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TL;DR:
Your Help Center is a great resource for sharing information with customers. And as AI technology transforms customer support, the Help Center now also serves as a data source that provides AI with the knowledge to answer questions.
Gorgias’s AI features function by drawing on information from knowledge sources. For example, Gorgias’s AI can draw upon your past support tickets to generate Help Center content. Likewise, our upcoming AI Agent uses your Help Center to write and send answers to customer questions.
Our AI Agent is coming July 1st (with a Beta starting in May). Below, we'll explain why an up-to-date Help Center that covers all your policies is the best way to prepare for AI Agent, gain admission to the Beta, and resolve 30%+ of your email support interactions.
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AI Agent is a conversational AI tool that answers customer support emails by learning your brand’s policies and processes from your Help Center. It can understand a wide array of questions and generate unique responses that are helpful, personalized, and accurate.
Unlike AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini, which are trained on public information, AI Agent specifically works with your data. Its first layer of support is your Help Center, a database of articles about your products and policies. From there, you can complement its knowledge with data from Macros and connected ecommerce tools like Shopify.
With AI Agent as your level 1 support, your team can focus on escalated or VIP tickets and other projects you may not currently have time for.
The crucial step to fully prepare AI Agent is to make sure your Help Center articles are accurate and up-to-date. You don’t need to have your Help Center published or linked on your website — however, articles must be published and not saved as drafts.
To hit the ground running with AI Agent, your Help Center must meet a few criteria. Here’s a checklist to prepare your Help Center:
Ideally, customers should find answers with just one click. You can achieve this by publishing articles that answer your customers’ top concerns.
We’ve compiled the most important Help Center articles to have, with the starred questions being essential to include. You can skip to the bottom of this post to find templates for these topics:
As an online business, your information constantly changes, including policies, product updates, and brand revamps. Review older articles, particularly those over a year old, to ensure the information is still accurate.
Here are the most important elements to update:
If your articles point to other web pages, you’ll want to make sure the right texts are hyperlinked, and the links do not lead to 404 pages.
Some important links to include:
💡 Pro Tip: Avoid including statements in your articles like, “To resolve this issue, contact us at [email]” as this confuses the AI Agent.
Ensure your articles are published so AI Agent can learn from them. Whether the article is Unlisted or Public, you must take them out of Draft mode. An article left in Draft mode remains invisible to AI Agent. To confirm that your article is published, check the top right corner of the editor to ensure the article is “Published” and not “Unsaved.”
That said, if you’re not ready to share your Help Center with customers, you don’t need to publish the Help Center itself.
Related: How to boost your Help Center’s visibility
If you don’t currently have a Help Center, you can set one up and start filling it with articles within a couple of hours. Below are three strategies that will let you create the most comprehensive Help Center, fast.
When you create a Help Center on Gorgias, you can access the AI Library. The AI-generated articles are based on your past conversations with customers and their concerns. You can edit them to suit your brand voice and policies.
As of now, only accounts with a single Shopify store connected have access to the AI Library. We expect multi-store accounts to gain access to this feature by mid-May 2024.
Related: Our AI Library Help Doc
Accelerate the setup of your Help Center by using pre-written article templates. These templates cover common customer inquiries and ensure consistency in response quality and format.
Gorgias offers six ready-to-use Help Center article templates that cover essential topics. These templates enable you to quickly establish a strong database without wasting agents’ time.
Take stock of your existing content, such as FAQs, product guides, and blog posts. Convert this content into Help Center articles and properly categorize them based on the topic for seamless user navigation.
💡 Pro Tip: Each article should only ask one question. This helps AI Agent to easily decipher the purpose of each article.
To speed up Help Center creation, we’ve provided article templates covering topics from shipping and tracking and account creation to product information. Simply edit the details and add the necessary links based on your policies.
⭐️ Where is my order? (WISMO)
To check the status of your order, please visit our Order Tracking Portal and enter your email address and order number. We update our tracking information as soon as it is available.
⭐️ How do I track my order?
Once your order has shipped, we'll send you a confirmation email with a tracking link. Click on the link to view the latest updates on your order and its estimated delivery date.
⭐️ How do I get my tracking number?
Your tracking number will be emailed to you when your order ships. If you haven't received it, please check your spam folder. If it's not there, please contact our customer support team.
⭐️ How much does shipping cost?
Shipping costs vary depending on the weight of your order and the destination. To view shipping costs, simply add items to your cart, proceed to checkout, and enter your shipping address. The applicable shipping fees will be displayed before you finalize your order.
⭐️ Do you offer free shipping?
Yes, we offer free standard shipping on orders over [$#]. A standard shipping fee will be applied to orders under [$#].
⭐️ Do you ship worldwide?
We ship to [#] countries worldwide. Shipping costs and times vary depending on the destination. For detailed information and to see if we ship to your country, please visit our international shipping page.
⭐️ Do you offer expedited shipping?
Yes, we offer expedited shipping options for most locations. You can select your preferred shipping method at checkout. Additional charges will apply for expedited shipping.
⭐️ How long does delivery take?
Delivery times vary depending on the destination and the shipping method selected. For standard shipping in [country], expect your order to arrive within 5-7 business days. International orders may take 10-20 business days.
Why can’t I track my order?
If you can’t track your order, it may be for several reasons: the tracking information is not yet available, the tracking number is incorrect, or there may be a delay in the tracking system updates.
Please allow up to 24 hours for your tracking information to become available after receiving your shipping confirmation email. If you still face issues, contact our customer support team for further assistance.
⭐️ Can I edit or add anything to my order?
Once an order is placed, we are unable to make changes to the order. However, if you need to update your shipping address or contact information, please contact our customer service team immediately after placing your order.
⭐️ How do I apply promo/discount codes?
To apply a promo or discount code, proceed to checkout and enter your code in the 'Discount Code' field. Click 'Apply' to see your new total before finalizing your order. Only one code can be used per order.
What methods of payment do you accept?
We accept various payment methods including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and PayPal.
Please note that we do not accept personal checks or money orders.
Where do I get promo codes/discounts?
To get promo and discount codes, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter, check our homepage, and follow us on social media to get the latest deals.
My promo code isn’t working.
The promo code you entered may not work due to an incorrect input (check that you have entered the right letters and numbers), specific conditions (like minimum spend), or an expiry date. If you continue to experience issues, please contact our support team for assistance.
I forgot to add a promo code but already made a purchase.
If you forgot to apply a promo code at checkout, please contact our customer service team as soon as possible. Depending on the status of your order, our team may be able to apply the promo code for you.
How do Shop Pay installments work?
Shop Pay Installments allow you to split your purchase into multiple payments, interest-free. At checkout, choose Shop Pay, select 'Installments', and follow the prompts to set up your payment plan.
How do I update the billing information on my order?
To update your billing information, you may log in to your account and change your information from the Account Settings page. If you do not have an account, please contact our customer service immediately.
How do I purchase a gift card?
Gift cards can be purchased directly from our website. Visit our gift card section, choose the amount, and complete the purchase. The gift card will be directly emailed to you or to the specified recipient.
How do I use a gift card for my purchase?
To use a gift card, enter the code in the 'Gift Card or Discount Code' box at checkout. The value of the gift card will be deducted from your order total.
Do you price match for sales?
We offer price matching for sales within [specific timeframe] of purchase. If an item you’ve bought goes on sale within this period, please contact our customer service to adjust the price difference. Note that certain conditions may apply.
⭐️ What is your return/exchange policy?
We accept returns and exchanges within [30] days of purchase. Items must be in their original condition and packaging. Some items may not be eligible for return. Please see our detailed return policy for more information.
⭐️ What is your cancellation policy?
Orders can be canceled within 24 hours. After this period, we may not be able to cancel your order as it might already be in processing or shipment.
⭐️ How do I initiate a return?
To initiate a return, please visit our Returns & Exchanges Portal and enter your order number and email address.
⭐️ How do I initiate an exchange?
To exchange an item, please visit our Returns & Exchanges Portal.
⭐️ How do I cancel my order?
If you need to cancel your order, please contact us immediately. If your order has not yet been processed, we will cancel it and issue a full refund. If the order is already processed, please refer to our Returns & Exchanges policy.
⭐️ How do I get a refund?
Refunds are processed upon receipt and inspection of the returned item. Please allow up to 10 business days for your refund to be credited back to your original form of payment.
⭐️ Order is marked delivered but not here.
If your order is marked as delivered but you haven't received it, please check around your delivery location and with neighbors. If you still can't locate it, contact our customer support for assistance.
⭐️ What do I do if I receive the wrong item in my order?
If you receive the wrong item, please contact our customer service immediately. We will arrange for the correct item to be sent to you and provide instructions for returning the incorrect item.
I received the right product but in the wrong size/style/color.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused. Please contact our customer service team within [#] days of receiving your order to initiate an exchange for the correct size/style/color. Visit our Returns & Exchanges policy for more information.
What should I do if an item is missing from my order?
We're sorry to hear that you're experiencing issues with your order. Please check your confirmation emails to ensure all items were included in your shipment. If an item is missing, please contact our customer service team immediately so we can resolve the issue.
What can I do if my item doesn't fit or isn't true to size?
If the item you purchased does not fit, you can return it for a refund or exchange it for a different size. Please refer to our Returns & Exchanges policy for details on how to initiate a return or exchange.
What should I do if I'm having a reaction to the product?
Your safety is our priority. Please stop using the product immediately and consult a healthcare professional as needed. To report a reaction and request a return or exchange, contact our customer support team. We also recommend checking the ingredients list to identify any potential allergens.
What should I do if my order arrived damaged?
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please take a photo of the damaged item and email it to our customer service department within [#] days of delivery. We will assist you with a return or exchange as quickly as possible.
Where can I find sizing information?
Our sizing runs true to size unless stated otherwise.
For detailed sizing information, please visit our Sizing Guide page. The guide includes size charts and tips on measuring yourself to ensure the best fit.
Which style is best suited for my needs?
Our various styles cater to different preferences and requirements. For a breakdown of our styles and their best uses, please check out our detailed Style Guide.
What are the materials or ingredients used in this product?
We use high-quality materials/ingredients to ensure the best experience with our products. For a full list of the materials or ingredients in this product, visit the product page.
What product do you recommend for [trait/preference/condition]?
For [trait/preference/condition], we recommend our [Product Name], designed to provide a [benefit here].
How do I use this product?
For optimal results, follow these steps:
How long does this product last and how should it be stored?
This product typically lasts [X amount of time] when used as directed. Store in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. For perishable products, refrigeration may be required.
What's the best way to care for this product?
To maintain the quality of your product, we recommend [specific care instructions, e.g., machine wash cold, hand wash only]. For more detailed care instructions, please visit our Care Guide.
What's the difference between Product A and Product B?
Product A is designed for [specific use], while Product B is better suited for [different use].
⭐️ How do I use these rewards points?
You can redeem your rewards points at checkout. Enter the amount of points you wish to apply in the 'Rewards' field, and the discount will be applied to your total.
⭐️ I’m having trouble logging in.
If you're having trouble logging into your account, please try resetting your password using the 'Forgot Password' link on the login page. If you still experience issues, contact our customer support team for help.
⭐️ How do I cancel my membership/subscription?
To cancel your membership or subscription, please log into your account and navigate to the 'Subscriptions' section. You can choose to cancel your subscription from there. If you need assistance, our customer service team is here to help.
⭐️ How do I skip a subscription shipment?
You can skip a subscription shipment by logging into your account, going to the 'Subscriptions' section, and selecting the shipment you wish to skip. Please do this before the billing date for the next shipment.
⭐️ How do I update my subscription items?
To update the items in your subscription, log into your account and visit the 'Subscriptions' tab. You can add or remove products or change the quantities for your next shipment.
How do I set up an account?
Create an account [here] by using the same email address you ordered with.
Please note that if you haven’t created a password, you do not have an account. Additionally, signing up for our emails or ordering doesn't mean you have created an account.
How do I become a member/subscriber/loyalty program?
Become a member by visiting our Membership page.
What are the membership benefits?
You’ll earn many perks as a [company name here] member! Upon joining, you’ll receive a 10% off discount on any purchase.
Plus, more benefits:
I forgot my password.
To reset your password, please click [here].
How do I change my default address?
You can change your default address from your Account settings.
If you need to change your shipping address for a current order, please [contact us].
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Since ChatGPT was introduced in November 2022, customer service automation has stormed its way into almost every industry, including ecommerce. This leap in technology has paved the way for companies to increase their support efficiency dramatically, as demonstrated by the buy-now-pay-later service Klarna, which recently resolved two-thirds of customer service chats with AI.
The business gains arising from automation are evident. Faster and smarter tools mean less time handling mundane tasks and more time improving the customer journey with meaningful conversations, personalized experiences, and seamless upselling opportunities.
At Gorgias, our mission is to elevate customer experiences with automated solutions. To determine the impact, we analyzed data from over 14,000 merchants who use automation compared to those who do not.
Our data revealed a 36% increase in repeat purchases, a 37% reduction in first response time, a 52% reduction in resolution time, a 27% decrease in the ticket-to-order ratio, and a 1% increase in CSAT when automation is used.
These compelling results assert our belief in automation as the next, inevitable step for scaling support teams.
“AI is going to help us transform ourselves into deeper thinkers by taking over simple, standardized functions” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi
Before automation, customer service teams scrambled to hire more agents as their customer bases grew. When Black Friday and other peak seasons arrived, hiring more agents was the Band-Aid fix. Today, companies are opting for leaner support teams as automation allows them to do more with less. The benefit? Teams can scale and improve the quality of service without temporarily bringing on new staff.
Automation works like a junior support agent but at a higher efficiency. It can handle frequently asked questions like where is my order? and customize responses according to brand voice. So, as repetitive tasks are handled in the background, agents can focus on more complex tickets, such as product-specific questions or technical issues that require troubleshooting.
“Before, agents had to handle it all. Now, they rarely take a ticket about frequently asked questions. They’re only handling escalations, special product-related questions, and things like that.” —Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience, Jaxxon
The flexibility of automation makes it the ideal tool for personalized customer service. Aside from being a keyboard shortcut or macro, automation can be a hands-off assistant that can engage customers and influence as much as 25% of revenue.
At Gorgias, automation is at the core of our products, powering almost every feature in Helpdesk, Automate, and Convert. It allows merchants to deliver delightful and personalized customer interactions across various channels and touchpoints in the customer journey.
While automation is only one of many factors, we’ve found it to positively impact support performance metrics. Based on our data, merchants who used automation saw clear improvements in repeat purchase rates, response times, resolution times, tickets per order, and CSAT scores.
Retaining customer loyalty is challenging even when brands launch loyalty programs, as customers are discouraged by the effort required to receive rewards. However, Gorgias data shows that simply using automation can increase repeat purchase rates. Within 28 days, merchants who automated up to 20% of tickets increased their repeat purchase rate by 8%.
Yoga apparel brand Manduka used Gorgias Convert's on-site campaigns to influence customers to purchase multiple products. The campaign convinced shoppers to hit a $100 order total for free shipping by recommending small additional items they may be interested in. Their campaign brought in nearly $12,000, proving that automation can directly affect revenue.
“We want to be able to target our repeat customers who have purchased a lot, and say, ‘Welcome back! Here's a new product that would go wonderfully with the item you bought last time.’ It would be a wonderful translation of the in-person retail experience where staff know what you like, so they can assist you better.” —Jessica Botello, Customer Service Manager at Manduka
Automated responses resolve tickets in zero seconds and result in faster first response times. On average, merchants using automation respond 37% faster than ones who don’t automate customer service.
Responding to customers as quickly as possible is especially important during busy seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday so that revenue-generating questions don’t get pushed to the backlog. The customer experience team at health supplement brand Obvi was able to drive 3x more purchases from support conversations compared to previous years.
Faster response times also mean agents are able to make stronger connections with customers. For Obvi’s CX team, it translated to more time to engage with their vibrant Facebook community:
“Instantly, our CX team had time to prioritize important matters, like being active in our community of 75,000 women instead of sitting answering emails.” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi
When customer tickets are automated, resolution times improve dramatically. Merchants using automation resolved tickets 52% faster than those without.
Automation is especially helpful in answering pre-sales questions. High-end luggage retailer July deflected 450 tickets a month immediately after activating Quick Responses, one-click FAQs that live in Chat. Their Head of Operations and CX, Alex Naoumidis, notes that setup was “so easy, with a huge payoff.”
This significant efficiency gain ensures customers are well-educated about their products, leaving agents time to personalize the rest of the customer journey.
As automated responses provide quick solutions to customer issues, customers need to contact support less. Based on our data, brands that automate 10% or more of their tickets see a decrease in billable tickets per order. Brands with little to no automation do not see a significant improvement in the ticket-to-order ratio.
For apparel brand Shinesty, automating more than 10% of tickets greatly decreased the number of tickets per order by 27%. Self-serve tools like interactive conversations called Flows and Article Recommendations enabled customers to solve issues relating to discounts, subscription policies, and returns on their own.
“Automate would be useful for any ecommerce company that needs to lower their ticket counts, or wants to provide a more consistent experience.” —Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty
Thirty days after setting up automation in Gorgias, brands enjoyed a 1% increase in CSAT score, a 4.51 score compared to 4.46 for non-automating brands. Even though satisfaction only nudged an inch, the positive effects reached support teams, improving agent morale and team alignment.
Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty, emphasizes the importance of preserving quality customer interactions during growth, "We get a lot of praise from our customers, and they talk highly of our CX team after 1:1 interactions. We can’t lose that as we scale."
Since Gorgias provides in-depth conversation analytics, CX teams are finally able to see their impact.
“Tracking customer satisfaction scores in Gorgias is a really big help to us. Before, we didn't know if we were doing well or not, but now we can see people like the service we provide. We use the KPI tracking data for internal monthly meetings to review performance and see where we can improve,” says Deja Jefferson, Customer Experience Manager at Topicals.
Clearly, balancing automation with personalization significantly improves the customer journey. Given that customers with positive customer experiences are 2.7 times more likely to do repeat business, the value of automation is unmistakable.
AI progress has advanced in a short amount of time. But to remind you, this is only the beginning of what automation and AI can do in customer service. We envision AI as a constant work in progress, meant to intake information until it is capable enough to handle more complex tasks. This means agents will spend more time building strong customer connections and finding ways the business can grow.
Gorgias is at the forefront of this evolution, developing automation and AI-driven solutions like an AI-generated Help Center, an AI Agent, a generative AI assistant that autonomously answers customer questions, and an Interaction Quality Score to measure and report on AI-customer interactions. Gorgias aims to transform how support teams and customers interact with AI, paving the way for more impactful customer experiences on a human scale.
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Customer service professionals (and the customer service skills they possess) are at the frontline of creating great brand experiences.
All too often, customer service workers aren’t valued as truly skilled or strategic members of the business. It’s a shame (and a missed opportunity), given how big a role customer service agents play in the success of a business.
According to 2022 McKinsey research, three out of five customer service leaders view attracting, training, and retaining skilled customer service workers as a top business priority.
My name is Deja Jefferson, and I’m the CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals. We’ve upskilled our customer experience associates with both soft and hard skills to give our customers complete support and unwavering confidence when making a purchase.
Here are 16 of the most important hard and soft skills for customer support that we train for at Topicals, and that you should build your support team to possess.
Customer service soft skills are the non-technical, interpersonal traits agents use while supporting shoppers. Ultimately, soft skills help to problem solve through good communication and clear thinking.
These aren’t technical skills, nor are they easily quantifiable, but they are vitally important to improve customer communications.
Your support agents need to have a firm understanding of how their tone of voice and word choice affect customer satisfaction.
Using positive language is a valuable customer service technique that steers conversations toward positive emotions, which generate positive outcomes for customers and your business.
Here are some examples of how your team can use positive language in customer service situations.
For further clarification, here are a few examples of what these same interactions might look like using negative language instead:
You can get a sense of a person’s positive language skills early on, even during an interview when hiring for customer service roles.
If your support agents need help using positive language for any scenario, write customer service scripts or Macros that incorporate positive language. This helps all your agents stay positive, whether they're brand-new employees or established team members.
“I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.”
—Deja Jefferson, CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals
It's a key customer service skill to show empathy for a shopper, especially when a difficult situation comes up.
When customers share their challenges and frustrations, it's essential for them to feel assured that their concerns are being understood by empathetic listeners. In the realm of targeted skincare for specific skin conditions, we must consider the vulnerability of consumers as they seek out new skincare solutions. Let's be honest — they've received recommendations from friends, witnessed numerous skin influencers endorse their preferred "featured" products for various skin types, and might be following advice from various dermatologists, (if they're lucky). I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.
Take a look at this hypothetical customer issue with an angry customer:
Empathy is hard to teach. At Topicals, I train my team to get inside the customer’s mind.
Our customers are real people facing challenging (and highly personal) skin issues, from Hyperpigmentation, Atrophic/Acne Scarring, Keratosis Pilaris, and so much more.
Sure, some customers lose their patience when they feel defeated — that’s unavoidable. But most of them are feeling frustrated and hopeless. And my team has an opportunity to give them hope that we can work together to help fix the customer’s issue.
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Whether in a physical retail setting or digital, active listening is a key step to adapting to nuanced questions or navigating tense situations with customers.
Active listening is listening with the intent to obtain information and understand it, rather than simply listening with the intent to reply.
Active listening requires the agent to acknowledge that they understand our customers during a conversation, and provide feedback or ask follow-up questions when appropriate.
First, let’s look at a hypothetical customer issue:
Here’s what a generic, canned response looks like:
But when you use active listening skills, the reply becomes more like this:
The second example response showcases that the support agent has heard the problem and is actively looking for a solution.
Use active listening alongside a helpdesk like Gorgias, which helps your customer service representatives “remember” past interactions. It’s like active listening but at scale.
Gorgias displays customer information like past conversations and orders, current orders, and data from your other apps (like loyalty points or product review scores).
Your agents can use this information to avoid asking for information the customer already gave, and automatically pull it into their responses with variables like [Last Order #] or [Shipping Address].
Related reading: Our full guide on personalized customer service
Time management is the ability to get the most important things done, with a limited number of hours in a day.
As a customer service skill, it's make-or-break: The better an agent's time management, the quicker their first response time and the more tickets they can resolve.
Customer service response times tremendously impact your store’s bottom line. If a response to a query takes too long, customer satisfaction plummets.
In a customer support environment, managing time effectively allows an agent to handle a larger volume of tickets (without breaking their back).
Effective time management is a team sport. You need to make sure:
Your agents have better things to do than copy/paste order statuses all day. We use Gorgias’s Automate at Topicals to handle repetitive questions (like “Where is my order?” or “Where do you ship?”) so that my team can spend their time on issues that need human attention.
Plus, Automate helps customers, even when my team isn’t online.
Support services is an industry that is stressful by nature, largely because most shoppers’ problems are a little tense.
Your agents need to understand when a situation is tense and what to do to defuse the emotional heat:
We know we can’t make everyone happy, but we can always make sure people feel heard. In this example, a shopper shared on Instagram that the product we were featuring didn’t work for them.
Instagram comments are public-facing and we always want to be sure we address feedback from disappointed customers in this kind of arena.
So, we apologized and recognized what the commentator said. Then, we suggested carrying the conversation to a private DM so we could find a solution.
In addition, support agents need to care for themselves, drink plenty of water, and get enough rest.
"People underestimate the emotional and mental resilience that working in CX requires. It’s hard not to take things personally sometimes."
—Grace Choi, Customer Experience Team Lead at TUSHY
When an agent takes time for self-care, they are prepared to be resilient to the job's stresses and approach customer problems with understanding. It’ll improve both a customer's patience with your rep as well as their ultimate satisfaction.
Reflecting is the act of repeating a concern to the person speaking — and it’s a crucial customer service skill your agents must master.
It will make your shoppers feel heard, which is the foundation of a great experience.
Reflecting accomplishes three things:
Let’s see what reflecting looks like in action in a customer support context.
Sometimes, the most challenging part of solving a problem is understanding what the problem actually is.
Here are a couple of clarifying phrases to keep in your back pocket.
A strong brand voice is crucial for any brand, but keeping the brand tone consistent in customer comms is a challenge — especially for technical tickets.
Skilled customer service reps know that maintaining brand voice in customer communications goes a long way toward improving customer experiences.
Personalized Macros help brands plug in automated responses for commonly asked questions. You can build pre-made responses that are infused with your brand voice, so you can maintain fast and effective response times without sacrificing your core messaging.
At Topicals, we use Macros to help maintain brand voice while handling a high volume of customer service tickets. We’ve built a library of templated responses based on our audience persona of skincare-obsessed Gen Z-ers and millennials.
As a result, 69% of tickets at Topicals are now dealt with using automations.
In addition to Macros, consider following up with customers using SMS messaging.
At Topicals, we tested out SMS so customer service reps could follow up with customers. The less formal format made it easy to keep up with our brand persona of Gen-Z and millennials who prefer quick messaging over emails or phone support.
We were blown away by the positive response. Customers were willing to open up about their experiences and were happy to chat about how much they loved our products.
Beyond the soft skills we’ve discussed above, there are hard skills every customer service representative needs to master.
Customer service techniques or hard skills are defined as the hands-on, technical requirements of the job. This entails understanding the company's products and the tools and technology that your customer service team uses.
The most obvious customer service skill your agents (and your virtual assistants) must possess is the ability to answer questions and communicate information about the products you sell.
An essential part of customer service training is making sure your agents really understand the product, so they can answer in-depth questions and questions about how to use the product:
If hiring, you may occasionally come across an applicant who has existing knowledge of your products, which is a bonus. Still, you should maintain a knowledge base that gives your support team (and your customers, if you chose to make your knowledge base public) easy access to the information they need.
Product knowledge includes product ingredients, uses, compatibility, troubleshooting, and more. Your training should also include process and policy information, like shipping times, packaging, returns and exchanges, and other common questions in ecommerce.
↗️ Check out our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training for more guidance.
Your support staff doesn’t need to illustrate beautiful images with their wordplay — actually, that risks confusing the customer. However, they do need a sharp understanding of the language they’re using and know how to use proper grammar and spelling.
Test your prospective agents on the following:
If your agents are having trouble with spelling or grammar, consider giving them access to tools they can incorporate into their day-to-day work.
A few great language and grammar tools to consider include:
Typing speed may not sound like the most crucial skill on this list, but when you break it down faster typing speed = faster response times.
90% of customers rate an immediate response as "important" or "very important" when they have a support request. So, the faster you can move through tickets, the more satisfied your customers are likely to be.
Take a typing speed test to know exactly how your typing ability stacks up.
Generally speaking, here’s a ranking of words per minute (WPM):
If you’re a professional typist, you’re likely typing at a whopping 60 - 90 WPM (or more!)
A bulk of communication with your customers will take place via email.
Make sure your support staff has excellent email communication skills in place and that they understand how to leverage your email platform’s features.
One great way to make email customer support more streamlined and convenient for your team is to utilize a single platform for all of your customer support channels.
With Gorgias, agents can respond to emails, SMS messages, and social media messages from a single, easy-to-use dashboard rather than having to master each channel individually.
↗️ Check out our email templates for a way to scale quality email customer service.
Considering 59% of the world's population uses some form of social media, it makes sense to arm your support staff to field questions and concerns that come through your social media comments.
Build a clear protocol to handle public tickets. Will you move the conversation to another communication platform or handle it where it starts? Your support agent should know what you expect as well as how to use the social media platforms you promote your brand on.
If you don’t have a helpdesk, you’re missing out on opportunities to provide great experiences and turn more casual browsers into loyal buyers:
“Gorgias has so much integration between Shopify, Instagram, and Facebook. The Facebook ad comment has been very interesting. People have been converting right there, thanks to simple social interaction.” —Cody Szymanski, Customer Experience Manager, Shinesty
↗️ Learn more about how Shinesty earns more sales and answers questions faster with Gorgias.
↗️ Read our complete guide on social media and customer service for more tips.
Most customer relationships span multiple channels. As your brand grows, make sure your customer service agents are comfortable switching from one channel to the next.
If you don’t have a helpdesk, this will require a bit of tab-shuffling throughout the day to respond to comments and messages from all these different platforms.
That said, a helpdesk will save your agents hours every week by unifying your omnichannel approach to one platform, where agents can see every past interaction — be it an hour-long phone call or a 5-star review — and respond to customers without leaving the platform.
Offering customer support via multiple channels such as live chat, email, call centers, and social media provides customers with more touchpoints for contacting your company.
A helpdesk that can unify customer support interactions across channels in one view is helpful for agents because it reduces the amount of app swapping they have to do. It also gives every customer's entire interaction history with your brand across all channels.
Here are a few effective tips to optimize your omnichannel support approach:
↗️ Check out our complete guide to omnichannel customer service for more tips.
The skills we’ve covered so far can apply to agents that work to manage customer issues for in-person or online experiences.
For those agents who solely work in ecommerce, there are four more valuable skills to help improve customer satisfaction with your brand.
Nearly 80% of customers told PwC that a speedy, helpful answer is the most important aspect of good customer service. So, brands are turning to messaging-based customer support channels (like live chat support, WhatsApp, and SMS texting) to meet these customer expectations.
If your support team isn’t trained on these fast-moving channels, you could miss out on opportunities for sales.
In addition to the technical skill required to maneuver these channels within your helpdesk, your staff should refine their skillset to drive sales with live chat. Live chat can boost your conversion rate by 12%, and it’s made a huge difference in raising our purchase rate and lowering our return rate here at Topicals:
Check out our detailed guide to live chat support for more tips and tricks.
When talking directly with customers you need to be able to solve their issues quickly — and that involves fast decision-making.
It’s the responsibility of the customer service rep to take care of the customer by providing the best possible solution to their problem right away.
Sometimes what the customer wants isn’t beneficial to your business’s bottom line. If that happens, your agents need to be able to weigh this one issue with the customers’ entire lifetime value.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example.
While the delivery person didn't take great care to keep the packaging intact, the customer was clear that the serum works as advertised. It might not be realistic for your brand’s bottom line to offer a replacement in this case.
Instead of giving the customer something that could hurt your bottom line, a strong customer service agent might make a quick decision:
Sometimes, bending your rules to keep a customer happy (even if it’s not the most cost-effective) can pay you back with repeat purchases, positive reviews, recommendations, and more.
In your customer service policies and training, be extremely clear about what kinds of situations are black-and-white, where the agent must follow company policy.
But also be very clear where there's some gray area, where the agent can deviate from the stated policy to delight a customer or make sure an interaction ends positively.
Make sure your customer service reps know what they are allowed to do on their own, and when they need a manager's review.
In a physical retail setting, employees can welcome customers, ask if they need any help, and give customers the information (and encouragement) they need to make a purchase.
Pre-sale support means you are able to communicate with a shopper during their browsing experience — helping the shopper make a confident purchasing decision before they click “checkout.”
It's tricky to pull this off in an ecommerce setting, but it can have a huge impact on the ROI of your support team. That’s why it's important to think critically about how your brand offers pre-sale support and give agents the skills to pull it off.
Empower your customer service reps to speak with shoppers during their browsing experience.
At Topicals, we offer a lot of education about our products, so we can arm agents with the knowledge they need to talk about Topicals with customers.
Here are a few examples of common pre-sale questions your agents might see:
For brands that use Gorgias, Convert lets you proactively reach out to customers based on their browsing behavior.
This way, you can ask if the customer has questions, remind them of a timely promotion or free shipping offer, point them to a product recommendation quiz, or even offer a discount to nudge them toward a purchase.
When you’re looking for a new agent, it’s a great idea to hire for the skills in this list right out the gate. Then, continue to offer training opportunities for your customer service reps to master their craft.
Training for the skills listed in this article has a great impact on your company’s reputation and revenue.
Once you’re ready to put those skills to use, sign up for Gorgias to turn your customer support team into a revenue-generating machine.
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TJ’s Top Advice:
Everybody wants to skip to the answers, but for TJ Balo, there is more joy to be found in the learning. Since 2014, TJ has been the Head of Customer Relations and Marketing at Andrea Iyamah, a fashion line founded in 2011 by Nigerian designer Andrea Dumebi Iyamah. From Toronto, TJ leads a group of customer service reps from around the world, including New York and Nigeria, teaching them the ins and outs of customer service operations, logistics, and lingo.
Brainstorming is one of the most exciting parts of the job for TJ, who’s always finding ways to improve the customer experience. When his team gets together, there is no wrong answer. TJ encourages his staff to think outside the box. Whether it’s a bold social media marketing play or a never-before-done collection, he wants to hear it all.
“I always want them to bring new concepts and ideas to the table. I think that for success, it's not about the implementation. It's about what you’re thinking,” he says.
The vulnerability to share out-of-the-box ideas allows his team to create a playground where creativity is the only goal. It’s where every idea has a chance to shine when the time is right, whether it’s in a month or in the next year. All TJ asks is for every person to be fearless and confident: “Let your presence be known. The minute I can identify you, that's when I know that you're doing something right and I'm doing something right.”
Online businesses, especially fashion brands, are no strangers to the challenge of meeting customer expectations. Sometimes colors don’t appear the same way on a screen as they do in person. Other times, sizes may run a smidge too loose or snug. Regardless of the issue, “it’s about consistent communication first,” TJ says.
How can you show up for the customer and show them they matter? For TJ’s team, customer satisfaction is their guiding light. They always remember to throw in an incentive for customers, whether it’s a refund, discount, or replacement.
TJ pays the same heed to internal feedback. His team’s opinion takes precedence before a product is released. They answer questions like, “What’s missing?” “Does it translate well to different body types?” People naturally gravitate towards good products, and TJ wants to hit that mark as closely as possible the first time around.
When mishaps occur, broadcasting the solution to their customer base is imperative. “I think that that's one step a lot of fashion and retail brands miss. They take the feedback in, and they come out with a new or better product, but the customer doesn't know because they don't communicate that message to them to say, ‘We took this in from you, we have this new version out, come and try it again,” he says.
Peruse Andrea Iyamah’s Pinterest and their inspirations draw from a cornucopia of African cultures, stories, and experiences. Traditional details can be found in every piece, from a modern sleeveless dress in the recognizable silhouette of a Kaftan to jumpsuits adorned with sculptural pleats similar to those found on a Gele. The room to innovate is boundless, especially with their Treasures.
Treasures, the term of endearment for their customers, are the backbone of Andrea Iyamah. Without the support and feedback of their Treasures, the brand would not have crossed international borders, dressing icons like Michelle Obama, Gabrielle Union, Ciara, and Kate Hudson.
“We treat our customers as our stakeholders. We believe they’re the driving force of the brand and its vision, hence our goal to make them feel valued and appreciated,” TJ emphasizes.
On Instagram, they spotlight their Treasures’ voices with Instagram carousels of rave reviews on Twitter. One Treasure confidently states, “Andrea Iyamah never misses… I swear.”
“You have to take in every single detail. That is where the brand meets the stakeholder. That's where they both come together. I never give credit to just either or. They both come together to create and to curate this amazing masterpiece.” —TJ Balo on handling custom orders
For a business that’s been operating for over a decade, you could say Andrea Iyamah has accomplished everything. But for TJ, the learning never stops. “Research and ensuring that you're actually taking in that research is the genesis of staying on the cutting edge.”
He recognizes that they aren’t the first to do it in their industry, that there are countless other companies making great strides. Nonetheless, he wants to be the best to do it. “As we grow, as a business, as a brand, as a company, even just as a team generally, I want to be a reflection of what I would like from my team. You can never know it all. Continuous learning is also leadership.”
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TL;DR:
This year, we witnessed customer service teams from 16,140 brands support over 77 million shoppers and millions of tickets with Gorgias.
As we turn to a new chapter, we want to spotlight how six of the top-performing industries delivered customer service in 2023.
From food to fashion, we’ll see how quickly agents answered questions, then discover what customers were asking, and learn from experts about what customer experience trends to expect in the new year.
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Step into the ecommerce world, where you’ll find a vibrant population of merchants, each with their own niche and groups of loyal customers. Together, they generated $1.45 billion in revenue in 2023.
Of course, this would not have been possible without the grit of customer service teams and their dedication to customer satisfaction.
Support teams across 20 industries answered customer inquiries within one business day and solved them in two and a half, resulting in very satisfied shoppers. Impressively, 15% of interactions were fully automated and resolved on average.
Here are the average industry support stats:
The most popular ecommerce industries — Apparel and Fashion, Health, Wellness, and Fitness, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage, Consumer Goods, and Luxury Goods and Jewelry — were the top performers.
Using exclusive Gorgias data, we’ll look at how support teams from these industries handled tickets. Then, we’ll gain expert insight into the ecommerce experience in 2023, and how experts predict it will change in the coming year.
Our first stop is the bustling market of Apparel and Fashion. We’re all familiar with how tricky online clothes shopping can be. Most likely due to issues with sizing and style, support teams mainly dealt with inquiries about:
Yet, despite receiving the highest number of customer tickets among the six industries, Apparel and Fashion brands kept customers happy. They responded within one business day and resolved issues within two, with 15% of interactions being resolved with automation.
Here are their stats compared to the overall industry average:
According to Loop, over 50% of their merchants now charge for certain returns, including fees for exchanges and returns for store credit. This change aligns with consumer preferences, as their report shows 70% of shoppers are willing to pay for premium, convenient experiences, a trend already embraced by half of these customers.
The next stop on our tour is the thriving Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry.
Unfortunately, brands in this sector had a challenging year keeping up with unpleasant tickets about:
Perhaps support teams could have automated more than 15% of interactions to handle these repetitive tickets better. But despite their slower-than-average first response time, customers were still pleased with the support experience:
Expert Insights: Amanda Kwasniewicz, the VP of Customer Experience at women’s wellness brand Love Wellness, highlights that personalized customer service has been a key trend of 2023. She’s observed that customers now expect to receive personal recommendations during their shopping journeys.
Now, take a peek at the fast-growing Cosmetics industry, and you’ll see how eager customers were to check out the hype around both small businesses and celebrity brands.
Given the boom of influencer marketing for these highly personal products, customers often inquired about:
To solve these tickets, support teams automated 18% of interactions and attained faster times than average:
Getting hungry? This year, the growing appetite for Food and Beverage in the ecommerce world was unmistakable. Beef jerky or freshly squeezed fruit juice, customers savored their snacks. But it also didn’t stop them from being tough critics.
The main issues raised to Food and Beverage support teams revolved around:
Luckily, they cut down their first response time by automating 15% of interactions — nearly three hours faster than average:
Expert insights: Zoe Kahn, former Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps and now Owner of Inevitable Agency, saw inventory issues as a major challenge of 2023. The complexity of inventory logistics is difficult for consumers to understand, leading to higher outreach from customers wondering when items would be back in stock. "Quieting those concerns is really difficult," Zoe notes. However, after witnessing inventory issues over the last few years, Zoe realized that "it's inevitable that inventory problems will happen because of how challenging the logistics of selling a product are."
There’s a lot to explore in the all-encompassing Consumer Goods industry. You’ll find brands that sell everything from sustainable water bottles and furniture to everything else in between, like dog toys and mystery subscription boxes.
While Consumer Goods brands only automated 14% of interactions, their resolution time was two hours faster than the industry average, resulting in the happiest customers among the six industries:
The top tickets Consumer Goods brands received were about:
Expert Insights: Ren Fuller-Wasserman, the Director of Experience at TUSHY, notes that the impact of the macroeconomic climate was among the top challenges faced in 2023. “As there's talk of recession and inflation, people are really looking for products that provide added value,” she says.
Our partner Okendo, a growth marketing platform that has worked with well-known brands like SKIMS and Rhode, notes that tech stack consolidation has been the top priority in 2023. They saw that merchants who used a multifaceted product with app integrations resulted in a 15x return on investment.
Our final stop is at the small gem of an industry, Luxury Goods and Jewelry. Making sure their pricey wares arrived to customers safely was the top priority. That’s why the top questions support teams received were in regard to:
Out of all the industries, Luxury Goods and Jewelry brands automated the most interactions at 28%, which certainly helped to shorten response and resolution times:
Expert Insights: Caela Castillo, Director of CX at Jaxxon, advises preparing early for BFCM but being flexible to change. She notes, “Sometimes you need a different perspective,” acknowledging that agents are valuable resources to gain customer insights, especially when it comes to planning new customer service strategies.
It’s been a fruitful year of expediting the traditionally slow support process. However, with greater strides made in AI technology, ecommerce has only scratched the surface of providing accelerated service.
We interviewed ecommerce experts who saw the rise and fall of trends in 2023 and are ready to use their learnings to make the new year better.
Here are the top four actions ecommerce companies should take in 2024.
We’re constantly fed an endless stream of new technology, which can be a distraction to business goals. That’s why the CTO of ecommerce agency Novatize, Pierre-Olivier Brassard, highly recommends planning a robust strategy first. Clear business goals will help teams pick the best tools — not the other way around.
Customer service management platform TalentPop saw AI as the top CX trend of 2023. They foresee late adopters using AI next year, while early adopters will focus on optimization. To get ahead of the game, TalentPop recommends that support teams research all AI options since CX will only become more saturated with AI tools.
Brandon Amoroso, Founder & President at Electriq and Co-founder at SCALIS observed similar trends. In 2023, many CX teams implemented more self-service options for customers. Going into 2024, Brandon notes that a “continual integration of AI into the entire customer experience” is likely.
As social shopping gains traction, marketing platform Yotpo predicts customers are going to look for more real-time communication with brands. In fact, HubSpot reports a 45% year-over-year surge in using social media DMs for customer service. Therefore, using tools that enable interactions through DMs or text, like Yotpo SMS, will be a crucial strategy in the upcoming year.
Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, advises CX leaders to ensure their contributions are recognized. Kwasniewicz notes that support teams often know the business better than any other department. "Beat the CX drum loudly. If you're not in the room, find a way in the room," she stresses.
TL;DR:
As of June 2022, 64% of US customers prefer email when contacting brands, so it’s clear why email is a mainstay in customer support programs. Even still, the Internet’s snail mail can sometimes translate to a slow and negative experience.
So, how do you maximize email as a customer service channel? You use it as a stepping stone to point customers to faster support channels.
Email is simply the medium; the resources are your answer. From including Help Center articles in your emails to replacing a raw mailto link with a user-friendly contact form, we’ll present plenty of ways to transform email into an efficient support channel.
Like all channels, email has its benefits and weaknesses, but you can’t rely on it alone. Here’s what you can expect from email as a customer service channel.
It would be unwise to skip offering email support when more than half of customers prefer it over social media. Email support provides a vital bridge to connect with customers, especially if you’re a DTC business that can't engage with your shoppers in person.
Email can illustrate solutions for customers with embedded links, images, and attachments — something instant channels like social media DMs and SMS would handle with more difficulty.
For example, look below at Dr. Squatch’s eyecatching promotional email. Their use of multiple high-quality images, call-to-action buttons, social links, and logos proves how email can accommodate the most elaborate messages.
If you have a digital footprint, email is almost always a requirement. You need it when creating a new account or when contacting people. It’s even accessible on all devices. Email’s prevalence means customers will expect online stores to offer email support at the very least.
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The average first response time for email is 7 hours and 34 minutes. While most people tolerate how slow email is, it still doesn’t make for the best customer service experience. Urgent customer questions about product defects or bank account issues require rapid responses that other channels are better suited for.
Email allows for more creative liberty than other messaging channels but also has downsides. Since customers are free to format their own subject lines and messages, the responsibility of sorting through your inbox is on your agents.
The problem here isn’t just about maintaining a clean workspace but ensuring urgent messages like angry customer emails aren’t overlooked due to a messy inbox.
Support teams often feel their inbox is an obstacle course rife with concerned customers and a flood of recurring questions. Luckily, there’s a solution: use a customer service helpdesk that can consolidate email and other support tickets to keep your inbox and support team at bay.
Here’s how to effectively use email as a support channel with a helpdesk like Gorgias.
Why? To maintain organization 🗂️ and increase service quality ✨
Plainly leaving your email address on your contact page can be intimidating for customers. What should they put in the subject line? Will they actually get a reply back? Since this contact method has practically no guidelines, you’ll want to set parameters to make reaching out more approachable.
How? Do away with a raw email link and use a contact form. Contact forms provide structure to emails. Thanks to step-by-step guidance through drop-down menus and required fields, you can sort emails even before they reach you.
💡 Tip: We recommend that merchants don't direct customers to an email address for support. Instead, use a contact form to intake email support. Contact forms are superior because messages get structural data that helps customer service agents categorize and prioritize incoming tickets.
Why? To increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) score 👍
Don’t forget that you can start an interaction via email and move to a different channel. This tactic isn't new — it's known as omnichannel communication. After all, 46% of customers expect a response time of 4 hours or less, and if switching support channels is the key to providing faster service, then go for it.
How? Let’s say a panicked customer wants to reverse duplicate charges on their credit card ASAP. This interaction could take multiple back and forths spanning several business days. Instead, you can reap the benefits of voice support, SMS or WhatsApp by directing them to your phone number.
“Being able to organize and divert tickets internally, having a good FAQ, making sure that you're actually solving the problems instead of putting band-aids on them, all goes into [reducing] resolution time.” —Zoe Kahn, Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps
Why? To maintain organization 🗂️ and increase customer retention 🤝
A common customer service mistake is treating tickets on a first-come-first-serve basis. This can lead to more unhappy customers because some tickets are less urgent than others. This is where prioritization can be effective.
How? First, categorize incoming tickets with Gorgias Rules and Tags. Do this by determining the conditions for which tickets should be tagged with an “Urgent” tag. For example, emails containing the word “cancel” will be tagged “Urgent.” Now your most high-value tickets will be solved and your loyal customers won’t need to worry.
How to prioritize unsatisfied customers: Set up a Rule to identify and auto-tag customer complaints as Urgent so you can turn their day around with exceptional customer service.
Why? To increase service quality ✨ and enforce brand voice 🗣️
Being an advocate for personalized customer service doesn’t mean automation needs to be off-limits. Automation can and should be your best friend.
Automating customer service reduces response times and standardizes service quality. Automation can also capture data from customer interactions, letting support teams make data-driven improvements to their operations.
How? Use Macros (pre-written sample emails) to immediately answer questions about common topics, such as shipping information, return policies, and product-specific questions. Macros are a convenient way to compose professional messages, like customer apology emails, while allowing agents to add a personal touch.
📚 Related: The risks & rewards of customer service automation
Why? To increase customer satisfaction 👍 and service quality ✨
The biggest challenge about sending emails as a business is striking a balance between valuable and bothersome. It’s not only about crafting attractive promotional emails but making even the most mundane “Your order has shipped!” emails pop with purpose.
How? Integrate your ecommerce platform of choice, whether it’s Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento (Adobe Commerce), with Gorgias. You can view customer information from your chosen platform in the Customer Sidebar and extract the data to automatically populate emails.
Why? To increase customer satisfaction score 👍 and reduce ticket volume 🔻
In ecommerce, a self-service resource is any resource that answers customer issues without talking to an agent. They include a Help Center (or knowledge base), FAQs, or automated chat widgets.
How? Create a Help Center with linkable articles that can be inserted into customer support emails. This is especially useful for new customers who may want to ask several frequently asked questions. A Help Center effectively acts as technical support, while freeing up agents to deal with more unique tickets.
A successful customer support program should maximize self-service options to minimize manual effort.
How well are you serving your customers through email? The answer lies in measuring how quickly you accomplish support tasks like opening and closing a ticket. But it's not only about speed. Tracking metrics is invaluable for troubleshooting gaps in your customer service operations.
Here are three metrics that can shed a light on how well your customer support team is using email.
Average first response time is the average time it takes for your customer service team to send the first response to a customer after receiving a request.
🕒 Industry average: 18 hours (Timetoreply)
🟢 Time to aim for: Under 4 hours
🔻 What slows it down: Inadequate staffing, lack of automation, and poor prioritization
➕ How to improve it: Use automation like Rules, Tags, Macros, and more self-service options
Average resolution time refers to the average amount of time it takes to resolve or address a specific issue or request, typically measured in hours or days.
🕒 Industry average: 18.1 hours (Gorgias)
🟢 Time to aim for: Same day
🔻 What slows it down: Inefficient process, disorganized inbox, and complex issues
➕ How to improve it: Reroute tickets to faster channels like voice, and build self-service options like a Help Center
First contact resolution rate or FCR rate measures the rate of resolving a customer inquiry within the first interaction. An excellent FCR rate indicates that your support team is well-trained to be able to solve issues efficiently.
🕒 Industry standard: 70% (Fullview)
🟢 Rate to aim for: 78% (Qualtrics)
🔻 What slows it down: Complex issues and lack of customer service skills training
➕ How to improve it: Add more self-service options, ensure agents are given complete information on product/service knowledge and resolution techniques
[Callout] How to calculate FCR: Total number of requests resolved with one interaction in a single time period / the total number of requests in the same time period
Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, you can refine your operation by tracking 25 more customer support metrics.
Email is stronger when combined with other channels — no one knows this better than multitasking expert Gorgias.
As a powerful helpdesk tool, Gorgias offers omnichannel support and powerful automation features like Macros and Rules that make managing email effortless. You can even supercharge Gorgias with integrations to ecommerce apps like Shopify, Yotpo, and Shipbob to keep you focused on delivering support without distractions.
Ready to bring in a crowd of happy customers? Book a demo now.
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Customer service professionals (and the customer service skills they possess) are at the frontline of creating great brand experiences.
All too often, customer service workers aren’t valued as truly skilled or strategic members of the business. It’s a shame (and a missed opportunity), given how big a role customer service agents play in the success of a business.
According to 2022 McKinsey research, three out of five customer service leaders view attracting, training, and retaining skilled customer service workers as a top business priority.
My name is Deja Jefferson, and I’m the CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals. We’ve upskilled our customer experience associates with both soft and hard skills to give our customers complete support and unwavering confidence when making a purchase.
Here are 16 of the most important hard and soft skills for customer support that we train for at Topicals, and that you should build your support team to possess.
Customer service soft skills are the non-technical, interpersonal traits agents use while supporting shoppers. Ultimately, soft skills help to problem solve through good communication and clear thinking.
These aren’t technical skills, nor are they easily quantifiable, but they are vitally important to improve customer communications.
Your support agents need to have a firm understanding of how their tone of voice and word choice affect customer satisfaction.
Using positive language is a valuable customer service technique that steers conversations toward positive emotions, which generate positive outcomes for customers and your business.
Here are some examples of how your team can use positive language in customer service situations.
For further clarification, here are a few examples of what these same interactions might look like using negative language instead:
You can get a sense of a person’s positive language skills early on, even during an interview when hiring for customer service roles.
If your support agents need help using positive language for any scenario, write customer service scripts or Macros that incorporate positive language. This helps all your agents stay positive, whether they're brand-new employees or established team members.
“I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.”
—Deja Jefferson, CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals
It's a key customer service skill to show empathy for a shopper, especially when a difficult situation comes up.
When customers share their challenges and frustrations, it's essential for them to feel assured that their concerns are being understood by empathetic listeners. In the realm of targeted skincare for specific skin conditions, we must consider the vulnerability of consumers as they seek out new skincare solutions. Let's be honest — they've received recommendations from friends, witnessed numerous skin influencers endorse their preferred "featured" products for various skin types, and might be following advice from various dermatologists, (if they're lucky). I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.
Take a look at this hypothetical customer issue with an angry customer:
Empathy is hard to teach. At Topicals, I train my team to get inside the customer’s mind.
Our customers are real people facing challenging (and highly personal) skin issues, from Hyperpigmentation, Atrophic/Acne Scarring, Keratosis Pilaris, and so much more.
Sure, some customers lose their patience when they feel defeated — that’s unavoidable. But most of them are feeling frustrated and hopeless. And my team has an opportunity to give them hope that we can work together to help fix the customer’s issue.
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Whether in a physical retail setting or digital, active listening is a key step to adapting to nuanced questions or navigating tense situations with customers.
Active listening is listening with the intent to obtain information and understand it, rather than simply listening with the intent to reply.
Active listening requires the agent to acknowledge that they understand our customers during a conversation, and provide feedback or ask follow-up questions when appropriate.
First, let’s look at a hypothetical customer issue:
Here’s what a generic, canned response looks like:
But when you use active listening skills, the reply becomes more like this:
The second example response showcases that the support agent has heard the problem and is actively looking for a solution.
Use active listening alongside a helpdesk like Gorgias, which helps your customer service representatives “remember” past interactions. It’s like active listening but at scale.
Gorgias displays customer information like past conversations and orders, current orders, and data from your other apps (like loyalty points or product review scores).
Your agents can use this information to avoid asking for information the customer already gave, and automatically pull it into their responses with variables like [Last Order #] or [Shipping Address].
Related reading: Our full guide on personalized customer service
Time management is the ability to get the most important things done, with a limited number of hours in a day.
As a customer service skill, it's make-or-break: The better an agent's time management, the quicker their first response time and the more tickets they can resolve.
Customer service response times tremendously impact your store’s bottom line. If a response to a query takes too long, customer satisfaction plummets.
In a customer support environment, managing time effectively allows an agent to handle a larger volume of tickets (without breaking their back).
Effective time management is a team sport. You need to make sure:
Your agents have better things to do than copy/paste order statuses all day. We use Gorgias’s Automate at Topicals to handle repetitive questions (like “Where is my order?” or “Where do you ship?”) so that my team can spend their time on issues that need human attention.
Plus, Automate helps customers, even when my team isn’t online.
Support services is an industry that is stressful by nature, largely because most shoppers’ problems are a little tense.
Your agents need to understand when a situation is tense and what to do to defuse the emotional heat:
We know we can’t make everyone happy, but we can always make sure people feel heard. In this example, a shopper shared on Instagram that the product we were featuring didn’t work for them.
Instagram comments are public-facing and we always want to be sure we address feedback from disappointed customers in this kind of arena.
So, we apologized and recognized what the commentator said. Then, we suggested carrying the conversation to a private DM so we could find a solution.
In addition, support agents need to care for themselves, drink plenty of water, and get enough rest.
"People underestimate the emotional and mental resilience that working in CX requires. It’s hard not to take things personally sometimes."
—Grace Choi, Customer Experience Team Lead at TUSHY
When an agent takes time for self-care, they are prepared to be resilient to the job's stresses and approach customer problems with understanding. It’ll improve both a customer's patience with your rep as well as their ultimate satisfaction.
Reflecting is the act of repeating a concern to the person speaking — and it’s a crucial customer service skill your agents must master.
It will make your shoppers feel heard, which is the foundation of a great experience.
Reflecting accomplishes three things:
Let’s see what reflecting looks like in action in a customer support context.
Sometimes, the most challenging part of solving a problem is understanding what the problem actually is.
Here are a couple of clarifying phrases to keep in your back pocket.
A strong brand voice is crucial for any brand, but keeping the brand tone consistent in customer comms is a challenge — especially for technical tickets.
Skilled customer service reps know that maintaining brand voice in customer communications goes a long way toward improving customer experiences.
Personalized Macros help brands plug in automated responses for commonly asked questions. You can build pre-made responses that are infused with your brand voice, so you can maintain fast and effective response times without sacrificing your core messaging.
At Topicals, we use Macros to help maintain brand voice while handling a high volume of customer service tickets. We’ve built a library of templated responses based on our audience persona of skincare-obsessed Gen Z-ers and millennials.
As a result, 69% of tickets at Topicals are now dealt with using automations.
In addition to Macros, consider following up with customers using SMS messaging.
At Topicals, we tested out SMS so customer service reps could follow up with customers. The less formal format made it easy to keep up with our brand persona of Gen-Z and millennials who prefer quick messaging over emails or phone support.
We were blown away by the positive response. Customers were willing to open up about their experiences and were happy to chat about how much they loved our products.
Beyond the soft skills we’ve discussed above, there are hard skills every customer service representative needs to master.
Customer service techniques or hard skills are defined as the hands-on, technical requirements of the job. This entails understanding the company's products and the tools and technology that your customer service team uses.
The most obvious customer service skill your agents (and your virtual assistants) must possess is the ability to answer questions and communicate information about the products you sell.
An essential part of customer service training is making sure your agents really understand the product, so they can answer in-depth questions and questions about how to use the product:
If hiring, you may occasionally come across an applicant who has existing knowledge of your products, which is a bonus. Still, you should maintain a knowledge base that gives your support team (and your customers, if you chose to make your knowledge base public) easy access to the information they need.
Product knowledge includes product ingredients, uses, compatibility, troubleshooting, and more. Your training should also include process and policy information, like shipping times, packaging, returns and exchanges, and other common questions in ecommerce.
↗️ Check out our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training for more guidance.
Your support staff doesn’t need to illustrate beautiful images with their wordplay — actually, that risks confusing the customer. However, they do need a sharp understanding of the language they’re using and know how to use proper grammar and spelling.
Test your prospective agents on the following:
If your agents are having trouble with spelling or grammar, consider giving them access to tools they can incorporate into their day-to-day work.
A few great language and grammar tools to consider include:
Typing speed may not sound like the most crucial skill on this list, but when you break it down faster typing speed = faster response times.
90% of customers rate an immediate response as "important" or "very important" when they have a support request. So, the faster you can move through tickets, the more satisfied your customers are likely to be.
Take a typing speed test to know exactly how your typing ability stacks up.
Generally speaking, here’s a ranking of words per minute (WPM):
If you’re a professional typist, you’re likely typing at a whopping 60 - 90 WPM (or more!)
A bulk of communication with your customers will take place via email.
Make sure your support staff has excellent email communication skills in place and that they understand how to leverage your email platform’s features.
One great way to make email customer support more streamlined and convenient for your team is to utilize a single platform for all of your customer support channels.
With Gorgias, agents can respond to emails, SMS messages, and social media messages from a single, easy-to-use dashboard rather than having to master each channel individually.
↗️ Check out our email templates for a way to scale quality email customer service.
Considering 59% of the world's population uses some form of social media, it makes sense to arm your support staff to field questions and concerns that come through your social media comments.
Build a clear protocol to handle public tickets. Will you move the conversation to another communication platform or handle it where it starts? Your support agent should know what you expect as well as how to use the social media platforms you promote your brand on.
If you don’t have a helpdesk, you’re missing out on opportunities to provide great experiences and turn more casual browsers into loyal buyers:
“Gorgias has so much integration between Shopify, Instagram, and Facebook. The Facebook ad comment has been very interesting. People have been converting right there, thanks to simple social interaction.” —Cody Szymanski, Customer Experience Manager, Shinesty
↗️ Learn more about how Shinesty earns more sales and answers questions faster with Gorgias.
↗️ Read our complete guide on social media and customer service for more tips.
Most customer relationships span multiple channels. As your brand grows, make sure your customer service agents are comfortable switching from one channel to the next.
If you don’t have a helpdesk, this will require a bit of tab-shuffling throughout the day to respond to comments and messages from all these different platforms.
That said, a helpdesk will save your agents hours every week by unifying your omnichannel approach to one platform, where agents can see every past interaction — be it an hour-long phone call or a 5-star review — and respond to customers without leaving the platform.
Offering customer support via multiple channels such as live chat, email, call centers, and social media provides customers with more touchpoints for contacting your company.
A helpdesk that can unify customer support interactions across channels in one view is helpful for agents because it reduces the amount of app swapping they have to do. It also gives every customer's entire interaction history with your brand across all channels.
Here are a few effective tips to optimize your omnichannel support approach:
↗️ Check out our complete guide to omnichannel customer service for more tips.
The skills we’ve covered so far can apply to agents that work to manage customer issues for in-person or online experiences.
For those agents who solely work in ecommerce, there are four more valuable skills to help improve customer satisfaction with your brand.
Nearly 80% of customers told PwC that a speedy, helpful answer is the most important aspect of good customer service. So, brands are turning to messaging-based customer support channels (like live chat support, WhatsApp, and SMS texting) to meet these customer expectations.
If your support team isn’t trained on these fast-moving channels, you could miss out on opportunities for sales.
In addition to the technical skill required to maneuver these channels within your helpdesk, your staff should refine their skillset to drive sales with live chat. Live chat can boost your conversion rate by 12%, and it’s made a huge difference in raising our purchase rate and lowering our return rate here at Topicals:
Check out our detailed guide to live chat support for more tips and tricks.
When talking directly with customers you need to be able to solve their issues quickly — and that involves fast decision-making.
It’s the responsibility of the customer service rep to take care of the customer by providing the best possible solution to their problem right away.
Sometimes what the customer wants isn’t beneficial to your business’s bottom line. If that happens, your agents need to be able to weigh this one issue with the customers’ entire lifetime value.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example.
While the delivery person didn't take great care to keep the packaging intact, the customer was clear that the serum works as advertised. It might not be realistic for your brand’s bottom line to offer a replacement in this case.
Instead of giving the customer something that could hurt your bottom line, a strong customer service agent might make a quick decision:
Sometimes, bending your rules to keep a customer happy (even if it’s not the most cost-effective) can pay you back with repeat purchases, positive reviews, recommendations, and more.
In your customer service policies and training, be extremely clear about what kinds of situations are black-and-white, where the agent must follow company policy.
But also be very clear where there's some gray area, where the agent can deviate from the stated policy to delight a customer or make sure an interaction ends positively.
Make sure your customer service reps know what they are allowed to do on their own, and when they need a manager's review.
In a physical retail setting, employees can welcome customers, ask if they need any help, and give customers the information (and encouragement) they need to make a purchase.
Pre-sale support means you are able to communicate with a shopper during their browsing experience — helping the shopper make a confident purchasing decision before they click “checkout.”
It's tricky to pull this off in an ecommerce setting, but it can have a huge impact on the ROI of your support team. That’s why it's important to think critically about how your brand offers pre-sale support and give agents the skills to pull it off.
Empower your customer service reps to speak with shoppers during their browsing experience.
At Topicals, we offer a lot of education about our products, so we can arm agents with the knowledge they need to talk about Topicals with customers.
Here are a few examples of common pre-sale questions your agents might see:
For brands that use Gorgias, Convert lets you proactively reach out to customers based on their browsing behavior.
This way, you can ask if the customer has questions, remind them of a timely promotion or free shipping offer, point them to a product recommendation quiz, or even offer a discount to nudge them toward a purchase.
When you’re looking for a new agent, it’s a great idea to hire for the skills in this list right out the gate. Then, continue to offer training opportunities for your customer service reps to master their craft.
Training for the skills listed in this article has a great impact on your company’s reputation and revenue.
Once you’re ready to put those skills to use, sign up for Gorgias to turn your customer support team into a revenue-generating machine.
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Customers who use chat support are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those who don’t. Despite its proven impact, misconceptions around chat’s limited scope — reducing it to only live interactions — persist, creating a missed opportunity for the online stores that could benefit from it the most.
The reality is chat is a versatile tool that can adjust to company needs, whether it’s a self-service tool that runs on its own, a channel for providing live support, or both.
For ecommerce businesses on the fence about incorporating chat into their customer service operations, we're here to clear up five of the most common myths about chat’s functions, costs, and benefits. After that, we’ll lay out a five-step guide to efficiently set up chat so you can start delighting customers now.
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Live chat is real-time communication that allows customers to interact with a customer service representative instantly. It's the digital equivalent of walking into a store and speaking directly with an employee.
On the other hand, chat is more than just live interactions; it includes automated responses that ensure customers receive support, even without agents. This hybrid approach allows businesses to deliver 24/7 customer support.
Chat solutions, like Gorgias Chat, blend live chat's on-demand nature with automation and AI. Chat allows businesses to provide support regardless of time zone and staff availability.
Confusion about what chat can do often discourages businesses from leveraging the powerful customer service tool. Below, we’ll be myth-busting five common misconceptions about chat to reveal its true potential.
Contrary to popular belief, chat can be a cost-effective solution to operate customer service. Brands can earn 10x more revenue by implementing chat and, in turn, operate a smaller support team. Support agents can be costly, so using chat to deflect tickets can be a quick way to optimize both time and budget.
Chat's usefulness transcends business size and breaks down silos in customer service by allowing customers to get answers on their own time. As a customer service tool, any business engaging with customers can benefit greatly from it to tackle pre-sales questions and resolve issues efficiently.
As previously mentioned, chat can handle both live and automated interactions, which means no agents are required to manage it. Online stores can set up chat on their websites, allowing it to run 24/7. Businesses can decide whether to enable live chat or keep it fully automated.
Related: Customer service outsourcing: why, when, and how
Due to automation-based conversations in chat, ticket volume does not necessarily increase when customers use chat. A ticket is only created when a customer converses with a live agent. Unlike using social media as a support channel, chat empowers customers to self-serve and resolve issues on their own.
Contrary to popular belief, chat has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. Based on Gorgias data, brands experienced a 1% increase in CSAT when using automation, including chat. The improved satisfaction can be attributed to the efficiency of automated answers and the absence of wait times.
While email remains a staple, chat offers immediate engagement in the shopping flow that can create opportunities for upselling. For example, an on-site campaign toolkit like Gorgias Convert becomes a seamless extension of your sales and support strategy with the ability to recommend products within chat.
Since chat simplifies the process of reaching out, it is also easier for companies to build trust with their customers. The fewer hurdles customers have to jump over to get an answer, the more readily they will trust your brand.
Read more: You’re doing it wrong: better ways to use email as a customer service channel
Now that you know chat isn’t expensive and can give you a great return on investment, you can start making the most of it. Here’s the optimal way to set up chat in four, simple steps.
A study from the University of Göttingen found that customers value clarity on whether they're conversing with a bot or a human agent. Their satisfaction did not dwindle when issues went unresolved, knowing they were interacting with a chatbot.
You can add “Bot” to your chat name on Gorgias whenever automated messages are sent. Enabling this improves the customer experience by letting them know exactly who they are talking to.
In addition, customizing your chatbot avatar to your company logo instead of leaving it as the default robot avatar adds a personal touch. If live chat is enabled, uploading individual profile photos for your agents will help customers feel more comfortable since they’re able to associate a face with the agent they’re talking to.
Frequently asked questions can quickly dominate your inbox, but with Quick Responses, you can offer fully automated answers. This allows you to provide customer service on an international scale without worrying about increasing agent workload.
Gorgias Automate upgrades your customer experience with an entire automation toolkit that includes Quick Responses in Chat. You can display up to six Quick Responses at a time, providing customers with immediate answers to their questions.
While many assume live chat needs to be available for extended hours, the truth is that live chat hours can be tailored to what suits your brand best, even if that's just one hour a day. The key is to clearly communicate when an agent will respond to customers outside of these hours.
Customers prefer live chat because of the lack of wait times, so if you’re offering live chat, be sure your agents meet customer expectations by answering chat conversations in 30 seconds. Strengthening customer relationships is crucial to building trust and, therefore, increasing your ecommerce retention rate. On Gorgias, setting your business hours will directly update how Chat appears to customers.
A help center is a database of articles that range from frequently asked questions and guides to video tutorials and policies. On Gorgias, Chat can use your Help Center articles to enrich automated answers with detailed information. For instance, fashion and apparel stores can create a sizing guide article, which Chat can then reference, guiding customers directly to the information they need.
Gorgias Automate enabled luxury luggage company July to handle the equivalent workload of three extra agents. With tools like Chat, July went from handling repetitive queries to focusing on more significant customer issues. This significant change enhanced their support efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Want to become a success story? Discover how Gorgias Automate can streamline your support workflow and elevate customer experience. Book a demo today.
Your customer service is the lifeblood of your business. And, live chat is a central communication channel for your online shoppers. Live chat can make or break your business. When leveraged properly, Shopify live chat can have a tremendous positive impact on sales. You just need to make sure you’re not turning prospects away.
This article covers a few points.
Now, learn why your growth depends on your live chat processes.
If you don’t yet have live chat or you haven’t experienced the potential of optimizing your communication processes on this channel, you may wonder what the big deal is. Yeah, your customers want to talk to you at all hours, but is it really that important?
Let’s look at a few facts about live chat so you can think about it.
Now, here’s what might happen if you leave your shoppers dissatisfied.
Are you convinced? If so, it’s time to make sure you get it right. Avoid these live chat mistakes and ensure that you’re getting the most out of one of the most powerful communication channels for online stores.
Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. Here are the mistakes you need to avoid when implementing live chat on your Shopify store. And, below each problem is a simple and actionable fix.
When you don’t implement automation, you’re forced to have multiple support agents online at all times or miss the point of live chat altogether. Your customers prefer this communication channel because they want the convenience of self-service. And, without some level of automation, customers might as well send an email because it will take just as long to receive a response.
Live chat platforms are designed to enhance the workload of your support team. So, naturally, the brand you work with will have a knowledge base with detailed instructions about platform use. Make sure your support agents learn how to implement macros or automations.
Before you get too excited and try to automate your entire live chat workflow, stop and think for a moment. It is possible to fully-automate your live chat communications. However, with automation, you can’t always get the answers right. Irrelevant responses to customer queries can trigger immediate dissatisfaction.
In marketing, sales, writing, and even customer service, the Pareto principle, better known as the 80/20 rule can come in handy. This principle states that 80% of the effects for many actions come from 20% of the effort. Spin this just a bit for an easy solution.
Find out where most of your effort is being spent (maybe 20% of the customer support workload) and use live chat macros to answer the most common customer questions first. Then, the rest of your support agents’ work time to reply to the unique and personal queries (perhaps about 80% of the customer support workload).
See Also: Love Your Melon Has Automated 25% of Shopify Support Tickets
While it may not always be possible, especially from the perspective of a brand, up to 79% of consumers want immediate responses and expect answers within 10 minutes. If you’re making your shoppers wait longer than this, you may be losing sales.
One of the biggest benefits of live chat for customer support is its speed .You need to find a solution to accelerate your responses.
Much of the time, excessive wait times are due to the fact that customer support staff must reach out to external departments and wait for answers before replying to the customer. Try what Nomad did to decrease first-response time by 78% and implement an all-hands support strategy.
Require each department to directly respond to a number of tickets every day. And, there’s no need to go overboard -- just a few tickets a day from sales, marketing, and/or product teams can have a dramatic positive impact on response and resolution times.
Do your agents sound like robots? Are your chat communications overly-formal? If so, you run the risk of turning people away. Consumers appreciate AI, but if they can have better conversations with Siri or Alexa that they do your customer support team, your conversations could use some work.
Compile some data from your chat sessions and look for patterns. Do you see any recurring words or phrases in your customer communications? If so, add them to your macros and your agents’ vocabulary. When you speak the same language with shoppers, they’re more likely to trust you.
Customer service agents never get as much credit as they deserve. Without a small army of satisfaction soldiers, you will lose the eCommerce war. So, the work needs to be taken seriously. If you hire low-skilled agents who can’t answer your shoppers’ questions, you will end up with low-quality support operations. Eventually, this mistake can kill your business.
Unfortunately, for this problem, there isn’t a “quick” fix. However, if you put in significant energy in the beginning, you may be able to kick up your heels later. Onboard well.
Fist of all, learn the core skills that your support agents need like active listening and product knowledge. Then, hire like you know what you’re doing. Make sure to ask the right interview questions. And, when onboarding, create stellar customer service training materials. The resources you invest when you bring on new agents will pay for themselves fast.
Once in a while, if you throw an emoji out there in a live chat conversation with a customer, it can be fun. Emojis can help adjust the mood and keep a message lighthearted. Forbes says that emojis can be worth 1,000 words. But, don’t go overboard. Too many smiley faces and penguins will come across annoying and unprofessional.
If it seems like your agents may be on emoji overdrive, just ask them to stop. Remove the use of smileys and strong arms from your operations entirely. It’s better to have no emojis at all than to have too many. Now, if this hasn’t become a problem internally, then don’t worry about it. Skilled agents typically know what’s appropriate and what’s not.
In eCommerce and business in general, decision-makers spend end a lot of time looking at numbers. In customer service, you strive for the fastest first-response and resolution times. While this is best practice, don’t let quantity overshadow quality. Some teams become so focused on their numbers that they lose sight of their actual customer satisfaction. Don’t let this be your team.
Instead of playing a numbers game and obsessing about the clock, focus on quality. Customer satisfaction should be the number one goal of every support team and every business, for that matter. Periodically, run an audit on your operations and make sure your satisfaction levels are balanced with your speed.
A few weeks ago, I called out to online store owners on Twitter to ask for their experience using live chat to increase sales. I wanted to level the playing field and reach beyond our internal data to find others who had the same experience. And, while each respondent knew that live chat had a positive impact on their Shopify sales, they couldn’t provide real numbers. Instead, they shared anecdotes and vague descriptions and stories. There are two key problems with no data collection for live chat.
90% of consumers value when an agent knows their account history and current activity within a company.
If your live chat platform is designed to collect data from your agents and your customers, you can get all of the information you need to collect helpful internal statistics.
Keep track of tickets created, replied, closed, messages, time to resolution. Sort your data by agent or event. Use real numbers from your internal processes to power your customer support strategy.
With the right reporting system, you can inform your future decisions about hiring, automation, processes, and more.
Do you know when your website traffic spends most of their time on your website? And, are you making certain that your agents are online during peak times? If not, you will naturally see low response and resolution times. Plus, the people who reach out when nobody is online may never return to your site.
Use a tool like Google Analytics to generate hour of day and day of week reports. When you have determined the most active times for your website visitors, check to make sure you’re staffed during these times. And, if you see that there are active traffic times that you don’t have anyone available, make adjustments to your staff schedules.
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Customer support is an avenue for your team to keep shoppers happy. And, happy shoppers evolve into satisfied, long-term customers. But, you may be missing opportunities to upsell your website traffic on current promotions and increase sales even more.
When you’re running a promotion, contest, or sale, make sure your support agents are aware. At the beginning or end of every live chat conversation (you’ll have to test to see what works best for your audience), give customers a link to a page with the information or briefly tell them about the promotion.
A major problem for many support agents that can kill satisfaction is processes that are disconnected. Your staff can be forced to open multiple tabs to keep a conversation going -- email, social media, live chat, web store. This can take up precious time and also give customers the feeling that your company doesn’t know who they are or what their status is.
Gorgias's live chat platform connects with your Shopify data so that you can streamline the resolution on orders, shipping, tracking, and return tickets. Furthermore, it integrates with your email, phone, and social media messaging platforms so that you have access to all customer data, no matter which channel they reach out on.
Now you know exactly what not to do and how to fix what you’re doing wrong with live chat on your Shopify store. Apply this advice today and watch your support team nurture more satisfaction with shoppers. If you need a Shopify full-featured live chat platform that provides the data you need to scale your customer support operations and the integrations that can streamline your operations, find out what we have to offer.
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As ecommerce grew this year, we continued to work toward a decentralized vision of commerce — a model where merchants take back their customer relationships from colossal marketplaces and connect one-to-one with the people who buy their products.
Our merchants had a record-breaking number of these personal interactions in 2021 and that’s worth celebrating. So we’ve collected all the firsts, upgrades and proudest moments to share with you.
Since January 2021 feels like 10 years ago (and also 10 minutes ago, somehow), let’s take a walk down memory lane.
This year, we helped 8,000 brands support over 290 million shoppers, bringing in customers like Bidabo, Biketart, Lillie's Q and Livinguard.
All together, our customers generated $1.1 billion from their customer support functions in 2021.
Those companies varied in size, from single entrepreneurs still proving their products to enterprise companies scaling beyond their wildest dreams. Differences aside, they united in prioritizing customer experience to grow their businesses.
Some industries came up again and again on our roster, including:
And because Gorgias powered growth across 110 industries, our customers’ customers were purchasing everything from medical supplies to maritime essentials.
Every minute of 2021, Gorgias customers closed out an average of 179 tickets. In more relatable terms, they helped more than 10,000 shoppers in the time it took to watch a new episode of Shark Tank.
At the peak of support volume — the five-day period from Thanksgiving and Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM) — our merchants answered 2.5 million tickets. Their support teams drove $25.6 million in sales during that time.
With tools made for that moment, they were able to stay on top of the ticket pile and turn the holiday rush into a gold rush.
The impact didn’t stop there. On average, our merchants received a 4/5 satisfaction rating from their customers in 2021. The 75 million tickets they answered reinforced their brands, one loyal customer at a time.
After all, when your team has a million fires to extinguish, the only flames in customer support should be the emoji reactions to your five-star ratings.
And that’s exactly what you’ll be chasing as your performance metrics approach those from our top quartile of merchants. The top-performing teams clocked first-response times under two hours and resolution times under 8 hours, on average.
As ecommerce becomes more decentralized, so do the channels that provide your customer feedback.
Still, it’s no surprise that email remains the most popular support channel, used by 92% of our brands. Together, they answered 64 million emails in 2021 (85% of all tickets).
This next stat may be more of a revelation: 78% of our brands have brought Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter interactions into their Gorgias workspace. They answered 3.7 million comments across those three channels, with almost two-thirds coming from Facebook.
These social channels were used even more than our live chat, phone, and SMS integrations. And Gorgias helped merchants meet their customers in all of the above, without ever leaving their dashboard.
2021 also saw the launch of our long-awaited Gorgias App Store. This hub features 75 apps to extend the power of our helpdesk and centralize the information support agents rely on.
62% of our merchants are using at least one of our partner apps, and we’re exploring new partnerships all the time to continue streamlining the customer support process.
This allows us, and all of our partners, to stay focused on being the absolute best at what we do.
Some of our merchants’ favorite integrations include:
So go ahead and close those 20 tabs out — you won’t need them where we’re headed.
We released 91 features this year, 42 of which were led by your requests on our public roadmap.
Our most requested features (that are all available today!) were:
The quick adoption of our 2021 social media updates made it clear these channels were critical to our merchants’ success this year. We expect that to continue into 2022. (TikTok, anyone? Give it an upvote here!)
And while voice support didn’t see the same volume of requests as the social channels, we knew it was essential for certain brands. To better serve these merchants, we built a native phone integration that’s easily set up for new and existing numbers.
Merchants responded by taking more than 4,000 calls from shoppers this year. As a result, resolution times were up to 34% faster than others who left phone service out of their strategies.
And while we want to give our merchants a variety of tools to provide help, sometimes it's best to empower shoppers to help themselves.
Our new Help Center feature provides FAQ hubs on merchant websites, to work toward this goal. The first 100 Help Centers that went live attracted over 100,000 views, answering inquiries before they could turn into tickets.
Another contribution is perhaps our most exciting release: Our Automate product allows for customization of self-service flows and deflects even more tickets to boost team efficiency.
Hundreds of merchants used the add-on in 2021 to automate their tickets, increasing efficiency across their support teams.
Our self-service portal alone deflected up to another 33% of tickets specific to shoppers (like order status). This freed up agent time to provide a more personal touch to important conversations.
We tripled the size of our team in 2021 to continue building the best possible helpdesk for the specific needs of ecommerce brands. There are now 185 employees who work in 16 countries around the globe and speak 18 different languages.
That means there’s more Gorgians building out integrations, furthering the product roadmap, and contributing to our merchants’ success.
And our customers have let us know how much these improvements impacted their businesses. We currently hold top marks among the helpdesk categories on G2, Capterra and the Shopify app store.
2021 was a year to remember for the Gorgias team and our customers, but 2022 is shaping up to be even better. It might even be the year people learn to pronounce our name. (470 people asked how during this year’s demos; think “gorgeous.”)
Fingers crossed.
Either way, we have some key new features on the roadmap and several surprises up our sleeves. We’ll continue building and optimizing channels so you can meet your customers where they are (including a much-requested Whatsapp integration). We’re also going to renew our focus on automation tools to increase efficiency across your team.
Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter, below, to beam all of our updates directly to your inbox.
As for the rest of the ecommerce industry, we have high hopes for 2022 (and plenty of predictions). We’re expecting continued shift of support tickets to social channels, a bigger emphasis on self-service options and a sharper focus on app integrations across the ecommerce ecosystem.
Until then, thanks for a great year!
By Ross Beyeler, Founder and CEO of Growth Spark
Often, a support team answers the same questions over and over…
Or issues returns repeatedly for reasons that could be addressed internally…
Maybe the sizing isn’t well represented, the fulfillment house has mixed up SKUs, or your product images aren’t clear or detailed enough.
If you can lighten the load for your customer support team, you can save significant time and costs, while at the same time improving the buying experience for your customers.
The goals here are to:
The key is to address your customers questions and issues before they ask your support team. Here's how you do that:
91% of shoppers would gladly try to answer their own questions first using an online knowledge base or FAQ page before reaching out to a customer service team, according to a survey by Coleman Parkes for Amdocs.
This means that your FAQ page is a huge opportunity to answer your customers’ most common questions and issues so they don’t need to reach out to customer support.
FAQ information typically falls into one of two distinct buckets: product-specific and buying process.
Product Specific: Common questions about individual products may be better off addressed on the product pages rather than in a broad FAQ page. You may need to provide clearer or more comprehensive product descriptions, or consider more or better photography to clear up common product questions.
Buying Process: Questions about shipping, returns, policies, and other operational topics are best addressed in a single easy-to-find page like an FAQ.
When is the last time you cross-checked the content of your FAQ page with the data from your customer support team?
There are many customer support tools like Gorgias that will make it easy for you to track the reasons behind why users submit a ticket.
Once you begin tracking the topic, or tag, of your questions, you can easily identify the questions that top the list, and permanently add the responses to the FAQ.
Bonus points: Prioritize the FAQ page based on the frequency of each customer service inquiry so that the most relevant answers are closer to the top.
Your next step is to set up a monthly meeting with your head of customer service to review the feedback coming in from your customers and ask yourself:
Remember, an FAQ page is:
For more on FAQ pages, check out this Shopify article.
Now that you have your FAQ page squared away, be sure to track visitors to the page and note any changes in volume, and look for changes in your support ticket volume around those related questions.
Remember: You should never answer a support ticket only by referencing your FAQ page. Always include the information they are asking for directly within your response. After that, let the customer know that there is an FAQ page for more information, to avoid future tickets.
Have you watched actual customers explore your online store to see where they stumble?
Customer behavior tools like Hotjar make it easy to review how customers navigate your website. One way that customer behavior analysis tools can help you understand exactly how your customers are using your site is with heat maps.
A heat map is a visual representation of the most popular (hot) and unpopular (cold) elements of a website page. They can give you an at-a-glance understanding of how people interact with individual website pages. Elements that get the most views and interaction are shown in red, so you can immediately spot what your users are clicking on. Those that most people tend to ignore appear in blue.
Once you know which parts of your website are most (and least) useful to shoppers, you can tweak those elements to make the on-site experience easier to use.
Customer behavior data can inform on-site improvements, such as:
It may require some A/B testing to ensure your changes deliver results.
According to a recent Shopify post, during the holiday season, Ecommerce returns surge to 30 percent (or as high as 50 percent for “expensive” products).
Return deliveries are estimated to exceed $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.
Many of those returns are probably associated with a customer support ticket - whether customers are asking questions about the product they received, or need help processing their return.
Anything you can do to reduce the number of returns - and the number of customer support requests associated with them - can mean a huge boost for your bottom line.
So, what causes returns?
Returns can often be traced back to a disconnect between customer expectations and the reality of the product once they receive it. It may be that:
All of these problems (and more) can be prevented in advance with improvements to your website content.
While fit can be a difficult factor to get right online, including detailed dimensions is a big step in the right direction. Some apparel merchants are taking sizing one step further with interactive fit guides, like the one above Nudie Jeans, which uses an app integration called Virtusize:.
Poor quality or not enough product images can make it difficult for customers to accurately understand what your product will look like when it arrives at their home.
You can easily reduce your return rate by making sure your product photography is clear and high-quality, and illustrates all of the primary parts of each product. More complicated or detailed products can also benefit from a video or 360-view.
Detailed product descriptions can also help address confusion about product appearance and feel. Sol de Janeiro does this with a multi-tab product content area that defaults to a brief product highlight, with additional tabs to provide more details.
Are orders not being fulfilled to the right customers?
Are deliveries taking longer than they should?
Analyzing your fulfillment data and using that information to make adjustments to your website content - such as average delivery times - can help eliminate a source of customer support calls.
For example, maybe you want to be able to deliver every order within two days, but your current fulfillment resources simply can’t make that happen consistently. Being up-front and clear about realistic delivery times (like The Black Dog does in their Shipping FAQ page, above) will help set customers’ expectations appropriately.
Bonus: To get setup on two day shipping, consider our partners at ShipBob.
Continue to study your on-site data using Google Analytics or Shopify’s native analytics and look for high exit % pages. These may be pages where prospects or customers are running into a dead end and being forced to turn to support.
You can also create a goal in Google Analytics that corresponds to contacting support, then reverse the user path to determine which pages lead to them submitting a ticket / hitting that “contact” or “support” button.
Chances are, there are a few areas of “low hanging fruit” that can make significant improvements to your customer support load once you find them and address the root concerns. And with those small fixes, you could see a big impact on your bottom line, and a better on-site experience for your customers.
Read more about customer support on our trusted partner’s site, Growth Spark:
Aircall is a cloud-based call center software made for support teams. With Aircall, support agents can track everything from A-Z, on any device, with zero hardware to manage. The right tool to increase agent efficiency and customer satisfaction!
After listening to early customer feedback, we quickly realized we needed to find a phone integration that empowered users to manage voice calls as easily as emails or chats.
Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer. This way, agents can see the full conversation history between the brand and the customer.
By building Aircall’s cloud-based phone into the Gorgias platform, agents can also quickly edit orders while on the phone based on the case history they see. After a call has ended, all notes will be added to the correct customer’s profile along with a link to the full call recording.
Looking back, the partnership has been mutually beneficial and seamlessly implemented.
Aircall has a well-documented API that our dev team could easily use. We were able to build a working and robust phone integration with Aircall in just a few hours. Four days later, after QA testing, the new solutions were fully functional and ready to use.
Since Gorgias and Aircall both seek to provide the best customer experience possible, cross-company visibility has become a valuable source of new leads and sales. Furthermore, we conduct regular catch-up meetings and share a Slack channel to make sure both teams work hand-in-hand to create the best integration and the best results. The partnership with Aircall is super valuable for both our customers and our respective companies and we strongly recommend each others.
If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect Aircall. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.
You spoke and we listened. We’re excited to tell you that, we are ready to launch out of beta. Now, you can connect your Magento 2 store with your Gorgias account. Access your Gorgias and Magento data from one dashboard.
The simplistic interface will enable you to display customers, orders, shipments, and credit memo data from your Magento eCommerce store next to your Gorgias support tickets. Learn more about the features you can take advantage of.
Magento users now have access to the fundamental and performance-boosting advantages of the Gorgias help desk platform.
Soon, we will add actions like ‘refund’ or ‘cancel order’ to the dashboard as well.
Our extension was created for compatibility with the updated Magento 2 platform. So, Magento 2.2 users may need to upgrade to version 2.3 to properly access all of Gorgias’ help desk features.
By integrating with Magento 2, we are excited to serve a new rank of online sellers. We hope to recreate the satisfaction we’ve given our existing users. Here’s what you can do now.
Cheers!
Gorgias connects to over 70 leading ecommerce applications, giving you the power to centralize customer data in your helpdesk, perform support actions from a single place, and streamline your store’s toolkit.
This month, we launched 7 new integrations:
Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!
LoyaltyLion is a digital loyalty framework that gives ecommerce stores innovative ways to engage and retain customers. If you're using LoyaltyLion for your loyalty program, you can connect it to Gorgias to display information next to support tickets, and reward loyalty points using Macros.
Note: Gorgias no longer supports Twitter. You can still use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in Gorgias.
Give your support team the power to provide customer service to shoppers on Twitter, without having to log into another platform or share credentials with your social media manager. View past Twitter conversations, gain cross-channel message context, and customize your replies to provide exceptional customer support.
Note: This integration is currently only available for Enterprise plans. View pricing here.
CallHippo allows startups and businesses to buy instant local support numbers from over 50+ countries around the world. With this integration, you can create tickets in Gorgias for phone calls and SMS conversations via Call Hippo.
Shipup follows your packages in real-time to create a seamless, transparent, and branded delivery experience. With the Gorgias integration, you can easily share shipping information with your support team, immediately notify them with a ticket in Gorgias when an incident occurs, and find customer information right next to conversations.
Tolstoy is an interactive video platform, helping users create meaningful and personal conversations at scale. With this integration, Gorgias users can sync their Tolstoy videos and monitor every viewer interaction as a ticket, empowering support agents to engage without ever leaving the help desk.
Autopilot is a data and customer journey marketing platform designed for businesses who sell online. With this integration, you can now combine your Shopify and Gorgias data together seamlessly in Autopilot. You’ll not only have a single view of your customer, but you’ll be able to deliver a more personalized marketing experience and get glowing reviews from satisfied customers.
SentiSum is an automated ticket tagging engine powered by natural language processing technology. With this integration, SentiSum tags can auto-fill form fields directly in Gorgias. From there, you can implement additional automation that saves agent time and improves customer outcomes.
You can now receive Yotpo product reviews right in Gorgias and reply to them as tickets! This gives your agents visibility into how shoppers feel about your product and allows them to address concerns without ever leaving the helpdesk. Each ticket will include the review details (like score and product) and allow you to either reply publicly or privately, so you can customize the support experience.
To add these integrations and discover more, go to the Gorgias App Store.