With online sales activity increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more businesses are turning to eCommerce helpdesk software to boost their business.
Transaction Intelligence has been one of the emerging industries of the pandemic, with savvy retailers employing third-party solutions to help them tackle the increased demand on their customer service team. One such tool is the eCommerce help desk, and we discuss seven reasons why investment in a tool like eDesk could deliver strong returns for your business.
1. Consistent customer service
eCommerce helpdesk software lets you standardize interactions with customers. In the US, 33% of shoppers say they’ll feel the temptation to abandon a seller after just one bad interaction. Those bad interactions rarely stem from intent, but often come about through inconsistency.
Nobody likes having to repeat information they’ve already given to another customer service agent. Little frustrations like that can add up over time to damage your rep in shoppers’ eyes.
With a helpdesk, the problem is much easier to solve. All interactions are held in one place. One agent can tap into the whole conversation and provide the same high standard of service.
Even if you’ve only got one or two people handling customer service, helpdesks can greatly reduce human error. They also help set a benchmark for how you approach solving problems as you grow.
2. Streamlined multichannel selling
It’s one thing to provide good customer service via two or three different agents, but when you introduce those agents to different channels, it adds a whole new layer of complexity. Transaction Intelligence will be key to growing your business as multichannel selling becomes more and more common, but daily business still revolves around the customer.
Right now, it’s important to provide a positive brand experience that feels like your company, regardless of whether the customer is buying direct or via Amazon. A helpdesk lets you speak in a consistent tone, accessing data between channels which might otherwise get forgotten.
Later, you can start using what you’ve learned to assess what platforms perform best for you, helping to grow your eCommerce business intelligently.
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3. Help your customers faster
The flagship benefits of eCommerce are speed and convenience. According to McKinsey, 75% of customers expect help with an enquiry within five minutes. In reality, the average response time for an email is 12 hours and 10 minutes.
You can do better. You need to leverage that speed advantage you have over traditional retail. Helpdesk features on eDesk let you do just that:
- Responses to common questions saved as templates
- Automated responses informing customers of known issues
- Ability to see all interactions and order history from one dashboard
- Auto-translation to help customers from different nationalities
- Live chat to provide real-time customer support
Each feature saves you time that you can reinvest into business growth. They can be tweaked and customized to fit your preferred way of working so you can prioritise other aspects of the business.
4. Prioritize your most urgent cases
Not all customer service cases are created equal. Some are routine questions asked purely to satisfy the customer’s curiosity. Some are urgent demands which, if you don’t handle them properly, risk reputational damage to your brand and business.
It’s hard to jump those urgent cases to the head of the queue if you’re using a spreadsheet to track things. Even some platforms’ native customer service features leave much to be desired in terms of setting clear priorities.
eDesk’s eCommerce helpdesk makes it much easier to spot the most important cases and handle them in a timely manner. Even better, your criteria for what qualifies as ‘an important case’ can be standardized across your team so everyone provides a consistent level of service.
Last year, our eDesk customers saw 1 in 6 sales generating a support ticket in 2020 vs 1 in 8 in 2019 👀 That’s why we are committed to support sustainable growth and supercharging customer support with AI advancements. Get in touch and learn more: https://t.co/sHr1H0AbJx pic.twitter.com/ZTfbxpQ28A
— eDesk (@eDesk) March 19, 2021
5. Store your data more efficiently
Smaller or younger eCommerce businesses can operate effectively with relatively little data. But intuition can only take you so far, and even in those early days it’s better to back up your gut feeling with evidence.
As you grow, data becomes a necessity. That data is going to be coming from multiple sources across various platforms. A good helpdesk will pull everything together so that everyone, from frontline staff to senior management, is working with the same information.
Of course, once you’ve got that data built up, you’ve got to use it.
6. Use data to make better decisions
When is your business busiest? Where are your customers buying from? Is your new strategy paying off? You need evidence to answer these questions, and you need to crunch the numbers to make sure you’re in the right.
Not only will an eCommerce helpdesk store your data in one central place, it lets you run reports in seconds which could take hours on a spreadsheet. It gives you authentic Transaction Intelligence which you can leverage to grow your business.
7. Keep that data safe
As people wise up to how much value is hidden in their data, security becomes more of a concern than ever before. For eCommerce businesses, a data leak can be catastrophic in terms of damage to your reputation.
Storing data in multiple places offers multiple opportunities for hackers to strike lucky at your expense. A good helpdesk doesn’t just help you gather, store, and report on that data. It also enables you to provide assurances that you can be trusted by demonstrating robust security measures.
eCommerce is a game of trust in many ways. Being open and vocal about how well you protect your customers’ and employee’s personal information makes for great PR, and a trustworthy brand is one that drives sales.
Final thoughts on eCommerce helpdesks
If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ll spot a hidden, eighth benefit of eCommerce helpdesk software scattered throughout this article: scaling. Helpdesks are useful investments when you’re at the earliest stages of your eCommerce journey, but those benefits make themselves felt more and more strongly as you grow.
Adopting an eCommerce helpdesk like eDesk from day one lets you hit the ground running. You’ll start gathering data which you can later use to refine every element of your business. And most importantly, you’ll start building that incredible customer goodwill from your very first sale.
