For any company, the decision to outsource certain operational functions to a contact center is a BIG one, involving many details; perhaps even more so when it comes to the E-commerce Industry. The E-commerce, or retail industry, is a fast-paced industry that involves many moving parts such as inventories, pricing, shipping, and seasonal highs and lows. All the more reason for this industry to outsource its customer support.
Here at Centris, we’ve been supporting the E-commerce industry for more than two decades and during this time, we have learned a few things about how this industry can effectively outsource their customer support functions.
E-COMMERCE
As we stated earlier, E-commerce is a fast-paced industry with many moving parts:
- Inventory
- Suppliers
- Warehouse management of inventory
- Pricing
- Shipping
- Returns
- Customer care and management
Managing just one of these components effectively is a challenge, but in retail, every component needs to be managed effectively in order for the whole to work and be a success. Your warehouse operations will manage and track your inventory and likely handle the shipping (and returns) of your products. You may have buyers or supply-chain managers who will interact with your suppliers to keep your inventories stocked and they may also be responsible for pricing inventory. Each of these tasks is very important and play a critical role in the successful operations of your business. But, what about the customer? Who is handling the needs of your customers? Do you have a team devoted entirely to servicing them in taking orders, taking payment information, answering questions or fielding complaints?
Your product, inventory, and pricing are all important but, let’s face it, if your customers are not satisfied then nothing else really matters. This is where outsourcing to a contact center can make a huge difference because a contact center will be able to focus entirely on supporting your customer.
OUTSOURCE EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT
By partnering with an experienced contact center to provide customer support, you will strengthen this very critical component of your business, enabling the entire system to run smoothly and efficiently. So, what specific functions should a call center assume in order to provide the best level of support? Great question! When businesses reach out to us for help with customer support, here are some of the services that we provide.
- Billing Support: At Centris, we handle data entry for customer billing information which allows us to handle any billing issues that may arise such as correcting information that may have been incorrect or changing/updating billing information to ensure it is accurate.
- Shipping Inquiries: If a customer reaches out with a question on the shipping status of their order, we can quickly access this information for them.
- Complaints: We handle all customer complaints that may come up and we provide excellent follow-through to ensure the problem is resolved.
- Basic Troubleshooting: We provide additional customer support for any type of technical issue the customer may be having.
- Bilingual Customer Support: Our nearshore contact centers offer fully bilingual agents who speak excellent English and are fluent in Spanish as well. Many of our E-commerce clients find this feature of our customer support to be the most important. The Hispanic population has grown enormously in the US and having a team in place who can communicate with this population has proven to be crucial to many E-commerce companies.
ACROSS CHANNELS
At Centris, we believe the most effective outsourcing of customer support includes a number of services, like those mentioned above, across multiple channels of communication; such as phone, e-mail, live chat, social media and text messaging services. Today’s customer has a variety of methods for communicating and an effective contact center should as well.
If you’re looking to improve the level of customer support for your E-commerce business, contact us. We’ve been providing exceptional customer support to a number of E-commerce clients for more than twenty years and we’d love to partner with you.
