With the advent of new tools and technologies and the rise of social media platforms, brick-and-mortar retail stores have experienced a significant downfall in footfalls that has also impacted their sales and revenue generation channels. Today’s customers expect a digital shopping experience from brands. They are more likely to stay engaged with brands that meet their needs and expectations of prompt and convenient services. This is why many retailers have undergone extensive digital transformations, heavily relying on a contact center for retailer services. Therefore, to stay connected with tech-savvy customers and avoid challenging situations, reshaping the retail experience has become imperative.
Despite adopting innovative tools and technologies, many retailers and even some eCommerce businesses are yet to acknowledge the complete range of benefits of contact center outsourcing. These businesses usually believe it is easy to set up an in-house contact center team and provide outstanding customer services. Moreover, they also believe that an in-house setup is much more cost-effective and risk-free than reaching out to a third-party agency. While some businesses successfully manage it, most retail and eCommerce companies struggle to manage their customer support and focus on their core activities simultaneously.
What makes retailers opt for third-party contact centers for customer support services?
Customer support challenges are inevitable, but you can certainly overcome them by strategically working with a third-party agency offering retail and eCommerce BPO services. These agencies are often considered to be the ultimate solution for delivering competent and convenient customer services. Take a look at the challenges that can be easily overcome with outsourced customer support agencies.
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Omnichannel experience:
Customers these days look for the most convenient mode of communication to connect with brands. They choose their preferred channel to interact with brand representatives and expect brands to offer a seamless experience across all channels.
Every customer also expects eCommerce or online retail brands to know their past journey and what they are looking for in real-time, even if they switch between channels. In order to meet these expectations, modern eCommerce businesses find agencies that can provide omnichannel customer services. Omnichannel customer support agencies are able to maintain consistency in services, regardless of the communication channels of customer interactions.
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Access to emerging technologies:
Another reason to find a contact center for retail services impressive is the easy access to emerging technologies. Modern contact centers utilize new emerging technologies like artificial intelligence to streamline customer support operations. In addition, they use these AI-powered tools to improve customer experiences by educating them and catering to their unique needs.
Furthermore, contact centers use advanced technology to deliver fast and accurate responses, automate mundane and repetitive tasks, provide real-time suggestions, etc. This encourages businesses to rely on modern customer support solutions.
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Multilingual support:
Customers always appreciate brands that offer multilingual support. They feel more valued when they find brands giving them the flexibility to use their native languages for seamless interactions.
Moreover, multilingual customer support enables businesses to serve their global customers effectively. Regardless of whether it is France, India, Spain, the UK, the US, or any other region around the globe, companies can deliver exceptional experiences to customers simply by teaming up with these agencies. Therefore, finding an outsourcing partner that prioritizes multilingual customer engagement can be quite beneficial.
- Self-service support:
Another aspect that makes online retailers or ecommerce enterprises think about customer support outsourcing is the customers’ demand for self-service options. It has been seen that customers these days are pretty independent. They look for options to solve their problems without support from an actual human or a virtual assistant. In fact, they like to shop from brands that have this self-service customer support option.
The primary intention of introducing this self-service option is to provide online support to customers that require no conversation with customer support representatives. Some extremely common customer self-service options include FAQs, knowledge bases, online discussion forums, and many more. Businesses can certainly look for contact centers that provide these self-service options along with other customer support alternatives.
List of customer services offered by eCommerce contact centers
Online retailers and eCommerce agencies reach out to contact centers as they offer a comprehensive range of customer services. These include –
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- Inbound and outbound sales
- Cross-selling and upselling
- Loyalty programs
- Live chat support
- In-app and email support
- Billing and adjustments
- Order processing
Contact centers for seamless ecommerce customer experience
Modern contact centers are known for offering a seamless experience to customers. They have talented professionals who can leverage innovative technologies to deliver personalized services. Their primary intention is to drive brand loyalty and recurring revenue for every small and medium-scale business and assist them in securing an enticing bottom line. Therefore, teaming up with these third-party agencies will definitely be an impactful approach.
Whether you choose offshore, onshore, or nearshore agencies, companies offering retail and ecommerce BPO services are worth investing in. So, instead of planning to have an in-house customer support team, it is better to think about outsourcing customer support solutions to avail of its benefits.