Customer service represents a large piece of any company’s sales and growth strategy. There is no doubt that great customer service has an impressive ROI. According to a recently published Salesforce Research, 89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase, and 78% are willing to do business again after a mistake as a result of a positive customer service experience. 

Corporate spending on customer service teams and support is taking a larger chunk of companies’ budgets every year and spreads among multiple online businesses and industries, such as retail, ecommerce marketplaces, media, SaaS, and social media. Despite the high costs of support, the impacts of bad customer service are significant in their impact on the companies’ profitability. Poor customer service results in 58% of customers willing to switch companies, according to Microsoft’s analysis. Moreover, this number grows to 80% if such experience repeats more than once, based on Zendesk’s report.

Following the massive shift in consumer behavior towards the online space, companies must adapt to the new user behavior and customer expectations in order to stay relevant and optimize their transaction processes and user journeys.

Why invest in self-service customer support?

According to Zendesk’s Customer Experience Trends Report, consumers have a clear preference towards independent problem resolution, with 69% preferring to find support-related information independently. Unfortunately, only one-third of the companies are offering self-service options, such as a knowledge base, to their customers. Adding into the equation the cost of a live help/support service per call, averaging at around $6 according to ICMI analysis, self-service customer support represents a win-win situation for both the customers and the companies.

Customer Support Center: Retail

Online retail companies provide their customers with seamless customer journeys on the site by integrating support-related content into a federated search experience, displaying support banners when users enter customer service-related queries, and having an easily discoverable dedicated support center section on the website.

Redirect to customer support pages on help-related queries for sports & goods retailer: Arc’teryx

When customers on sports retailer Arc’teryx’s ecommerce website enter a query related to customer service and support, they are directed to a dedicated support page, eliminating the need to spend time browsing the website.

Support banners in search for electronics desktop: PC Componentes

Spanish electronics website PC Componentes directs users to a comprehensive support resources page when they enter support-related queries in the search box.

Highlighting and snippeting for retailer customer service page: Arduino

Arduino uses Algolia highlighting and snippeting on their help center website. Highlighting shows the user why Algolia shows a particular result, while snippeting extracts the relevant context.

Customer Support Center: Marketplace

Ecommerce brands and marketplaces often handle a large catalog with hundreds of thousands of products. Integrating support centers allows them to connect users with the most relevant help center resources when they look for assistance. Users are offered the comfort and flexibility of having all the necessary information at their fingertips, without having to spend time making phone calls to the customer support line and waiting long times for an available representative or extensively browsing the site in search of information.

Conclusion

Customer service is an essential part of any ecommerce company’s sales and growth strategy. An excellent customer service experience, and the resulting increase in customer satisfaction, supports sales efforts and benefits ROI and customer retention. In the era of extreme customer-first approach, sometimes called customer obsession – a trend set by major industry leaders – customers are acquiring a high degree of expectations from every ecommerce business site or app. The risk of providing your customers with sub-par customer service translates into a loss of customer loyalty to your competitors. Additionally, the importance of self-service solutions is rising. With more customers preferring to find answers to their support-related questions independently, support service solutions have to evolve in order to keep up with the new trends and expectations.