4 Ways to Automate E-commerce Customer Support

For any e-commerce organization, having swift customer support is crucial. However, a strict dependency on manual customer service can rarely deliver real-time support due to the time it takes. This is the main reason why e-commerce support requires automation.

Even with all of the pre-defined FAQs present on an e-commerce site (where any customer can self-learn about basic policies and procedures), there needs to be another way to communicate with the customer. Other aspects, like delays in shipping, refunds not being processed, abandoned shopping carts, and other individualized concerns need to be addressed.

To improve the response time on queries like these or uncommon queries, it becomes necessary to have real-time replies.

Here are four ways to automate e-commerce customer support.

1. Trigger Emails Based on Keywords

Sending canned emails when the customer makes the purchase is not our current concern. However, sending triggered emails based on keywords such as “wrong package/delivery,” “delivery hasn’t arrived,” “payment not processing” or similar issues can be beneficial to an e-commerce support team.

These types of emails can be triggered easily using a CRM. The only requirement will be to create emails with relevant content to the keyword tag. So, whenever your system receives an email from a customer carrying a tag like “delivery hasn’t arrived,” a canned email with relevant tag should be sent to the customer automatically. Using Agile CRM’s email campaign feature, you can easily automate such triggered emails.

2. Routing Queries Based on Relevancy

Generally, customer support receives queries that not only fall under their expertise but also under the specialization of other teams. This usually delays the response time as the queries need to be sent to the relevant teams. So routing queries based on team expertise and relevancy can also be automated using keyword tags. You can add tags such as “password,” “delivery,” “broken,” “never arrived,” “not working,” etc. to differentiate the query type, as well as to route emails that carry keywords like “password” to IT support and “never arrived” to customer support.

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Again, a CRM can help you differentiate between queries that require customer support or IT support using the email tags system. Based on the tags, it can route the relevant emails to relevant teams without any delay. Whether the reply needs to be automated or not is completely dependent on the nature of the query.

3. Scheduled Calls

Times when the customer abandons the cart or has issues with payment, he/she can be contacted to using a quick, scheduled call. Representatives can trigger an automated call to solve the customer issue instead of waiting for the customer to send an email.

Through this automated call, the customer can choose his or her grievance from the recorded options using the dial pad and opt for the most relevant one. The customer might find an answer in one of those recorded options or can opt for a support rep’s help. This type of automated solution will help you get the customer back on the correct page and help him or her to continue shopping.

4. Live Chat

Any customer who is having issues with your site will first look for a chat option to get a quick solution to his or her grievance. For this reason, it is important to have live chat on your site with canned responses. In the instance that the reps on duty are missing, the canned responses can be useful and keep the customer busy. The missed responses can be directed to the support rep’s inbox for quick response if necessary.

These are few of the very important forms of support automation that need to be adopted. Using a CRM that is integrated with your helpdesk can be the best solution. You can also have forums on your site where customers can ask questions to each other and provide free support. However, if any question goes unanswered, then any support rep can answer those queries. In such cases, it is important to control these forums on regular basis.

Having complete support automation might not be possible for e-commerce companies, but streamlining workflows using automation can be the best way to optimize this process. The aim for this automation should be to have complete customer satisfaction. At the same time, it should be cost-effective and the automation needs to be carefully implemented and monitored.