Customer service is key for making an online store a success, people want to be delighted by you and the way in which you interact with them before or after purchase is so important.
You want to be there and ready to answer any burning questions but you also want to ensure that all the information they could possibly need is already on your website, so they don’t have to spend their time contacting you for it.
Customers want easy online shopping experiences and there are ways you can ensure they get that. Just follow my top tips below and take a look at your on-site and off-site customer service and see where you can make some improvements:
Contact us page
Okay, so most of you will have set this up, but I often see that people have simply just created their page in Shopify and added the pre-built contact box. And that’s all.
But the problem with this, is that it doesn’t build much trust or rapport with your potential customers. It can make them untrusting of your website as contact boxes are just that, a way for a customer to contact you. But it does not show anything about who/where you are.
So you need to adding at least one more of the following: phone number, email address, postal address.
And I also think it is nice to add a bit of personality to the page with some copy, perhaps telling customers how much you love to hear from them or explaining what they might want to contact you for.
It can also be a great page to pop any generic order information, such as postal delays, pre-order due dates and delivery times.
FAQ page
You might think this is a quick and easy part of your website to create, but it actually isn’t.
You need to think about including the things people will actually need to know and actually answering the questions they may have before they ask them.
If you have already started trading, keep a note of questions which keep coming up and add them periodically to your FAQ page. If you are about to launch, just look at your website through your customers eyes. What might they ask or want to know and include as many questions and answers in your page as possible.
You could also break this page down by category of question, for example, ordering, products, returns, delivery, payment etc.
Another great place to start adding this is on your product pages themselves, if you have a product which needs more explaining then doing this where they are thinking about purchasing can help
Clear delivery information
This is a big one.
Make sure your delivery charges are clear and everywhere on your website.
So not just one delivery information page (although you do need this and preferably in the footer) but also in the headline, on the product pages, in the basket and of course checkout.
It is one of the most important pieces of information your customer needs to know, so don’t make it impossible for them to find.
I also find that it is useful to add some extra info to your delivery page, letting customers know who you will be shipping their order with, how long you take to process orders and anything they need to know about customs and duty (if selling internationally).
Policies
The delivery page leads on nicely to your other policy pages, which are not only useful but some are actually a legal requirement for running your online store.
Make sure you have all the policy pages set up within Shopify (go to Settings > Policies to find them). There is one for returns, delivery, T&Cs and privacy. Complete all of them as they will show at checkout and are essential for legal compliance.
Then you can duplicate them onto pages to show in your footer as well.
Size guides & extra info
If you are selling clothing, I highly recommend having your sizing information easily available for customers. This will not only help them to order, and therefore increase sales but also hopefully reduce the amount of returns you receive.
Create a dedicated page for sizing, which can be placed in your main navigation or footer and also ensure this information is accessible on the product variants and / or in its own tab.
If you aren’t selling clothing there are other bits of information that your customers may need, product specifications, materials, composition or ingredients. And you want to ensure these are clearly laid out on each product page for your customer to view.
Auto-responder
If you are starting to get a lot of customer service enquiries, even after ticking off all the above on-site tasks, you could set up an automatic reply from your email inbox.
This will do 2 things for you. 1. Let customers know you have received their message 2. let customer know how long they can expect to wait for a response.
Managing a customers expectations when they do have to send a message, and letting them know that you’re a small business with potentially one member of staff, means they will be more understanding and happy to wait. Just make sure you do reply in the time you say you will.
Live chat
How can people contact you on your website? If you’ve already read my first tips, you will hopefully have set up your contact page with an email address, phone number, postal address and the contact box.
But the most popular way to contact any customer services right now has to be live chat. This is a quick and instant way of chatting with your customers, and can enable you to give information your customer needs in the moment they need it.
Just be careful, if you can’t be sat manning live chat at your websites most popular times, then it may frustrate people when you either do not reply quickly or it ends up being an email trail anyway.
Just add the Shopify Inbox app to your store (it's made my Shopify and it's free) so you can start to see how live chat can help customers on your store.
Ticketing system
If you are finding your customer service requirements are increasing and you are getting messages from various channels, you might want to look into using a ticketing system. I highly recommend Gorgias for all Shopify stores as it integrates so easily.
Gorgias enables you to centralise all your support options in one place. Meaning messages sent through Facebook, your website or even live chat will all appear in one place where you can reply directly. It also connects with your Shopify customer data, meaning you can quickly see the customers order history, which is great when they are chasing an order.
