

TL;DR:
You’ve chosen your AI tool and turned it on, hoping you won’t have to answer another WISMO question. But now you’re here. Why is AI going in circles? Why isn’t it answering simple questions? Why does it hand off every conversation to a human agent?
Conversational AI and chatbots thrive on proper training and data. Like any other team member on your customer support team, AI needs guidance. This includes knowledge documents, policies, brand voice guidelines, and escalation rules. So, if your AI has gone rogue, you may have skipped a step.
In this article, we’ll show you the top seven AI issues, why they happen, how to fix them, and the best practices for AI setup.
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AI can only be as accurate as the information you feed it. If your AI is confidently giving customers incorrect answers, it likely has a gap in its knowledge or a lack of guardrails.
Insufficient knowledge can cause AI to pull context from similar topics to create an answer, while the lack of guardrails gives it the green light to compose an answer, correct or not.
How to fix it:
This is one of the most frustrating customer service issues out there. Left unfixed, you risk losing 29% of customers.
If your AI is putting customers through a never-ending loop, it’s time to review your knowledge docs and escalation rules.
How to fix it:
It can be frustrating when AI can’t do the bare minimum, like automate WISMO tickets. This issue is likely due to missing knowledge or overly broad escalation rules.
How to fix it:
One in two customers still prefer talking to a human to an AI, according to Katana. Limiting them to AI-only support could risk a sale or their relationship.
The top live chat apps clearly display options to speak with AI or a human agent. If your tool doesn’t have this, refine your AI-to-human escalation rules.
How to fix it:
If your agents are asking customers to repeat themselves, you’ve already lost momentum. One of the fastest ways to break trust is by making someone explain their issue twice. This happens when AI escalates without passing the conversation history, customer profile, or even a summary of what’s already been attempted.
How to fix it:
Sure, conversational AI has near-perfect grammar, but if its tone is entirely different from your agents’, customers can be put off.
This mismatch usually comes from not settling on an official customer support tone of voice. AI might be pulling from marketing copy. Agents might be winging it. Either way, inconsistency breaks the flow.
How to fix it:
When AI is underperforming, the problem isn’t always the tool. Many teams launch AI without ever mapping out what it's actually supposed to do. So it tries to do everything (and fails), or it does nothing at all.
It’s important to remember that support automation isn’t “set it and forget it.” It needs to know its playing field and boundaries.
How to fix it:
AI should handle |
AI should escalate to a human |
|---|---|
Order tracking (“Where’s my package?”) |
Upset, frustrated, or emotional customers |
Return and refund policy questions |
Billing problems or refund exceptions |
Store hours, shipping rates, and FAQs |
Technical product or troubleshooting issues |
Simple product questions |
Complex or edge‑case product questions |
Password resets |
Multi‑part or multi‑issue requests |
Pre‑sale questions with clear, binary answers |
Anything where a wrong answer risks churn |
Once you’ve addressed the obvious issues, it’s important to build a setup that works reliably. These best practices will help your AI deliver consistently helpful support.
Start by deciding what AI should and shouldn’t handle. Let it take care of repetitive tasks like order tracking, return policies, and product questions. Anything complex or emotionally sensitive should go straight to your team.
Use examples from actual tickets and messages your team handles every day. Help center articles are a good start, but real interactions are what help AI learn how customers actually ask questions.
Create rules that tell your AI when to escalate. These might include customer frustration, low confidence in the answer, or specific phrases like “talk to a person.” The goal is to avoid infinite loops and to hand things off before the experience breaks down.
When a handoff happens, your agents should see everything the AI did. That includes the full conversation, relevant customer data, and any actions it has already attempted. This helps your team respond quickly and avoid repeating what the customer just went through.
An easy way to keep order history, customer data, and conversation history in one place is by using a conversational commerce tool like Gorgias.
A jarring shift in tone between AI and agent makes the experience feel disconnected. Align aspects such as formality, punctuation, and language style so the transition from AI to human feels natural.
Look at recent escalations each week. Identify where the AI struggled or handed off too early or too late. Use those insights to improve training, adjust boundaries, and strengthen your automation flows.
If your AI chatbot isn’t working the way you expected, it’s probably not because the technology is broken. It’s because it hasn’t been given the right rules.
When you set AI up with clear responsibilities, it becomes a powerful extension of your team.
Want to see what it looks like when AI is set up the right way?
Try Gorgias AI Agent. It’s conversational AI built with smart automation, clean escalations, and ecommerce data in its core — so your customers get faster answers and your agents stay focused.
TL;DR:
While most ecommerce brands debate whether to implement AI support, customers already rate AI assistance nearly as highly as human support. The future isn't coming. It's being built in real-time by brands paying attention.
As a conversational commerce platform processing millions of support tickets across thousands of brands, we see what's working before it becomes common knowledge. Three major shifts are converging faster than most founders realize, and this article breaks down what's already happening rather than what might happen someday.
By the end of 2026, we predict that the performance gap between ecommerce brands won't be determined by who adopted AI first. It will be determined by who built the content foundation that makes AI actually work.
Right now, we're watching this split happen in real time. AI can only be as good as the knowledge base it draws from. When we analyze why AI escalates tickets to human agents, the pattern is unmistakable.
The five topics triggering the most AI escalations are:
These aren’t complicated questions — they're routine questions every ecommerce brand faces daily. Yet some brands automate these at 60%+ rates while others plateau at 20%. The difference isn't better AI. It's better documentation.
Take SuitShop, a formalwear brand that reached 30% automation with a lean CX team. Their Director of Customer Experience, Katy Eriks, treats AI like a team member who needs coaching, not a plug-and-play tool.
When Katy first turned on AI in August 2023, the results were underwhelming. So she paused during their slow season and rebuilt their Help Center from the ground up. "I went back to the tickets I had to answer myself, checked what people were searching in the Help Center, and filled in the gaps," she explained.
The brands achieving high automation rates share Katie's approach:
AI echoes whatever foundation you provide. Clear documentation becomes instant, accurate support. Vague policies become confused AI that defaults to human escalation.
Read more: Coach AI Agent in one hour a week: SuitShop’s guide
Two distinct groups will emerge next year. Brands that invest in documentation quality now will deliver consistently better experiences at lower costs. Those who try to deploy AI on top of messy operations will hit automation plateaus and rising support costs. Every brand will eventually have access to similar AI technology. The competitive advantage will belong to those who did the unexciting work first.
Something shifted in July 2025. Gorgias’s AI accuracy jumped significantly after the GPT-5 release. For the first time, CX teams stopped second-guessing every AI response. We watched brand confidence in AI-generated responses rise from 57% to 85% in just a few months.
What this means in practice is that AI now outperforms human agents:
For the first time, AI isn't just faster than humans. It's more consistent, more accurate, and even more empathetic at scale.
This isn't about replacing humans. It's about what becomes possible when you free your team from repetitive work. Customer expectations are being reset by whoever responds fastest and most completely, and the brands crossing this threshold first are creating a competitive moat.
At Gorgias, the most telling signal was AI CSAT on chat improved 40% faster than on email this year. In other words, customers are beginning to prefer AI for certain interactions because it's immediate and complete.
Within the next year, we expect the satisfaction gap to hit zero for transactional support. The question isn't whether AI can match humans. It's what you'll do with your human agents once it does.
The brands that have always known support should drive revenue will finally have the infrastructure to make it happen on a bigger scale. AI removes the constraint that's held this strategy back: human bandwidth.
Most ecommerce leaders already understand that support conversations are sales opportunities. Product questions, sizing concerns, and “just browsing” chats are all chances to recommend, upsell, and convert. The problem wasn't awareness but execution at volume.
We analyzed revenue impact across brands using AI-powered product recommendations in support conversations. The results speak for themselves:
It's clear that conversations that weave in product recommendations convert at higher rates and result in larger order values. It’s time to treat support conversations as active buying conversations.
If you're already training support teams on product knowledge and tracking revenue per conversation, keep doing exactly what you're doing. You've been ahead of the curve. Now AI gives you the infrastructure to scale those same practices without the cost increase.
If you've been treating support purely as a cost center, start measuring revenue influence now. Track which conversations lead to purchases, which agents naturally upsell, and where customers ask for product guidance.
We are now past the point where response time is a brand's key differentiator. It is now the use of conversational commerce or systems that share details and context across every touchpoint.
Today, a typical customer journey looks something like this: see product on Instagram, ask a question via DM, complete purchase on mobile, track order via email. At each step, customers expect you to remember everything from the last interaction.
The most successful ecommerce tech stacks treat the helpdesk as the foundation that connects everything else. When your support platform connects to your ecommerce platform, shipping providers, returns portal, and every customer communication channel, context flows automatically.
A modern integration approach looks like this. Your ecommerce platform (like Shopify) feeds order data into a helpdesk like Gorgias, which becomes the hub for all customer conversations across email, chat, SMS, and social DMs. From there, connections branch out to payment providers, shipping carriers, and marketing automation tools.
As Dr. Bronner’s Senior CX Manager noted, “While Salesforce needed heavy development, Gorgias connected to our entire stack with just a few clicks. Our team can now manage workflows without needing custom development — we save $100k/year by switching."
As new channels emerge, brands with flexible tech stacks will adapt quickly while those with static systems will need months of development work to support new touchpoints. The winners will be brands that invest in their tools before adding new channels, not after customer complaints force their hand.
Start auditing your current integrations now. Where does customer data get stuck? Which systems don’t connect to each other? These gaps are costing you more than you realize, and in the future, they'll be the key to scaling or staying stagnant.
Post-purchase support quality will be a stronger predictor of customer lifetime value than any email campaign. Brands that treat support as a retention investment rather than a cost center will outperform in repeat purchase rates.
Returns and exchanges are make-or-break moments for customer lifetime value. How you handle problems, delays, and disappointments determines whether customers come back or shop elsewhere next time. According to Narvar, 96% of customers say they won’t repurchase from a brand after a poor return experience.
What customers expect reflects this reality. They want proactive shipping updates without having to ask, one-click returns with instant label generation, and notifications about problems before they have to reach out. When something goes wrong, they expect you to tell them first, not make them track you down for answers.
The quality of your response when things go wrong matters more than getting everything right the first time. Exchange suggestions during the return flow can keep the sale alive, turning a potential loss into loyalty.
Brands that treat post-purchase as a retention strategy rather than a task to cross off will see much higher repeat purchase rates. Those still relying purely on email marketing for retention will wonder why their customer lifetime value plateaus.
Start measuring post-return CSAT scores and repeat purchase rates by support interaction quality. These metrics will tell you whether your post-purchase experience is building loyalty or quietly eroding it.
After absorbing these predictions about AI accuracy, content infrastructure, revenue-centric support, context, and post-purchase tactics, here's your roadmap for the next 24 months.
Now (in 90 days):
Next (in 6-12 months):
Watch (in 12-24 months):
The patterns we've shared, from AI crossing the accuracy threshold to documentation quality, are happening right now across thousands of brands. Over the next 24 months, teams will be separated by operational maturity.
Book a demo to see how leading brands are already there.
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TL;DR:
Customer education has become a critical factor in converting browsers into buyers. For wellness brands like Cornbread Hemp, where customers need to understand ingredients, dosages, and benefits before making a purchase, education has a direct impact on sales. The challenge is scaling personalized education when support teams are stretched thin, especially during peak sales periods.
Katherine Goodman, Senior Director of Customer Experience, and Stacy Williams, Senior Customer Experience Manager, explain how implementing Gorgias's AI Shopping Assistant transformed their customer education strategy into a conversion powerhouse.
In our second AI in CX episode, we dive into how Cornbread achieved a 30% conversion rate during BFCM, saving their CX team over four days of manual work.
Before diving into tactics, understanding why education matters in the wellness space helps contextualize this approach.
Katherine, Senior Director of Customer Experience at Cornbread Hemp, explains:
"Wellness is a very saturated market right now. Getting to the nitty-gritty and getting to the bottom of what our product actually does for people, making sure they're educated on the differences between products to feel comfortable with what they're putting in their body."
The most common pre-purchase questions Cornbread receives center around three areas: ingredients, dosages, and specific benefits. Customers want to know which product will help with their particular symptoms. They need reassurance that they're making the right choice.
What makes this challenging: These questions require nuanced, personalized responses that consider the customer's specific needs and concerns. Traditionally, this meant every customer had to speak with a human agent, creating a bottleneck that slowed conversions and overwhelmed support teams during peak periods.
Stacy, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Cornbread, identified the game-changing impact of Shopping Assistant:
"It's had a major impact, especially during non-operating hours. Shopping Assistant is able to answer questions when our CX agents aren't available, so it continues the customer order process."
A customer lands on your site at 11 PM, has questions about dosage or ingredients, and instead of abandoning their cart or waiting until morning for a response, they get immediate, accurate answers that move them toward purchase.
The real impact happens in how the tool anticipates customer needs. Cornbread uses suggested product questions that pop up as customers browse product pages. Stacy notes:
"Most of our Shopping Assistant engagement comes from those suggested product features. It almost anticipates what the customer is asking or needing to know."
Actionable takeaway: Don't wait for customers to ask questions. Surface the most common concerns proactively. When you anticipate hesitation and address it immediately, you remove friction from the buying journey.
One of the biggest myths about AI is that implementation is complicated. Stacy explains how Cornbread’s rollout was a straightforward three-step process: audit your knowledge base, flip the switch, then optimize.
"It was literally the flip of a switch and just making sure that our data and information in Gorgias was up to date and accurate."
Here's Cornbread’s three-phase approach:
Actionable takeaway: Block out time for that initial knowledge base audit. Then commit to regular check-ins because your business evolves, and your AI should evolve with it.
Read more: AI in CX Webinar Recap: Turning AI Implementation into Team Alignment
Here's something most brands miss: the way you write your knowledge base articles directly impacts conversion rates.
Before BFCM, Stacy reviewed all of Cornbread's Guidance and rephrased the language to make it easier for AI Agent to understand.
"The language in the Guidance had to be simple, concise, very straightforward so that Shopping Assistant could deliver that information without being confused or getting too complicated," Stacy explains. When your AI can quickly parse and deliver information, customers get faster, more accurate answers. And faster answers mean more conversions.
Katherine adds another crucial element: tone consistency.
"We treat AI as another team member. Making sure that the tone and the language that AI used were very similar to the tone and the language that our human agents use was crucial in creating and maintaining a customer relationship."
As a result, customers often don't realize they're talking to AI. Some even leave reviews saying they loved chatting with "Ally" (Cornbread's AI agent name), not realizing Ally isn't human.
Actionable takeaway: Review your knowledge base with fresh eyes. Can you simplify without losing meaning? Does it sound like your brand? Would a customer be satisfied with this interaction? If not, time for a rewrite.
Read more: How to Write Guidance with the “When, If, Then” Framework
The real test of any CX strategy is how it performs under pressure. For Cornbread, Black Friday Cyber Monday 2025 proved that their conversational commerce strategy wasn't just working, it was thriving.
Over the peak season, Cornbread saw:
Katherine breaks down what made the difference:
"Shopping Assistant popping up, answering those questions with the correct promo information helps customers get from point A to point B before the deal ends."
During high-stakes sales events, customers are in a hurry. They're comparing options, checking out competitors, and making quick decisions. If you can't answer their questions immediately, they're gone. Shopping Assistant kept customers engaged and moving toward purchase, even when human agents were swamped.
Actionable takeaway: Peak periods require a fail-safe CX strategy. The brands that win are the ones that prepare their AI tools in advance.
One of the most transformative impacts of conversational commerce goes beyond conversion rates. What your team can do with their newfound bandwidth matters just as much.
With AI handling straightforward inquiries, Cornbread's CX team has evolved into a strategic problem-solving team. They've expanded into social media support, provided real-time service during a retail pop-up, and have time for the high-value interactions that actually build customer relationships.
Katherine describes phone calls as their highest value touchpoint, where agents can build genuine relationships with customers. “We have an older demographic, especially with CBD. We received a lot of customer calls requesting orders and asking questions. And sometimes we end up just yapping,” Katherine shares. “I was yapping with a customer last week, and we'd been on the call for about 15 minutes. This really helps build those long-term relationships that keep customers coming back."
That's the kind of experience that builds loyalty, and becomes possible only when your team isn't stuck answering repetitive tickets.
Stacy adds that agents now focus on "higher-level tickets or customer issues that they need to resolve. AI handles straightforward things, and our agents now really are more engaged in more complicated, higher-level resolutions."
Actionable takeaway: Stop thinking about AI only as a cost-cutting tool and start seeing it as an impact multiplier. The goal is to free your team to work on conversations that actually move the needle on customer lifetime value.
Cornbread isn't resting on their BFCM success. They're already optimizing for January, traditionally the biggest month for wellness brands as customers commit to New Year's resolutions.
Their focus areas include optimizing their product quiz to provide better data to both AI and human agents, educating customers on realistic expectations with CBD use, and using Shopping Assistant to spotlight new products launching in Q1.
The brands winning at conversational commerce aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the largest teams. They're the ones who understand that customer education drives conversions, and they've built systems to deliver that education at scale.
Cornbread Hemp's success comes down to three core principles: investing time upfront to train AI properly, maintaining consistent optimization, and treating AI as a team member that deserves the same attention to tone and quality as human agents.
As Katherine puts it:
"The more time that you put into training and optimizing AI, the less time you're going to have to babysit it later. Then, it's actually going to give your customers that really amazing experience."
Watch the replay of the whole conversation with Katherine and Stacy to learn how Gorgias’s Shopping Assistant helps them turn browsers into buyers.
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TL;DR:
Rising customer expectations, shoppers willing to pay a premium for convenience, and a growing lack of trust in social media channels to make purchase decisions are making it more challenging to turn a profit.
In this emerging era, AI’s role is becoming not only more pronounced, but a necessity for brands who want to stay ahead. Tools like Gorgias Shopping Assistant can help drive measurable revenue while reducing support costs.
For example, a brand that specializes in premium outdoor apparel implemented Shopping Assistant and saw a 2.25% uplift in GMV and 29% uplift in average order volume (AOV).
But how, among competing priorities and expenses, do you convince leadership to implement it? We’ll show you.
Shoppers want on-demand help in real time that’s personalized across devices.
Shopping Assistant recalls a shopper’s browsing history, like what they have clicked, viewed, and added to their cart. This allows it to make more relevant suggestions that feel personal to each customer.
The AI ecommerce tools market was valued at $7.25 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $21.55 billion by 2030.
Your competitors are using conversational AI to support, sell, and retain. Shopping Assistant satisfies that need, providing upsells and recommendations rooted in real shopper behavior.
Conversational AI has real revenue implications, impacting customer retention, average order value (AOV), conversion rates, and gross market value (GMV).
For example, a leading nutrition brand saw a GMV uplift of over 1%, an increase in AOV of over 16%, and a chat conversion rate of over 15% after implementing Shopping Assistant.
Overall, Shopping Assistant drives higher engagement and more revenue per visitor, sometimes surpassing 50% and 20%, respectively.

Shopping Assistant engages, personalizes, recommends, and converts. It provides proactive recommendations, smart upsells, dynamic discounts, and is highly personalized, all helping to guide shoppers to checkout.
After implementing Shopping Assistant, leading ecommerce brands saw real results:
Industry |
Primary Use Case |
GMV Uplift (%) |
AOV Uplift (%) |
Chat CVR (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Home & interior decor 🖼️ |
Help shoppers coordinate furniture with existing pieces and color schemes. |
+1.17 |
+97.15 |
10.30 |
Outdoor apparel 🎿 |
In-depth explanations of technical features and confidence when purchasing premium, performance-driven products. |
+2.25 |
+29.41 |
6.88 |
Nutrition 🍎 |
Personalized guidance on supplement selection based on age, goals, and optimal timing. |
+1.09 |
+16.40 |
15.15 |
Health & wellness 💊 |
Comparing similar products and understanding functional differences to choose the best option. |
+1.08 |
+11.27 |
8.55 |
Home furnishings 🛋️ |
Help choose furniture sizes and styles appropriate for children and safety needs. |
+12.26 |
+10.19 |
1.12 |
Stuffed toys 🧸 |
Clear care instructions and support finding replacements after accidental product damage. |
+4.43 |
+9.87 |
3.62 |
Face & body care 💆♀️ |
Assistance finding the correct shade online, especially when previously purchased products are no longer available. |
+6.55 |
+1.02 |
5.29 |
Shopping Assistant drives uplift in chat conversion rate and makes successful upsell recommendations.
“It’s been awesome to see Shopping Assistant guide customers through our technical product range without any human input. It’s a much smoother journey for the shopper,” says Nathan Larner, Customer Experience Advisor for Arc’teryx.
For Arc’teryx, that smoother customer journey translated into sales. The brand saw a 75% increase in conversion rate (from 4% to 7%) and 3.7% of overall revenue influenced by Shopping Assistant.

Because it follows shoppers’ live journey during each session on your website, Shopping Assistant catches shoppers in the moment. It answers questions or concerns that might normally halt a purchase, gets strategic with discounting (based on rules you set), and upsells.
The overall ROI can be significant. For example, bareMinerals saw an 8.83x return on investment.
"The real-time Shopify integration was essential as we needed to ensure that product recommendations were relevant and displayed accurate inventory,” says Katia Komar, Sr. Manager of Ecommerce and Customer Service Operations, UK at bareMinerals.
“Avoiding customer frustration from out-of-stock recommendations was non-negotiable, especially in beauty, where shade availability is crucial to customer trust and satisfaction. This approach has led to increased CSAT on AI converted tickets."

Shopping Assistant can impact CSAT scores, response times, resolution rates, AOV, and GMV.
For Caitlyn Minimalist, those metrics were an 11.3% uplift in AOV, an 18% click through rate for product recommendations, and a 50% sales lift versus human-only chats.
"Shopping Assistant has become an intuitive extension of our team, offering product guidance that feels personal and intentional,” says Anthony Ponce, its Head of Customer Experience.

Support agents have limited time to assist customers as it is, so taking advantage of sales opportunities can be difficult. Shopping Assistant takes over that role, removing obstacles for purchase or clearing up the right choice among a stacked product catalog.
With a product that’s not yet mainstream in the US, TUSHY leverages Shopping Assistant for product education and clarification.
"Shopping Assistant has been a game-changer for our team, especially with the launch of our latest bidet models,” says Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY.
“Expanding our product catalog has given customers more choices than ever, which can overwhelm first-time buyers. Now, they’re increasingly looking to us for guidance on finding the right fit for their home and personal hygiene needs.”
The bidet brand saw 13x return on investment after implementation, a 15% increase in chat conversion rate, and a 2x higher conversion rate for AI conversations versus human ones.

Customer support metrics include:
Revenue metrics to track include:
Shopping Assistant connects to your ecommerce platform (like Shopify), and streamlines information between your helpdesk and order data. It’s also trained on your catalog and support history.
Allow your agents to focus on support and sell more by tackling questions that are getting in the way of sales.
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TL;DR:
Most shoppers arrive with questions. Is this the right size? Will this match my skin tone? What’s the difference between these models? The faster you can guide them, the faster they decide.
As CX teams take on a bigger role in driving revenue, these moments of hesitation are now some of the most important parts of the buying journey.
That’s why more brands are leaning on conversational AI to support these high-intent questions and remove the friction that slows shoppers down. The impact speaks for itself. Brands can expect higher AOV, stronger chat conversion rates, and smoother paths to purchase, all without adding extra work to your team.
Below, we’re sharing real use cases from 11 ecommerce brands across beauty, apparel, home, body care, and more, along with the exact results they saw after introducing guided shopping experiences.
When you’re shopping for shoes similar to an old but discontinued favorite, every detail counts, down to the color of the bottom of the shoe. But legacy brands with large catalogs can be overwhelming to browse.
For shoppers, it’s a double-edged sword: they want to feel confident that they checked your entire collection, but they also don’t want to spend time looking for it.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant accelerates the process, turning hazy details into clear, friendly guidance.
It describes shoe details, from colorways to logo placement, compares products side by side, and recommends the best option based on the shopper’s preferences and conditions.
The result is shoppers who feel satisfied and more connected with your brand.

Results:
Big events call for great outfits, but putting one together online isn’t always easy. With thousands of options to scroll through, shoppers often want a bit of styling direction.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shoppers get to chat with a virtual stylist who recommends full outfits based on the occasion, suggests accessories to complete the look, and removes the guesswork of pairing pieces together.
The result is a fun, confidence-building shopping experience that feels like getting advice from a stylist who actually understands their plans.

Results:
Shade matching is hard enough in-store, but doing it online can feel impossible. Plus, when a longtime favorite gets discontinued, shoppers are left guessing which new shade will come closest. That uncertainty often leads to hesitation, abandoned carts, or ordering multiple shades “just in case.”
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shoppers find their perfect match without any of the guesswork. The assistant asks a few quick questions, recommends the closest shade or formula, and offers smart alternatives when a product is unavailable.
The experience feels like chatting with a knowledgeable beauty advisor — someone who makes the decision easy and leaves shoppers feeling confident in what they’re buying.
Katia Komar, Sr. Manager of Ecommerce and Customer Service Operations at bareMinerals UK says, “What impressed me the most is the AI’s ability to upsell with a conversational tone that feels genuinely helpful and doesn't sound too pushy or transactional. It sounds remarkably human, identifying correct follow-up questions to determine the correct product recommendation, resulting in improved AOV. It’s exactly how I train our human agents and BPO partners.”

Results:
When shoppers are buying gifts, especially for someone else, they often know who they’re shopping for but not what to buy. A vague product name or a half-remembered scent can quickly make the experience feel overwhelming without someone to guide them.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Thoughtful guidance goes a long way. By asking clarifying questions and recognizing likely mix-ups, Shopping Assistant helps shoppers figure out what the recipient was probably referring to, then recommends the right product along with complementary gift options that make the choice feel intentional.
It brings the reassurance of an in-store associate to the online experience, helping shoppers move forward with confidence.

Results:
Finding the right bra size online is notoriously tricky. Shoppers often second-guess their band or cup size, and even small uncertainties can lead to returns — or abandoning the purchase altogether.
Many customers just want someone to walk them through what a proper fit should actually feel like.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Searching for products is no longer a time-consuming process. Shopping Assistant detects a shopper’s search terms and sends relevant products in chat. Like an in-store associate, it uses context to deliver what shoppers are looking for, so they can skip the search and head right to checkout.

Results:
For shoppers buying personalized jewelry, the details directly affect the final result. That’s why customization questions come up constantly, and why uncertainty can quickly stall the path to purchase.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant asks about the shopper’s style preferences and customization needs, then recommends the right product and options so they can feel confident the final piece is exactly their style. The experience feels quick, helpful, and designed to guide shoppers toward a high investment purchase.

Results:
Decorating a home is personal, and shoppers often want reassurance that a new piece will blend with what they already own. Questions about color palettes, textures, and proportions come up constantly. And without guidance, it’s easy for shoppers to feel unsure about hitting “add to cart.”
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Giving shoppers personalized styling support helps them visualize how pieces will work in their home.
Shoppers receive styling suggestions based on their existing space as well as recommendations on pieces that complement their color palette.
It even guides them toward a 60-minute virtual styling consultation when they need deeper help. The experience feels thoughtful and high-touch, which is why shoppers often spend more once they feel confident in their choices.

Results:
When shoppers discover a new drink mix, they’re bound to have questions before committing. How strong will it taste? How much should they use? Will it work with their preferred drink or routine? Uncertainty at this stage can stall the purchase or lead to disappointment later.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Clear, friendly guidance in chat helps shoppers understand exactly how to use the product. Shopping Assistant answers questions about serving size, flavor strength, and pairing options, and suggests the best way to prepare the mix based on the shopper’s preferences.

Results:
Shopping for health supplements can feel confusing fast. Customers often have questions about which formulas fit their age, health goals, or daily routine. Without clear guidance, most will hesitate or pick the wrong product.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant detects hesitation when shoppers linger on a search results page. It proactively asks a few clarifying questions, narrows down product options, and points shoppers to the best product or bundle for their needs.
The entire experience feels supportive and gives shoppers confidence they’ve picked the right option.

Results:
Shopping for kids’ furniture comes with a lot of “Is this the right one?” moments. Parents want something safe, sturdy, and sized correctly for their child’s age. With so many options, it’s easy to feel unsure about what will actually work in their space.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Shopping Assistant guides parents toward the best fit right away. It asks about their child’s age, room layout, and safety considerations, then recommends the most appropriate bed or furniture setup. The experience feels like chatting with a knowledgeable salesperson who understands what families actually need as kids grow.

Results:
Even something as simple as choosing a toothbrush can feel complicated when multiple models come with different speeds, materials, and features. Shoppers want to understand what matters so they can pick the one that fits their routine and budget.
How Shopping Assistant helps:
Choosing between toothbrush models shouldn’t feel like decoding tech specs. When shoppers can see the key differences in plain language, including what’s unique, how each model works, and who it’s best for, they can make a decision with ease.
Suddenly, the whole process feels simple instead of overwhelming.

Results:
Across all 11 brands, one theme is clear. When shoppers get the guidance they need at the right moment, they convert more confidently and often spend more.
Here’s what stands out:
What this means for you:
Look closely at your most common pre-purchase questions. Anywhere shoppers hesitate from fit, shade, technical specs, styling, bundles is a place where Shopping Assistant can step in, boost confidence, and unlock more sales.
If you notice the same patterns in your own store, such as shoppers hesitating over sizing, shade matching, product comparisons, or technical details, guided shopping can make an immediate impact. These moments are often your biggest opportunities to increase revenue and improve the buying experience.
Many of the brands in this post started by identifying their most common pre-purchase questions and letting AI handle them at scale. You can do the same.
If you want to boost conversions, lift AOV, and create a smoother path to purchase, now is a great time to explore guided shopping for your team.
Book a demo or activate Shopping Assistant to get started.
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TL;DR:
Your shipping strategy is more than just getting packages to customers. It's a revenue lever that influences conversion rates, average order value, and long-term loyalty.
Unexpected shipping costs are often the culprit when shoppers abandon their carts. When they return, it's because you delivered transparency and speed.
This guide covers the tactics that turn shipping into a competitive advantage.
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Free shipping is considered the number one factor in purchasing decisions. In fact, 73.9% say it's the most important factor when deciding where to buy, according to a 2024 Digital Commerce 360 data survey. However, offering it on every single order will be detrimental to your margins.
The trick here is to set a threshold with a message encouraging customers to add more goods to their cart.
How to calculate free shipping: Calculate your average order value and then set your free shipping threshold 15-20% higher. For example, if your average order value is $60, offer your customers free shipping on orders above $75. By doing so, you encourage customers to make larger orders and don't have an extra cost burden of paying the shipping charge.
Carriers charge based on package size, not just weight — whichever costs more. This pricing means a lightweight item in an oversized box can cost 7x more to ship than necessary.
Audit your packaging and eliminate excess space. Use smaller boxes, vacuum-seal soft goods when possible, and minimize void fill. Every inch you cut from package dimensions reduces shipping costs without changing what you sell.
One brand saved 50% on shipping simply by reformatting their packaging strategy and reducing box sizes. That's money that goes straight to your bottom line.
People abandon carts because they are uncertain if the order will arrive on time. Showing clear delivery estimates at checkout is where building trust and reducing anxiety occur.
Give exact days of delivery such as, “Arrives by Friday, December 15” instead of “3-5 business days.” If you offer multiple shipping speeds, show the delivery date for each option so customers can make informed choices.
For international orders, set expectations about customs processing times. Surprise delays harm relationships more than longer shipping times.
Offering two or three shipping speed options, such as standard, expedited, and express, will give customers control over their delivery experience. While not all customers require overnight shipping, those who do will cover the cost.
When feasible, use real-time carrier rates to show customers the exact cost of shipping and foster trust through openness. Use flat-rate pricing with distinct speed tiers if that is too complicated for your operations.
The secret is to match the urgency of the customer with their expectations. When purchasing a gift, someone needs it quickly. Someone replenishing necessities can wait. Give them a choice.
Read more: Ecommerce shipping made simple: Strategy, tools & tips
Customers are deterred from making a purchase by a convoluted returns procedure. By making returns simple, you eliminate the largest obstacle to buying.
Give consumers pre-paid return labels so they can easily print, package, and deliver their returns. Yes, return shipping will cost you money, but you'll get repeat business and devoted customers.
Use a self-service portal to automate your returns process so that customers can start returns, print labels, and monitor the status of their refunds without getting in touch with your customer service team.
According to Narvar, 91% of Fortune 50 retailers, 63% of D2C brands, and 52% of omnichannel sellers use online returns portals — making easy returns table stakes.
“Where is my order?” (WISMO) tickets overwhelm support agents, consuming time that could be used to address more challenging issues. But when you take a proactive approach, these tickets are eliminated before customers think to ask.
At key moments of the fulfillment process, from order confirmation and shipping confirmation to the order being out for delivery, send automated notifications. Customers get their answers without the wait or hassle.
In the event that customers do contact you, use conversational AI to handle tracking inquiries instantly.
Don't make the mistake of always relying on one carrier for every shipment. Many carriers perform certain functions better than others. For example, USPS is great for lightweight packages, FedEx is best for express deliveries, and local deliveries are often provided by regional carriers.
We recommend shopping for the best rate on a per-order basis by comparing all of the rates offered by different carriers before making a final decision. You can automate this process with shipping software.
As your shipping volume increases, be sure to negotiate rates with your carriers. Typically, increased shipping volume will result in lower rates. However, be sure to also have strong relationships with multiple carriers to protect yourself in the event that one of your carriers has unexpected delays.
Great shipping doesn't just get products to customers—it builds trust, reduces support costs, and increases repeat purchases. Start with these seven practices, then optimize based on your customer feedback and order data.
Tired of WISMO tickets flooding your inbox? Gorgias automates shipping notifications and tracking updates so your team can focus on growing your business. Book a demo today.
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TL;DR:
There are a lot of different ecommerce payment options to choose from when setting up your online store. This guide will help you choose the right ones for you and your customers.
We’ll cover:
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To help you prevent high cart abandonment rates, we’ve narrowed down the best ecommerce payment options for 2023.
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Image Source: PayPal.
Pros: Most popular payment processor, leads to higher conversion rates than other payment platforms
Cons: High fees, payments can be held for up to six months
PayPal needs no introduction. It’s the biggest payment processing platform on the globe, with more than 254 million active users. What’s more, ecommerce stores using PayPal have 82% higher conversion rates than their competitors.
However, like everything else, PayPal isn’t perfect. Unlike some of the platforms we have on the list, it isn’t free. PayPal has pretty high fees that will vary from region to region. Of course, with enough volume this can be negotiated.
PayPal is also known for holding payments for up to six months. They aren’t exactly the sellers’ first choice, but with such a high market share, customers trust them which is why we’re ranking them number 1 on our list of payment providers.
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Image Source: Shopify.
Pros: Integrates with the most popular ecommerce platform,
Cons: Not available in all countries
Second on our list is the payment gateway developed by Shopify. Since it’s the most widely used ecommerce platform in the world, it only makes sense that the company would create its own payment system.
Similar to WooCommerce Payment below, you can access Shopify Payments from your dashboard. Shopify Payments keeps your customers on your site, and is included with your plan.
As Shopify continues to evolve, they’ve also rolled out Shop Pay. It’ll allow customers to store their billing and shipping details, and in turn, make the checkout process a lot quicker.
Pros: Offers customization and flexibility for enterprise-level needs
Cons: May require technical expertise to unlock full capabilities
Magento has been around for more than a decade at this point. Based on their experience with online merchants, the company has launched Magento Payments, a platform that can help you reduce operational complexities, lessen costs, and improve conversions.
Furthermore, with a merchant account, Magento Payments gives you an all-in-one solution that streamlines the payment process for you and your customers. It eliminates the need for 3rd-party account management, additional expertise, or subscription costs.
Pros: 55+ payment gateways
Cons: Varying transaction fees
With cost-effective price plans and customizable options, this SaaS platform works perfectly for small ecommerce stores and mid-sized business owners. It offers more than 55 pre-integrated payment gateways to ecommerce sellers from all over the world.
At the moment, the payment option is available in almost 100 countries. It’s also available in more than 140 world currencies. The setup is also perfect for beginners: you just need to click a single button, and you start accepting credit card payments from all of the major players.
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Image Source: CloudApp.
Pros: Accessible to customers worldwide
Cons: Limited to users on Visa
If many of your shoppers are Visa holders, Visa checkout should be the most obvious payment solution for you. Considering the fact that there are more than 21 million Visa Checkout users across the globe, it’s a safe bet that some of your visitors might prefer this payment option.
With this option, Visa users won’t have to fill in their personal information. They’ll be able to enter their credit card information, and they’ll be able to finalize the purchase. Visa Checkout can potentially increase conversions by 42%. A little convenience can go a long way.
Pros: Well-suited for companies with brick-and-mortar and online stores
Cons: High transaction fees
Most users associate Square with POS payments, however, the company offers ecommerce payment processing services as well. By using their API, your website will be able to accept a number of payment methods from this list, including Google Pay and Apple Pay.
And that’s not all. Square can also make things easier for your customers additionally, by allowing them to create their own profiles. That means they won’t need to input their login data every time they want to purchase something from you.
If you’re already using Square POS, adding them to your website may be a natural fit.
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Image Source: Stripe.
Pros: Low operating costs, suited for ecommerce stores
Cons: Day-to-day management requires more technical know-how
Besides on-demand marketplaces and crowdfunding campaigns, Stripe works perfectly for people that have their own stores as well. More than 1,000 of ecommerce stores have managed to build their business around Stripe.
According to research commissioned by Stripe, companies using the platform have been able to increase their revenue by 6.7% during the first year of business. Compared to others, Stripe users also have 24% lower operating costs.
Stripe is so trusted, that Shopify Payments is built on it.
Pros: Transparent pricing plans
Cons: Limited contactless payment options
This Massachusetts-based company offers a number of processing solutions to its customers. One of their most popular products is an ecommerce payment platform that's free to use. There are no upfront costs when you’re accepting card payments.
The company uses Authorize.net as their payment gateway platform. This allows you to be as flexible as possible. With ProMerchant, your store will be able to accept payments from a number of different companies, including Mastercard, Visa, and Discover.
Pros: Connects to Amazon, large customer base
Cons: Long registration process
Millions of people use Amazon to buy products every single day. There’s no reason not to try and turn some of these people into regular customers? By using the Amazon Pay platform, you’ll allow Amazon users to shop on your website without jumping through hoops.
For many people, the registration process takes too much time. They don’t want to enter their information, come up with a password, and wait for a confirmation email just to buy something. Remove all of these barriers with Amazon Pay.
Pros: Most accessible to North American customers
Cons: Limited to Apple users
Nearly two-thirds of Americans use Apple products. For most of them, their Apple product doubles as a digital wallet. Naturally, they use their Apple accounts to pay for products on websites that accept it.
Apple Pay makes things incredibly easy for iPhone owners by leveraging touch identification and allowing users to pay for products with literally a single touch. If you want to get a piece of the action, then consider this platform.
Apple Pay, like Google Pay, makes mobile checkout almost instantaneous, and is already included with many payment providers.
Pros: Large customer base, easy payments for Android users
Cons: Not adopted by all merchants
Millions and millions of people already have their data saved on Google accounts. That’s why the biggest tech giant in the world has created its own payment platform. If you’re targeting a large user base, it can’t get larger than this.
Additionally, Google offers top-notch security that will make the consumers feel safe at all times. The platform can help you set up a loyalty program, offer gift cards, and various other discounts for most-loyal buyers.
Pros: Directly integrates with WordPress
Cons: Limited to US customers
Let’s round it off with a built-in integration. If you’re a WooCommerce user with no intention of changing your platform, then this could be the right solution for you. WooCommerce payment allows you to manage your finances swiftly and safely.
You don’t have to learn anything new, either. You can safely use the plugin from the safety of your dashboard.
Payment gateway technology is used by store owners to accept credit and debit cards from shoppers. In a traditional sense, the term refers to both physical, card-reading devices found in stores and payment processor apps, typically found on ecommerce websites. However, in this post, we’ll only talk about the latter. So any time we mention a payment gateway, we’re talking about an online application.
Why do small businesses need payment gateways?
Have you ever tried to buy an item only to find out that the purchase process is overly complicated and not worth your time? There’s a good chance you did. Most shoppers come across this problem more often than you think.
That’s why shopping cart abandonment rates are still considerably high. This March, more than 88% of shoppers in the United States have filled their virtual shopping carts, only to abandon them completely, before finishing the transaction.
If you want to decrease your cart abandonment rates, allow your customer to make purchases easily, and improve your revenue, you need a good payment gateway. It will remove any possible barriers, make the process feel intuitive, and lessen the need for customer support..
Every day, thousands of people have their credit card numbers leaked, identities stolen, their bank accounts drained. For that reason, most shoppers are mainly concerned about preventing ID theft.
Recent studies indicate that around 1 in 5 online shoppers have had their identity stolen at some point in their life. Because of this, around 40% of consumers will only buy products from well-known websites.
If you want to attract new customers, you need to make them feel safe.
The best way to do that is to use a payment service that will keep their sensitive information completely safe. Your system needs to have proper encryption along with other security features. Being transparent about your security measures can also help.
There are dozens if not hundreds of payment platforms for you to choose from. If you’re opening an online store for the first time, you’re probably not sure what to look for. We want to explore the common options you have to you.
When selecting a payment gateway for your ecommerce business, there are three specific things you should keep your eye on.
The first thing you need to think about is whether you want your shoppers to leave your website or not.
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For example, PayPal, one of the biggest payment solutions out there, requires users to leave the merchant’s website in order to finish their payment process. You can pay a fee to make sure the payment is processed without requiring shoppers to go to an external site. We highly recommend choosing a payment option that will keep uses on your site.
Different companies have different payment methods. Besides debit and credit card processing, there are plenty of other options including gift cards, financing, cryptocurrencies, and many more 3rd-party options.
In order to know what will work best for you, getting familiar with your consumer base is a must. See what payment methods your visitors prefer and only then make a choice.
We simply can’t stress enough the importance of data protection. If the payment platform you’ve started using has experienced data leaks, then the consumers might not be too keen on doing work with you.
Moreover, you should make sure that the platform you’re using doesn’t come with any hidden monthly fees. The safety of your consumers should be your number one priority.
Now that you’re familiar with the best ecommerce gateways, you can improve the experience of your customers, help them finish their purchase in a matter of seconds, and grow your store, without managing cart abandonment rates all the time.
So let’s recap:
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In the past, the best way for online stores to grow was to spend heavily on paid advertising. The thinking: get your brand in front of an audience, and sales will just… happen.
But this ecommerce growth tactic is outdated because paid advertising has become outrageously expensive, and many shoppers make purchasing decisions based on customer experience and trust, not ad spend.
Before you dedicate an enormous growth budget to paid customer acquisition, read our guide for more sustainable, customer-centric tips to grow your online store.
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You can’t really develop an ecommerce growth strategy without knowing how to know what needs improvement. Without solid key performance indications (KPIs) as a benchmark (and a signal on where to improve), your growth strategy will be little more than guesswork. Pause on the “growth hacking” until you have solid data.
Measuring your KPIs can help you answer questions like:
KPIs every ecommerce business should track fall into four distinctive categories:
Any customer service platform worth the price will help you track key KPIs. Gorgias, for example, provides revenue statistics, real-time support performance data, and up-to-date customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
Tracking KPIs requires you to acquire new tools, learn how to use them, and train your employees. Is tracking KPIs really worth your investment? Here are a few reasons why tracking KPIs is worth the effort:
Keeping track of performance can help you bring your business to new heights. If you’re interested in knowing more about KPIs, how they can help you, and which ones to track, read our guide to ecommerce KPIs.
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Organic search (when people use a search engine like Google) is the #1 source of traffic for ecommerce. One of the reasons for this is the fact that people, especially young people, actively ignore paid Instagram and Facebook ads. (Plus, those tactics are wildly expensive.)

That’s why your store needs search engine optimization (SEO). Specifically, you at least need to optimize your homepage and product pages to ensure your store is a top Google results when people are online shopping for the kinds of products and services you sell.
And, if you have the bandwidth, consider launching a full-fledged content marketing program (with blog posts and other educational content) to get even more eyes on your ecommerce site.
While most SEO refers to Google searches, online stores also have to think about marketplace SEO. If you sell on Amazon, for example, you’ll want to optimize your product descriptions to show up at the top of relevant search results.
Check out Amazon’s SEO guide for more information.
Is SEO really that great of a marketing campaign? Do its benefits apply to small businesses? Let’s take a look at some of SEO’s biggest benefits:
You can optimize your ecommerce website for search with a few quick wins, but the best SEO strategies are long-term marketing investments that compound over time. Check out our posts on ecommerce SEO:
A 2021 Forbes survey of 6,000 shoppers found that about two thirds of shoppers use social media as part of their online shopping routine. They either discover a brand through its social posting, check out the Instagram for product photos, or look through customer conversations in the comments.
Check out how CROSSNET uses social media cross-marketing to grow their audience:

Not only can social media persuade your target demo that you’re the right store for them but it can also expose your business to customers you didn’t even plan on targeting. In addition to retail sales growth, it will help you expand to markets you haven’t even thought about.
Of course, having a page/profile on all of the more popular social media platforms is a must nowadays. But should you continuously invest in social media marketing? Consider this:
If you want to read further about how your store could benefit from social media marketing or know more about the best strategies, we recommend you read our article on the topic. There, you’ll find out everything you need for a winning social media strategy.
Without your customers and their loyalty, your business wouldn’t exist. Simple as that. Focus on providing incredible customer service, and you’ll see increased customer satisfaction, more testimonials and customer referrals, and higher retention and repeat purchases from cusotmers.

32% of shoppers say they would no longer shop with a brand they loved after one bad experience, according to PwC’s Future of CX report. You don’t have to worry about “delighting” every customer. But you do have to provide quick, effective service (and a great customer experience) to build trust and keep customers from shopping with your competitor.
Want to learn more about growing through customer experience? Check out our CX-Driven Growth Playbook, a compilation of 18 tactics from top ecommerce brands to raise your revenue by up to 44%.
Without a question, investing in customer support is a must. Here are some of the benefits you can expect when you start investing in providing a great customer experience through service:
Your business heavily depends on a great customer experience (and customer satisfaction rates staying high). While chasing after new customers may seem like the fastest way to grow, investing in customer service is your best bet for sustainable growth.
Check out our guide on customer service best practices for more strategies.
Live chat is one of the best ways to provide in-context, efficient customer service. We also find that Gorgias customers who use live chat can increase conversion rate through the channel by proactively offering discount codes
Live chat also allows your customer service agent to serve multiple customers simultaneously. And, when you use self-service portal and chat contact form, you can offer live chat support even when you don’t have a human agent to staff the channel.
Here’s how shoppers can use the self-service portal to answer their questions — in this case, track and update their order — without interacting with an agent:

Unlike physical stores, most online stores provide limited communication options to their visitors. A customer can’t just walk up to you and ask you a question. Live chat offer that. And live chat can facilitate sales, just like a physical attendant who can answer questions and give product recommendations in the moment. Here’s what can live chat do for you:
Live chat bridges the gap between real-world and online retail by enabling you to help your customers in real-time.
Read our piece on how live chat can increase sales on your online store.
As your business grows, you’ll only take on more time-demanding tasks. On their own, these tasks are harmless. However, they can quickly swell and distract you from higher-impact projects in your growth strategy.
Thankfully, tasks like customer segmentation, order tracking, and many parts of your digital marketing (like creating social media posts) can all be automated. With the right tools by your side, you’ll ensure that your business stays profitable.
That’s why 89% of businesses already automation some parts of their growth tactics, according to a 2019 survey from Automizy.
Small tasks can consume a lot of your time. What can you do with all of that free time? Here’s what ecommerce automation does for you:
Ecommerce automation is a broad topic. You can automate elements of your digital marketing, your customer service, your administrative tasks the build up here and there.
Take a look at out our guide on ecommerce automation for further reading.
In ecommerce, a niche is a specific segment of the retail market’s target audience interested in a particular product type. Niches can be narrow and wide. A wide niche would be beauty products and a narrow niche would be male, eco-friendly care products.
Some of the top ecommerce niches in 2022 include:
If you want to expand your business, it would be smart to find a particular niche to target. These are trending niches, but you should expand wherever is most relevant to your existing brand and customer base. By targeting a specific group of customers over the long haul, you can more easily establish yourself as the go-to brand.
Trying to please everyone is a recipe for disaster. Finding a niche and sticking to it will help your business with:
Expanding into a new niche is no small decision. You have to ensure the expansion makes sense for your existing customers and brand, as well as your future growth goals.
Check out our guide on choosing a niche for more information.
According to 2021 Statista data, nearly 35% of social media users were either likely or extremely likely to purchase a brand’s product or service because an influencer promoted it. Ecommerce influencers are one of the best ways to increase exposure for new products (or to new audiences).
Below, you can see how Princess Polly partnered with an Instagram influencer with over 11,000 followers to increase brand awareness and bolster social proof:

These people are the ones you need to partner up with. Regardless of your ecommerce industry or the niche you’re targeting, certain influencers can help you improve sales.
Not even your geographical location makes a difference. There are influencers in North America, Latin America, and even in the Asia-Pacific region — there are plenty of high-impact influencers in China. There are also influencers on every social media platform, from TikTok to LinkedIn.
Working with an influencer can expose your brand to the global ecommerce market and boost your marketing efforts beyond your wildest dreams. If done correctly, partnering with an influencer can expand your social reach, ensure growth, and improve your bottom line.
Although “influencer marketing” is a recent phenomenon, people have been using the influence of others to sell products for decades. Another way marketers describe this is “social proof.” Here’s what you can expect from it:
Influencer marketing is one of the best growth hacks for ecommerce stores, thanks to the wide reach of influencers and the impact they can have on brand exposure and product awareness.
Check out our guide on ecommerce influencers for more information.
Consumer behavior has changed drastically over the past decade. Just 10 years ago, a vast majority of consumers couldn’t imagine going shopping without any cash on them. Today, most people are more than glad to go cashless.

According to 2021 data from Statista, digital wallets and credit cards are by far the most common ways to make purchases . Online payment apps like Venmo and Paypal aren’t far behind.
Merchants that want to expand their businesses need to offer seamless payment options to their customers. Having the right platform will speed up the entire purchase process for both local and international customers alike, all while making them feel 100% safe. Fortunately, Shopify, BigCommerce, and other major ecommerce platforms offer multiple payment options.
What’s the preferred platform for your audience? That’s the question you need to answer. Here’s how using the right payment gateway helps your business:
Offering the right payment methods could make or break user experience and customer trust.
Check out our guide on ecommerce payments to learn more.
Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a form of online advertising in which the business owner pays a certain amount of money every time a consumer clicks on their advertisement.
There are plenty of platforms you can use to host your ads. This includes search engines like Google and Bing, social networks like Facebook and Instagram, as well as popular websites like TechCrunch and Search Engine Journal.
SEO might be a more cost-effective way to market your business, but paid advertising is a great way for quick bursts of growth. Here are the benefits of paid ads:
For most players in ecommerce, paid advertising is a strong strategy. (Of course, it can never replace customer experience.) If you choose to invest heavily in pay per click advertising, you must make sure you understand your customers to advertise on the right platforms to the right targeted segments.

Even though some people think that email marketing is on a decline, that’s not even close to the truth. Failing to invest in email marketing would be a huge mistake. The fact of the matter is, without email, your sales, user engagement, and returning customer base would drop.
In a 2020 survey from Litmus, four out five growth marketers said they’d rather give up social media than email. Email may be old-fashioned, but it’s not out-dated. You check your email most days, don’t you?
With email, you’ll be able to directly reach your customers and serve them weekly content, without relying on social media algorithms. Not only that but with retargeting, you’ll be able to lower your cart abandonment rates significantly and increase conversions in no time.
Paying more attention to your email campaigns comes with a lot of pros and a very few cons. Here some of the benefits you can expect to experience:
Is email marketing something you want to get into? Do you know how to start building a list of leads? What do you want to accomplish with your strategy?
Take a look at our ecommerce email marketing best practices to learn the basics.
Ecommerce conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors that make a purchase. Have a low conversion rate? In the world of ecommerce, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Most US ecommerce websites have a conversion rate between 1% and 2%.
Of course, the rate varies greatly between different sectors. Some ecommerce niches have rates as high as 4.9% while others have as low as 1.4%.
All of this doesn’t mean that you should be satisfied with your rate. Your website can always use some conversion rate optimization. How can you boost your conversion rate? In many ways actually, some of which include:
Don’t underestimate the power of CRO. By improving your conversion rate by a percent, you can double your revenue.
Dedicating a certain amount of time each week to conversion rate optimization can make your business strategy more effective. But there are lots of other CRO benefits:
Conversion rate optimization is a full-time job at some companies. But even if you can’t hire a CRO specialist, you can (and probably should) make a plan to ensure as many visitors as possible end up making a purchase.
Read our guide on ecommerce conversion rate to learn more about how to maximizes sales on your site.
As an ecommerce store owner, your job is to sell products. And when customers can’t pick up and hold your products, your product images become paramount.
Nowadays, consumers are being bombarded with visual content. Social networks, streaming platforms, and forums, all thrive from visual content. With so much visual content on the Internet, consumers now ignore most things that don’t tickle their imagination right away.
The Social Ms reports that 67% of potential shoppers say image quality is an important. Think about it: would you trust a brand with low-quality product photos?

That’s why you need to take steps to ensure that your products are looking crisp. Whether this means hiring a professional to handle the work or taking things into your own hands is all up to you. Just make sure that your visuals are on high quality and show the product in its best light.
Organizing a professional photoshoot is not a small task to tackle. A lot of time and money goes into photo sessions. Here are a few reasons why you need to focus on product pics:
Product photography can be a significant investment, so it’s important to hire a great product photographer at the right time.
Read our guide on ecommerce product photography to learn the smart approach to great product photos.
Ecommerce growth is a complex beast. Whether you decide to invest in PPC, hire a product photographer, or start working on an email marketing strategy, one thing is certain: your customers always come first.
You need to keep your customer service at a high level, in order for your business to continue growing. And you can’t possibly do that without the right tools.
Gorgias is a customer service platform built specifically for ecommerce. Gorgias users provide more efficient (and satisfying) customer service, generate more revenue, and get up-to-date support and revenue data from the tool.
If you want to see how Gorgias can help your ecommerce business grow, check out our customer story on Ohh Deer, a small business that used Gorgias to generate $12,500 per quarter through customer experience.

The post-purchase experience is a crucial window of time that starts the moment after a customer checks out and completes a transaction on your ecommerce store. Clicking “buy” is not a finish line in the customer relationship: It’s the beginning of the next leg in the customer journey, from first-time shopper to (hopefully) loyal customer.
With the right tactics and strategies, ecommerce businesses create post-purchase experiences that proactively support these new buyers, strengthen the relationship, and nudge them to return to the store.
Follow these nine strategies to make your brand’s post-purchase experience more customer-centric and profitable.
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We define the post-purchase experience as any and all touchpoints a customer has with a brand from the moment the shopper completes checkout until they start using your product. Building a powerful post-purchase experience that creates long-lasting customer loyalty takes finesse because a lot of small pieces make up the customer experience.
Here are nine strategies for how to encourage better post-purchase behavior among your customers.
📚Recommended reading: 20 Ecommerce Customer Service Best Practices to Help You Level Up
There are a lot of best practices when it comes to encouraging repeat business, but often brands jump right into tactics and overlook the overall journey.
“My biggest piece of advice,” says Bri Christiano, Director of Customer Support at Gorgias, “is to really understand the customer journey for your business. Which touchpoints are going to drive the most revenue?”
The first step is to consider the outcomes you want from the post-purchase experience. Most likely, those outcomes include:
Then, as you set up touchpoints like email campaigns or SMS messages, think about the different moments where your shoppers will be most engaged post-purchase.
Ideally, you’ll catch them while they're already interacting or thinking about you. You don't want to try to talk to them randomly when they're probably not thinking about you or their experience. The more personalized you can make the experience, the better. That means segmenting emails based on a customer’s profile wherever possible.
“My biggest piece of advice is to really understand the customer journey for your business. Which touchpoints are going to drive the most revenue?”
— Bri Christiano, Head of Customer Support at Gorgias
Keep in mind that the flows will look different over time to a first-time purchaser than to someone who's been a customer for a year.
As you’re starting to optimize the post-purchase experience for your brand, this is the first step to take.
First, map out your customers’ journey. You can use anything, from a tool like Miro to a whiteboard. We recommend this article on customer journey mapping in retail from Delighted.

Then, take a look at the emails you're sending today and start with the small elements. How often are shoppers opening those emails? Why do you think they're not opening them? Maybe you have the wrong subject line, or perhaps you’re sending emails on the wrong day.
Then, consider how your customers behave and think about some small tweaks you can make. Be sure you’re looking at your current metrics like email open and click rates or CSAT scores as you’re doing this audit.
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Shoppers already look forward to receiving packages in the mail. But sending eye-catching, fun packaging that people actually want to keep makes your brand stand out. It also sparks joy by turning the simple task of unboxing into an enjoyable, surprising experience.
For example, stationery shop Ohh Deer and its subscription brand Papergang send creative and recyclable packaging to their customers. The boxes and packaging are so loved that fans post unboxing videos on YouTube.

📚Recommended reading: Ohh Deer uses Gorgias Chat to provide excellent CX & generate revenue by $12,500/quarter
Now is a great time to start! The sooner you create fun and interesting packaging, the sooner your customers can start enjoying it.
Use a tool like Arka or Fantastapack to create custom boxes for your brand. If you don’t have design skills yourself, hire a freelance designer to work on the design for you.
Sending detailed and personalized post-purchase email campaigns is a major part of your overall email marketing and post-purchase strategies. This is how you’ll stay engaged with customers throughout their post-purchase journey. These campaigns also make up a key part of your marketing strategy as a business.
📚Recommended reading: 16 Useful Email Templates for Your Customer Service Teams
Let shoppers know that you’ve got their order and you’re working on it to give them peace of mind that their payment went through and that it’s coming soon. You can set up various order status updates in your ecommerce platform (like Shopify).
Before a customer’s order ships, you have the opportunity to upsell customers and add that item to the same shipping box. Not only are you driving additional sales here, but from a cost perspective (especially if you offer free shipping) it helps you out as a business.
For example, maybe a customer signed up to get notified when an out-of-stock item comes back in. Now that it's in stock again, you can send that item out with whatever that customer already purchased.
You can use a Shopify app like AfterSell to upsell customers after checkout.
Send a shipping confirmation email and offer order tracking so that shoppers can stay up to date with the whereabouts of their package.
You can also use a tool like AfterShip to automate real-time tracking updates.
A good rule of thumb is to trigger different emails based on the delivery status. But within a few days, under the assumption that someone needs a few days to check out the new product.
Check in to ask questions like:
If you sell a physical product like soap, vitamins, or soda, customers will likely run out of them within a set amount of time. If you can figure out what that average amount of time is, you can trigger an email reminding them to refill or sign up for a subscription.
For example, Method soaps are all built around the eco-friendly principle of refilling, keeping waste to a minimum (and as it happens, strongly pushing repeat purchase decisions and driving up customer lifetime value).
The company sends replenishment emails that nudge customers to purchase those refills, often with a special, time-limited discount attached.
Some brands, like curiosities retailer Uncommon Goods, offer a paid subscription program with benefits like free shipping, donations to non-profit partners on your behalf, and members-only emails.
Its program comes with a two-week free trial. Near the end of that free trial, the brand sends out an email with the subject line, “Reasons to stick with Uncommon Perks.” The email lists the different benefits of the program. If you have a program like this, consider a similar email campaign.

Do you sell other items that would enhance the customer’s experience with what they already bought? They might not have seen the need before (in an upsell or cross-sell attempt), but now with the product in hand, they may be ready to buy.
If you have a loyalty program and the first-time customer hasn’t joined it yet, now could be a great time to pull them in.
A tool like LoyaltyLion will come in handy here.
How to set this up
If your ecommerce site is built on Shopify, BigCommerce, or Adobe Commerce, check out the links below for how to set up different email notifications powered by automation.
If the product you’re selling requires some setup or assembly or has features that go beyond the basics, one form of post-purchase communication you’ll want to focus on is tutorial-style content. You want to show customers how to use or set up their new product so they get the maximum benefit from it.
Explain the importance of content that can show customers how to properly use or set up your product or even creative alternative ways to do things with your product — both because this is helpful for customers and because this effortless experience tends to reduce returns and lead to loyal customers who make repeat purchases.
For example, D2C ecommerce retailer Bug Bite Thing offers one primary product: a plastic suction contraption that reduces the severity of stings and bites, including from mosquitoes. Unless you’ve used their exact product, you’ve probably never seen anything similar. The company sends an excellent tutorial email to all customers and features clear instructions with custom GIFs that show exactly what to do with the thing.
https://youtu.be/jWPgoeDSDYM
Tutorial videos, use cases, explainers, or links to FAQs can be helpful while the customer is waiting for the item to arrive or as the customer is learning about the item.
Send out tutorial information after the item ships and before the item gets delivered.
If you're not getting a lot of traction on email, or you want to make sure that customers see your setup guide, include an insert with a QR code that links to a setup video or blog post on your website.
This is another good lever for physical, good ecommerce brands to have a touch point in the actual physical product that they’re sending since not everyone opens their emails.
Share product-specific how-to content via links to your Help Center to find set-up and troubleshooting information for their new product.
For example, Brümate created a handy Help Center with help from Gorgias that customers can visit to get all of the information they need.

Having to return an item is already frustrating on its own. So if your brand complicates the returns process further, it will discourage people from shopping with you again.
Instead, start by listing your refund policy clearly on your website. Then, create an easy, self-service return portal where folks can easily initiate a return or exchange.
Loop Returns is one of the best tools for ecommerce returns management, and it integrates with Help Desks like Gorgias.
For example, jewelry shop Jaxxon uses Loop to facilitate an easy returns process and push exchanges over returns.

If you have a loyalty program, the post-purchase timeframe is the perfect time to plug it. You’ll get your brand back in front of eyeballs while impressions are still fresh, and if you can get them to sign up now, you’ll turn more existing customers into long-term fans.
If you don’t have a loyalty program, consider starting one. eMarketer found that 58.7% of internet users indicated loyalty points or rewards as one of the aspects of retail shopping they valued most.
Loyalty program or not, you can also send discounts, incentives, or rewards during this period, sweetening the pot for a second purchase and producing an even better post-purchase customer experience.
Loyalty programs are ubiquitous these days, from the loyalty punch card (or app-based version) at your local coffee shop to paid VIP programs like what Uncommon Goods offers with Uncommon Perks.
If someone has ordered from you multiple times or filled out a CSAT or NPS survey that scored high, it’s a great time to invite them to join your loyalty program.
“You're catching that person at a point where they're feeling really energized about the brand,” says Bri.
LoyaltyLion is a great tool that makes setting up a loyalty program a breeze. It also integrates with Help Desks like Gorgias, so your support team can keep an eye on how your loyalty members are doing.
Growave is another great tool that can help you manage referral programs to bring new shoppers to your store and improve conversion rates thanks to social proof — or in other words, turning more browsers into buyers because their friends vouch for your brand.
According to Bright Local’s Consumer Review Survey, 94% of consumers are more likely to use a business because of positive reviews.
“You're catching that person at a point where they're feeling really energized about the brand”
— Bri Christiano, Director of Support at Gorgias
The more feedback you get, the more you can act on it, which can improve the customer experience and lead to more positive reviews.
Request customer feedback a few days after a product gets delivered to see if they liked it. This can be in the form of a quick NPS survey or a request for a public product review on your website. And once you get those reviews, spread them far and wide! We love how prominently Loop Earplugs features customer reviews:

After a support interaction, you can send out a CSAT (customer satisfaction) survey to collect feedback about the support experience.
📚Recommended reading: How to collect and implement customer feedback from your helpdesk.
A customer service platform like Gorgias can help you automate sending these surveys after every single interaction:

You can solicit feedback and reviews with automated email campaigns, chatbots, human chat agents, or an SMS campaign.
Review tools like Yotpo can also help. If you use a Help Desk like Gorgias, Yotpo integrates with it to make it easy to collect feedback and respond to negative or positive reviews easily.
If your brand has any official online communities, the post-purchase period is the perfect time to invite customers to join. Doing so can build up greater customer loyalty by building a sense of connection.
If customers are engaged in a community, they're more likely to stay longer, both in the community and as customers. Communities also can help people answer questions or solve problems.
Nearly half of businesses that had online communities saw between 10 and 25% savings in customer support costs. Customers got their answers from communities instead.
For example, Instant Pot is a well-known consumer brand that has leveraged the power of online communities to grow its brand. It has a large, active official Facebook group, and it’s active on other social spaces too. Additionally, the brand has managed to get its product mentioned on all sorts of mommy blogs, cooking and recipe sites, and more.

After a purchase, send an email or drip series that invites customers to follow you on social media or join your community. Consider offering an incentive within that, like 15% off their next order.
Online communities can take shape on social media or on community or collaboration platforms like Slack and Discord. Choose whichever platform makes the most sense for your business. You can leverage your brand’s community to foster greater customer relationships and raise customer lifetime values.
Many successful brands have moved to an omnichannel support strategy, one that’s customer-centric and delivers consistent help across all avenues where a customer might reach you. Helpdesks make omnichannel more feasible, as do back-end ecommerce platforms and systems that can sync experiences across all channels.

Social listening (tracking brand mentions and customer feedback) and customer support play an elevated role here. The goal is to ensure that no matter where your already-paying customers are, you can hear them and respond to their conversations.
In terms of availability, you don’t need to be available 24/7, but you should always post your hours or automate a response to let customers know when they’ll hear back.
In terms of proactive outreach, as with any post-purchase communication, think about the user experience and what timing makes the most sense for that user and your product.
You might send an email thanking a customer for a positive review or send a text message once a product gets delivered. For example, pajama shop Printfresh sends a personalized text message to see if customers liked their purchase or need support a few days after it’s been delivered.

A centralized help desk like Gorgias makes setting up and maintaining an omnichannel support experience easy for you and your customer support team.
These tools pull in customer information from different locations like social media, SMS, email, your ecommerce platform (like Shopify or BigCommerce), and other ecommerce tools (like Yotpo and Klaviyo) into one central place, so you can see any and all interactions with a customer from within their profile.

The post-purchase experience is a crucial time for customer relationship building: it affects customer retention and can set you apart from your competition. Creating a positive post-purchase experience has many benefits, including reducing customer confusion, nurturing customers to make repeat purchases, and reducing support tickets.
As a brand, you can make the customer experience smoother and eliminate guesswork for shoppers. Offer information proactively so customers don’t have to panic and wonder whether:
This is the primary benefit of a solid post-purchase experience because customers won’t return to a store that left them confused, frustrated, and sending a hundred questions to customer support.
Like it or not, giant ecommerce brands like Amazon have trained customers to expect lots of information automatically, and keeping pace is in your brand’s best interest.
According to our research, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers do. And with the rising costs of acquisition, especially via paid advertising, this is crucial for your business.

A smooth customer service experience, plus follow-up marketing, promotions, self-service resources, and other value-adds (like a customer community) help turn first-time shoppers into loyal customers.
While fielding questions from customers isn’t a bad thing, forcing new customers to write to your support team for basic information creates a more high-effort experience.
Those high-effort experiences can ruin relationships. The Effortless Experience found that 96% of these customers lose their loyalty to customers after putting in high levels of effort to get help.

Plus, your team probably has more important conversations to get to. If you spend all day answering WISMO tickets, you won’t have time to offer product recommendations, update your Help Center, or experiment with new chat campaigns.
Your post-purchase flow provides a great opportunity to proactively answer customer questions without having to wait for a live person on the other end. You can also create self-service resources like FAQ pages and knowledge bases that share pertinent policies (like return policies or shipping times).
While a post-purchase experience entails more than just customer support and helpdesk services, you can’t build a top-quality post-purchase experience without these crucial functions.
Gorgias is the world’s best helpdesk and customer service platform for ecommerce businesses. It was built specifically for ecommerce and has the features, integrations, and flexibility you need to create the best possible post-purchase experience.
Learn more about how Gorgias helps ecommerce brands streamline support, improve CX, and drive revenue in the video below:
See more about what Gorgias can do and sign up for free today!

Once your ecommerce business starts attracting a large number of customers, keeping up with order fulfillment can quickly become a full-time job.
For most brands, ecommerce shipping is a significant expense and time-suck. The average cost to fulfill an online order amounts to 70% of the order's value, according to eFulfillment Service.
At the same time, customer expectations regarding shipping management and order fulfillment have only grown more demanding, with 96% of customers now defining "fast delivery" as same-day delivery, according to Invesp. Not to mention the new normal of free shipping. (Thanks, Amazon.)
It is also worth noting that, according to Pitney Bowes, 54% of customers will shop with a retailer less often or never again after a negative delivery experience.
The good news is that there are plenty of great shipping software solutions designed to help you optimize your customer experience and make order fulfillment less of an expensive hassle. To help you choose the best shipping software for your online store, we'll discuss what to look for in shipping management software before diving into the 12 best shipping software tools for ecommerce stores available today.
If you are searching for shipping software solutions that will help make your online business more efficient and profitable, there are plenty of great tools to choose from. Below, we’ve compiled 12 of the best shipping software tools on the market today, including their customer review score from G2:
If you would like to take the hassle of order fulfillment and inventory management off of your hands entirely, partnering with ShipBob is a great option. ShipBob is a third-party logistics (3PL) company that enables ecommerce store owners to ship their products — in bulk — directly to ShipBob's warehouses. From there, ShipBob takes over all inventory management and order fulfillment services, including picking and packing, shipping orders to customers, carrier routing, managing returns, and everything in between.
📚Recommended reading: Our comparison of ShipBob and Shopify Fulfillment Network.
ShipBob requires you to contact them for a custom pricing quote.
🔌 See how ShipBob integrates with Gorgias.
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LateShipment.com allows you to create a branded post-purchase experience for your customers. This tool makes it easy to create customized tracking pages and tracking widgets for your website, as well as pages and widgets for processing order returns. LateShipment.com also provides real-time shipment tracking information and a wealth of other valuable data that you can use to optimize your shipping management process.
Fun fact: LateShipment.com is also on our list of the best returns management software.
🔌 See how LateShipment.com integrates with Gorgias.
AfterShip is a shipping solution that provides insightful real-time tracking data for all of your store's orders via a centralized, user-friendly dashboard. The biggest selling point of AfterShip is the fact that it allows you to create branded tracking pages and shipment notifications.
📚Recommended reading: Our guide to post-purchase experience to help you provide the best ecommerce experience possible, from checkout to repeat purchase.
🔌 See how AfterShip integrates with Gorgias.
Shipup is a shipping platform that provides three key features: create branded real-time tracking notifications and tracking pages, receive alerts about delays or delivery incidents sent straight to your existing CRM, and receive a range of useful analytics that you can use to improve your company's shipping process.
🔌 See how Shipup integrates with Gorgias.
Like many order fulfillment software solutions, ShippingChimp lets you create branded tracking notifications and tracking pages. It also allows you to track the status of all your shipments from a user-friendly dashboard. In addition to these features and its ease of use, what really sets ShippingChimp apart is the fact that it provides store owners with a customizable self-service returns portal for facilitating customer returns.
Wonderment is a post-purchase shipping platform designed to help you reduce "Where is my order?" tickets by providing customers with automated order updates. In addition to sending automated shipping updates via email and SMS, Wonderment also provides order lookup and reporting that includes a daily digest of stalled, delayed, and lost orders.
🔌 See how Wonderment integrates with Gorgias.
Netsuite offers a wide range of ecommerce software solutions. For the purposes of shipping and fulfillment, it is Netsuite's multichannel order management solution that you want.
Netsuite's multichannel order management solution enables you to execute multiple order fulfillment and inventory management tasks across your supply chain from a single dashboard, including direct shipping products from a warehouse and placing purchase orders to ship to various warehouses.
Netsuite's multichannel order management solution is included with a Netsuite license. The price of a Netsuite license is only available upon request.
🔌 See how NetSuite integrates with Gorgias.
2Ship is a shipping software solution designed to help ecommerce stores lower their shipping costs by comparing prices across carriers. Along with making it easy to find the best rates for each product you ship, 2Ship also provides tracking updates and the ability to print shipping labels.
2Ship offers a long list of pricing options, ranging from $10/month for up to 10 shipments/month to $449/month for up to 5,000 shipments/month.
With Shippo, ecommerce store owners can manage orders across multiple sales channels from a single dashboard. You can:
Essential Hub is a shipping API designed to connect your shopping carts and warehouse technology in order to search for the best rates across shippers and automate order fulfillment processes with automation rules. Best of all, the API is customized and set up on your behalf based on a thorough analysis of your store's existing order fulfillment process.
Custom pricing is available upon request
Shopify Shipping is an app that comes included with a Shopify subscription. With this app, Shopify store owners can access discounts on USPS, DHL, and UPS shipping rates, buy and print shipping labels within their Shopify store, and fulfill orders from the same dashboard used to manage products, customers, and inventory.
Shopify Shipping also simplifies the process of paying for shipping by allowing you to pay shipping costs from the same statement as your monthly Shopify subscription.
Shopify Shipping comes included with a Shopify subscription, which starts at $29/month.
📚Recommended reading: Our list of the best 40+ Shopify apps for ecommerce brands.
With ShipStation, ecommerce store owners can import orders from over 100+ sales channels, marketplaces, ERPs, or CRMs. You can also utilize barcode scan-based workflows, bulk updates, and automated rules to streamline the order fulfillment process, compare shipping rates and print labels, and automatically provide customers with tracking numbers when their orders ship.
ShipStation offers six different pricing plans, starting at $9/month for a Starter plan that offers 50 shipments/month, and going up to an Enterprise plan that costs $159/month for up to 10,000 shipments/month
🔌See how ShipStation integrates with Gorgias.
When comparing shipping software options, there are several important factors to consider. Some of the most valuable features to look for in software designed to assist with order management and fulfillment include:
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Choosing shipping software that integrates with your online store’s other software is highly beneficial. Shipping software that integrates with your email marketing software, for example, makes it easy to send branded shipping update emails.
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Similarly, software that integrates with your customer support software can make it much simpler to manage customer issues regarding order fulfillment. Most shipping software is cloud-based, and integrates with a wide variety of software. But, it’s worth the extra research to see whether they integrate with your ecommerce tech stack.
Below, we’ll share whenever a shipping tool integrates with Gorgias to save you the extra search.
The ability to track orders in real-time is one of the most important capabilities to look for in shipping software. Real-time order tracking allows you to better manage the order fulfillment process on your end and provides your customers with timely shipping updates.
If you would like to create a shipping process that will help ensure a positive customer experience then real-time order tracking is a great place to start.
However, you don’t need . If you use Gorgias, Automate lets customers track orders within your chat widget and Help Center — no shipping software needed.
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📚Recommended reading: Learn how to provide real-time order tracking to customers (and avoid answering WISMO requests).
Even for small businesses, filling out shipping information by hand for each product sold is often far too time-consuming to be a feasible management system. This becomes next to impossible for high-volume stores.
Thankfully, many shipping software tools allow you to choose a carrier and print shipping labels from within the platform. Some tools allow you to print return labels as well, ensuring that you never have to worry about creating shipping labels manually.
Along with choosing shipping software that integrates with all of the other tools that your ecommerce business relies on, it is also essential to choose software that integrates well with your ecommerce platform — like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, or Magento.
For example, the best shipping software for Magento stores isn't always going to be the best software for Shopify or eBay other ecommerce platforms. Before you purchase a shipping software solution, you want to be sure that it deeply and easily integrates with your ecommerce platform for optimum functionality.
Order fulfillment is not the only task that great shipping software can help with. With the right tools, an ecommerce business can also streamline and automate its inventory management process.
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Purchasing shipping software designed to assist with inventory management means that your inventory is automatically updated each time an order is placed, helping you keep track of your available supply. This is also a helpful way to prevent products from going out of stock.
From helping you compare shipping rates across carriers and print shipping labels to creating branded order tracking pages, purchasing shipping software solutions can provide your online store with a number of advantages.
At Gorgias, we recognize the immense value of these shipping software solutions. We have designed our comprehensive customer service platform to seamlessly integrate with a large number of popular shipping tools, making it easy for you to manage and resolve customer issues regarding order fulfillment.
To see how Gorgias can help you upgrade your shipping and customer service alike, be sure to check out this link to learn more about all that Gorgias has to offer!
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TL;DR:
Thanks to conversational AI, live chat has become a larger shift toward always-on support for Shopify stores. It improves customer experience, helps drive sales, and boosts retention—all while giving shoppers a faster, more personal way to connect with your brand.
In fact, 82% of online shoppers say they’d talk to a chatbot if it meant avoiding a wait. The challenge? Choosing the right live chat app. With over 1,000 options in the Shopify App Store, the search can feel overwhelming.
That’s why we’ve rounded up the 13 best Shopify live chat apps to help you narrow it down.
(Not on Shopify? Explore our best live chat apps for ecommerce or best live chat apps overall instead.)
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Live chat is a way for shoppers to get real-time support from a human agent. The best live chat apps also use automation to handle FAQs, route conversations, or collect details before handing things off to your team.
Conversational AI, on the other hand, goes a step further. Instead of assisting your agents, AI chatbots can carry out entire conversations on their own. They answer questions, recommend products, and resolve issues without human involvement.
Today’s top Shopify live chat tools bring these two worlds together. You get the flexibility of human-led support when it matters most, plus AI agents that scale your availability and keep response times low.
App |
Pricing |
Helpdesk Integration |
Automation and AI |
Handoffs to Humans |
Ease of Setup |
Language Localization |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Gorgias |
$10/mo (7-day trial) |
✅ Native helpdesk |
Rules, macros, AI Agent, Shopping Assistant |
✅ Smooth routing to agents |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
Zendesk Chat |
$49/agent/mo (14-day trial) |
✅ Zendesk Support Suite |
Macros, triggers, chatbots in higher tiers |
✅ Handoffs supported |
Steeper learning curve |
✅ |
Tawk.to |
Free (branding removal extra) |
❌ |
Basic auto-responses, no advanced AI |
✅ Transfer supported |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form |
Free plan + paid tiers (from $2.99/mo) |
❌ No native helpdesk |
Basic automation & preset welcome messages |
✅ Via your linked messaging apps |
Easy, one-click install & widget setup |
✅ |
Chatra |
$31/mo (free plan available) |
❌ |
Typo correction, chatbots (not advanced AI) |
✅ Manual transfer |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
Re:amaze |
$29/mo (14-day trial) |
✅ Full helpdesk |
Chatbots, rules, macros, workflows |
✅ Integrated with helpdesk |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
Tidio |
$29/mo (free plan available) |
❌ |
Automation flows, AI chatbot templates |
✅ Transfers to agents |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
LiveChat |
$16/mo (14-day trial) |
✅ via LiveChat + integrations; not Shopify-native helpdesk |
Chatbots (via add-ons) |
✅ Handoffs supported |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
Shopify Inbox |
Free |
❌ Limited to Shopify Inbox/Ping |
No advanced AI, basic chat only |
✅ Manual transfer |
Requires Ping app install |
❌ |
Formilla |
$17.49/mo (15-day trial) |
❌ |
Basic automation rules, no advanced AI |
✅ Manual transfer |
Easy, app install |
❌ |
eDesk Live Chat |
$69/agent/mo (14-day trial) |
✅ eDesk helpdesk |
Limited automation, no advanced AI |
✅ Manual transfer |
Easy, app install |
❌ |
Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat |
Free (100 convos); Paid $39/mo |
❌ |
AI chatbot trained on store data, integrations with Slack/WhatsApp |
✅ Smooth transitions |
Easy, no coding |
✅ |
Moose (MooseDesk) |
Free plan; Paid tiers available |
✅ Unified helpdesk inbox |
AI chatbot, FAQ builder, auto-translate |
✅ Integrated handoffs |
Easy (PWA, no coding) |
✅ |
Gorgias is the best customer experience platform for ecommerce merchants. It provides you with all the features you need to create an incredible customer support experience, improve team performance, and increase sales.
One of Gorgias’s most noticeable features is its tight integration with ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Hence, Gorgias can pull relevant data like order tracking numbers, last order details, loyalty points, etc., from your Shopify dashboard right to your helpdesk.
Another exciting feature of Gorgias chat is Shopping Assistant, a conversational AI tool that helps support teams increase sales on their website. Using your Shopify catalog, AI can recommend, upsell, and offer tailored discounts at scale so every chat conversation is maximized.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Basic plans start at $10/mo. A 7-day free trial is available.

Developed by Zendesk, Zendesk Chat is a live chat app for Shopify stores. It allows you to communicate with customers over your Shopify storefront, mobile apps, and popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Line.
If you’re a Zendesk customer using the Team plan or above, you can use Zendesk Chat for free.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $49 per agent per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

Tawk.to Live Chat is an agent-centric chat application for Shopify stores. The best thing about this app is it’s 100% free—there’s no limit to the number of agents, chat volumes, or sites you can add widgets to.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Free

O: WhatsApp Chat, Contact Form makes it easy for shoppers to reach you through the channels they already use, like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Instagram. Instead of building out a complex live chat system, it focuses on providing a simple, customizable widget that connects directly to your preferred messaging platforms.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing:

Chatra Live Chat claims to help you “sell more, answer questions, and alleviate concerns to help visitors place an order.” It also allows you to view a shopper's cart contents in real-time to identify the most valuable customers and provide tailored assistance.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $31 per month. A free plan is available.

Re:amaze is a helpdesk, live chat, ticketing, chatbot, and FAQ for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. It allows you to handle support tickets across channels, including emails, live chat, Facebook pages, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, SMS, VOIP, and WhatsApp.
Reamaze Live Chat aims to help you support customers faster by chatting with them in real-time. It offers many features that are similar to Gorgias’ and other live chat apps.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $29 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

With approximately 900 reviews, Tidio Live Chat is currently the highest-rated live chat app on the Shopify App Store. Tidio merges live chat, bots, and marketing automation to provide you with a comprehensive live chat app.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $29 a month. A free plan is available.

LiveChat is a messaging app that offers many unique features for its live chat service. It can integrate with most customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Zendesk and ecommerce platforms like Shopify.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $16 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.

Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s native live chat function that allows you to have real-time conversations with customers visiting your Shopify store. It’s an extension to the messaging capabilities already available within Shopify Ping.
Note that all your chats are managed in Shopify Ping. Shopify also asks your customers to provide a phone number or email address in order to start a chat with you. Their information will be added to your Customer list in Shopify or matched to an existing customer.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Free

Formilla Live Chat offers free live chat and premium services for your Shopify store. You can use this app to chat with your visitors live if they have any questions or need support from your store.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $17.49 per month. A 15-day free trial is available.

eDesk is a comprehensive customer helpdesk designed for ecommerce. It helps you create a positive experience for customers across your marketing channels: email, live chat, social media, and online store.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Starting from $49 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Jotform AI Chatbot & Live Chat lets you provide 24/7 support with an AI-powered chatbot that integrates directly into your Shopify store. The app automatically trains on your store’s data to answer FAQs, track orders, and even recommend products, while still allowing live chat when a human touch is needed.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Free plan available (includes up to 100 monthly conversations). Paid plans start at $39/month with higher limits.

Moose: AI Chatbot & Live Chat (MooseDesk) brings live chat, helpdesk, and omnichannel messaging into one unified tool built for Shopify. With AI-powered automation and support across chat, email, WhatsApp, and social, it's engineered to help you respond faster — without leaving your dashboard.
Standout features:
Why it may not be for you:
Pricing: Free
The benefits of live chat are real, but only if you roll it out with a plan. Too often, brands turn it on everywhere and suddenly face a flood of new tickets their team can’t keep up with. The result is often longer wait times and frustrated customers.
The key is to treat live chat as both a support and sales channel. That means leaning on automation to handle the quick, repetitive stuff, and reserving agent time for higher-value conversations.
Here’s how to strike the right balance:
By combining humans with automation, you’ll give customers the instant responses they expect, without creating another backlog for your team.
There’s no single Shopify live chat app that works for every store. Each brand has its own support needs, sales goals, and team workflows—which means the “best” tool depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
The smartest approach is to test a couple of the apps above and see which one fits your business best. The right live chat tool should do three things: improve customer satisfaction, make your team’s job easier, and contribute to your bottom line.
And if you’re looking for a solution built specifically for ecommerce? Book a demo with Gorgias as the best Shopify-native option.
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When you think of customer service, you likely imagine a team of agents responding to incoming customer complaints and questions. This type of customer support, called reactive customer service, is an important way to help customers, but it’s only one dimension of a larger customer service experience.
You can upgrade your customer service with a proactive customer service strategy that includes:
With proactive customer service, you can set customer expectations, create more opportunities for positive customer interactions, and increase your brand’s conversion rate. All without requiring your shoppers to put forth the effort of reaching out to you.
Below, we’ll share a few strategies for proactive customer service that will support a happier customer base and, in turn, long-term sales.
Proactive customer service means that you make the first move, proactively providing customers with support resources, rather than waiting on them to contact your brand first. Proactive customer support can be provided directly via an agent messaging customers, or indirectly via self-service resources such as an FAQ page or knowledge base. Examples of proactive customer service include:
Reactive customer service is the type of customer service that most people are much more familiar with. Despite the growing popularity of a proactive customer service approach, reactive customer service remains a vital form of customer support as well.
As the name suggests, reactive customer service involves reacting to customer issues when they are brought to your attention by the customer. Examples of reactive customer service include:
While examples of reactive customer service can be found in virtually any customer-facing business, Zappos executes especially effective reactive customer service. Part of their strategy is sending a personalized response to every single email that they receive. This level of personalization ensures that the customer feels seen and acknowledged, lending itself to more positive customer experiences.
There are two main categories that customer service can fall into: reactive customer service and proactive customer service. If you would like to create a customer service strategy that is as efficient and effective as possible, it's important to balance both of these approaches.
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The numerous benefits of proactive customer service have led more and more online stores to adopt a more proactive approach to meeting customers' needs. According to data from MyCustomer, 73% of customers who are contacted proactively report a positive experience that changes their perception of the brand for the better.
Here are three additional benefits of proactive customer support:
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Proactive customer service can be the difference between an abandoned cart and a placed order. Why? Customers need information — such as sizing guides, product details, and refund policies — before placing an order. However, a customer might opt to shop elsewhere before reaching out to customer service.
You can keep customers on your site by reaching out proactively via live chat to ask if they need any help in those key moments. With Gorgias live chat campaigns, you can even automate this process and trigger a live chat that offers support (or even a discount code) when customers reach certain cart values, linger on a purchase page, return to your site multiple times before making a purchase, or a number of other situations.
The result? Better customer support, higher conversion rates, and more opportunities to drive upsells.
Adopting proactive customer service means that you will be able to resolve common issues without the need for customers to contact your customer service team. In many cases, providing proactive customer service does not require the assistance of a customer support agent at all. Self-service resources, for example, allow customers to find the answers to common questions on their own.
Self-service chatbots alone are estimated to save companies across the globe a projected total of $11 billion by 2023, according to data from Kindly. Not only can reducing the size of their customer support staff help save your company money, but shrinking your support team's workload via proactive customer support solutions can also provide your team with more time to focus on high-priority customer conversations. This can help you further increase customer satisfaction as your team can focus its efforts where they are needed the most.
Take a look at Rio de Janeiro’s help center, powered by Gorgias. Customers have access to a number of support articles about the product, the company’s shipping and returns policies, and more. Plus, they can even track and manage their orders without ever having to contact an agent.
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The entire goal of proactive customer support is to provide value to customers without waiting for them to make the first move. This isn’t always easy: you have to study the customer journey, from first exposure to repeat customer, in order to anticipate and proactively address customer issues and pain points.
Providing proactive customer support lets a customer know that your company truly cares about their needs. Today, offering great products alone isn't enough to ensure high customer retention rates. Customers choose, share, and stick with companies that offer a customer-centric experience in addition to excellent products and services — it’s the secret to Amazon’s success.
Want to learn more about live chat for proactive customer service? Check out these resources:
The benefits of proactive customer service are undeniable, but implementing an effective proactive customer support strategy requires a carefully developed plan. If you would like to start leveraging a proactive approach to customer support to create more happy customers, here are five strategies to consider.
One of the most effective forms of proactive customer support is to reach out to customers while they’re shopping. It’s like a sales associate asking in a physical store asking a shopper whether they need anything — but easier to ignore if they’re happy shopping solo.
With the right helpdesk, you can automatically reach out to customers with best-selling items in their cart offering to answer questions, recommend accessories, or provide a discount code to incentivize a purchase. Customers may respond by asking for your opinion about sizing or other product details, or just feel delighted to save a few extra dollars. This kind of proactive conversation, which we call a chat campaign, can reduce cart abandonment or even lead to upsells.
Here’s an example of a customer adding a best-selling product to their cart:
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Customers with best-selling items in their cart are only one segment you can target. With chat campaigns, you can automatically start a chat with customers who:
If you want an inside peek at how to set up chat campaigns in Gorgias, check out our help doc on the subject. Alternatively, book a demo (and ask about chat campaigns.)
By the way, this tip is part of our CX Growth Playbook, which offers 18 tactics to boost ecommerce revenue by 44% through exceptional customer service.
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Most brands already use social media for customer service. But in addition to managing incoming DMs and comments on your various social media accounts, you can nurture customer relationships by sending a welcome DM to new followers on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform.
You can say hello, thank them for the follow, direct them to some helpful new-shopper information, or even offer a unique code for their first purchase. Also, let them know they can chat with you right within your DMs should any issues come up now or in the future.
This kind of proactive, relationship-building activity reinforces the notion that your customer support team isn’t just there to respond to tickets (like the 21st-century version of a call center). Instead, they should find new ways to nurture long-lasting customer relationships and proactively provide the information and discounts customers need to make their first, second, or tenth purchase.
Here’s a template for welcome DMs you can use:
“Welcome to [brand] 🙌. [Personalized message related to your brand.] Here’s a 10% discount code for being a new member: [coupon]. Please explore our Insta and our products and reply here if you have any questions!”
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Proactive customer support isn’t just helpful for new customers. You can delight your most loyal customers by proactively reaching out to celebrate key milestones like their birthday or the anniversary of their first purchase.
If you want to automate this process, you can use a tool like Zapier to trigger a workflow whenever a customer creates their first order and, if the customer spends more than a certain amount once those 11 months are up, create a support ticket in your helpdesk reminding your support team to send them a gift for their first purchase anniversary.
Plus, a customer may opt to share this special occasion on their own social media accounts, broadening your brand’s exposure in a very positive light.
Offering customers proactive customer support that is actually helpful first requires your brand to develop a thorough understanding of its customers' needs, pain points, and common issues. With that in mind, there's no better way to determine what your customers need from proactive customer support than asking them directly.
For this purpose, surveys and customer feedback tools can prove incredibly valuable, helping you gather direct feedback that you can use to fine-tune your proactive customer service approach — as well as other aspects of your product and customer experience.
If you don’t, we recommend at least measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) with a field for open-ended responses where customers can tell you what they like and what they’d change about your business.
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Your CSAT score will give you a gauge of the quality of your offering, making it one of the most important customer service metrics out there. Plus, the qualitative feedback you receive can help you identify areas of the product and customer journey to improve, which helps you proactively avoid issues for future customers.
As you send your CSAT survey to more customers, you may get overwhelmed with responses. A customer service platform like Gorgias can give you a big-picture view of your CSAT across all tickets, as well as let you zoom in on low-scoring tickets to understand what went wrong.
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According to customer retention statistics from Microsoft, 66% of customers try self-service options before they decide to contact a brand's customer service team (see our full customer service statistics guide for more stats on consumer behavior). With this being the case, one of the best ways to provide proactive service to your customers is to offer them helpful self-service resources — such as FAQ pages, knowledge base pages, forums, and automated chatbots.
In addition to improving the customer experience by enabling customers to quickly resolve common issues on their own, self-service resources can also dramatically reduce a company's customer support ticket volume. This way, your agents spend less time answering repetitive questions and more time on high-impact tickets that require a human touch.
For example, childcare product brand JOONE gets notified when a customer's package runs late. JOONE passes on that information to customers rather than waiting for them to reach out and ask why their order hasn’t arrived yet.
"If we're more proactive,” says Clara Zaoui, JOONE’s Head of CRM and Customer Care, “the customer can be only happy to be informed and to know that customer service is following their package. It's a more personalized experience."
Proactive customer service offers a wide range of benefits — from improving customer satisfaction, to building empathy, to reducing the workload of your customer service team. However, implementing a proactive approach to customer service is also something that requires a very specific set of customer service tools.
As a comprehensive customer service solution, Gorgias provides everything that ecommerce store owners need to start offering effective proactive customer support, including social listening tools, live chat widgets, an automated customer service workflow builder, and self-service solutions such as FAQ pages and knowledge bases.
If you would like to start taking a proactive approach to customer service, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce the size of your customer support staff, then Gorgias is an excellent solution to consider. To learn more about the benefits that Gorgias can have for your online store, be sure to check out our comprehensive overview of Gorgias's many features and uses.
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How many times have you left an online store, mid-purchase, after trying and failing to find the answers you needed?
According to Baymard Institute, about two-thirds of carts end up abandoned. Luckily, live chat can help convert those customers — providing well-time customer service at the height of buying intent.
Companies that leverage live-chat tools on their websites provide a stronger customer experience, maximize the efficiency of their customer support agents and see bigger gains in revenue and customer retention.
Plus, it has exploded in popularity recently and continues to grow. Even if you don’t have live chat enabled on your website, there’s a good chance your competitors are in the 85% of companies projected to be using it in 2022.
In this article, we’ve listed 22 live chat and chatbot statistics that show just how beneficial these tools can be for your company and customer support team.
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Recent live chat statistics from the Gorgias platform demonstrate that the majority of customers are satisfied with their live chat experiences for support. In fact, we found 86% of live chat conversations on the Gorgias platform end with a 4- or 5-star CSAT rating. There are a number of issues that can arise with any type of digital customer communication method, but based on these statistics, it’s fair to say that live chat offers a clear path to customer satisfaction.
Source: Gorgias

This data point drives home the win-win nature of live chat for companies and customers. If your company is going to invest in new technology and take the time to train your customer support team in how to use it, you’ll want to make sure it’s worth it.
If you’re still not convinced: In 2021, brands using the Gorgias chat widget generated an average of $38,702 from conversations involving chat.
Sources: ltvplus

Converting website visitors to customers is key to any successful ecommerce business, so most companies will do whatever they need to in order to boost their chances of a conversion. Recent statistics show that adding live chat can increase conversion rates by 12%. This data also tells us that visitors who chat via live chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those who do not engage in this form of communication.
This is much more attainable when you combine automation and a human touch in your chat strategy. (Not sure of the difference? Read our post on live chat vs chatbots.)
Source: ltvplus
Leveraging chat tools on your company’s website can help save your company money on staffing and the costs of high churn, and can improve overall customer experience — which often leads to customers spending more money while on your site.
Source: Intercom
Keep reading with our list of 60+ customer service statistics you should use to inform your team’s support strategy.
Nearly two-thirds of buyers report that they expect an immediate response from a support team (“immediate” is defined as within 10 minutes). This may be partially because many customers are used to old-fashioned phone support, which usually results in an immediate solution to the problem.
This statistic should also tell you that when your customer success team is providing live chat support, they should either respond immediately, or set up an automated message that is sent immediately that states when a team member will be available to assist them.
With some live chat products, you can also provide a self-service solution. We have found that it can deflect up to 30% of tickets and provide your customers with immediate responses at any hour. You can see an example of the Gorgias self-service chat below.
Source: HubSpot

Speed doesn’t mean much for live chat customer service if the issues aren’t ultimately resolved. The good news is that a recent industry assessment shows that most customer issues brought to a company via live chat are resolved in less than one minute, once the agent gets to the ticket.
At the end of the day, your customers want to know they can rely on you and your team to help them out in a reasonable amount of time — especially if the issue is simple and straightforward.
Source: SnapEngage
There’s no question that real-time support via chat is taking over traditional phone support. But it’s not just phone support that is losing to live chat — there are other forms of digital communication that are no longer preferred among customers. Only 23% of customers report preferring email communication for support, and 16% report social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and forums as their preferred mode of support communication.
If a customer has a question, they’re more likely to visit your company’s website and try to engage with a live chat agent. But the real takeaway here is that different customers have different support needs.
It’s important to choose a solution that unifies your support operation across all channels, so you can meet customers where they are without keeping 15 different tabs open.
Source: SuperOffice
Most people can agree that talking to a robot with scripted responses can be a negative and even entirely unhelpful experience. Furthermore, 38% of companies agree that their customers are most annoyed by scripted responses on live chat.
At Gorgias, we have found shoppers are less bothered by self-service features if they are fast and, more importantly, helpful in getting them to the right agent more quickly. But if you’ve ever typed “I need an agent” five times in a row in a live chat window, you know firsthand that those experiences can be rare.
Source: ltvplus
As we discussed earlier, many customers are still turned off by auto-scripted chat bots. Even though many companies agree with this notion, more than two-thirds of companies continue to use canned responses in their live chat services.
It is important to recognize that there is a distinction between a bot that provides automated responses, and a live customer service agent who refers to a script. Your customer support agents should be able to bring in their own personalities and styles when chatting with customers, but it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel for each response.
For example, a script at Disney might look like this:

The above script is called a Macro, and it’s an example of how we strike this balance at Gorgias. Agents can use Macros to quickly respond in a way that is personalized and in line with your company’s voice. This allows for a warmer, more natural support experience. Plus, all the information is pulled in automatically.
Source: Forbes
When the pandemic started, online shopping increased dramatically. A household can easily spend $250 per month online — especially if they’re ordering groceries or items they would have normally bought in person.
Statistics show that, out of consumers who spend between $250 and $500 a month online, 63% are more loyal to companies that have live chat services. They are also more likely to be repeat customers.
Live chat services can help customers feel seen and heard, so regular customers feel comforted knowing that someone from your customer success team is one message away. This level of service will keep them coming back time and time again.
Source: Kayako
Even if customers don’t necessarily take advantage of your live chat support feature, over one-third of consumers report they are more likely to make a purchase from an online retailer if they simply have live chat support as an option. Live chat can help show customers that your company is available for any question they have, and that the company cares about their experience.
Source: Kayako
To further support the fact that many customers in today’s retail landscape prefer live chat, close to one-third say that they expect to see a live chat option on a company’s website. Similarly, almost 50% of mobile device users visiting your website expect to see a live chat option. To ignore live chat is to ignore a large portion of your customers’ expectations, leading to a poor ecommerce shopping experience and ultimately, less revenue.
Source: Forrester through TechJury
Have Shopify? Learn how to add a live chat to your store.
Recent data shows that by 2022, the majority of businesses are expected to incorporate some form of live chat experiences to their websites or mobile apps.
In addition to the statistical benefits of live chat, other benefits include an overall increase in customer satisfaction rate, better customer experience with personalized interactions, and fewer costs while providing simultaneous support to multiple customers.
Source: Software Advice
Keep your business ahead of the curve: Read about 8 must-know customer service trends for 2022.
Live chat is most commonly used among B2C businesses for customer support and to further enhance the customer experience. According to recent data, more companies use live chat for sales than support. Among B2B companies, 85% are using live chat mainly for sales and 66% are using it mainly for support. Among B2C companies, 74% are using live chat for sales more, while 67% are using it mainly for support.
Source: FinancesOnline
Drive more sales with these 9 tips for ecommerce upselling.
Perhaps one of the most important statistics on this list, the global live chat software market is set to grow at unprecedented rates over the next year. The live chat software market is also registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% from 2017 to 2023.
As a business leader or owner, this is excellent news for your company because it means that you will have multiple options for live chat products. All live chat software is not created equal, so researching companies and asking questions to make sure a product can meet the unique needs of your business is key.
For example, you should consider:
Source: Allied Market Research
Related: Get our in-depth list of the best live chat apps for Shopify.
Research shows that almost all customers (95%) value higher quality support over speed when it comes to live chat apps. This isn’t to say that customers are content with long average wait times. Rather, it reveals that consumers prefer slower, more personalized live chat support when it leads to higher quality service.
Luckily, with a combination of live chat and a chatbot, you don’t have to compromise between speed and customer experience.
Source: Finances Online
Among the reasons customers prefer live chat over any other form of customer communication are the lack of wait times (34%) and the increased convenience (26.9%). The data also shows us that customers appreciate that they can privately engage with a brand, express their concerns, and receive quick solutions to their issues.
In this case, live chat is a critical tool for building trust with your customer base and establishing long-term customer relationships.
Source: SoftwareAdvice
The time spent talking to a customer service agent is often cited as a reason customers prefer live chat over other customer communication options. In one study, chatting online with a human came in first place for the shortest chat duration, resolving an issue in just 24 minutes. This is compared to email (157 minutes), social media messaging (58 minutes), and online chat with a bot (27 minutes).
Source: TopBots
Although customers prefer live chat sessions over email, phone, and social media support, two-fifths of them lack faith that they’ll get the support they need in a reasonable amount of time.
While this lack of confidence isn’t ideal, it provides an opportunity for you and your customer success team to prove to your customers that your company’s live chat is fast and helpful. This is also a key reason many of our customers use self-service features in their live chat experiences.
Building trust with your customers turns them into lifelong customers, helps with your company’s ecommerce churn rate and lead generation, and can ultimately boost your customer success team's morale as they successfully resolve tickets.
Source: Kayako
When it comes to younger generations, speed and convenience are priorities. Among millennials specifically, live chat tools are the preferred method of communication when contacting a company.
According to a report by Software Advice, the top reason they prefer live chat is because it can dramatically decrease holding time. Even more, 71% of those surveyed between 16 and 24 years old think the customer experience could be drastically improved with quicker response times. That percentage drops only slightly (65%) for those between the ages of 25 and 34.
Source: Comm100
As much as marketing and sales have gone digital, there’s still something extremely powerful about word of mouth. People are more likely to share positive customer service experiences over “just okay” experiences. Among younger generations like millennials and Generation Z, talking among friends and sharing experiences about online retailers is the norm.
Online shopping experiences have become even more widely discussed since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, as many people have defaulted to shopping online instead of making trips to brick-and-mortar stores.
Source: Kayako
Following up on how millennial customers prefer to communicate with brands, more than half expect to be able to engage with a brand whenever they choose.
To be available to them across all platforms, you need to ensure your live chat integrates into a customer support solution that can bring those channels into your dashboard. Otherwise, you’ll be clicking back and forth between different windows for every new ticket.
It may seem easier to just make them come to your preferred channels, but overlooking the preferences of millennials and Gen Z can negatively affect your business as their buying power grows.
Source: Comm100
Now that you’ve explored the latest data on chat tools, you can see why a live chat tool is a worthy addition to any ecommerce business. But as we mentioned earlier, all live chat solutions are not created equal. I
Gorgias live chat integrates into our leading platform for ecommerce customer support. You can handle live chat tickets alongside those from email, phone, and social media to more easily serve your online customers. You can even proactively reach out to customers to resolve more issues and boost sales. Then automate your most repetitive inquiries to make time for the conversations that matter to your business.
Our tool was specifically built to work seamlessly with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, and our integrations go deeper than any other platform. Sign up today to see how our chat tools can help your business grow.
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