Customer Engagement For e-Commerce: Blueprint Of An Effective Customer Retention Strategy

Why is customer engagement important in the e-commerce industry?

“Your order of 5 articles has been shipped from our warehouse. It will be delivered within 2-5 working days.”

One notification is enough to keep a customer glued to your shopping platform for days. Be it new offers, discounts or new additions to your collections. A customer, who completes a pleasant journey with your brand, will usually come back for more each time you prompt them. Which is why, to be able to remain in the playing field, its imperative for a business in the e-commerce industry to keep its Customer Engagement strategies on priority.

E-commerce has changed the way the world shops. As per Statista, online shopping accounts for over 14% of all retail sales globally. As the world is moving towards the digital realm every single day, online shopping becomes more popular as a choice for customers all over the world. So as its popularity and marketability increase, competition does too. This in turn definitely demands a prompt customer retention strategy and good customer service from e-commerce companies.

Unbeatable strategies for customer engagement for e-commerce

Adoption of a proper set of effective customer engagement strategies is crucial for an e-commerce house. In fact, it can be the best possible solution to build a strong customer base for an e-commerce business. Some of the major steps to streamline business and empower the online audience of an e-commerce website are as follows:

Engaging customers with multiple support channels

It is very essential for e-commerce owners to provide multiple touchpoints for customers to reach a brand. This increases the chances of stronger customer engagement. A customer’s connecting point could be through live chat, personalized emails, presence on social media or even a mobile application. However each touchpoint should be integrated within themselves, i.e., an e-commerce company should approach holistic omnichannel-based customer support.

Presence on social media

With social media being a major content-creating medium, presence on popular platforms becomes necessary to be able to engage with an active audience.  Engagement on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, by answering queries of customers develops a positive image for a sizeable number of spectators in addition to a user seeking support. Again, by sharing customers’ stories in the form of reviews, user-submitted photos or testimonials will enable companies to win the trust of potential customers.

Proactive and effective customer service

A loyal customer base is what a business needs to make it through today’s market competition and erratic market changes. Good experiences differentiate brands in the minds of customers. Being proactive is one of the best things a business can do when it comes to customer support. Some of the major channels that can be explored are live chat, personalized email support, 24×7 live voice support and so on.

For example, live chat can allow e-commerce brands to respond to sales inquiries, enabling proactive selling and also to managing tickets about shipping and post-sale support for customers. Personalized email support that addresses a customer by their name makes them feel acknowledged and creates a positive impact. Since customer churn is a major problem in the e-commerce industry, engaging unhappy customers promptly is also vital.

Appealing product catalogs

Attractive product catalogs can make or break a user’s experience online. Ensuring easy findability and apt information about listed products allows customers to evaluate and make decisions more promptly.

Businesses can include FAQs with the common pre and post-sale queries to make lives easier for the buyer. As a result, an optimized checkout process will minimize cart abandonment and will also simplify the purchase process.

Adopting the optimized path to ensure better customers retention

In order to engage customers, it is very important for e-commerce organizations to listen to their customers. For a business to keep up with the changing needs of today’s customers, it is important to always have an open channel to engage the user base.

Outsourcing non-core activities like cataloging, back-office, and omnichannel customer support are one option that an emerging business in the e-commerce industry can explore.

Maxicus has been a seasoned outsourcing partner for leading names in the industry for over a decade.  To know more about our outsourcing services, contact us.