As you head into peak season, it’s important to prepare every part of your business for a spike in traffic. Making sure your website doesn’t slow down or crash during a major sales event like Black Friday and Cyber Monday is probably top of mind. But it’s equally important to consider the increase in customer service requests you’re likely to receive alongside that spike in sales, and how you’ll handle them.
While it’s common for brick-and-mortar stores to hire additional staff during peak season, this isn’t necessarily the case in the world of eCommerce. You might scale up your warehouse staff, but depending on your current approach to customer service (third-party call centre, live chat solution, or just an overworked marketing team), you may not have a plan in place to increase capacity in this area.
That is where Shippit’s Delivery Help Launcher comes in. We not only offer pre-negotiated discount rates with Australia’s leading couriers, we also provide delivery support, so if your customer has a question about the status of their order, we can answer it for you.
- If a customer has a question about their order, they can click on a button to ‘get help’ at the bottom of the track page.
- They can choose from a range of common issues, such as reporting a missing or damaged package, arranging a redelivery, or changing their delivery address.
- If they need to provide additional information, they can add a message.
- Our in-house delivery support team will then reach out via email with an update or to continue the conversation.
In just a few clicks, your customers will receive the delivery support they need, at no extra cost to you. And the best part? You don’t have to answer any more emails asking, “Where is my order?”
Why good delivery support is key
As an online retailer, you can preempt many of the questions your customers have simply by sharing relevant information on your website. Detailed product descriptions, customer reviews and a comprehensive FAQ page go a long way to helping customers make confident purchase decisions.
But one area where customers tend to have a lot of questions that can’t be answered on an FAQ page is delivery. Whether they want to know where their order is, or they need to change their mailing address, these questions generally require individual responses. And if you don’t deal with them promptly, it could have a significant impact on your business.
According to a 2018 report by PwC, 24% of Australian consumers will stop doing business with a brand that they love after just one bad experience, and over half will cut ties with a brand they love after a few bad experiences. In addition, consumers said speed and efficiency were the most important aspects of customer service for the future.
These statistics underscore the importance of scaling your delivery support during peak season (when delays are more likely to occur and service requests rise), since it will help you to retain your new and existing customers.
Fortunately, according to customer service specialist Zendesk, customers actually prefer to use digital channels like email, live chat, SMS/text and social media for simple information requests, meaning Shippit’s Delivery Help Launcher could be just what you need to get through peak season with your customer service record intact.