E-commerce business is not only about acquiring new customers to the website but also maintaining the old customers. Just by focusing on attracting new visitors to the website, it’s not viable to neglect your existing customers who like to shop at your online store. Engaging your customer to visit back to the store is also one of the marketing strategies to make repeat purchases, and increase Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Retention Rate.
What is an e-commerce customer support centre?
An e-commerce customer support is the support centre that helps the customers with their assistance and solutions to solve the problems, queries and tickets (complaints) raised by the customers to serve with the utmost support services so that the customers are delighted to return to the store.
What is the Customer Retention Rate?
Customer Retention Rate enables how many customers visit back to the online store, making them long-time and loyal customers of a brand. It is an important metric to show the business customer engagement and how good their customer service is.
It is more cost-effective than reaching to new customers. Increasing Customer Retention will help to increase your profits by double the amount.
Here are 10 most effective & proven strategies to maintain good customer care and customer retention of the brand
1. Retentional E-mail Marketing Campaign with Personalised E-mails
E-mail marketing is the best way to engage your existing customers as the business has their data with them they can send a personalised e-mail based on the based on the user-behaviour and past purchases by sending up-selling and cross-selling product recommendations and deals & special offers.
Personalised e-mails shouldn’t be limited to selling products, but also to make customers realise that they matter to us and we’re grateful to have a loyal customer like you by sending birthday e-mails, discount e-mails, and many more.
2. Customer Satisfactory Customer Care Services
Research made by Salesforce Research stated that 89% of the customers are happy and willing to make repeat purchases with the brand having a good customer service experience. Customer care services should be humble enough and should have problem-solving capabilities. It’s not right to assume that the consumer is only looking for refunds or exchange of the products there is much more involved in the customer satisfaction process. To solve their doubts live chatting, chatbots and human interactive customer care services should be organised by the company.
If the customer has any discrepancy customer services should be capable enough to solve it in such a way that the customer satisfaction is not hurt.
3. Incentive & Rewarding Customer Loyalty Programmes
Apart from discounts and special offers, Customer Loyalty Programs which give incentives and rewards to the customers help in maintaining customer retention and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Opting for a loyalty-based program will incentivize the customer to return and repeat the purchase. It is observed that 68% of the customers who prefer a brand that has good customer relations tend to have customers who won’t hesitate even to spend more for the purchase. Also, Loyalty programs help to increase the e-mail list as the customer is willing to fill out the subscription forms.
4. Engage Customers in social media through UGC
An e-commerce business that makes the best use of User Generated Content (UGC) to engage and encourage its customers tends to become more popular and have better conversion. By asking their users to participate in different social media marketing campaigns and contribute their share in the form of photos, reviews, testimonials and videos, the brand has 4 benefits i.e.
- engaging the existing users,
- attracting new users,
- Creating brand awareness & spreading brand popularity and
- higher rate of conversions and sales.
5. Customer Feedback
To know where the customer service lags and in which areas the brand must work ask for customer feedback through surveys and emails. Though the brand is analysing user behaviour it might be the case that the judgement is wrong and the product the brand is recommending is of no use, instead of just making a wild guess ask the customers themselves what topics they would like to have emails on so that the brand can notify accordingly to the customer.
Asking them about their buying experience, and any problems faced by them in the whole process helps to improve the user experience even more, ensuring the best user retention, customer loyalty and high chances of referrals.
6. Improving the response time of the customer care service
One of the most common the customers face in India is delayed response from the brand which is irritable and will affect customer retention. More than 83% of the customers stay loyal to the brand whose customer services respond quickly to solve their doubts. As mentioned above to respond quickly to the queries of the customers it is advisable to have a live chat tool or chatbot.
But all the queries can’t be resolved by the chatbots, where the needs of the customer care service team are required, already frustrated customers will be even more agonised when the service is not responding quickly.
To maintain the functionality of the customer care service centre a business needs to have a multi-faceted system with various channels to serve hassle-free services.
7. A self-service-based customer care support
A common human tendency is first to solve the problem by ourselves rather than asking for help from others. Customers also feel the same so before making any move to file a ticket they research the website, community pages, video references and other customer references.
Proactive customer services that are available 24/7 provide the best customer support that increases the trust in the brand. To enable a self-portal customer care services, a web page containing all the relevant information about the brand services, some basic infographic tips to solve the most common problem, filling a complaint procedure, time required to solve the complaints should be mentioned so that the customer will get aware and increase the knowledge regarding the brand’s product or services.
8. A follow-up after the problem has been resolved
It’s a very bad sign to make customers feel the brand is not concerned about the problem and the only motive is to sell products by advertising promotional emails. Ask the customer by follow-up emails and calls whether their problems have been solved or if any discrepancies are still there.
9. Offer Free perks
Offering free shipping, free installation, and free servicing can make the customer make quick decisions and ensure dependability for the brand to increase the return rate of the customer.
10. Listen to your Customers and be available for them
Listening is the most important aspect which is most of the time overlooked. It’s important to listen to customers and to be available for them even in the business period of your business like sales.
Conclusion
Customer support is a sensitive element in every business as the rest of the business can be affected by its poor performance of it. It’s a crucial step for online reputation management as one negative review can cost a lot. Also to make sure the customers come back to your brand an adhered and systematic customer service is viable.
