Recent years have witnessed a drastic change in retail industry due to multiple factors. Major ones include rise in the number of shopping malls and supermarkets, investment by corporate giants in retail sector, expansion of online shopping websites and rise in the expectation of consumers.
All these factors have forced the retail firms to focus on the quality of customer experience as it can be a key differentiator. This is where retailers take support of call centers that offer specialized services for this particular sector.
Following points highlight how the retail call centers can support retail industry in enhancing customer experiences through their specialized services.
Support Through Different Channels
Exponential increase of social media networking sites and popularity of smartphones has given chance to the customers to contact the brand through multiple channels. In fact, some customers use more than one channel to make sure that their voice is heard by the brand. Therefore, you need to be available to the customer via every touch point. This is where retail contact centers help you thrive by providing multichannel customer support. Let’s see the importance of each channel related to customer support.
Phone – It is the conventional point of contact for customers through which maximum queries are resolved.
Live Chat – While browsing online retail store, website visitors can clarify their doubts. It can turn them into buyers.
Emails – Customer are able to send screenshots or image related to product to increase vividness related to their query.
Social Media – It’s the transparency factor due to which it is popular among customers that are active on social networking sites.
Ability to Expand
Customer support solution providers help retail startups in expanding their business in two ways – direct and indirect! The call centers immediately hire new agents in large groups if the retailer wants to expand his business. Well, that’s the direct way!
Indirectly, the investors can be influenced to invest more in the retail firm. This will happen when finest customer care from call center will offer great customer experience. This will ensure that company becomes a trusted brand in the market. Ultimately, the investors will be assured that investing in the retail company is the safe bet.
Customer Care During Holiday Rush
Holidays are the busiest times for retailers as huge number of customers tend to purchase new products due to jaw-dropping offers. It is during this time that the retailers face the challenge of high call volume related to customer care. Once again, the retail call centers act as savior in handling the holiday rush quite effectively by ensuring that the image of the company is not harmed. Call centers usually hire new representatives, provide specialized training and re-design IVR in order to handle customers during this season.
24×7 Customer Care
A retail customer can face the issue at any time of the day or night. And he/she will try to connect to the brand at that instant only in order to resolve the issue. And if the customer support is not active at that particular instant, he/she may get frustrated.
Therefore, to avoid such kind of frustrations from customer’s end, you can hire an outsourcing vendor, which specializes in retail sector projects and offers customer care services 24 hours a day.
Proactive Support can be Offered to Ecommerce Customers
Proactive support is becoming a popular trend in various industries as customers feel more valued through this approach. E-commerce is the best domain where proactive support can be used to offer memorable experience to the buyers.
Informing customers about the status of their order during different phases comes under proactive support which includes:
- Order Confirmation
- Dispatch of product
- Shipping status
- Delivery details
You can use either text message or email (or even combination of both) to provide information to the customer on regular basis. Information related to warranty, product return, refund of money and list of service centers can be sent to the customers to help them proactively.
Support Through Multiple Languages
There are chances that retail firms may lose business if the target customers consist of more than one ethnic group. This is because people from different ethnic group will speak different language. And these people face difficulties if the retail brand does not offer customer service in their local language.
For example, the target audience of a specific retail brand in the U.S. may consist of Native Americans along with Hispanics. Therefore, it is necessary for retail firms to offer customer support in American English and Spanish in order to retain the customers.
All these points reflect how Retail Contact Centers can act as the most trusted partner of call centers, which offers multiple facilities that are necessary to boost the retail business.