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4 essential technologies for customer service in retail

Julien Rio, marketing director at RingCentral Engage Digital, shares why having just one customer support channel is a fail. He writes it is essential for brands to adopt channels to support customers during their online purchases.

Photo by istock.com

October 29, 2019

By Julien Rio, marketing director at RingCentral Engage Digital

In the retail sector customer experience is playing an increasingly important role. No surprises there perhaps, but in 2020 it will be the most important differentiator between brands, above price and product.

The boundaries between physical and online stores are increasingly blurred, but customer care must also adapt to this evolution. Just as it is unthinkable to have a store without a salesperson, it is essential for brands to adopt channels to support customers during their online purchases.

Live-chat: increase your conversions by assisting your customers

According to a study, 44% of customers believe that getting live answers to their questions when shopping online is one of the most important features a website can offer. In addition, 68% of them stop using a company when they perceive that they are indifferent to them.

One of the most effective ways for a retail site is to provide that level of service is through live chat. This channel allows agents to chat in real time with customers, while they are visiting the website, engaging in discussions about products and services or to help resolve a problem.

One of the features of live-chat that is particularly interesting for retailers is the use of triggers to create an opportunity to instigate that conversation. A live chat can be triggered according to specific criteria, such as the volume of products added to a basket, visits to certain pages or the time spent on a page. These criteria imply a customer needs more information for his or her decision making or may be confused: offering a live chat conversation is a good way to accelerate that process in a proactive way, and remove any barriers to them completing a transaction.

Another live-chat feature to consider is co-browsing, allowing the agent to view the same page in real time as the client. This does not require any installation for the client or agent and can help the agent to highlight certain areas of a web page.\

WhatsApp business solution: Talk to your customers on one of their favorite applications

Live chat is great for instant interactions but has some limitations. Its synchronous nature means the customer must remain on the website waiting for an answer, forcing them to wait for answers, which can be frustrating

Messaging is a way to bypass these limits and will be more suitable for situations that do not require an immediate response. Thanks to its asynchronous rhythm and notifications, customers can ask their questions and receive a delayed response.

WhatsApp Business Solution is a great example of a messaging platform and one of the most relevant messaging channels for the retail sector.

By using WhatsApp, retailers allow their customers to contact them on a channel that they already use daily to communicate with friends, family and colleagues. Rather than being forced to use channels such as online forms or the phone, customers can simply send a message and be notified when they receive a response. WhatsApp offers features such as sharing media, voice messages and localization to provide more context and facilitate problem solving.

For the business itself, WhatsApp Business Solution offers many advantages such as instant responses to customers and freeing up time for teams, increasing agent productivity, improving customer satisfaction and sales, by offering support more adapted to customer usage, with faster resolution.

Moreover, since WhatsApp Business Solution was launched only a few months ago, adopting it allows retailers to position themselves as pioneers, more closely aligned with how customers expect to engage with them.

Google My Business: manage customer reviews and points of sale

Another challenge in the retail sector is the management of customer reviews and comments - 95% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. This makes it the most widely used source for research, ahead of search engines and the wider website.
One of the most important channels for reviews is Google My Business, on which 44% of local businesses are already registered for free, with reviews directly visible in search results.  

Faced with these uses, monitoring opinions to be able to respond to them becomes essential. A negative comment left unanswered, can quickly have negative impacts on the brand and 96% of Internet users are influenced by the presence of negative opinions during a purchase, making it essential for retailers to effectively manage Google My Business.

In-App Messaging: Make the most of your app's investment

A mobile application is one of the most important investments for a distribution company. However, making applications an ongoing success is hard work and 96% of apps are no longer used after 12 months. To make such an investment profitable, the challenge is to provide users with value-added features to justify the use of the application in the long-term.

In-App Messaging allows customers to have an experience similar to Messenger and WhatsApp, directly within the retailers application. This provides different advantages: identifying customers through their account and accessing their data, encouraging the application to be maintained over the long term and making the investment related to the application profitable, letting customers to use the system both iOS and Android.   

How to effectively manage these channels?

Taking the decision to use a combination of these tools may seem straightforward enough. But it is not simply a case that deploying the technology, the processes and day-to-day management becomes critically important if they are to be successful. Given that companies may already use a variety of channels to communicate with customers it is important to choose platforms that bring all of them together. Taking this approach empowers customer support agents by giving them all the information they need about previous engagements as well as simplifying the task of management. It can also help businesses reduces the complexity of their customer support teams, making them more efficient and effective.

With customer service being the differentiator for brands that helps them win and keep customers long into the 2020s, and brand loyalty a dim and distant memory, retailers need to place as much emphasis on the technologies that support customer engagements, as they do on the web platforms that sell them products.