E Commerce Marketplace blog

Category: E Commerce

  • Social media as customer service channel? Things to consider

    Social media is one of the most important channels where you can actually understand and drive the message in a viral way. Social media is the place where information is shared often in byte sized chunks and opinions fly thick and fast.

    Social media is the place where a company can drive the conversation in the direction in which it is looking to move towards, especially related to customer complaints. Social media can be a force multiplier for companies as customer service channels if used well.

    As a company your social media interaction may be one to one but the message that you put out is broadcast to everyone of the page followers and thus has high chance of virality.

    Here is a list of items that you need to keep in mind using social media effectively as a channel of communication.

    Respond politely and effectively

    Social media is a place where not only your reply to the post has a chance to go viral but also that it could be screenshotted and passed around leading to more virality. Thus, you need to respond to the customer complaints/reviews/feedback as professionally as possible. Admitting mistakes if they have occurred or accepting praise gracefully can go a long way to ensure that your business is viewed favourably.

    Beware of the emotional status of the end user

    People usually end up on social media when they have exhausted other channels of communications. When Emails and Phone support is proven ineffective, an aggrieved user tend to write the post on social media. The post contains details that are often the evidence of complaint and lack of response from the company.

    Companies’ responses usually are robotic. They usually don’t take user’s grievances into account. A lack of response or a poor response may lead to more reaction and damage to the reputation of the company.

    Create specialist team if you can afford them

    Social media is a unique channel where not only complaints but also responses may go viral. A person well known in the way people behave in a social media context will be able to manage the situation more effectively. The team should be able to get the proper message out and perform damage control in shortest amount of time.

    Be aware of the changing landscape

    Every social media website has its own pros and cons. While Facebook is generally used by more senior population, Instagram is mostly used by millennials. Recent additions like Tik Tok are more favourable to generation Z. X (formerly twitter) on the other hand is used as the most viral channel. Pinterest on the other hand is the place where images speak the most.

    It is important to understand where your client base lies and gets engaged. Choosing a different social media platform means not reaching the right audience.

    Also be aware of any other trending social media where you can target your user base.

    Avoid sharing personal data on public channels

    I have seen countless times, people putting up either their order number or their phone number on the social media posts. While as a customer care team, one cannot stop people from sharing personal details, the next step could be asking them to share the details privately. If you ask them to share it on the post, most of them would carelessly share data for everyone to see. This could lead to privacy issues.

    One way, companies avoid this fiasco is to send a link to their direct message or email. A user then doesn’t to share too many details online and risk jeopardizing their safety and privacy.

  • Network Effect: How does it help E Commerce Business?

    Network Effect: How does it help E Commerce Business?

    In E Commerce parlance, Networking Effect means that more and more consumers of  products or services are joining a platform while at the same time, providers of those products or services are also joining it, in anticipation of sales.

    At the start of an E Commerce project, it is basically a supply side excess. You put a product or you sign up several suppliers ( in case of a market place)  and wait for their customers to sign up. In case the customers don’t sign up, the platform may quickly lose relevance.

    Thus, you would need to simultaneously also would need to attract the customer base . The larger the customer base, more products you can sell or more suppliers you can sign up.

    Positive feedback loop for your business

    This is called as Network effect and it is very important to understand the importance of it for your E Commerce business to succeed

    The Network Effect causes a positive feedback loop as can be inferenced from above. The larger your catalogue, the higher will be your customer base and higher customer base means more suppliers are attracted to your business.

    Spend money initially, enjoy later

    When your E Commerce business is new, you would experience a barren customer landscape. This is because you don’t have advertised your platform and how it benefits those who are signing up. And that may be a significant spending. But once you have a sizeable user base, you can utilize their data to help your suppliers target them with specific attributes such as gender, location or interests.

    In case you cannot grow organically (there is probably competition), you will need to use all available methods including running paid ads to attract as many sign-ups as possible.

    The funnel that is created out of those orders, can further be incentivised by using data analysis for higher customer satisfaction. You may also incentivise users by providing referral mechanisms, initial discounts or free shipping offers. The idea is to attract a growing customer base and then when once done, increase engagement.

    Utilize the growing network to better your platform

    Even if you are knowledgeable about your business, E Commerce can still spring a surprise upon you. You could be asked to provide your products in a different variant for e.g. in a different size or a different colour or shape. If offline world, you would rarely get an opportunity to collect so much requirement unless your network is huge. But in online world, your users’ behaviour can be studied in detail. The data you collect may not only improve your sales funnel but also help you give new product ideas or open the markets which were probably hidden from you.

    You can also improve your innovation based on the search queries on your platform and guide your suppliers towards creating new demand-based products.

    Getting more engaged user base

    Your users would be happier if they have multiple choices to sell their products or buy from your suppliers. They could even compare terms and prices in order to get a good deal for themselves.

    And you benefit from all these activities as well because the data analysis allows you to understand deep motives of your user base. You can further define strategies and personalized recommendations based on that data analysis.

    Thus, you would get highly engaged customer base which responds to your offers and promotions, and you would get to see more orders and referrals.

    Network effect is an important part of your E Commerce business journey and you need to keep in mind that it takes time and money to reach an optimal level beyond which network grows itself. Be patient and win.

    Photo by Pixabay

  • Social proof helps your E Commerce Business – How?

    Social proof helps your E Commerce Business – How?

    Social Proof is defined as something that propels an individual who is uncertain about making a decision to give them a psychological push in order to help or make that decision. Social proof is telling the individual that the decision they are going to make is already being taken by other individuals and that has turned out to be a great decision for them.

    Social proof was extensively used in the offline business. If you want to increase your customer base, you may ask your existing customer to refer your product or service to a friend or an acquaintance and to also let them know how the existing customer is benefiting because they are using your products or services.

    Let us understand a few reasons why social proof works in E Commerce.

    Uncertainty is the enemy of ordering

    Have you ever visited a website that you found is carrying the product that you have been looking for. Everything looks good and you are fairly convinced that the product that they have on the site will meet your needs. However, there is always a nagging doubt if the product will actually perform as it is shown on the page. You scroll down and then you see that other people have added reviews for it. Now, you can be confident that other users have navigated the same uncertainty, yet they have gone ahead and taken the risk of trying things out.

    And that has worked for them. Thus, you move past the psychological barrier of being uncertainty. You can now order, happily knowing that the product has been tested and approved by others.

    Celebrity endorsement works

    If a popular celebrity endorses a particular product, a lot of fans following them become eager to buy what they are advertising. For example, if a strong sport star promotes a healthy protein drink, fans who are aspirational to reach their levels of fitness, would like to try and buy the protein drink. The advertisement instantly catapults the product to top of their mind.

    If you can, consider using a celebrity based on your budget to promote your product. You can put the images or videos of the celebrity endorsement on your website. That way, the user that has come looking for a solution gets instant rewards in his or her brain upon purchasing that product.

    Conformation helps with social proof

    Every product comes with a level of aspiration. If a large number of people in a social or local setting use a particular product then the pressure on a person who does not use the product increases significantly.

    A prime example is rise of new songs. On social media, a song gains some popularity, and it is moved up the chart. Soon because of word of mouth or social media algorithm, the song is moved to the top of the list. Everyone starts talking about it. A person who hasn’t followed the herd, now needs to listen to the song, leading to further increase in popularity.

    In E Commerce parlance, if you can use existing trends to your advantage, you may ride on popularity wave. Sales of concert T Shirt of the artist sells like hot cakes, when you create them based on who is more popular or who is going to perform near your users.

    Detailed testimonials matter more

    A person who buys a product and then writes a detailed testimonial of what works and what doesn’t is a far valuable asset than the one who just leaves a rating (which is also good, but it doesn’t have the same impact). These people actually make effort to craft a review and add images or videos of them using the product.

    A person who writes detailed review may not always leave positive reviews, but it still helps to improve your product. A well-crafted reply to a detailed reviews leaves a visitor with a good impression about your business.

    Photo by Lisa from Pexels

  • How can referrals help you get customers for E Commerce?

    How can referrals help you get customers for E Commerce?

    Referrals are one of the few ways an E Commerce business can reliably get more customers without expending a lot of advertising dollars. Referrals are usually provided to engaged customers. It is under the belief that a highly engaged customer, who is using your website or app, is more like to recommend the same to his friends and family, in turn earning some goodies for him or herself.

    Let us find out a few ways that referral program can be great for your business.

     

    Your customer does the heavy lifting for your business

    Normally, you as a business would need to advertise the feature, make interesting tutorials and spend money on explaining your product to your future customers. Wouldn’t it be great if it happens without your involvement and effort. Referral program helps you do just that.

    Your customers, if they are happy enough with your product or business are quick to suggest your name when it comes to suggestion to family members. Why, because it is an inherent need for humans to be known as authority on a subject. They would also do the job of explaining the features of your product. And that is great because they are using their time to explain your product to them.

    As an example, you would have seen people recommending restaurants, taxi services, or anything else they have experienced to their friends who are looking for information.

    You save on expenses.

    As indicated in the point above, it costs a lot of money to reach customers these days. There are too many things vying for their attention. So, you need to spend top dollars to occupy their mind space.

    Referral marketing reduces the cost that you need to create more leads. Your referrer does it for you, for a small amount of benefit to themselves or sometimes for no benefit and just their own belief in your product.

    Imagine if you were to create viral campaigns, run paid ads for them, how much would it cost to you. Search is getting expensive and keywords are difficult to rank for on internet. In some places, you are not even allowed to advertise for certain industry and rely exclusively on word-of-mouth tactic to attract more customers.

    Your referrer wants you to succeed post referral

    Can you imagine a deal gone bad after you have suggested it to your friend. You would be in an awkward position. So people who suggest your business to their friends need to be fully convinced that your business will serve everyone, you and their referred folks honestly and with full support. If your business fails to deliver, they might suffer a loss of reputation, and it is not good for anyone.

    So, it is in your interest to make sure that you honour your referral terms and conditions and put your best foot forward. In the end, if everything works out, you get your referrer for life and those referred too happily using your products or services. And who doesn’t need a happy satisfied customer.

     You get to learn more about your target

    Let us say you have a clothing store, and you offer referral discounts. Because of the authority of referrer, their friends and family pick up the discounts and start buying things from you. You now have a deep insight on multiple people including the original referrer if they are using your products. You can find what trends and what does not and you can have a good guess about what your targeted bases are is looking for. This insight can help you further refine your understanding of your base because the whole referral program generates large data.

    Even if you do not get many purchases, you can still find out how to better convert your leads into orders by tweaking your products and processes.

    Photo by Felicity Tai

  • How to effectively use Social Media for your E Commerce Business

    Social media these days is one of the primary ways to interact with friends and family on internet. However, almost all social media channels also double up as venues for facilitating E Commerce activities. Social media websites can be utilized for brand awareness, launching new products, creating sales funnel among many other things.

    Social media can also be used as customer communication channels where complaints and inquiries can be handled right on the social media website.

    Social media can also to be used to develop granular insight into the customer behaviour so that you know your customer base and you can move to end of funnel pretty quickly (in this case, sales)

    Your E Commerce store can benefit from being on social media and utilizing the benefits of a targeted campaigns run on social media with deep analysis done on your customer segment.

     

    Select your social media platform carefully

    The idea is not to start on all social media platforms at once and then get overwhelmed checking up the engagement on each of them.

    If you are a sole entrepreneur or a business owner with small marketing team, trying to be on every social media platform at once meaning stretching your limited resources.

    Let us say your product needs an explainer or a live tutorial (like a how-to-use video). Video would be obvious choice for marketing. And the platform that serves the best interest is YouTube. YouTube viewers are used to long videos and they will not mind watching a well-made video.

    However, if your product appeals to families or friends who interact a lot with each other, you may prefer Facebook as that kind of engagement gets higher reward over there.

    If you prefer short form videos, Instagram and Tik Tok are your friends and if images are what are important to you, Pinterest is the right place.

    If virality is important to you and your product line needs rapid coverage, X will better serve your needs.

     

    Influencer marketing

    Social media created a new generation of celebrities. They are called as influencers. Even though the term does not have a lot of positives associated with it, influencers are a major force in the social media world.

    A reliable influencer can readily convince their follower to give your products a try. They can become brand awareness consultants for your brand, taking your new product launches to their million of followers.

    This obviously introduces a level of scale that is not possible with just plain advertising.

    However, you need to be aware if the influencer has the right reach and credentials to connect with the followers. And, that influencer needs to be knowledgeable about the industry he is going to work with.

    Understand how interactions work in social media context

    Social media interactions are different compared to other styles of interactions. In a phone or email conversation, a limited number of people are involved and there is almost no virality.

    However, with social media, every statement that your company writes, is broadcast to the world. The statements may generate further discussions which may be positive or negative.

    The primary idea on social media is to show that your brand is mature enough to handle all kinds of feedback such as praise, criticism or worse, trolling. Respectful answering in the face of provocation, with facts indicates that you can handle criticism of your product and are willing to incorporate changes to make your product a better one.

    Using nonorganic methods to promote your products

    Yes, we all want almost zero cost virality. In recent years, the organic reach of the pages esp. in Facebook has been going down continuously. That means social media companies would want to cut the free traffic and charge you for showing your products and campaigns to their users.

    With the paid advertising, there are a number of features that social media platforms provide. You can for example with paid advertising, target a specific set of people, you want to reach. It could location, gender or interest groups. This may not be possible in a organic sharing. The reach may be far restricted than the paid campaign

    Use Social media as customer service

    How and why, you may ask!!

    Using social media platforms as customer service is a great and effective way to achieve good results and reputation across websites that already have huge numbers of engaged viewers. Social media platforms are the places where trends emerge and ideas happen. With you working in the right direction, you can leverage social media to answer questions, handle comments and also listen to complaints. Your thoughtful responses will lead to better benefits for your business

  • How to resolve the challenging issue of E Commerce Business – Returns

    One of the biggest challenges faced by E Commerce providers is handling returns. The returns often cost a substantive portion of order completion and if mishandled can cause dissatisfaction with customer base.

    However, without possibility of returns, customers would not take the risk of trying a product, more so if the cost of product is high. This is evident mostly in consumer apparel industry where unless the product reaches the customer, it cannot be tried and only then it can be scheduled for returns.

    So how does an E Commerce portal owner solve this problem?

    Let us outline a few of the steps.

    Add as much fitment details as possible.

    Retail clothing, shoes websites face this problem. The size fitment expectation is often different when the actual product is tried on. An E Commerce portal owner thus needs to make sure that the size is as standardized and as accurate as possible. That means listing out all the attributes that are used when the product is created. It may include for example, fabric type, height of the clothing, the width of the person that it is suitable for in case of clothing.

    A good idea for example in apparel sales is to include a model wearing the cloth and attributes describing their height and width is clearly mentioned thus helping the buyer to understand the product details a little better.

    You can also add a live customer help (an expert) or a chatbot which takes the query related to product and provide answers either in real time or by other channels a little later.

    In case of other kind of products such as electronics, specifications should be clearly shown in a table. Also, all the salient points related to product should be mentioned in clear bullet points.

    Clear Return policies

    If I am buying a product, I sure want to look at the return policies mentioned in the website. If it is a costly product, I read through the return policies more carefully. By doing that, I avoid the heartburn that comes when I realize that policies prevent me from making a return.

    On the E Commerce website’s side, it is important that return policies are easy to read and not made deliberately confusing. By creating difficult policies, you are only going to end up in arguments with a customer. Keep it simple.

    Design a policy like

    • what can be returned and what cannot be
    • In what time return window closes (can’t keep it open forever) . PS: It should be reasonable
    • In what condition the product should be returned (For example, unopened, unworn, untried etc)
    • What will be the charges if any for returns pickup?
    • Are products allowed for exchange only or refunds?

    Having clear policies often help achieve a good ratio of return to ordered and helps in better profitability.

     

    High resolution images

    Have you ever felt the frustration when you pinch zoom a product image on the website and all it leads to is a blurry image. That is frustrating because the details than can be seen with eyes now is not clearly visible on the image. It may not be intentional to put up a low-resolution image that does not scale well but it tells the customers looking at your page that you are not professional enough to take good photographs of your product.

    Use bright lights and good quality camera to take good photographs of your product preferably from multiple angels possible.

    If you decide to add a video where you show the actual usage or assembly of the product, that aids the buyer decision in your favour.

    Data Analysis to help reduce returns.

    A scenario may be where a customer habitually orders a product use it and return it within the return window. While legally in their right to return, such customers may misuse the return process and cause you losses in your order delivery.

    Another scenario may be that customer reports that your orders are not delivered in right condition or at agreed upon times.

    Yet another scenario may happen that customers frequently report damaged or defective goods.

    All the scenarios provide useful data that can helped to identify which part of the process needs tweaking. Is it an issue with production, shipping, website or customer themselves and return policies can be tweaked to made it easier and more effective.

  • Types of E Commerce Businesses

    Types of E Commerce Businesses

    E Commerce is a very broad term. What initially started as Commerce between a business and end consumer initially on internet now has encompassed multiple branches and diversifications.

    E Commerce refers to selling/buying goods either electronically (they are available as downloads) or physically (they are shipped in boxes) . It can also mean transfer of money from services such as IT services, BPO solutions, legal and even CV preparation.

    Initially, most of the E Commerce used to be performed through desktops while in new age, E Commerce is conducted on desktop, TV, laptops and most importantly on mobile devices.

    Let us have a look at various types of E Commerce types that currently exist in the world.

     

    Business To Consumers

    Business to consumers is inarguably the most known type of E Commerce business. Dell computers for example, sells its configurable computers online. The customer just needs to customize and place the order and make payment, everything online. Then the computer is shipped to the home.

    Another great example is Amazon. Amazon is one of the largest E commerce companies with millions of products and customers as well.

    But there are millions of small other companies and businesses running their business online often in competition to the giants. The companies sell niche products.

    In case of service Industry, one can think of companies such as Fiverr, Upwork, and many online education platform which provide services and not products as their main offering. The customer pays a subscription and in return they are provided with the services related to their needs.

    There are some businesses that outsource part of their business to vendors while they focus on taking orders. Such example of drop shipping, T shirt and Mug printing services fall under this category.

    Business To Business

    Commerce just does not happen between consumer and businesses. It can also happen between two businesses. A truck company for example can entertain applications for electric component manufacturing, online instead of offline. Even the process of bidding for the tender may happen online.

    Then there are bulk buyers, which supply other companies with the required raw materials. Things such as inventory level replacement, shipping dates, payments can be integrated within the two companies leading to smooth E Commerce transactions.

    Even for services, a business can buy online from the B2B arm of a company while the company also serves B2C customers. An example is Stock photography companies. While the individual customer needs only one or two images at a time, a business can make multiple image purchases from the stock photography companies.

    Consumer to Consumer

    In this type of E Commerce, the consumers talk to each other, buy and sell using a company providing listing services. The payment is handled mostly by the consumers themselves. Companies such eBay and Etsy allow consumers to directly buy from other sellers on the platform. The company providing the services thus generally neither produces anything, nor ships   anything to customers. It is left to the sellers and buyers to agree on the price and terms of shipping. The intermediatory though takes a cut of sales value or charges a fee for providing extra details such as phone number or email id of the buyers/sellers.

    Direct To Consumer

    If a company not just lists its own products but also sells it online on its own website, it is supposed to have performed the Direct To Consumer sale. It is different than Business to Consumer that here the manufacturer is directly selling products or services and is often providing even service guarantees. The manufacturer can also list products on other B2C sites such as Amazon to increase the reach but often will give you the best price and guarantees if you purchase things from their own website.

    Examples are electronic consumer good companies that manufacture and sells them through their own websites. They typically cut the middlemen and often have enough flexibility to manage the customer service requests, complaints too.

     

    Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

  • Key Components of E Commerce

    Key Components of E Commerce

    E Commerce has a number of moving parts and often the success of an E Commerce venture depends on integration of all these parts to achieve the targets either in terms of awareness or profitability.

    Some of the parts are common between E Commerce and offline business, such as products and customer service. However, there are some parts exclusive to E Commerce as business which are vital to success.

    Let us understand both the parts that form a complete E Commerce business and also contrast them with offline businesses

     

    Website

    The most important component of E Commerce business is of course that it has something that can be accessed over internet. With an offline business, you can just walk up to a store or call up your neighbourhood grocer to deliver your grocery. But the real E Commerce concept kicks in when you have a website that has a store front, a product listing page, a cart page and way to place the order. The website is designed often to help you browse and move the products to the cart just like in physical world but just online.

    Sign Ups and Login

    Sign ups and login form an important part of E Commerce ecosystem. People signing up either for ordering or just receiving your email newsletter are a stamp of approval for your website and brand. Sign ups means that people have moved one step into the sales funnel and with enough encouragement ( such as social proofs, promotions running at the time) or your brand image, they are now inclined to make a purchase.

    Logging back indicates that users are still willing to buy from you and want to understand if something in terms of pricing or delivery has changed.

    Online marketing and newsletter

    People may find your website from the search results on the search Engine page or if they happened to browse on social media and come across content related to your website. The important part is that this type of marketing is directly integrated into your E Commerce website and purchasing decisions can be very quick. A user seeing an impressive ad, clicks on the suggested link, where they can see the product. They then add to the cart and make the payment. This can happen in a span on minutes.

    Newsletters are another way to integrate E Commerce marketing. Newsletter helps your customers stay update with your offers and often they make purchases right after clicking on the links in newsletter.

     

    Shopping carts and Order process

    There is marked difference between an offline store and E Commerce. Even though you are not physically putting products into a cart, you are essentially ordering them still. The order process involves checkout which is like any offline store just that you are making a payment, adding address, checking discounts happening in real time on website.

    If you decide not to complete the order, the system may retain your shopping cart even if you decide to logout and close the browser. A good E Commerce system may even inform later by email that you have certain items in the system that are waiting to be processed and ordered.

    Analytics

    In an E Commerce setup, you can analyse the customer’s behaviour in real time and correlate it to their purchasing habits at a much granular level compared to offline stores.

    You can also use Search Engine Optimization to learn more about how your individual product pages are performing.

    Data analysis of user reviews and feed back from social media can help in understand more details about product issues which can help improve your overall offering.

     

    Expectation matching and Customer Service

    In terms of expectations management, E Commerce needs more work than an offline shop. E Commerce often involves viewing products and guessing their attributes to some extent. It is possible that there could be a colour mismatch or size mismatch or even features that are not visible before purchase because user ignored the associated text.

    This may lead to higher returns affecting the profitability of the store.

    Photo by Connor Lucock:

  • Pros and Cons of getting into online E Commerce business

    Pros and Cons of getting into online E Commerce business

    E Commerce is probably the most important trend in the timeline of human business endeavors. E Commerce exploded once the internet became ubiquitous and faster than before. The advent of giants such as Amazon and eBay led to a number of small businesses taking their business online.

    If you are planning to take a business online or just want to understand if you should even consider doing it, it is a good idea to understand the pros and cons of going online.

    Let us look at some of the pros of doing online business.

    You have global reach

    If you can fulfill the need, the world is your oyster now. People searching for that special product that only you can manufacture can find from beyond your country’s border. You get orders from distant places and being online just exploded your reach. You have more data to analyze about global audience and chance to explore markets that may be more profitable than your local demographic.

    You are online all the time

    That is the dream of every business, to be running even when the owner is asleep. The orders can keep flowing while you are busy with other aspects of the business. You don’t have to pay your employees to be at the store all the time. The website acts as an interface, the chatbots answer customer queries and even make sales on your behalf. The customers are browsing, checking out your products even when there is no personnel around to show the products to them.

    Your costs of operations are reduced for the hours you are open

    Of course, there are costs associated with operating an online store. However, if you are using large companies such as Amazon, Etsy or eBay to list your product, you may just add the products, set up details and forget about them. These companies will do the job of keeping the servers running and even marketing products if they fit their own criteria. You will just need to fulfill the orders. You can even outsource the product in case of the dropshipping business, where someone else will fulfill the orders on your behalf.

    Even if you run your own website, the cost of running it is far less than operating a physical store with all whistles and bells such as electricity costs, rent, hiring employees, providing physical security and dealing with store theft.

    Enhanced Data analysis and tracking

    You collect the information the moment a visitor lands on your site. You have their IP, their browser type, the mobile phone they are using, their geographic location etc. The granularity of data can help you understand customer behavior in more detail. You may find it easy to target a particular demographic based on the data collected and analyzed. This level of detailing is not possible in a physical store where the data collection is often minimized to phone number or email address.

    But not everything is hunky dory. As is everything in life, good things come with a cost and that cost cannot be avoided. There are obvious cons to selling online.

    Faceless ordering leads to poor interactions and personal connections

    Yes, you are aware of the customer’s geographic location and other attributes, but you can never replace the value of a customer that you know personally. A good shop owner knows their customers often by name and understands their buying patterns and motivations to buy something. The relationship leads to lifetime customers who come to them for repeat purchases and even for suggestions. Online doesn’t establish such connections easily and thus cannot replace the value of personal connections

    Product fitment problems

    Can you ever imagine going to a clothing store and just buying an item of clothing by reading the size label. You won’t, like, ever do that. But online, you are often forced to make an educated guess about if the product is really going to fit your needs.  The site selling the product may have policies that a return is not allowed.

    As a store owner, this could be a problem as customer expectations are hard to foresee and it is always a guess work even for you to correctly resolve fitment issues.

    Security and data protection issues

    Well, you may ask, if there are no storefronts, why do you need security. It is because you are custodian of the customer data and often that data is sensitive. You wouldn’t want the world to know what any customer has ordered. The expose of such data may lead to loss of reputation, hurt brand reputation and open you up to lawsuits. And the data stays in the world forever, ready to be used time and again by hackers.

     

    Photo by Jan van der Wolf

  • Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbot as customer service tool

    Advantages and Disadvantages of Chatbot as customer service tool

    Chatbots have come far in time. Initially they were just based on static questions and answers that were predetermined and configured in the software system. Now chatbots can handle complex questions written in the native language of users and can supply information based on rules in the system.

    Chatbots are a major component of business automation. They can be used in customer service, answering customer questions and taking requests for service. They can help a company free customer service resources for important calls or other useful tasks rather than answer similar questions.

    Here are a few advantages of using chatbots in your E Commerce landscape

    Available 24/7

    One of the top advantages of having a Chatbot system installed in your web property is that Chatbots are available 24/7 to answer customers questions. That means you can have one shift of human employees while leaving the other shifts to chatbots. You can even start your first customer interaction with chatbots answering basic and repetitive questions which may often consume valuable time of a human employee.

    In case that chatbot cannot answer a question, the query can be forwarded to a human agent.

    Personalized Service

    Chatbots can be helpful when they can answer customer query by deriving information from multiple sources. A chatbot can provide answer after the engine that it is using is trained on company and customer policies. A chatbot is trained on product data and content based on the website. It can also connect with multiple systems such as Order management and Customer relationship management and can fetch order details from them without the need of human intervention.

    The advantage of chatbot here is that it can converse with the customer in their own language using the advantage of Natural Language Processing system.

    With the data collected from the interactions , the chatbot can further be personalized. Customers chat history can be collected to refine the future interactions.

    Higher efficiency, Cost savings

    Chatbots can offer cost savings as we can see from the above paragraphs already. They can help reduce the number of human agents required to answer similar or repeated questions. There is definitely a cost related to initial investment in setting up the chat systems but with time , you might see a reduction in cost if the chat systems are correctly configured and data is analyzed well for further usage.

    The efficiency results from the fact that these systems are available 24/7, takes data from multiple sources and can provide personalized services. The chatbot system can be used to handle multiple customers at a time , freeing up the human resources for other important tasks. They can suggest products on the fly leading to less time lag and higher customer satisfaction.

     

    What are the disadvantages of using Chatbots as customer service tools

    Obviously with the upside of using Chatbots, there are downsides to them as well. Remember that chatbots can never completely replace a human in the chain and they can sometimes cause more damage than benefit

    A chatbot may sound fake

    Once, I had to call an E Commerce company regarding their delayed order and how much it was affecting me. Fortunately, at the other end of the line, was a human who could understand, how much of a frustration I was feeling. She was empathetic to my issue and then she put the order escalation to the highest priority. It would have been difficult for a chatbot to understand my agony. Even the empathetic preset messages may sound phony as I can see that a machine is empathising with me , which totally appears fake.

    Problem with customer confidentiality

    There have been cases, where a chatbot often based on LLMs ( Large Language Models) engines have been known to be hacked easily and spill out details that were not supposed to be exposed to anyone. This is a dangerous thing because if there are no guardrails, a hacker may know everything about your customers and their order books. This can lead to lawsuits and reputation damage.

     

    Photo by cottonbro studio