The E-commerce industry in particular has brought the biggest paradigm shift in the history of consumer behavior. By marring customers with options to choose from, multiple payment methods, and quality logistics support, the e-commerce industry has helped the audience juice their expenditure to the extreme.

Now customers want to be treated the same way by every other organization; retail stores are following suit, they are now offering free home-delivery, pay on delivery, and free exchange options.

Statistics that Show How Big E-commerce Industry Is

• 2 billion people are expected to buy at least one product online in 2020
• The E-commerce industry is likely to cover 95% of all retail transactions by 2040
• Amazon is the leading retailer with over $230 billion in revenue
• Amazon has over 100 million Prime users alone in the US
• In 2019, 83% of the US consumers bought at least one product online
• Over 70% of people prefer E-commerce Platforms over Google for finding new products

Why E-commerce Customer Service is Important?

In the age of omnichannel customer experience, 84% of customers agree to never shop from a site that offers a poor experience. Customer experience is now the key differentiator and not investing heavily in it is going to cost businesses a bomb. Over 50% of organizations are diverting their marketing funds towards customer experience innovation.

E-commerce marketplaces with limited funds in hand can rely on outsourcing to bridge the gap between their customers and quality experience. Outsourcing customer service makes sense because:

• Outsourcing agencies work to streamline data from channels like chat, email, social media, and call to offer incomparable omnichannel support.
• They help businesses get rid of data silos and increasing overall efficiency
• They leverage the latest technology like AI and ML to predict the future steps of a customer

Must Read: Top E-commerce Outsourcing Questions Answered for You!

Dominating 2021 Customer Service Trends 

1. No Trade-off with Customer Experience

Let us re-iterate it for you, Customer Experience is now a key differentiator and customers are willing to pay an additional amount for a quality experience. The success of Amazon Prime in the United States and India is proof that experience wins over price. With over 100 million Prime users alone in the US, Amazon has shown the entire e-commerce industry the route to generating capital for offering improved customer experience.

E-commerce players can use the additional fund for the following measures:

• Offer faster delivery options
• Ensuring catalog improvement to assist with faster decision making
• Improving on-site experience like speeding up the product discovery
• Deploying new tech like Live Chat to offer better support

The aforementioned measures when implemented effectively impact customer experience positively and allows e-commerce players to command a loyal audience base.

With quality customer experience, e-commerce players are aiming to achieve

• Higher on-site conversion
• Improved average order size
• Increasing customer lifetime value
• Incessant increase in referral sales
• Opportunity for up-selling and cross-selling

2. Simplifying the Communication Channels

In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, the customer realized the companies that care is always reachable. Organizations that kept the communication channels open and provided a real-time update about lost, delayed and damaged packages won a big time. Given the nation-wide lockdown in Canada, UK, India, and Singapore, millions of packages were lost and online stores failed to provide their customers with tangible support.

Bigger players were quick in ensuring that all such requests are addressed on priority and it helped the likes of Amazon, Noon.com, and Lenskart win big time. The annual growth rate of the mentioned online stores has increased by 30-40% respectively.

Just like the focus in 2021 will be on building a robust BCP, online stores will also look into building communication channels that function no matter what happens. E-commerce outsourcing will emerge as a viable option because it allows organizations to have an affordable pool of skilled employees from varied countries offering requisite support remotely.

With such outsourcing provisions, organizations can build multi omnichannel routes to ensure that the best possible experience is leveraged to every customer.

3. Self-Service is On the Rise

A huge percentage of calls received at e-commerce call centers are technical. Customers are often looking for support to help them operate or install a tech or hardware. A huge percentage of these users are busy professionals and they are constantly looking forward to saving time.

E-commerce players have introduced a self-help section, which ensures the requisite literature related to varied products are made available to customers with one click. What started a well-documented manual have now turned into:

• Audio recordings to assist with installation
• Video-based tutorials
• Augmented-reality powered experience

This is one of the most relative e-commerce customer trends that will dominate 2021. Customers want instant access to quality support and a combination of audio-video just enhances the entire experience.

Why Self-service is Such a Popular Option?

The increasing popularity of self-service can be attributed to the following reasons:

• Allows customers to fix problems at their own pace
• Can be accessed from anywhere, anytime with great ease
• Customers become self-reliant, which saves online players a fortune
• Helps customers manage and save ample amount time

4. Personalized Customer Support

We have discussed how omnichannel experiences ensure customers can pick up from where they left irrespective of the platform they are using. Going forward, customers today want to get rid of introducing themselves repetitively and also avoid explaining their problem to support agents every-time they get in touch.

The technical evolvement now allows e-commerce players to ensure customers are not required to repeat their problems. The touch of personal customization makes it possible for online buyers to feel more comfortable and valued, which impacts the overall NPS and CSAT scores positively.

With well-equipped support agents reaching out to customers and offering them a customized solution through a personalized-experience, we are looking at an Amazon-like J-curve growth. It is something every online store should invest in and make it a part of their business.

5. Automation will Become Mainstream

When customers are buying without seeking help from humans, they can certainly solve their problems by relying on a human agent. The future is bright and there’s certainly space for technical advancement.

To ensure effective automation is leveraged, e-commerce stores will have to fix a few problems:

• Ensure catalog quality: With catalogs filled with errors, machines will end up ruining the entire experience because they cannot be trained to fix errors that were committed desperately by sellers. Catalog quality check measures can ensure that algorithms can function smoothly.
• Optimized Catalog: To ensure algorithms can scan content and process it accurately, e-commerce players will have to ensure that all catalog content is generated similarly. Organizations can leverage affordable outsourcing services to prepare catalog content for millions of a product. A one-time investment that will have online stores save millions on customer service.

Final Thoughts on E-commerce Customer Service Trends for 2021

E-commerce stores that offer an incomparable customer experience will only be able to survive the cut-throat competition. With the increasing cost of customer acquisition and dipping a customer’s lifetime value, online stores need to focus on curating a quality experience.

By adapting to the latest customer service trends e-commerce platforms can move towards curating an exceptional e-commerce experience like Amazon and win in the long run.