Customer Service in E-Commerce: What Has the Coronavirus Changed?

In spring, the e-commerce industry gained an unexpectedly large number of customers. Online sellers are recording double-digit growth in the number of orders, and there are suddenly more of them too. Greater traffic is also a challenge for providers of online sales tools. On the Shoper platform, nearly 2.5 times more new stores were created in April than in the same month of 2019. How is the company coping with such interest, and why did it "hire" a robot?

From the customer's perspective, online shopping resembles buying drinks from a vending machine - you choose a product from those visible behind the glass window of the website, press a few buttons, pay, and you're done! You just have to wait a little longer for delivery. From the seller's side, it's often similar. When orders come in, parcels are sent out.

The impression that everything "happens by itself" disappears when something doesn't fit the shopping pattern - the buyer has an unusual request or the goods arrive damaged. Contrary to appearances, these situations are frequent, which is why as many as 62 percent of stores on the Shoper platform employ at least one person dedicated to customer service - according to the "E-Commerce 360" Report conducted at the beginning of the year among stores on the Shoper platform. Email turned out to be the most popular means of communication with customers (offered by 100 percent of sellers), followed by phone (96 percent) and social media (83 percent), the latter also considered relatively less effective than the first two channels. At the same time, only one in four store owners had implemented or planned to implement a chatbot or voicebot (a talking bot), allowing artificial intelligence to take over some customer contacts.

Proven Solutions and Innovations

Proven Solutions and Innovations

Shoper itself quickly decided to launch a voicebot. For several weeks, the company's Customer Service Department has been supported by a virtual assistant that calls new customers to obtain information necessary to configure their online stores. In March, new stores on the platform began to appear much faster than the company's plans from a few months earlier assumed. In April, nearly 2.5 times more were created than in the same month a year earlier. The same increase applies to the number of people who decided to launch a test version of the software.

- Some of the new sellers had not planned to launch online sales so quickly, but they were forced to by the huge drop in the number of customers in brick-and-mortar stores. However, they were not fully familiar with how an online store works and are only just learning. Calls to the Shoper hotline with consultants could therefore take more time than usual, and on top of that, the number of inquiries to the CSD is currently 3 times higher than before the pandemic. That is why we appealed to store owners to email us rather than call, and that is also why we launched a virtual voice assistant. Thanks to these measures, the "traffic jams" on the hotline were alleviated and now all inquiries are handled efficiently. The modern voicebot is a remedy for the same amount of time available for service and a much larger number of people interested in an e-store. However, we are not replacing people with these measures - we are rather strengthening the power of our CSD. - explains Jacek Zientkiewicz, Business Development Director at Shoper.

An additional challenge for Customer Service Department employees was moving work to the consultants' homes and the holidays of part of the team caused by the closure of educational institutions. In this respect, the Krakow-based company already had experience. A similar operation at Shoper had already been carried out in 2016 during World Youth Days, when the city was partially closed for several days. So proven solutions were used, thanks to which the company quickly switched to fully remote work.

Caught Off Guard by the Growth

Caught Off Guard by the Growth

In March, clear increases on the Shoper platform were recorded by stores selling electronics and children's products, as well as online pharmacies and drugstores - the latter recorded a total of 138 percent more transactions than in February. Even greater was the increase for e-stores with food products - 239 percent more orders in just one month.

The lesson that every online seller can draw from Shoper's recent actions is that an increase in the number of customers, especially a rapid one, can be problematic. As the number of inquiries that need to be handled grows, so does the risk of lowering service quality, which can easily discourage buyers, especially those who have come to the store for the first time. To prevent this, small e-businesses experiencing a boom are trying to relieve the people handling customer service.

- Almost all stores have a contact phone number and email address listed in the footer of the site, but more and more sellers realize that these channels can become "clogged," and some typical customer questions are better preempted by providing information, for example, on social media, publishing posts or videos with updates and answers to frequently asked questions. Some online food stores, a few days before Easter, notified customers with a special banner on the homepage that they would no longer be able to deliver orders before the holiday. They probably saved themselves from answering several dozen emails and phone calls in this way. We also see that many stores that until now operated only as brick-and-mortar locations and handled all customer service matters on site are now trying to find their way in the digital world. It is not difficult, but it certainly requires time and determination. The best-prepared stores are those whose products and offers are presented so well that they do not require additional questions - advises Dariusz Brzeziński, Manager of the Customer Service Department at Shoper.

Summary

The pandemic accelerated the development of e-commerce, which is visible on the Shoper platform, where nearly 2.5 times more new stores were created in April than a year earlier. Along with the number of customers, the number of inquiries also increased - as much as 3 times compared with the period before the pandemic, which forced the company to implement a voicebot and organize remote work for the service department.

The largest increases in transactions were recorded by food stores (239 percent m/m) and pharmacies and drugstores (138 percent). This proves that a rapid increase in orders can be a challenge, which is why experts advise presenting the offer well and preempting customer questions, for example with banners on the homepage.