can better understand their perception of your business and how it could be improved.
So how do you make growth-focused customer support part of your business? Orienting your support posture to help drive new revenue in alignment with customer happiness is straightforward in most cases.
Training
Training your support team on your products and services is critical. Each support team member needs to not only know your product catalog but also have deep familiarity with alternate options that serve similar needs. If a customer is looking at a number of similar products, does your support staff have the necessary product knowledge to guide them to the right product for their needs?
In the case of cross-selling and upselling, training is again key. Make sure your support team is trained on how products work together and what additions will provide greater value for the customer.
It is of equal importance to train your support staff on the systems, processes, and tools that go into cross-selling and upselling. First, take care that they know how to locate related or recommended products to offer the customer. Checking inventory levels and shipping availability is part of this process. Second, they need to know how to process orders as deftly as returns so that customers feel they are receiving excellent service even while buying. Finally, train your team how to speak with customers about purchases without feeling pushy. It can be easy – and costly to your business – when a conversation that started off with helping a customer turns sour because of too much focus on selling more products.
Technical Requirements
Training your customer-facing support agents on products, processes, and tools is the beginning. To implement a growth-oriented support culture you will need to address some technical issues as well.
To help drive more revenue, you should consider an eCommerce solution or an add-on to your current platform that allows support agents to enter orders on the customer’s behalf. Alternately, a platform that allows for order attachments or for carts to be sent to the customer for review can suffice. Either way, a real sales lift is more likely to occur if support staff can book orders. At the same time, fulfillment and logistics tools will need to be flexible.
Metrics Worth Tracking
The success or failure of leveraging support into greater sales growth does not happen in a vacuum. You can, and should, track the key metrics and indicators for support-led sales just as you track customer satisfaction. To start, there are two key metrics to pay attention to: up-sell and cross-sell attachment rate and cancel and exchange rates.
Up-selling/Cross-selling
To track up-sell and cross-sell attachment, simply keep account of anytime an order is modified or replaced in a way that delivers greater revenue than the original order. In time you may want to track individual products, product lines, and support representative performance. However, you should start by focusing on what percentage of your orders are growing as a result of the customer’s interaction with the support team.
Cancel/Exchange rates
Cancel and exchange rates are more challenging to track through this lens. Materially, you are hoping to reduce cancellations or returns and facilitate more returns. Depending on your business and the type of product or service you sell, fewer cancellations may be an indicator of greater satisfaction with the original purchase. More exchanges may have nothing to do with support helping the customer decide against cancellation or refund.
If possible, use your support ticketing system to label or tag any support inquiry that starts off as a cancellation or refund request. Then label or tag the ticket if it results in an exchange or upsell. What you are looking for in this scenario is a trend away from cancellations or returns. Keeping or exchanging a product or making an additional product are positive business outcomes. A cancellation or refund request absent a new purchase is a negative business outcome.
The Big Picture
Support as a growth driver most often comes down to a few key things. Keep these in mind and train your team to do the same.
- Remember the customer comes first
- Growth and customer service are not mutually exclusive
- The customer wants to be happy with their decision to do business with you
- Saving a sale can be every bit as impactful as generating a new order
Support teams are charged with handling support inquiries, resolving problems, and troubleshooting technical issues on behalf of customers. Ideally, they are also empowered to help grow the business. Creating a strategy for this process will leave your customers happy, drive growth, and maintain long-term customer satisfaction.
Success is achieved by finding balanced opportunities to promote products, services, or additional purchases without feeling pushy or overbearing. The best guideline, as with all support, is to ask if what you are doing is in the best interest of the customer.
The great thing about leveraging customer support as a growth driver for eCommerce comes from the fact that great support and growth are not mutually exclusive. Doing the right thing for the customer often does mean making sure they have the product or service right for them. Focus on customer satisfaction in this way and growth will follow.
Questions or comments about the insights presented in this eBook? Contact us at wrrk.com
