Customer support matters in every industry, but it is especially impactful in e-commerce. Companies that offer standout e-commerce customer service tend to get better reviews, curate more loyal customers, and grow faster.
Learn how your e-commerce business can turn customer support into a competitive strength. Find the top strategies, key performance indicators (KPIs), and more tips for improving your customer service.
Importance of E-Commerce Customer Support for Business Success
Before considering how to improve e-commerce customer experience, you should understand why customer service is worth investing in. Let’s start with these two relevant reasons:
1. Impact on Customer Loyalty and Retention
According to researchers, three in four customers will spend more with businesses that provide good customer service. Data shows that 85% of consumers will even go out of their way to switch to a company with better service. These two stats sum up the business value of delivering excellent customer service.
Companies that do this have a more loyal clientele, and even a 5% increase in loyalty can boost profits by up to 95%. On the other hand, companies that fall behind in CX will likely lose existing customers to competitors that do it better.
2. Contribution to Revenue and Brand Reputation
Providing great customer service increases loyalty, which brings in new revenue. But that’s only one way it helps an e-commerce business succeed. Your brand reputation also improves when you provide standout customer service.
This can have a direct impact on your bottom line. Studies show that 93% of customers consider online reviews before buying something. Maintaining a strong reputation means better reviews, leaving a more positive impression on your target audience.
What are the Key Factors of Exceptional E-Commerce Customer Care?
Many factors impact whether you succeed as a customer-centric e-commerce brand. Pay attention to the following areas and how they work with your brand.
Communication Channels
First off, your service reps should be available across multiple channels. You want customers to be able to get the help they need in whatever format they prefer.
For e-commerce brands, this typically means offering service through live chat, email, and social media. But you may want to supplement these with phone support, especially if your products target an older clientele that expects to be able to call in.
Timely Responses and Empathetic Service
Next, responding to customer inquiries quickly and with positive, helpful messages is essential. Nowadays, it is easy for an online consumer to find multiple brands that sell the same things you do. If a customer cannot get a hold of an agent when they need one, they’re likely to move on to another brand.
Website Usability and Navigation
Supporting customers is about more than answering questions; you also need to provide a seamless shopping experience. Researchers say 60% of consumers will abandon e-commerce purchases after a bad visit to a brand’s website. Even the best customer service won’t replace those lost sales.
Focus on making sure that your website:
- Loads quickly
- Is easy to navigate
- Supports fast product searches
When spending time and money to improve the e-commerce experience, it is worth checking off this technical box early to avoid stifling that progress.
Personalization With AI and Data
Another factor to consider is that every person has their own ideal shopping experience. Some users want all the information, while others just want the headlines. You can keep both groups happy by personalizing your e-commerce site based on your knowledge of different consumers.
Researchers say 81% of customers prefer companies that offer a personalized experience. But how do you do this? You track, analyze, and use individual users’ data to shape their buying experience.
You can collect data through website interactions, surveys, and tracking across other sites. This tells you what a customer cares about. Then, you can use AI and other tools to design a personalized shopping experience based on the interests the data reveals.
That process could look like this:
- A user visits a particular product benefit page on your website.
- You track that information and store it in a database.
- The next time the user visits your site, you start by showing them the benefits they previously researched.
- This draws their interest and helps you close the sale.
“In 2025, e-commerce customer service is about meeting consumers where they are. That is as true for how you sell your products as it is for how you provide service for them.”
Chat Benefits
Offering live chat support helps with revenue. A recent survey found that 79% of companies believe adding live chat has positively affected sales. One way it does so is by reducing cart abandonments.
With live chat, you can engage customers at crucial moments, such as when they’re about to complete their transaction but have a lingering question. This won’t just help you close sales you’re about to make. It can also increase your average return per customer. Researchers say shoppers who use live chat end up spending 60% more per purchase.
AI Chatbot for Agent Support
There are two ways to provide chat support to e-commerce customers. You can add a chatbot to your site to answer common questions immediately or empower your customer support agents with the use of an AI-powered chatbot so they can address customer questions at the right time and accurately.
Many companies end up offering both forms of support. For example, customers who open a live chat window on your site can start by engaging with an AI bot trained on your products. If they don’t get the necessary answer, they could ask to talk to a real human. AI-powered customer care for e-commerce can work on both ways. These two elements help keep your staff lean and costs low without totally eliminating the human touch from the support process.
Omnichannel Customer Support
Keep the same high-quality support across all other channels your customers use is very important as well, such as social media and the phone.
Post-Purchase Engagement and Communication
Acquiring new customers can cost 5 to 25 times what it costs to keep existing ones. That’s why part of your strategy should focus on post-purchase engagement and ongoing communication. This helps you build loyalty and increase your average lifetime value per customer.
Strategies for enhancing e-commerce service post-purchase include:
- Sending follow-up emails with instructions for getting value out of your product
- Welcoming users back to your site with a personalized message
- Creating a loyalty program to encourage repeat buyers
- Asking for feedback to keep customers engaged with your brand
The Bottom Line on E-Commerce Customer Support
Delivering standout service can help your e-commerce company increase sales, build loyalty, and take the next step in its growth journey. However, meeting customers’ diverse needs today can be hard to do internally, especially cost-effectively.
That’s why Zahoree exists. Our hybrid managed services are the only e-commerce customer support outsourcing solution you’ll need. We leverage AI, provide deep analytical insights, and deliver value to your business in many other ways.
Don’t take our word for it. Set up an intro call today to learn more about how we can help improve your E-commerce customer service.
