Customer satisfaction has long been the Holy Grail for retailers. Social media now brings a whole new significance to customer satisfaction. Rants and raves reach friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends at an unprecedented scale. It's word-of-mouth on steroids.
The social web has also made customer support a collaborative effort, offering new online community tools that empower customers to find their own answers and help one another. While self-help and community forums can be an integral part of the total support package, online merchants should never overlook the power of direct engagement when it comes to happy and loyal customers.
Here are some of the key ways an onli ne store can look to increase satisfaction levels through customer support.
1. Be Helpful
This first tip might seem obvious, but can be easily forgotten in customer service today. It's important to realize that being available does not equal being helpful. It's not enough to simply have a person on hand to answer a live chat or phone call.
The quality of each interaction counts. Modern consumers are busy, not to mention able to choose from thousands of other shopping alternatives. Customer support representatives should be driven to help customers, answer questions and solve problems, not merely focus on metrics such as wait time and turnover rate.
It's also a great policy to proactively engage those customers who appear in need of assistance. For example, if someone is resting at the same checkout page longer than average, or a visitor keeps jumping across three product pages, savvy online sellers can initiate a conversatio n to help a customer when he...
