Turn frustration to celebration with ecommerce automation

3 key takeaways

   –> Data silos and manual processes prevent excellent customer service.
   –> Ecommerce automation provides full customer data and streamlines workflows.
   –> Create a comprehensive automation approach for the best results.

Bad customer service can quickly sway public opinion about a company. We’ve all experienced it–waiting hours to talk to a representative or dealing with slow shipping and delays. It’s frustrating. In fact, according to a study by Invoca, 63% of consumers are willing to pay more for better customer service.

Unfortunately, many ecommerce companies rely on time-consuming manual processes and siloed data sources that make it nearly impossible to deliver excellent customer service. These processes lead to a lack of visibility into customer data, poor scalability, and slow resolution times.

Now’s the time to reimagine your customer service processes. With ecommerce automation, you can turn pain points into stand out experiences that set you apart from competitors and foster loyalty. Explore the root causes of many customer service problems, strategies for addressing them with automation, and best practices for continued success.

Barriers to customer service success

With all of the systems required to do business in today’s ecommerce environment, it’s easy for your customer data to become fragmented. This isolated data makes it hard for customer service teams to get a comprehensive view of customer interactions, preferences, and purchase history. As a result, they struggle to provide personalized and relevant support.

When your ecommerce and customer service systems aren’t integrated, they often require manual tasks that bog down your processes and cause major challenges for customer service. Manual tasks for data entry, ticket resolution, and order tracking can affect response times and cause errors that lead to incorrect information being shared with customers.

The solution: Ecommerce automation

Ecommerce automation offers a solution to customer service problems caused by siloed data and manual tasks. By integrating your systems and automating your processes, you’ll gain real-time visibility into customer data. This allows you to provide timely support, scale customer service operations, and enhance your brand’s reputation.

In order to see the full benefits of automation, you will need to go beyond point-to-point integrations. A comprehensive automation approach is vital to achieving a unified view of customer data, successfully streamlining data flows, and eliminating manual work. To get started, explore how automation can improve these ecommerce processes.

Order management

Order management is at the heart of ecommerce business, making it a good place to start your automation journey. By automating your order management processes, you can easily process orders, reduce manual intervention, and eliminate errors. This allows you to make sure orders are accurately recorded and fulfilled every time.

Real-time, comprehensive data allows you to instantly provide your customers with updates on their order status, giving them a sense of control and peace of mind about their delivery. Access to your data will also help your team quickly resolve fulfillment issues and enhance customer satisfaction.

Returns management

A smooth returns process is key to upholding customer trust and satisfaction. By automating this process, you can streamline the return authorization process and enable customers to request returns online for immediate approval.

Automation expedites the return processing workflow by allowing your customer service team to process and track return shipments quickly. Faster return processing leads to quicker refunds or exchanges. You’ll also gain instant access to your returns data to help you identify common problems and solve them. Check out our blog to learn more.

Enhancing post-purchase experiences

Post-purchase experience is just as important as the purchase experience. Successful post-purchase experiences can drive repeat purchases and build brand loyalty. By providing meaningful follow up messaging, such as product insights, you can demonstrate your level of care and attention to your customers. By leveraging automation, you can deliver personalized and timely follow-up at scale.

Tips for successful customer service automation

Once you’ve decided which processes you want to automate, you can leverage these best practices to ensure you’re able to successfully integrate your systems.

1. Map out your customer service processes
The first step in automating your customer service processes is understanding which workflows should be automated first. Mapping out your processes, as well as associated applications, allows you to determine which are most critical. Be sure to note what data needs to be tracked as well as time-intensive and resource-heavy tasks. Once you’ve mapped everything, you’ll get a complete picture of your automation needs and the potential ROI of an automation project.

2. Create a central hub for your data
Selecting a central data hub to be your single source of truth is key to gaining a comprehensive view of your data customer data. You can opt to use an ERP, order management system, or ecommerce platform. Once you’ve selected your central data hub, you can integrate your customer service tools to ensure essential customer data and order history is readily accessible.

3. Determine data flow direction and frequency
After you’ve mapped your processes and selected a central hub for your integrations, you need to determine data flow direction and run frequency. Data updates can be bi-directional or one-way. Reference your mapped processes as a guide to determine which systems require which type of data. You should also determine how often you need your data to flow. Some processes may need to be updated in real time, while others can be scheduled and batched.

With a process-centric approach to automation, you can develop and maintain exceptional customer experiences, ensuring your customers never face frustrating customer service issues. If you’re ready to start building better experiences with automation, contact us today or sign up for a free trial. Want to dive deeper into this topic? Check out our eBook, Driving Ecommerce Growth through Customer Service Automation.