When you say the word “growth,” most brand leaders think of customer acquisition, paid ads, or the newest marketing trend — probably something about TikTok influencers. And while acquiring customers is important, we know that truly sustainable growth comes from loyal customers, organic referrals, reviews, and repeat buyers — all of which stem from your customer experience. And at the core of that customer experience is your customer service team.

Your customer service agents spend more time interacting with customers than any other department, including marketing and sales. They manage VIP customers, repair at-risk relationships, and have the opportunity to chat with customers at make-or-break moments (like right before a sale). In other words, your brand’s growth hinges on the quality of your customer service team.

We can’t offer any algorithms or magical software to find and hire talented agents. Hiring takes time, experience, and a strategic approach. That last part — a strategic approach to hiring — is what I’m here to provide. 

At HelpFlow.com, we run 24/7 live chat and customer service teams for over 100 brands. We’ve hired hundreds of customer service agents successfully and built scalable, robust customer service operations that provide great customer experiences and drive growth for brands we work with. 

In this post, I’ll walk through the framework we use step-by-step. My goal is to help you or your hiring managers simplify your customer service hiring process, find high-impact customer service professionals, and transform your brand’s customer service from a frustrating cost center to a seamless and scalable revenue driver.

But first, what’s really at stake here? 

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Bad customer service will kill your brand

If you are like most ecommerce brands, you hire customer service reps when your team needs additional support to keep up with tickets. This purely reactive approach means your support team will always be buried in tickets or onboarding new team members. The constant scramble means they’ll never have the bandwidth to think strategically, improve processes, or work on higher-impact initiatives to help the business.

Here’s the snowball effect we often see. First, your agents become overworked with an ever-growing number of tickets to process each day. This endless sprint to keep up contributes to extremely high turnover in the customer service industry. According to Harvard Business Review, CS reps typically last a job for about a year. 

As agents start to burn out and fall behind, customer service experience quality suffers. Customers feel frustrated with slow response times and often disappointed with incomplete or ineffective solutions from junior agents hired just a few months before. A downtrend in customer satisfaction is common with brands as they start to scale. 

Eventually, a poorly run customer service operation starts to have a direct effect on sales. First-time shoppers give low NPS scores and never develop brand loyalty. Customer complaints start to appear, scaring off potential customers, and referrals dry up. 

As the quality of service goes down, the cost of customer service goes up because you have to spend more time hiring and training customer service representatives that won’t be productive for weeks, if not months. Replacing an employee typically costs 1.5-2x their annual salary when you factor in all the costs, according to Gallup. 

The business sees these poor results and high costs, and refuses to invest in the department, which leaves them even more under-resourced. The cycle continues.

Great hiring processes can accelerate growth

A great customer service team (that’s not over-worked and under-resourced) will stop this vicious cycle. But beyond answering customer inquiries and managing ticket load, they’ll systematically improve your brand’s customer experience and, by extension, growth engine.

An excellent customer service team will create replace the vicious cycle with a positive one by:

• Improving your shopping experience by collecting customer feedback, building self-service resources, and studying data for high-impact opportunities
• Intercepting new visitors with proactive support to raise the conversion rate
• Helping customers who have unsatisfactory experiences, winning some of them back
• Encouraging happy customers to purchase more, leave reviews, refer new customers, and remain loyal to your brand

Ready to learn how to fill your customer service positions with agents who will make an impact? Let’s get into it. Here’s our 6-step framework to hire the best customer service teams around.

1) Assess your customer service hiring needs

The first step to hiring great customer service reps is to shift from a reactive hiring process to a proactive one. When you hire reactively, you tend to rush hiring and training to get a body in a seat processing tickets as quickly as possible. Of course, this leads to low-quality interactions and dings to brand perception. By proactively forecasting customer service needs, you’ll have time to run a more thorough hiring process to find and hire the ideal candidate.

Here is a quick overview of how to forecast customer service volume:

1. Identify the percentage of orders that typically turn into support tickets. For example, if you historically get about 20 tickets for every 100 orders then you can forecast that 20% of your future orders will turn into tickets. 
2. Use the traction to ticket ratio to forecast how many tickets you expect to receive in the future, based on your sales forecast for the upcoming quarter or another time period. 
3. Use the agent ticket capacity per day, accounting for PTO and sick leave, to determine how many agents you need to process that upcoming ticket volume. Account for ramp-up time for new team members.

The three tips above are just a snapshot of a true forecasting process. Check out our framework for customer service forecasting for more detailed guidance.

Forecasting will help you predict your future needs and shift to a more proactive approach. Remember to give yourself enough time to conduct a thorough hiring process and onboarding program. If you anticipate needing two new agents in Q4, start collecting applications by early Q3.
Forecasting is just one strategy to understand when you should hire. Here are a few additional signals that could mean your team is understaffed: 

1. Declining metrics: Each week, you should check on important metrics that measure your customer service management such as first response time, handle time, and customer satisfaction. If you start to see these metrics decline, it could mean your team can’t keep up with ticket volume and needs additional support.
2. Team morale: As part of your customer service team meeting cadence, you should have regular team huddles, manager-led 1:1s, and anonymous climate surveys.  Managers should work to foster trust and open dialogue so agents can share their stress. Don’t be afraid to ask them directly about their workload. If agents start to report challenges, especially if the concern comes up across multiple agents, you may need to staff up. 

You may find that you need additional support, but you may not need to hire people full-time to solve the problem. You may be able to support your core team with other solutions such as:

1. Efficiency improvements: If you’re like most brands, you’ve frankensteined together a customer service process, piece by piece. Consider doing a workflow audit to identify opportunities to improve the team’s workflow with process improvements, email templates, and customer self-service options. 
2. Changes to coverage schedules: You may have the right amount of agents, but simply have a schedule that leads to ticket buildup. For example, if everyone is staffed M-F, response and resolution times will suffer over the weekend. Look into your hour-to-hour ticket volume, especially on conversational channels like live chat and phone, and schedule agents whenever you have peaks in incoming tickets.
3. High-quality outsourced help: Hiring full-time employees is cumbersome and expensive, and sometimes more than you need. By working with a high-quality outsourced team, you can bridge the gap to have additional agents on a custom schedule or just for a season of high volume. 
4. Overtime opportunities: If your agents are currently salaried, you could change them to an hourly model so they can earn overtime during busy weeks. Don’t make this decision without consulting the agents. They might be enthusiastic, but they might also dislike that your solution for being understaffed involves working more hours.

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That said, you may conclude that you need to hire new agents. Here’s how to do it well. 

2) Create a target hire persona for the role

Before you start your search, I recommend taking some time to understand your hiring needs and describe your ideal candidate.

First, take stock of:

• Everything the customer support team does today
• Everything the team wants to do but doesn’t have the bandwidth for
• Everything the team currently does that could be phased out with process improvement or recalibration of ownership

Once that’s done, you’ll be better prepared to understand:

• What existing roles need to be filled or staffed up
• What new roles need to be developed
• What type of skills would match each of those needs — this is where your target persona comes into play

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A target persona is a tool we developed to build clarity around your jobs to be done, the skills needed to accomplish those jobs, the type of person who would succeed in this role, and how you’ll measure that person’s success.

The value is similar to an ideal customer profile (ICP) for sales and marketing. By defining the core qualities you need ahead of time, you can create a sharper job description, distribute the job posting in more targeted channels, and decrease the time it takes to find the right person.

What to include in a target hire persona

Below are the key sections to include in a target hire persona: 

Mission:

• What is the purpose of this position in your organization?
• Why does it exist?
• What will the role focus on?
• Why are you hiring this person now?

Outcomes:

• How will you measure this person’s success?
• How will you keep this person accountable to the mission described above?
• Use specific, clear, and quantifiable outcomes to answer both questions above.

Competencies:

• What experiences and qualifications should this person have?
• What attributes and customer service skills will help this person succeed? (For example, is it more important to be organized or empathetic for your specific needs?

Culture fit: 

• Separate from the role, what are the specific attributes that make someone a culture fit for your team? 
• These will vary depending on the company, but it’s very important to define these so that you can screen otherwise qualified applicants if they aren’t a culture fit.

Customer service agent target hire persona example

We put together a full customer service agent target hire persona example that you can access and modify for your own needs. Consider revising the mission and outcomes slightly to match your needs, and adjust the target experience for your specific company.

Have questions? Feel free to reach out! 

3) Create a job posting that sells (and market it)

Once you have a target hire persona completed, it’s time to start marketing- yes, I said marketing, just like how you grow your business. 

Typically, when someone is hiring they simply put together a job description, post it on a few job boards, and work with the applicants that come in. This is especially true for customer service hires, which are unfortunately seen as low-value.

This approach leads to a small number of low-quality applicants. The kinds of A-players you’re looking for aren’t scouring job boards and responding to basic job postings — they’re likely crushing it at their current role.

Here’s how to create and distribute a job posting that reaches the right people and convinces them to apply:

Sell the role in the job posting

Remember, hiring is a two-way street. You have to impress the candidate just as much as they have to impress you. Don’t just publish a list of duties and requirements on a job posting website with an application link. Instead, sell the role (and the company) by using parts of the target hire persona above:

Clearly explain the company’s current position, mission, and goals. Share a bit of the journey you’ve been on so far and the successes you’ve had. The right candidate will be excited about your particular growth stage and the opportunity to help you with the next leg of the journey.

Also, dedicate some space to selling your team and unique company culture. This doesn’t need to be all rainbows and unicorns: great candidates know building a great company takes hard work. But they should be able to get an understanding of your company’s unique values, priorities, and ways of working. Describe and share examples about how your teams collaborate, the level of autonomy, accountability, coaching, and support they can expect, and the general vibe of a day-in-the-life of your team. 

Finally, paint a very clear picture of what success looks like by sharing the outcomes and target metrics. This will ensure the applicants understand what you want to accomplish before your first conversation. Clear success metrics will also attract goal-driven people with an “I can do that” attitude. 

This may seem like a lot of work, but you’ll save time by getting higher-quality candidates quickly, and in the long run, having to rehire due to rushing into a bad hire.

How to drive a lot of quality applicants

An enticing job description gets you halfway to an inbox full of strong applications. Now, you have to get that job description seen by a lot of high-quality candidates.

Remember, great team members don’t typically spend their days scouring job boards to find a new job. You need to catch their attention in other ways to spark their interest in jumping ship and joining your brand.

Here are multiple ways to drive a lot of great applicants for your role:

Publish on multiple job boards. For example, if you are working with a remote team, consider publishing on WeWorkRemotely or Remote.co. If you are hiring locally, leverage a few different job boards such as Indeed.com or ZipRecruiter.com to get the best coverage. LinkedIn is also a good option for both local and remote hires. If possible, make the extra investment to make a premium or boosted posting. And, especially if you are in a challenging niche, consider specialized job boards and communities. The Support Driven Slack community, for example, has a job board for ecommerce community service positions. 

Another best practice is to share the role with your network. Send a few messages to peers who may know someone fit for the role and publish the posting on your social media. Also, encourage your team to do the same — they’ll be working with this new hire, after all. Again, don’t just copy/paste the link. Sell the role to attract the best candidates. 

Finally, involve your customers in the recruitment process. One of your customers may want the job or know someone else who could be a good fit. Customers who love and use your products have a great head start: they’re familiar with your brand, your shopping experience, and the benefits of your products. And since customer service skills can be transferred from many other types of roles, your customer base may have more qualified candidates than you expect.

4) Screen applicants async to avoid wasting time

A great job description effectively shared means you’ll have a steady stream of applicants. You might feel overwhelmed with the workload of screening applicants to find the right hire. And rightfully so: Applicant screening can turn into a lot of work if you do it with typical in-depth reviews of each applicant and blocking out time for interviews. 

Interviews are important, and we’ll explain how to hold a customer service interview below (including interview questions to use). But first, here’s how to effectively screen the large number of applicants you’ll receive to find the best possible hires. 

Quiz them on the job posting

Screening starts by gauging how well applicants read through the details of the job posting. If they’re not willing to spend the time reading and following the instructions on the job posting, odds are they won’t be detail-oriented in the role. 

By asking a simple question or making a request deep within the content of the job posting, you can quickly screen whether applicants read it. For example, you can ask applicants to start their cover letter with, “ready to rock!’“ This way, you can skip over anyone that didn’t catch and follow the instruction. 

Optional: Assign a micro take-home assignment

At HelpFlow.com, we skip take-home assignments because our hiring process is so thorough. However, since customer support agents spend most of their days writing, you may choose to request a short writing sample at this stage.

If you opt to include this step, consider keeping the writing sample very short — something applicants can complete in 10-15 minutes. However, be aware that more up-front work from your candidates means:

• You’ll spend more time reviewing applications
• You may lose some qualified job seekers due to a too-strenuous application process — but they likely wouldn’t be the most committed hire

Send them a common customer question or one of your most common customer problems. Give them resources like a knowledge base article and your policies so they have all the necessary information. At this stage, you’re looking for their ability to communicate clearly and empathetically. 

Request a brief video questionnaire

Rather than jumping straight to an interview, send a brief questionnaire to the applicant so they can tell you more about their experience in a short video message. There are tools such as Spark Hire that make this easy. But a simple list of questions and instructions to send a response using a screencast tool like Loom is just as easy. 

For the questionnaire, you should ask open-ended questions to get a sense of how their experience and capabilities fit your needs. You might also choose to include a fun, get-to-know-you question to get a better sense of their personality. 

Asking why they think they are the best fit for the role is a good starting point, as it gives them the ability to provide more context than they typically would in a text response. Also, this gives you the ability to compare their experience to the target hire persona. The way someone answers this question typically makes clear if they’re a fit at a high level.

Consider asking questions like:

• Why do you think you’re the best fit for this role?
• What are you looking for in your next role?
• How are you looking to grow and learn?
• What’s a mistake you made and learned from?
• How would your friends and family describe you? 
• If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

In their video response, you’ll see their communication skills, confidence, and personality — without having to schedule dozens or hundreds of 30-minute meetings.

5) Conduct two interviews to assess fit and experience

Interviews can be time-consuming. They take time to schedule and conduct, especially if you put too many people through the entire interview process. Multiple rounds of screening ensure you only invest time in the most promising candidates.

Ideally, your job posting results in hundreds of applicants. Your first screening (described above) gets you down to about a dozen, max. The first interview we’re about to describe gets you down to the single digits — about four or five. Then, you’ll only have to deeply interview those four or five candidates to find your new hire(s).

1) A quick interview to assess skills and mindset

This first interview is a brief (20- or 30-minute) phone call to learn more about each applicant's skill set, goals, and mindset. Skills aren’t the only prerequisite for success: True rock stars have a growth mindset and will look at this opportunity as the next step in a passionate career.

At the beginning of this interview, we like to build up the candidate’s confidence by saying something like, “We had ### applicants and you’ve made it this far, so you’re definitely a strong person for this role. We’re confident you’ll be successful regardless of whether you work for us or get scooped up by someone else.”

Then, you’re ready to start asking questions.

Questions to understand their goals and mindset

• What does success look like for you a year from now?
• What do you want to accomplish in this role?
• What specific achievements will make you feel the most successful?

These questions should feel familiar, and that’s because they should roughly align with the mission and outcomes you chose in the target hire persona. Of course, candidates didn’t read that document so it’s unfair to expect perfect alignment. But they will help you understand which applicants are the best fit for your needs.

For example,  if your target hire persona was a systems thinker who can help with problem-solving and organization across your team, you might look for answers about strong processes and great teamwork. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a brilliant customer-facing agent, you might seek answers related to empathy and customer advocacy. 

Also, a lack of clear, focused goals at this stage is a red flag. If someone answers vaguely or responds with a variation of “I just want a good customer service job and your company seems great,” then they’re not going to be a rock star on your team.

Questions to understand skillset

Skills are a difficult thing to discuss. If the candidate prepared well, they’ll likely know what skills you need for the role based on the job posting and find ways to weave those skills into their answers. They may also have completed courses or customer service certifications that indicate what they can do, but it's important to go beyond that and get a sense of real-world applications of these skills.We like to ask a series of questions that force candidates to reflect on their skills in a slightly different way. Here’s how we get there:

• We’re going to talk to a few people you’ve worked with at the end of the application process, should you make it that far. What’s a role you succeeded in, and who was your boss in that role? If we talk to them later in the interview process, how do you think they’ll describe you? What parts of the job would they say you excelled at?

Again, you’re looking for clear answers and alignment with your target hire persona. 

Second, gauge which parts of the job they’re least skilled and excited about. Here’s how we might get at this answer:

• Now I want to understand the opposite. What are some things that boss would say you’re not great at? Or maybe, what are some things you’re capable of doing but don’t love?

To make this question a bit less intimidating, we usually share an example. We’ve often used the example, “I’m able to whip up some graphic designs for our website and they look pretty good. But graphic design is something I just hate doing. It’s a tedious process and I would rather have a marketing person handle that if at all possible, so I can focus on my strengths.” 

This question allows the candidate to essentially complain about select aspects of the role. You’re not looking to trick someone into disqualifying themselves from the running. However, you are trying to avoid a situation in which you hire someone to spend all week doing something they’d rather avoid.

Once they answer, consider asking follow-up questions to get more examples and context.

Questions to understand teamwork and self-awareness

• How would past supervisors rate you on a scale of 1-10?
• How would your peers rate you on a scale of 1-10?

These questions are quick and help you understand whether their previous answers were honest and self-aware. 

Ask them for the name of two previous bosses and two previous colleagues. Explain that you won’t reach out to those people yet, but might if you extend an offer. 

Once they give you names, ask how each person would rate them on a scale of 1-10 — insist on a single number for each. You’re looking for lots of 8s and 9s. If you see a trend of 7 or lower, that could indicate this person has — and may have oversold themselves when discussing their skillset earlier in the interview. Also, 10s across the board show a lack of self-awareness and growth mindset. 

By the end of this interview, you’ll have a solid understanding of whether each candidate’s skills and mindset fit your needs. Move the best candidates onto the final interview, thank the rest for their time, and invite them to re-apply for future roles — after all, each role should have a specific target hire persona, and they might just fit your next opening a bit better. To thank them for their time, you can also refer them to anyone else in your network that’s hiring.  

2) A deep-dive interview to know you have a great hire

Each candidate that makes it to this final interview should be a pretty great fit for the role. Some companies might go straight to a job offer at this stage, but the risk of bringing on the wrong new hire still exists.

The deep-dive interview will last two hours. Two hours might seem like a big investment. But two hours is nothing compared to investing two or three months into a candidate before realizing you need to start the hiring process over because they’re not a great fit.

A deep-dive interview gives you a crystal-clear understanding of each candidate’s entire career history, their ability to communicate clearly and effectively in a long-format meeting, and their personality. After this conversation, you’ll have zero doubts about which candidate is your rock star.

Here’s how the deep-dive interview works.

Set up a two-hour conversational interview with a small panel

When you invite the candidate to this meeting, be clear about:

• The goal of the meeting
• The format of the meeting
• The list of attendees

If you give the candidate some context behind such a long meeting, they can approach the interview with more preparation and less anxious energy. 

As far as the list of attendees, you can make a decision based on your team’s makeup and availability. If possible, we recommend inviting the hiring manager, a senior manager, and a peer to introduce the interviewee to the team they’ll work with (and vice versa). However, you can also run the interview solo if that works better for your team. 

Once you assemble the panel and schedule the interview, the long-form interview itself is quite straightforward and formulaic. Here’s what it looks like:

Discuss every full-time position the candidate has had, in chronological order

Start from the beginning of the candidate’s resume and discuss each and every full-time role in their job history. For early parts of their career (or jobs that are not related to your open role) you can move quickly through these questions. But it is important to discuss each role.

By digging into every single part of the candidate’s career with a standard set of questions, you will get a clear overview of how they’ve performed and what makes them tick. 

Ask the same set of questions for each position

What makes this interview process effective and simple is that you ask the same questions for each role. This gives the interview a conversational flow that produces powerful insights. Here are the questions:

• What were you hired to do? This gives you an idea of the mission and outcomes they were hired to accomplish
• What accomplishments are you most proud of? This helps you understand whether they accomplished those goals and what they value in terms of achievement
• What were the low points of the role? This helps show the candidate’s self-awareness and growth mindset, and gives you a chance to spot red-flag trends — that said, recognize every job naturally has high and low points
• Who was your boss? What was it like working with them? This gives you context for your reference call later on and tells you how the candidate likes to be managed

Together, these answers give you a good idea of their specific experience in customer service roles, their experience with handling a helpdesk and the challenges of customer service, and some insight into their soft skills that a shorter interview could never provide.

Don’t bother with a take-home assignment for these qualified candidates

Many companies will assign a test assignment this late in the process to do a final check on the skillset and quality of candidates. We don’t recommend a test assignment — especially at this point — because assignments are too simple to game and sometimes give candidates a bad impression of your company because you asked them to do “free work.” 

If you want to use an assignment, keep it short and earlier in the process. But at this point in the process, the deep-dive interview will give you much richer information. Specifically, it helps you understand what the candidate will actually be like on your team before you invest in onboarding and two or three months of work.

6) Use reference checks to get more context and certainty

Most people treat reference checks as a way to make sure the candidate told the truth on their resume and during the hiring process. That can be part of the process, but the greater value of reference checks is to get even deeper context into the candidate’s skills and work style.

Here’s how to approach reference calls:

• Use the deep-dive interview to decide who to contact. If the candidate mentioned a particularly important or interesting relationship, success, or challenge, make a note to call their boss in that position to get more information.
• Chat with references for 5-10 minutes. These conversations should be informal and conversation — you want the major takeaways about what it’s like to work with this person.
• Give the reference person context. Start on a positive note, explaining that you’re hiring for a customer support role and the candidate in question seems like a great fit. 
• Ask high-level, open-ended questions. Questions like “Is what they said true?” limit the conversation. Instead, ask questions like “What was it like working with this person?” or “What kind of role would this person excel in?”
• Ask about strengths. For example, ask “What’s a project this person absolutely crushed? What responsibilities did they nail every time?” Ideally, the answers align with the candidate’s self-reported skills and strengths.
• Ask about challenges. For example, say, “They mentioned [the challenge] at your company. How did they handle that challenge?”. Then, open it up: “What are some other areas of improvement for them?” By framing this positively as improvements, you’ll get more direct feedback about the candidate's rough spots. 

Each call takes fewer than 10 minutes but gives you valuable insight into the highs and lows of working with this person. Again, similar to the deep-dive interview, you’re looking for patterns across reference calls more than any single answer. If the candidate’s answers line up with the answers you get during the reference checks, the candidate has high self-awareness and emotional intelligence — both important qualities in customer service. 

By the time you go through the entire process with multiple candidates, you’ll be certain about the best fit(s) for your open role(s). And once you’ve run this interview process a few times, it will become much more efficient and much less daunting. 

Bonus: How to choose a start date and win over unsure candidates

As we mentioned earlier in this guide, hiring is a two-way street. You have to win a candidate over just as much as they have to win you over. Once you choose a candidate, here’s how to give yourself the best chance for an accepted offer and a successful start.

Tips for sending an offer letter they’ll want to sign

If all went well, the candidate should be thrilled that you offer them the job. However, they may be considering other offers and it never hurts to demonstrate that you’re a thoughtful employer that’s genuinely excited about working with them.
First, consider giving them a call before sending the offer letter. Most candidates will appreciate hearing the enthusiasm in your voice and getting the news directly from the hiring manager, who they spent the entire process getting to know. Plus, you have the opportunity to get a verbal yes.

When you send the letter, give them a sign-by date. This gives them some parameters, adds a bit of urgency to the decision, and helps you develop a contingency plan with other top candidates in case your top choice declines the offer.

Last, consider asking everyone involved in the interview process to send a personal note to the candidate, especially if the candidate is on the fence. The candidate will end up working with these people, so an authentic and personalized note expressing excitement could make the difference between an acceptance and a declined offer.

Choose a start date that works for candidates and your business

Throughout the interview process, you should clarify when the candidates hope to start. Once you make the offer, don’t be afraid to encourage them to take a week or two off before starting the new job — they’ll appreciate the time off, plus it’s a signal that your company takes preventative measures against employee burnout. And if you’ve moved away from reactive hiring, this shouldn’t be too big of a hassle for your team.

Last, if you’re hiring multiple agents, work to start them on the same day. This way, you can onboard in cohorts, giving each new hire a buddy for support and companionship. Plus, you’ll save time by giving each training session once instead of multiple times for each hire. 

Master Hiring Customer Service Agents with HelpFlow.com and Gorgias

The hiring process isn’t about filling seats, it’s about building a team that strengthens morale, tackles challenges, and ultimately drives your brand forward. While it’s definitely possible to hire agents more quickly, quicker isn’t always better. A single bad experience with a customer service agent can cost you customers and damage brand equity. A team of bad hires can kill the future of your entire company. 

If you rush the hiring process, problems during onboarding, new-hire retention plummets, and the top talent you had before these bad hires start to leave. It’s better to invest time upfront to ensure you only hire A-player team members. 

Want help scaling your customer support team with agents who can provide an amazing customer experience and work with larger company goals in mind? HelpFlow runs customer service teams for over 100 brands and can help you level up your customer service operation. Check out our Gorgias Premier Partner profile and contact us today to learn more.

And if you’re struggling to streamline the workflow of your team and turn customer service into a profit center, check out Gorgias — the customer service platform built for ecommerce. Sign up for a free trial today.

According to data from Kepios, there are a total of 4.62 billion social media users in the world as of January 2022 — accounting for well over half of the earth's population. In other words, if you want to go where your customers are as a Shopify store owner, social media platforms are mission-critical.

Social media may be a great opportunity but it isn't exactly low-hanging fruit. Social media is complex and time-consuming. Even seasoned digital marketing professionals can get bogged down by tedious tasks, low-return initiatives, and frustrating obstacles when it comes to marketing products to potential customers on social media.

The good news is that utilizing the right Shopify social media apps can go a long way toward making your social media marketing campaigns more efficient and effective. To help you choose the ideal apps for your social media marketing and social media customer service needs, let's take a look at the 10 most powerful social media apps currently available on the Shopify app store.

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1) Outfy - Automate Social Media by Outfy

With Outfy, store owners are able to automate much of the work that goes into managing social media profiles by curating, scheduling, and publishing posts automatically. In addition to its convenient automation features, Outfy also enables you to easily create high-quality collages, videos, and GIFs to promote your products and boost brand awareness on social media.

Shopify rating ⭐4.8 (1214)

Price: From $15/month

Key features

• Provides a range of customizable promotional post templates
• Auto-generates and publishes promotional posts based on a number of predefined settings
• Makes it easy to turn your product pictures into collages, videos, and animated GIFs
• Hashtag research for helping you select the most effective hashtags for your promotional posts to reach your target audience

What users think of this app

• Exceptional for auto-generating social media posts 
• Easy to set up and use 
• Hashtag research tools make it easy to select the ideal hashtags for promotional posts

Related: Our guide to customer service automation — set repeatable, low-impact tasks to autopilot.

2) Chatdesk - Email & FB Support by Chatdesk

According to data from Microsoft, 90% of Americans use customer service as a factor in deciding whether or not to do business with a company. With Chatdesk, you are able to outsource your customer support responsibilities to a team of hand-chosen customer support agents who are already fans of your brand. In addition to providing 24/7 live chat and email support, Chatdesk customer support agents also respond to all social media comments, mentions, and direct messages in real-time.

Shopify rating ⭐5.0 (14)

Price: Free plan available

Key features

• Customer support agents are hired and trained on your behalf, and Chatdesk makes an effort to hire agents who are already "superfans" of your brand
• Social media integration for responding to comments, messages, and mentions across all major social media networks
• Provides 24/7 support options to your customers

What users think of this app

• Reliable U.S.-based customer support agents 
• Social media integrations are ideal for turning social media platforms into additional customer support channels. 
• Exceptional for driving conversions with pre-purchase chat conversations

For Gorgias customers, learn more about our Chatdesk integration here. 

3) Facebook Messenger Marketing by ShopMessage

Facebook Messenger Marketing is a Shopify app by ShopMessage that allows you to create automated Facebook Messenger marketing flows. These flows are triggered based on a wide range of customer actions, such as cart abandonment and first-time purchases from new customers. This app also offers customizable opt-in popups designed to help you grow your Facebook Messenger subscriber list and shareable links that will direct to a FB Messenger marketing flow when clicked.

Shopify rating ⭐4.3 (129)

Price: $9/month

Key features

• Messenger Menu feature provides customers with a concierge-like experience by giving them on-demand access to targeted product recommendations, support links, or interactive FAQs
• A guaranteed minimum ROI in your first paid month or you receive a full refund
• Create Facebook ads that direct to FB Messenger marketing flows

What users think of this app

• Excellent customer support 
• Targeted product recommendations boost conversion rates 
• Series for important revenue-driving initiatives like lowering cart abandonment and upselling at checkout

For Gorgias customers, learn more about our ShopMessage integration here. 

4) Octane AI: Quiz Growth Tools by Octane AI

According to data from DemandGen, interactive content elicits twice as much engagement as static content. Interactive content such as surveys and quizzes in particular can be especially useful for providing ecommerce store owners with zero-party data on their customers. 

With Octane AI, you can create customizable surveys for your Shopify store, which you can use to learn what your customers like and dislike about their experience with your brand and products. Octane AI also gives you the ability to create customizable quizzes that you can use to provide customers with targeted product information and recommend new products. Best of all, quizzes and surveys created using Octane AI are easily shareable across all social platforms.

Shopify rating ⭐4.8 (200)

Price: From $50/month

Key features

• Octane AI popup gives personalized product recommendations, which users can access and add to their carts
• Integrates with Klaviyo to target your SMS and email marketing campaigns based on data collected using Octane AI
• Dynamic quiz functionality lets you display different questions and Octane AI popup styles based on the demographics of the customer viewing them

What users think of this app

• Product recommendation quizzes lead to increased sales 
• Quizzes are customizable and easy to create 
• Collects valuable zero-party data 

For Gorgias customers, learn more about our Octane AI integration here. 

5) Recart: SMS & Messenger by Recart

Recart is an SMS, email, and FB Messenger marketing tool that lets you create popup opt-ins for growing your email list. It also offers a variety of automated flows and templates that you can use to make your FB Messenger marketing strategy more efficient. Additionally, Recart provides built-in SMS stats and a real-time dashboard for you to track your campaigns.

Source: Recart

Shopify rating ⭐4.8 (5506)

Price: Free plan available

Key features

• Edit templates with a no-code, drag-and-drop editor
• Personalize your campaigns with condition splits
• Integrate the tool with others, such as Klaviyo, Gorgias, and Drip

What users think of this app

• Excellent for growing subscriber lists 
• Abandoned cart recovery flows are highly effective 
• Lots of useful integrations 

For Gorgias customers, learn more about our Recart integration here. 

6) 20+ Promotional Sales Tools by Zotabox

Zotabox is a platform that offers over 20 different useful sales tools, including customizable banners, countdown timers, social sharing buttons, customizable forms, and push notifications. Whatever you might need to make your social media marketing efforts a success, there's a high likelihood that you'll find what you're looking for on Zotabox.

Shopify rating ⭐4.8 (469)

Price: From $12.99/month

Key features

• Embed videos on your website
• Add customizable forms and live chat windows to your site
• Source and display Facebook and Google reviews on your site

What users think of this app

• Excellent triggering options for popups 
• Lots of useful solutions in one package 
• All of the tools are highly customizable

Related: How to transform live chat into your a top sales tool.

7) Instafeed: Instagram Feed by Mintt Studio

Instafeed is an app that displays your Instagram feed on your website. Instafeed also enables you to tag products in your Instagram posts in order to create a shoppable Instagram feed.

Shopify rating ⭐4.9 (1183)

Price: Free plan available

Key features

• Display Instagram content in an on-site widget for social proof through user-generated content (UGC) 
• Expand the reach of your Instagram profile to your store visitors
• Turn your Instagram profile into a social commerce channel via the option to tag products in Instagram posts

What users think of this app

• Improves the visual appeal of a Shopify store 
• Great for converting Instagram into an additional sales channel 
• Easy to set up and customize 

Related: Our guide to Instagram for customer service.

8) Facebook Channel by Shopify

Facebook Channel is an app by Shopify that automatically syncs products from your store to your Facebook account, making it easy to sell and promote products on Facebook. Facebook Channel also allows you to easily create a variety of Facebook Ads campaigns, including audience-building campaigns and dynamic retargeting campaigns.

Shopify rating ⭐3.5 (3785)

Price: Free to install, additional charges apply

Key features

• Tag products in Facebook or Instagram posts
• Create a custom storefront for your Facebook Shop
• Access a variety of templates for setting up Facebook advertising campaigns

What users think of this app

• Seamless integration with Shopify  
• One of the easiest ways to get a Facebook store up and running 
• Makes it easier to set up effective Facebook advertising campaigns  

Related: Our guide to Facebook Messenger for customer service.

9) Minta Automated Social Videos by Minta Technology

With Minta Technology, Shopify store owners can construct professional social videos and design image posts using a variety of attractive pre-built templates. Minta Technology also gives you the option to schedule social media posts for automatic publishing.

Shopify rating ⭐4.8 (520)

Price: Free plan available

Key features

• Embed videos on your product pages
• Schedule posts up to two months in advance with the content scheduler
• Create fully-branded images and videos for social posts with ease

What users think of this app

• Saves a lot of time otherwise spent scheduling and publishing posts 
• Makes bland social media posts much more unique and eye-catching 
• An impressive variety of templates to choose from 

Related: Our guide to product photography to set customer expectations and boost sales.

10) Gorgias - Live Chat & Helpdesk

Gorgias is an all-in-one customer service helpdesk platform for Shopify stores. Gorgias offers a range of features designed to help you improve your online store’s quality of customer support, while simultaneously reducing your customer support team's workload. 

But what makes Gorgias such an excellent social media Shopify app is the fact that Gorgias integrates with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This allows your customer support agents to respond to messages and mentions across all social media channels from a single, user-friendly dashboard.

Shopify rating ⭐4.4 (533)

Price: From $10/month

Using Shopify Inbox? Compare Gorgias vs. Shopify Inbox.

Key features

• Connect your social logins with your helpdesk: Generate a customer support ticket anytime someone messages your brand, replies to a post, or creates a post mentioning your brand on WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram
• Live chat windows that can be easily transitioned to an email 
• Automated Rules and templated Macros to improve your customer service quality and speed

What users think of this app

• One-click integrations with your social media accounts and other ecommerce tools (for marketing, shipping, customer reviews, referrals, and more)
• Automate tedious customer support tasks to save time for your customer support staff and maximize their impact
• Very helpful for prioritizing customer inquiries to ensure that the most important inquiries receive the fastest possible response
• Excellent customer support to help you set up the tool and optimize your Rules, Views, and Macros
• Convenient to have messages from all social channels (Facebook Messenger and comments, Instagram DMs and comments, and WhatsApp conversations) in one place

Related: The best customer service software on the market.

Gorgias lets you manage all of your Shopify social media apps, minus the headache

Choosing the right social media apps for your ecommerce tech stack can provide you with a number of powerful capabilities, from the ability to automatically publish posts across numerous social networks to the ability to turn your social media profiles into convenient customer support channels.

At Gorgias, we are committed to helping our clients make the most of their chosen social media apps by ensuring that Gorgias is capable of integrating with a variety of popular Shopify apps, including Recart, Octane AI, ShopMessage, ChatDesk, and beyond. To learn more about Gorgias's powerful integrations, be sure to check out our social media app integration page.

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Some customers will arrive on your website, place an order, and move on with their lives. But ideally, given the outsize returns of returning customers, your shoppers also have the option of joining a strong community where they can: 

• Provide feedback that guides product development
• See how other customers use your products
• Engage with relevant (non-sales) content 
• Stay up to date with your brand’s promotions and releases
• Become a fully-fledged brand advocates

Thanks to these customer engagement tactics, a community can lead to better word-of-mouth marketing, referrals, and repeat purchases. According to Gorgias research of over 10,000 ecommerce brands, community building can boost a brand’s revenue by an estimated 6%.

In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into all things customer community management: what it entails, the benefits of community marketing at your company, steps you can follow to create a community management strategy, and tips and tricks to use once you’re in the thick of community management. 

What is customer community management?

Customer community management is the ongoing process of building and maintaining an authentic social network among your customers, staff members, and partners. You can host communities in various places: your brand's social media channels, dedicated online forums, or in person at networking events or brand get-togethers. 

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Two examples of great community management from ecommerce brands include 310 Nutrition and Kitsch. 

310 Nutrition sells meal replacement shakes and has a significant member base through their private 310 Nutrition Community Facebook group. There are over 400,000 members that engage in discussions related to the brand but also discuss nutrition and weight loss. It’s a place for like-minded individuals who share a similar goal of becoming healthier:

Beauty accessory and hair care brand Kitsch utilizes a slightly different community management strategy through TikTok. Kitsch has over 45,000 followers on TikTok and focuses on educating about their products, debuting new products, and running giveaways for their loyal fans. The brand does a great job at keeping its TikTok videos authentic and educational, rather than feeling like a salesroom floor:

The many benefits of a sound customer community management strategy

In addition to boosting revenue, a community management strategy can increase customer engagement and happiness, serve as an additional channel for customer service, and provide a platform for your most loyal customers to share their thoughts. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. 

So, what other benefits can solid community management offer?

Increases customer engagement and customer satisfaction

If your brand can run an effective customer community management strategy, you’ll start to see an increase in customer engagement as well as customer satisfaction. The more your brand's presence overlaps with where your customers are — especially online — the more you can boost engagement. For example, if you provide valuable content on Instagram and engage with people in the comment section, your audience will see your brand as authentic and committed to customers. 

In turn, if customers engage with your brand, they will be more satisfied and will likely return as customers again and again. Even more, for 43% of customers, good customer service breeds more loyal repeat customers — and more brand champions ultimately means more revenue for your brand, thanks to the value of referrals, product reviews, and repeat purchases.

These benefits come at a much lower cost than paid customer acquisition strategies, which require huge investments for customers who might only place one order with your brand — if that.

 Related: Our guide to improving customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, one of the most important metrics for long-term brand growth.

Becomes another convenient and efficient customer service channel

Online community management can also open additional customer service channels for your customers that are more convenient than contacting a call center, using your site’s live chat support, or sending an email. In the community management realm, this could be chatting with a service rep via direct message (DM) on Instagram or troubleshooting an issue on a public Facebook group forum. 

Related: Our guide on customer support in ecommerce.

Provides quality feedback about products or services from your most loyal customers

Feedback is vital to your brand’s success, so additional spaces for customers to share feedback can be extremely valuable. You can even encourage customer feedback about products if your community management strategy includes online forums or social media pages like LinkedIn and Facebook. 

However, there is some risk in asking for feedback in such a public setting. If you'd rather ease into it, you could create a survey that only shows the results to you and your team. Offer something to customers for their time — such as a gift card or entry to a raffle — to incentivize them to participate.

Collecting customer feedback doesn't need to have a complicated format. For example, furniture brand Sabai uses Instagram polls to gauge customer interest in new product designs:

This kind of customer research is a great way to stoke community engagement and mitigate future customer complaints.

Creates more opportunities for upselling and cross-selling

Community management strategies can be effective sales or upselling channels because they give you the chance to educate customers (and let customers educate one another) about how different or additional products can help their needs. 

On top of straightforward product recommendations, you can practice upselling by sharing influencer or user-generated content marketing about new or premium products. Again, the goal isn’t to plug your products directly but incorporate them into content your community might like to see. 

A great example of this is Glamnetic’s TikTok about the do’s and don’ts of eyebrow makeup, which features numerous Glamnetic products:

Related: Our guide to ecommerce upselling and cross-selling for higher average order values (AOVs).

Encourages customers to become your best brand ambassadors

Lastly, a benefit of community management is the ability to create brand ambassadors. You can do this organically by engaging with customers with large followings on social media, but you can also do it more strategically through brand ambassador programs. 

Brand ambassadors provide a type of advocacy that no paid ads could ever achieve. They convince their friends and followers to try your brand, then those friends and followers convince their friends and followers to try your brand, and the cycle continues. This is also a great way to create social proof, or reviews and testimonials you can attach to product pages and your website.

One ecommerce brand that uses this tactic effectively is athleisure company Fabletics. The brand prides itself on being an inclusive, quality, affordable alternative to other high-end athleisure brands like Lululemon. Thus, Fabletics reflects this in their brand ambassador program, where they encourage real people to apply as influencers regardless of their status. In addition, they also work with celebrity influencers who have a passion for health and fitness, such as Kevin Hart and Maddie Ziegler.

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Jaxxon, another brand that creates a community around a niche — chain jewelry for main — capitalizes on brand ambassadors who share content on their own social networks.

A step-by-step guide for creating a customer community management strategy

So, now you have a better understanding of why customer community management has the potential to increase your brand's revenue. But how can you create a community that gets results? Here are six steps to building a customer community management strategy that works for your unique brand.

1) Research social media community management platforms

The first step in developing a community management strategy is to do your research.. Think about where your current customers frequent most when online and where your target audience is. For most brands, the easiest place to gather a group of people will be whichever social media platform you already use the most, whether that’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or another platform. However, if you’re trying to launch a more :

• Discord: A robust platform that lets you host channels, forums, private messages, multimedia sharing, and more
• Reddit: A platform known for authenticity and impressive crowd moderation — be wary of Reddit’s anti-marketing guidelines, though
• Slack: Mostly known for business teams, Slack can also host customer communities
• Thinkific: A community platform that also offers great functionality for educational courses
• Mighty Networks: The top-rated community marketing platform on G2
• Tribe Platform: A community platform best known for its high degree of customization
• A forum native to your website: If you want, you can also try and build community functionality directly on your website

2) Create goals regarding what kind of outcome you’re looking for with your brand community

Next, you’ll want to create goals that align with the outcomes you hope to see from the strategy. Your goals could be tied to revenue, customer service effectiveness, brand awareness, and public relations. Some example goals may include:

• Higher customer retention
• Lower contact rate for your customer service center due to customers finding answers themselves in your online communities
• Increased interest in a new product or renewed interest in an old product
• Better public perception of your brand

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3) Get to know your audience

Though you likely have a solid idea of who your audience is at this point, you’ll want to continue getting to know your audience on the platforms you identified in step 1. You may realize you need a slightly different approach when applying your community management plan to TikTok versus a Facebook forum, for example. Though your audience may be similar in both places, folks expect quick, educational, and entertaining videos on TikTok. In contrast, they may want longer-winded discussions with other customers about your brand’s products on a Facebook forum.

One way to stoke community engagement is to try and spark interactions. For National Baking Day, for example, chocolate brand Montezuma’s requested community members’ best recipes instead of just sharing recipes themselves:

Related: Learn how Montezuma’s saves five hours a week and answers customer questions faster with Gorgias.

4) Craft valuable and thought-provoking content

Building off step 3, you’ll want to set up a plan to create valuable and thought-provoking content to ensure your customers come back to the online communities you are building. The type of content you create for your community management strategy should align with your overall brand image, tone, and voice. 

For example, let's say you're an ecommerce brand that sells sustainable mid-century furniture. Your community-based digital marketing strategy should include educational content that gives insight into your brand's sustainability: Where your products are made, how you source your materials, what your labor practices are, etc. In addition, you also want to create beautiful imagery (photos and videos) that showcase your brand’s furniture in real peoples’ homes. 

For example, fashion brand Princess Polly (and their community members) create outfit inspiration videos that would be independently interesting, regardless of whether you bought the clothes through the brand. Of course, someone watching might also love a particular garment and head to the website:

Related: Learn how Princess Polly helps customers 95% faster with Gorgias.

5) Use tools to measure success and track customer insights

In addition to the actual content that makes up your customer community management strategy, you’ll want to identify ways to measure the success of your program and track insights from your customers. One way to streamline this step is to find a tool that does what you need automatically. We'll highlight a few awesome insight tools below. Keep in mind that a great tool may require more financial investment upfront, but it will save you tons of time in the long run and should eventually pay for itself. 

Powerful community management tools to explore

• Gorgias: As an all-in-one customer support solution, Gorgias can be an excellent choice for your customer service team to keep up with both current customers and future customers alike through email, social media, and chat. 
• Keyhole: Keeping an eye on what is being said about your brand at any given moment can be a whole job by itself. Using a social listening tool like Keyhole can simplify this process by aggregating all mentions of your brand on social media. You can even keep an eye on your competition this way, which can help keep your brand’s strategy fresh and engaging.
• Tweetdeck: If your brand has a Twitter-heavy strategy, Tweetdeck could assist your team with keeping an eye on specific feeds, hashtags, lists, and even managing your own tweets and messages. The tool also allows for data-driven insights.  
• Grytics: If part of your community management strategy relies on running a specific group or online community, such as a private Facebook group, Grytics could help organize your insights, engagement, and overall performance. 

6) Assign a community manager to help your community flourish

The last step in creating your customer community management strategy is assigning a community manager. A dedicated community manager on your team will help execute your strategy and ensure the communities you’re building are supported and continue to grow. 

A community manager is similar to a social media manager, but there is one major difference. A social media manager typically posts and supports a brand from the inside. This usually means posting from a brand’s social media accounts. On the other hand, a community manager posts as a brand ambassador under their own accounts, not the brand's. The community manager will develop the community as a part of the community. A community manager can also be seen as a brand advocate. 

A great community manager would manage your brand’s community with a seriousness that doesn’t jeopardize the brand but also a friendly and personable attitude to keep customers engaged. Specific tasks of a good community manager could include:

• Ensuring customers' questions are answered
• Moderating conflict within the community
• Enforcing terms of service (TOS) policies
• Keeping the community a positive place for customers to interact

Tips and tricks for community management

As you finalize your customer community management strategy and start executing it, here are some best practices to keep in mind to make it as successful as possible.

Always provide a link back to your website

A link to your brand’s website is never a bad idea because each link out there increases the chance of someone in the community going to your website, clicking around, and making a purchase. Even if your community manager can provide an answer with one sentence of text, try to find somewhere to link to on your website, such as an FAQ page. 

Check out how Branch’s Help Center links back to the US (and Canada) store at the top of the portal:

Stay consistent with the company branding tone while responding to customers

Customers and even to-be customers come to know certain brands based on their tone. And even if you are new to community management, you can quickly become known if you create a unique brand voice and tone in online spaces and stick to it. 

One great way to achieve this is with the help of template responses, which we at Gorgias call Macros. With Macros, you can create and maintain a library of templates for frequently asked questions. But unlike most templates, Macros include variables that automatically populate with information like [Customer name] or [Tracking number of last order]. These Macros accelerate your customer service representatives’s workflows without sacrificing personalization or quality:

Create community guidelines and enforce them

Nobody wants to be the Rule Police, but community guidelines in online spaces are vital for mature, inclusive, and productive discourse. Successful community guidelines will also protect your brand if someone on a forum, for example, starts to get out of hand. Additionally, share your brand’s privacy and data protection standards with community members. 52% of social media users rate their privacy and data protection as highly important, so be sure to let them know how you protect their data.

Ask questions, encourage users to share wins/questions, and find other ways to stoke engagement

Remember that the community isn’t just a place for you to make announcements and sell your own products. Find meaningful ways to get people to talk to one another, share insights, and participate in the discussion.

Always respond to community members in a reasonable time frame

As part of your strategy, be sure to decide on what you and the rest of your team believe to be a reasonable time frame to respond to community members. If a community manager doesn’t respond to a community member’s question for several days, the likelihood of that member using the forum again is unlikely. 

Keep content engaging

Even if you are on a forum that uses mostly blocks of text, think of ways to keep the content engaging, such as incorporating photos, videos, infographics, and even podcasts (if applicable). 

One company you can look to as a model for great content creation is Casper, an ecommerce brand specializing in mattresses and pillows. Beyond its diverse content on various social media platforms, the brand has the Sleep Channel on YouTube, which includes a 12-part series that features sleep meditations and bedtime stories.  

Give back to your community

Lastly, it’s vital to dedicate part of your brand’s community management strategy to give back to your community. This can ensure your brand keeps growing and supports brand loyalty among customers. Ways to give back could include things like hosting contests, giveaways, highlighting user-generated content, and providing other incentives to expand the community. 

3 great examples of customer communities

We’ve covered a few examples of great customer communities above, but here are three more that we see as the gold standard.

310 Nutrition’s Facebook Community focuses on education

Though we mentioned 310 Nutrition earlier, the brand is a perfect example of how to run a strong online community focused on education. The fitness and weight-loss brand provides tons of content in its private Facebook group from brand ambassadors who work for 310 nutrition and are experts in the industry, such as trainers and nutritionists. 

The brand shares high-quality videos and articles with tips and tricks to encourage community members to stay motivated on their health journey. 310 Nutrition’s Facebook community also provides members exclusive promotions. All of these strategies help 310 Nutrition’s Facebook group attract new members regularly.

Annmarie Skin Care encourages emotional connections

Skincare brand, Annmarie Skin Care, combines its loyalty program (called the Wild & Beautiful Collective) with an exclusive Facebook group only open to loyalty-program members. Connecting a loyalty program to a closed online community can be a great way to give an exclusive benefit to loyal customers without investing too much overhead. In the community, loyal customers get exclusive content, access to the Annmarie team, and promotions. 

Oracle offers multiple communities for its powerful software

Even outside of the ecommerce world, online customer communities can be extremely beneficial. Oracle, for example, has different communities to bring together peers who use Oracle products and experts to help navigate the brand’s complex offerings. 

Without this kind of interactive community, new and prospective Oracle customers might be confused about the company’s benefits and use cases. The community helps them learn those things without having to talk to a sales agent:

Build a smooth, profitable customer experience with Gorgias

Creating online communities for your customers can take your brand one step closer to improving the overall customer experience. Online community management gives customers a better shopping experience, more avenues to answer their questions, and boosts your company's revenue in the process.

Efficient, helpful customer service and self-service resources like those offered at Gorgias can help you further your community management goals. Sign up and see how our platform can help streamline customer service interactions, automate repetitive tasks so your team members can focus on connecting with customers, and provide customer data to keep you and your team on track. Book my demo.

TL;DR:

• Audit your shipping process early — don’t wait for angry customers. 55% of shoppers expect delivery in under 48 hours, and delays lead to churn, bad reviews, and ticket spikes.
• Map out your full shipping workflow before you scale. From order verification to tracking notifications, smooth logistics reduce errors and save you hours on support.
• Offer the fastest shipping your margins allow and set clear expectations. Use standard, 2-day, or same-day delivery where it makes sense, and always communicate cutoff times at checkout.
• Get strategic with your carriers and pricing. Negotiate rates, test USPS vs. UPS/FedEx vs. DHL, and experiment with free shipping thresholds to increase AOV without killing your margin.
• Optimize packaging, tracking, and returns as part of your brand experience. Use right-sized boxes to cut costs, automate notifications to reduce WISMO tickets, and make returns painless to drive loyalty.

55% of consumers expect delivery within 48 hours, according to ShipStation's 2024 Ecommerce Delivery Benchmark Report. That's how critical shipping is to your ecommerce business. Get it right, and you'll build customer loyalty. Get it wrong, and you'll face abandoned carts, angry customers, and mounting support tickets.

Whether you're launching your first product or scaling to new markets, understanding shipping fundamentals is essential.

This guide walks you through carrier selection, costs, fulfillment, international shipping, and tracking — everything you need for excellent shipping from day one.

What is ecommerce shipping?

Ecommerce shipping is the process of getting products from your warehouse to your customer's address. It includes order fulfillment, carrier handoff, transit, and final delivery.

Shipping is a critical part of customer experience. While customers spend minutes on your site, they interact with your shipping for days. Delivery speed, tracking updates, and package condition all shape how customers perceive your brand. 

Good shipping builds trust and repeat purchases. Poor shipping leads to negative reviews and increased support requests.

The ecommerce shipping process

Here's how orders move from your site to your customer's door:

Order receiving and verification

When a customer checks out, your system validates their shipping address, checks inventory, and reserves the items. 

If you use warehouse management software, it assigns the order to the best fulfillment location based on stock and proximity to the customer. Automation tools can flag issues, like invalid addresses or out-of-stock items early, so your team can resolve them before packing begins.

Pick, pack, and label

Warehouse staff (or automation) locate the products, choose the right packaging, and secure items to prevent damage. Your shipping software then generates labels with barcodes, tracking numbers, and delivery addresses. Integrating label printing with your order management system reduces errors and prevents delivery delays.

Carrier handoff and notifications

Packed orders are staged for carrier pickup. Your system creates a manifest that lists all packages for the carrier to match against. Once scanned, tracking numbers activate and customers receive automated notifications with tracking info and delivery estimates. These updates reduce support inquiries since customers can monitor their orders independently.

Ecommerce shipping methods and delivery speeds

Your shipping options balance cost and speed. The right choice depends on your product margins, customer expectations, and what competitors offer. Here's what each speed means and how to offer it successfully.

Standard, expedited, 2-day, and overnight

Standard shipping uses ground transportation and is the most cost-effective option. Most carriers offer this as their base service level.

How to offer it: Work with major carriers like USPS, UPS, or FedEx for ground shipping rates. Negotiate volume discounts as you scale.

Setting expectations: Display the 5-7 day window clearly at checkout. Send tracking info immediately after the carrier picks up the order. Most customers accept standard shipping when delivery dates are communicated upfront.

Expedited and 2-day shipping (2-4 business days)

Expedited shipping (3-4 days) and 2-day shipping are premium options. Two-day shipping has become a competitive necessity in many categories thanks to Amazon Prime.

How to offer it: Upgrade to faster carrier services (UPS 2nd Day Air, FedEx 2Day). Consider fulfillment centers closer to major customer bases to reduce transit times. Pass costs to customers or absorb them for high-value orders.

Setting expectations: Clearly mark order cutoff times (e.g., “Order by 2pm for 2-day shipping”). Process and ship orders the same day to hit delivery promises.

Same-day and local delivery

Same-day delivery gets orders to customers within hours and works best in urban areas with local inventory. This shipping option is becoming increasingly popular, especially as large online sellers like Temu expand their fast delivery capabilities through partnerships with local and international carriers that handle last-mile logistics efficiently.

How to offer it: Partner with third-party courier services. If you have physical locations, you can also use your own delivery team. Start by limiting availability to specific zip codes where you have inventory nearby. Consider partnering with local warehouses to reduce transit distances.

Setting expectations: Set tight order cutoff times (usually before noon). Offer in-store pickup or curbside options as alternatives that give customers control without same-day delivery costs.

Overnight shipping

Overnight (next-day) is the fastest option with premium pricing. Most businesses pass these costs to customers.

How to offer it: Use overnight air services. Requires same-day order processing and later cutoff times than 2-day shipping.

Setting expectations: Make pricing transparent. Customers paying premium rates expect premium service. Communicate cutoff times clearly and confirm delivery dates before purchase.

Shipping carriers for ecommerce

The right carrier depends on where you're shipping and what speeds you need. Here's a breakdown by region.

US carriers (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL)

USPS is the most affordable for lightweight packages and reaches every US address, including rural areas. Priority Mail offers 2-3 day delivery at competitive rates.

UPS and FedEx are best for speed and reliability, with services ranging from ground to overnight. Both offer tracking, integrations with ecommerce platforms, and small business discounts. Check out FedEx's Small Business program and UPS's ecommerce integrations for better rates.

DHL specializes in international shipping and is ideal if you're expanding globally or regularly serving international customers.

Canada carriers (Canada Post, Purolator, UPS, FedEx)

Canada Post is the go-to for domestic shipping in Canada with affordable rates and nationwide coverage. They offer services from standard ground to expedited delivery.

Purolator provides reliable express shipping across Canada with strong tracking and next-day options for major cities.

UPS and FedEx also operate in Canada and are good options for cross-border shipping between the US and Canada, with expertise in customs clearance.

South America carriers (Correios, Blue Express, Estafeta)

Correios is the national postal service covering all of Brazil, though delivery times can vary significantly in remote areas.

Blue Express offers reliable domestic shipping throughout Chile with tracking capabilities.

Estafeta is a leading private carrier in Mexico with faster delivery than the national postal service and strong ecommerce integrations.

UK and EU carriers (Royal Mail, DPD, DHL, Evri)

Royal Mail is essential for UK domestic shipping, offering 2-3 day standard delivery and next-day tracked services at competitive rates.

DPD is a leading European carrier with reliable service across the continent, precise delivery time windows, and safe place options.

DHL Paket, Evri (formerly Hermes), and Colissimo provide strong regional coverage in Germany, UK, and France respectively. When expanding to Europe, evaluate carriers based on rates, customs support, and integration with your shipping software.

Middle East carriers (Aramex, SMSA Express, Emirates Post)

Aramex is a major regional carrier covering the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and surrounding countries with strong ecommerce capabilities.

SMSA Express in Saudi Arabia offers reliable domestic and regional shipping with cash-on-delivery options popular in the region.

Emirates Post provides affordable shipping throughout the UAE and has partnerships for international delivery.

Africa carriers (The Courier Guy, Aramex, DHL)

Aramex operates across Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. 

DHL provides reliable international shipping throughout the region.

GIG Logistics is a common choice in Nigeria.

Posta Kenya serves Kenya and the surrounding countries.

The Courier Guy and Fastway Couriers are popular for domestic shipping in South Africa.

Asia carriers (Japan Post, SF Express, Kerry Express)

Japan Post provides comprehensive coverage throughout Japan. 

SF Express dominates in China and Hong Kong with fast delivery and strong logistics infrastructure. 

CJ Logistics in South Korea offers reliable domestic shipping with good ecommerce integrations.

Kerry Express operates across Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia with affordable rates and tracking.

J&T Express has rapidly expanded across Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore, and Vietnam with competitive pricing.

Delhivery and Blue Dart are leading carriers for Indian ecommerce with extensive domestic networks. 

Daraz provides reliable shipping across Pakistan with cash-on-delivery options.

Oceania carriers (Australia Post, NZ Post, CouriersPlease)

Australia Post is the primary carrier for Australian domestic shipping with comprehensive coverage and multiple service levels from standard to express.

New Zealand Post (NZ Post) provides reliable nationwide coverage in New Zealand with affordable rates and tracking options.

CouriersPlease and Toll operate across Australia with strong ecommerce integrations and competitive express delivery options.

Shipping rates and pricing models

Your shipping pricing affects both sales and profits. Choose a model that fits your products, average order value, and what competitors offer.

Free shipping

Free shipping drives sales and customer satisfaction, but you need to cover the costs somehow. You can build shipping into your product prices, absorb costs from your margins, or offer free shipping above a minimum order value (like $50).

Pro Tip: Setting a minimum order value for free shipping (like “Free shipping over $50”) encourages larger purchases while protecting your margins on small orders. This taps into customers' desire to “earn” free shipping and can increase your average order value. 

Flat-rate shipping

Flat-rate shipping charges the same amount for all domestic orders regardless of location. This works well if your products are similar in size and weight (like clothing or coffee). Customers like knowing the cost upfront. However, this doesn't work well if you sell items with widely varying sizes or weights.

Real-time carrier rates

Real-time rates calculate actual shipping costs based on the customer's location and pass those costs along at checkout. This is the fairest method since you're only charging what carriers charge you, but unexpected high costs can lead to cart abandonment. 

Pro Tip: Consider adding a shipping calculator on product pages so customers can estimate costs before checkout.

Local delivery pricing

Offer flat-rate or free delivery to customers within a certain radius of your warehouse or store. This cuts carrier costs, provides faster delivery, and turns your location into a competitive advantage. Local delivery options are especially valuable if you have physical stores or regional warehouses.

How to calculate shipping costs

Understanding your shipping costs helps you price accurately and protect margins. Here are the key factors:

DIM weight, zones, and surcharges

Dimensional weight determines cost based on package size, not just actual weight. Carriers calculate it by dividing your package dimensions (length x width x height) by a DIM divisor. You're charged based on whichever is higher: DIM weight or actual weight.

Zone-based pricing means shipping costs increase with distance. Carriers divide regions into zones (typically 2-8 for domestic shipments), and rates go up as you ship farther from your warehouse.

Surcharges can include:

• Residential delivery fees
• Fuel surcharges
• Peak season fees
• Oversized package fees
• Remote area delivery charges

Handling and labor costs

These include the time and labor to:

• Locate products in your warehouse
• Pick items from inventory
• Pack orders securely

Labor costs vary by region and efficiency, but warehouse management systems can reduce handling time.

Packaging materials

Calculate costs for:

• Boxes or poly mailers
• Void fill (bubble wrap, air pillows, paper)
• Tape and labels
• Branded inserts

Pro Tip: Use the smallest box that safely fits your products to reduce both material costs and DIM weight charges.

Operational overhead

Don't forget these ongoing costs:

• Warehouse or storage space
• Shipping software subscriptions
• Label printers and scales
• Customer service time for shipping inquiries and tracking questions

Packaging for ecommerce

The right packaging protects products, controls costs, and reflects your brand.

Right-sizing and materials

Right-sizing means using boxes that match your product dimensions. Oversized boxes increase shipping costs through dimensional weight pricing, while undersized boxes risk damage and returns.

Common packaging materials:

• Corrugated boxes: Durable and stackable, best for protection but more expensive
• Poly mailers: Lightweight and cost-effective for soft goods like clothing
• Padded envelopes: Good for small, semi-fragile items
• Void fill options: Bubble wrap, air pillows, crinkle paper, or biodegradable alternatives

Pro Tip: Audit your most common orders and stock 3-5 box sizes that cover 80% of shipments.

Branded vs. plain packaging

Branded packaging creates a memorable unboxing experience with custom printed boxes, tissue paper, thank-you cards, and inserts. This builds loyalty and encourages social sharing, but costs more and requires minimum order quantities.

Plain packaging minimizes costs and works well for price-sensitive customers or commodity products.

Middle ground: Use plain outer packaging with branded elements inside (tissue paper, stickers, cards) to create a good experience without the full expense of custom printing.

Eco-friendly choices

Sustainable packaging appeals to environmentally conscious customers. Options include:

• Recyclable corrugated boxes
• Biodegradable poly mailers (made from cornstarch or plant materials)
• Compostable void fill
• FSC-certified paper products

Cost consideration: Eco-friendly materials typically cost 10-30% more than conventional options.

Carbon-neutral shipping: Some brands purchase carbon offsets to neutralize transportation emissions. This can differentiate your brand and appeal to customers willing to wait longer or pay more for sustainable options.

Labels, insurance, and shipping compliance

Accurate labels, proper insurance, and compliance with shipping regulations protect your business and ensure smooth deliveries.

Shipping labels

Shipping labels include your customer's address, return address, tracking barcodes, carrier routing codes, and handling instructions. Labels must meet carrier specifications exactly, or packages can be delayed, returned, or lost.

Common label errors to avoid:

• Address typos or incorrect ZIP codes
• Missing apartment or suite numbers
• Improperly formatted barcodes

How to print labels efficiently

Shipping software: Use platforms like ShipStation, Shippo, or ShipBob that connect to your ecommerce store and carrier accounts. These tools automatically pull order data and generate carrier-compliant labels, eliminating manual entry errors.

Label printers: Invest in a thermal label printer (like Rollo or Zebra) that prints 4x6 labels without ink. These are faster and more cost-effective than standard printers for high-volume shipping.

Address validation: Most shipping software includes address validation that checks addresses against carrier databases before printing, catching errors early and preventing delivery issues.

Batch printing: If you're shipping multiple orders at once, use batch printing features to print all labels in one go rather than individually.

When to insure shipments

Shipping insurance reimburses you when items are lost, stolen, or damaged in transit. Carriers provide basic liability (typically $100 for domestic shipments), but this rarely covers high-value items. You can purchase additional carrier insurance, use third-party providers like Shipsurance, or self-insure by absorbing losses.

Important: Customers expect replacements whether you're insured or not — insurance protects your margins, not their experience.

Here’s a table to determine if insurance is a good idea:

Cost consideration: Insurance typically costs 1-3% of order value. Compare this against your actual loss rate to decide if it's worth it.

Special handling and dangerous goods

Some products require special handling due to safety regulations:

Lithium batteries (in electronics, vaping products, power tools):

• Require special labels, packaging, and documentation
• Face quantity restrictions on air transport
• Subject to strict fire safety regulations

Hazmat products (flammable liquids, aerosols, certain cosmetics):

• Require hazmat certification
• Need specialized carriers
• Include items like alcohol, certain cleaning products, and some beauty items

Restricted items vary by carrier and destination, but commonly include:

• Alcohol and tobacco
• CBD products
• Certain health and beauty items

Next steps: Before launching products in these categories, check carrier resources on dangerous goods and restricted items. Non-compliance can result in shipment rejection, fines, or loss of carrier accounts.

Related: Learn how to deal with lost packages in ecommerce.

Tracking, notifications, and returns

Good tracking and easy returns reduce support requests and build customer trust.

Proactive order tracking

WISMO (Where Is My Order) inquiries are among the largest sources of customer support tickets. Customers want visibility into their orders, and when they don't have it, they contact you. Proactive tracking updates via email and SMS keep customers informed and dramatically reduce support volume.

Send these tracking notifications:

• Order confirmation
• Shipping confirmation with tracking number
• Out for delivery alert
• Delivery confirmation

Each message should include a direct tracking link and expected delivery window.

Advanced tracking options:

• Use services like AfterShip or Route to create branded tracking pages that keep customers on your site instead of carrier sites
• Add self-service order tracking to your website's chat widget so customers can check status instantly
• Consider AI chatbots that pull real-time tracking data and answer questions 24/7

Returns and exchanges

Easy returns build customer trust and encourage future purchases. A complicated returns process drives customers to competitors.

Keep these returns best practices in mind:

• Return policy: Display clearly on product pages and at checkout
• Return window: Offer 30–60 days (industry standard)
• Return process: Use automated RMA forms that collect info upfront
• Return labels: Provide prepaid labels to reduce friction
• Return portal: Give customers visibility into return status‍
• Communication: Send updates at each step (received, inspected, refunded)

Common returns mistakes to avoid:

• Hiding return policies in fine print
• Manual return processing that slows response times
• Offering free returns without accounting for costs in your pricing

Tool recommendation: Use a returns management tool such as Loop or Returnly to integrate with your store and customer service software to streamline the process.

Domestic vs. international shipping

Domestic shipping is straightforward: products move within one country under consistent rules. International shipping adds complexity with customs, duties, taxes, and documentation requirements. Here's what you need to know to expand globally.

Duties, taxes, and HS codes

Duties are import taxes charged when goods enter a country. Rates vary by product type and destination, typically ranging from 0-20% of product value.

Taxes (like VAT in Europe or GST elsewhere) are consumption taxes applied to products sold in those countries.

Who pays? You have two options:

• DDP (Delivered Duty Paid): You pay all duties and taxes upfront. Customers receive packages with no additional charges.
• DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid): Customers pay duties and taxes upon delivery. This can surprise customers and lead to refused shipments.

HS codes (Harmonized System codes) are standardized product classification codes that determine duty rates. Every international shipment needs an accurate HS code on customs documents. Incorrect codes cause delays, audits, or wrong charges.

Pro Tip: Most shipping software lets you store HS codes for products. Services like Zonos or Avalara automatically calculate duties based on HS codes and destinations.

International shipping documentation

All international shipments require a commercial invoice with:

• Sender and recipient information
• Product descriptions and quantities
• Product values and HS codes
• Country of origin

For small, low-value shipments, simplified forms (CN22 or CN23) may be enough depending on the destination.

De minimis thresholds

De minimis thresholds are value limits below which countries waive duties and simplify customs. These vary by country:

Shipping below these thresholds simplifies customs and speeds up delivery. However, many countries are lowering thresholds to protect domestic businesses, so check current limits before shipping.

Fulfillment options (FBM, FBA, 3PLs)

You can handle order fulfillment yourself or outsource it to third-party providers. Your choice depends on order volume, budget, and how much control you need.

In-house fulfillment (FBM - Fulfilled by Merchant)

You handle warehousing, picking, packing, and shipping yourself.

Pros:

• Complete control over packaging and customer experience
• Can customize everything (branded inserts, gift wrapping)
• Cost-effective at lower volumes

Cons:

• Requires warehouse space, labor, and supplies
• Time-intensive as you scale
• You handle all operational challenges

Best for: New businesses with low order volumes or those wanting complete control over branding.

Third-party logistics (3PLs)

3PLs handle receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping for you.

Pros:

• Easily scale during peak seasons (Black Friday, holidays)
• Distributed inventory for faster delivery
• Better carrier rates through volume discounts
• Focus on growing your business instead of operations

Cons:

• Less direct control over fulfillment
• Per-unit fulfillment fees
• Dependent on 3PL's service quality

Best for: Growing businesses shipping 100+ orders per month or those expanding to multiple regions.

Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)

Send inventory to Amazon warehouses. They fulfill orders from Amazon.com and potentially your own website through Multi-Channel Fulfillment.

Pros:

• Access to Amazon Prime badge and two-day shipping
• Amazon's massive logistics network
• Handles customer service for Amazon orders

Cons:

• Storage fees (especially for slow-moving inventory)
• Strict packaging requirements
• Less control over customer experience
• Can be expensive for non-Amazon orders

Best for: Businesses primarily selling on Amazon or wanting Prime eligibility.

How to choose a 3PL

When evaluating 3PL partners, look for:

Questions to ask:

• Does your system integrate with my ecommerce platform?
• What are your storage fees per cubic foot?
• How do you handle branded packaging?
• Can you provide references from similar businesses?

Ecommerce shipping integrations and APIs

The right tools connect your store to carriers and automate shipping tasks. Here are the essentials:

Shipping software:

• ShipStation: Multi-carrier platform with batch label printing and automation rules
• Shippo: Simple API for rate comparison and label generation
• AfterShip: Branded tracking pages and proactive shipping notifications
• Easyship: Good for international shipping with duties calculation
• ShipBob: 3PL with built-in shipping software

Ecommerce platform integrations:

• Shopify: Native apps pull order data and sync tracking automatically (Advanced plans include real-time carrier rates at checkout)
• BigCommerce: Native carrier integrations (USPS, UPS, FedEx) plus third-party apps
• WooCommerce: Shipping plugins and carrier extensions via WordPress
• Magento: Extension marketplace for shipping solutions (requires more technical setup)

Customer service integrations:

Connect shipping software to your help desk (Gorgias, Zendesk, Freshdesk) so support teams can view order status and tracking without switching systems

Shipping software checklist:

• Automatic order import from your store
• Multi-carrier rate comparison
• Batch label printing
• Address validation
• Tracking number sync back to your store
• Branded tracking pages

Streamline shipping support with conversational AI

Shipping inquiries — tracking questions, delivery issues, returns — make up a huge portion of customer support tickets. Gorgias automates these routine questions with AI while keeping responses personal and accurate.

Connect your store, carriers, and returns system to one platform so customers get instant answers to “Where is my order” without waiting for your team. Automate proactive notifications for delivery exceptions and let customers track orders or start returns through self-service flows.

Ready to reduce support volume and speed up response times? Book a demo.

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Most ecommerce businesses understand that offering great products at a reasonable price isn’t enough. We know that customer experience is key to gaining long-term loyal customers, obtaining reviews and referrals, and growing in the long term. But too many brands believe that a great customer experience means surprising and delighting customers. 

Frankly, handwritten notes and freebies don’t make for a great customer experience or a winning strategy. That’s not why customers reach out to your brand, nor is it what drives customer retention. They reach out to support for quick, helpful, effortless experiences; this is what makes top-notch customer service so important. Then (and only then) should you put the cherry on top with surprising, delightful extras.

Why “surprise and delight” is not a viable customer service strategy

Top-notch customer support is like an ice cream sundae, and efforts to thrill customers are the sprinkles and cherries on top. Sprinkles and cherries are great, but they don’t make for a satisfying sundae on their own. 

Customers won’t be that amused if you make them wait on hold for 45 minutes and greet them with lighthearted jokes. Likewise, you’ll make a customer feel frustrated if you spend your budget on freebies but ignore implementing customer feedback about the product.

More than anything, customers who contact a brand's customer service team want their problems solved quickly and well. Fast, helpful, low-effort experiences are the base of your sundae, and any extra efforts to delight the customer are sure to fall flat if you can't do that. 

Customer service interactions tend to drive disloyalty, not loyalty

According to Emplifi, 49% of consumers have left a brand in the past year due to a poor customer experience. Also, according to The Effortless Experience, an influential customer service book by best-selling author Matthew Dixon, customer service interactions are 4x more likely to drive customer disloyalty than they are to drive customer loyalty.

If 20% of support interactions leave customers delighted and 80% leave customers frustrated, your greatest opportunity is to reduce frustration, not chase after hard-to-achieve delight. 

Ecommerce customer delight isn’t linked to loyalty (and it’s expensive)

The Effortless Experience also reveals that going “above and beyond” isn’t even what drives that 20% of loyalty-building interactions. While companies assume exceeding customer expectations generate superfans, customers are generally just as satisfied when companies simply meet their expectations.

And 80% of companies who use customer delight as a strategy say they spend heavily on providing this delight: More overhead from giveaways, VIP kickbacks, refunds, and policy exceptions. Given that these delightful experiences don’t correlate to customer loyalty, this is not money well spent.

Support’s biggest impact is to mitigate disloyalty by reducing customer effort

If we zoom into what drives customers away, the most common issue is a high degree of effort — not a lack of gifts or delightful conversations. Common reasons for high-effort experiences include:

• Multiple contacts to resolve an issue
• Repeating information
• Getting transferred between channels

The negative impact of these high-effort experiences is staggering. According to The Effortless Experience, a whopping 96% of customers who had high-effort experiences feel disloyal to those companies afterward.

To put it simply, most companies are trying to go “above and beyond” before they effectively provide the baseline of customer service, which is a helpful and low-effort experience. 

How to minimize customer effort: The better version of surprise and delight

The key to customer retention is reducing customer effort. 94% of customers intend to purchase after a low-effort experience compared to a slim 4% after high-effort experiences, making it an essential part of a best-in-class customer experience. Lowering customer effort involves designing an intuitive user experience, decreasing the number of steps required to complete tasks, improving reply and response times (along with other key customer support metrics), and using forward resolution in support. 

Here are five more quick wins to reduce customer effort in ecommerce:

1) Offer self-service functionality on your website

88% of customers expect your online store to offer some kind of self-service. Self-service resources could be as simple as a frequently-asked questions (FAQ) page or more interactive functionality to manage orders without having to reach out to customer support. 

For merchants using Gorgias, you can set up a Help Center that does both in just a few clicks. Customers can read articles about your brand and shipping policy, and check their delivery status (which they do an average of 4.6 times for every order) instantaneously.

Here’s a great example of self-service order management on Steve Madden’s Help Center:

Learn more about self-service order management with Gorgias.

2) List answers to pre-sales questions in a help center

Once you have an FAQ page or customer knowledge base, one type of question to proactively answer is pre-sales questions. These are questions potential customers have while mulling over a purchase in their heads before hitting “Place order” at checkout:

• Is it the right size for me?
• Is it compatible with products I already own?
• Can I return it if I’m dissatisfied?
• Will it arrive before the holidays?

If customers have to reach out and wait for an answer, they might just abandon the purchase and look for another online retailer that better addresses their questions. At least, that’s the case for the 63% of customers who attempt to solve issues via self-service support before reaching out.

So, don’t delay in making clear sizing guides, shipping policies, returns policies, and other self-service information that your customers need to confidently make a purchase.

3) Use forward resolution in customer support to avoid unnecessary follow-ups

Forward resolution is the practice of solving anticipated issues for customers before the customer even thinks to ask.

Let’s look at a real-world example: A customer inquires about shipping times to their local region. The support agent can see they have items in their cart that are on pre-order and, while answering the customer’s question about shipping time, also tells them that pre-order items are sent separately and that they can track delivery status through self-service. The agent has answered the initial question and forward-resolved two potential issues — reducing effort for the customer.

If you can, audit multi-touch tickets from the past few months to understand which questions tend to have natural follow-ups you can proactively answer. Then, add that follow-up information to your templates, or Macros if you use Gorgias, to improve your customer experience.

Here’s a Macro that not only answer’s a customer question about the location of an order, but lets them know when that order will be shipped:

Learn more about resolution time from Gorgias’s Director of Customer Support.

4) Know more, ask les‍s

One of the most damaging mistakes is making customers repeat themselves. Agents need that information to do their jobs well, but asking a customer to repeat their story at every juncture is a surefire way to damage a valuable customer relationship.

Instead, give customer service representatives all the customer context they need from the jump. Gorgias’s customer sidebar gives agents valuable context like purchase and communication history (from Shopify or BigCommerce), reviews information, cart data, social media engagement, and much more so customers don’t need to constantly retell their story.

Learn more about Gorgias's customer sidebar (and how it helps you better understand and serve your customers).

5) Make your support more convenient with automation and omnichannel

90% of customers say an “immediate” response is important, and 78% of customers prefer a variety of support channels to get in contact with customer support. 

To answer questions faster, consider using a customer support platform with automation features to help your team move faster and automatically respond to repetitive customer questions. Gorgias’ automated system can help you prioritize customer service requests, tag the appropriate agent, and close no-response tickets so you spend less time on admin work. And, with the help of pre-written Macros, automated Rules, and chatbot-like self-service flows, you can send instant, personalized responses to questions like, “Where is my order?”

Additionally, explore expanding to an omnichannel or multichannel ecommerce customer service strategy, which gives customers more touchpoints for your brand. Customers value the convenience of texting your brand, calling your brand, and hearing from you on social media. If you’re only available via email, you will likely lose customers due to high effort.

Read our guide to omnichannel customer service or check out our unified helpdesk to learn more.

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6 ways to delight ecommerce customers (once they have a low-effort experience)

Don’t get us wrong, customers usually enjoy an extra bit of pizazz or a freebie. And those sprinkles can even boost your brand’s conversion rate in the short term and boost customer loyalty in the long term — as long as they’re not associated with a high-effort experience. 

Take a look at the following customer delight strategies and consider adopting them only once you’ve developed a low-effort customer experience as a foundation.

 1) Offer free shipping (the new normal for customer satisfaction)

According to a 2021 survey, 66% of customers expect free shipping with every online purchase. This means that free shipping is often more of an expectation than a bonus — thanks, Amazon. Nevertheless, offering free shipping to your customers can still be a great way to encourage customer delight in many cases.

Customers love the word "free," even if the money that they are saving is only a few dollars. In fact, many stores can raise their product pricing slightly to make up for shipping costs and still see a boost in conversion rate from offering free shipping. 

If you can’t offer free shipping to every customer, setting qualifying amounts is a good way to delight customers with free shipping while also driving higher average order values.

Woxer is one ecommerce brand that offers free shipping on all domestic orders and some international orders. Plus — another best practice — Woxer makes this information easily accessible as a Quick Response in their live chat widget.

For more help on how to offer free shipping without losing too much money, check out our guide to offering free shipping.

2) Launch a customer referral program

Creating a customer referral portal or program offers dual benefits. For one, it helps your brand attract new customers by encouraging them to refer their friends, family, and colleagues through word-of-mouth advertising. Along with introducing your brand to new potential customers, referral programs can also be a great way to blow away your customers: Everyone loves the opportunity to earn discounts and rewards!

If your ecommerce company has a strong net promoter score (NPS), you’re positioned to launch a referral program, capitalize on that goodwill, and delight your customers. If you want to start a referral marketing program, check out tools like Extole which systematically reward customers who bring you business via word of mouth.

3) Post user-generated content on social media

Recognition is its own reward, and a shout-out on social media is something most customers enjoy. Highlighting customers who use your products, positive customer reviews, and other delightful interactions allow you to celebrate customers and add social proof to your social media profile. It also reduces the number of content marketing materials you need to produce on your own.

Marine Layer's Instagram is full of customer shout-outs and other user-generated content that your brand may be able to pull inspiration from:

4) Use loyalty programs to reward VIP customers

Like a referral program, a loyalty program rewards customers for repeat purchases and continued brand loyalty. If your customer experience is already smooth enough to bring in repeat customers, delighting those superfans with rewards is a strong strategy.

If you already use Gorgias, you can integrate loyalty platforms like LoyaltyLion to make the customer experience even more seamless. For example, esmi Skin Minerals uses Gorgias and its integration with Loyalty Lion to bring loyalty data into Gorgias and provide even more personalized, automated service to shoppers. Thanks to this powerful integration, esmi achieved a 58% boost in brand loyalty program enrollment and a 2X increase in average loyalty program member spend. 

Learn more about how esmi uses Gorgias and Loyalty Lion to improve loyalty program enrollment rates and double the lifetime value of its loyal customers. 

5) Celebrate customer milestones for loyal customers

Even if you don’t have an official loyalty program, you can celebrate your VIP customers at key milestones like birthdays or the anniversary of their first purchase. On top of sharing some warm and fuzzies (and maybe free product), one benefit of this kind of celebration is to potentially get a shoutout from customers on social media for your surprise. 

Check out our CX Growth Playbook to learn how to implement this tip with Zapier, plus read about 18 other tactics to drive growth through customer experience.

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6) Optimize proactive customer service across the customer journey

One way to delight customers is to move beyond purely reactive customer service, which requires customers to reach out to get help. With proactive customer service, a combination of directly reaching out to customers and creating self-service resources, you can help more potential customers, reduce cart abandonment, and improve your brand’s customer experience.

Proactive customer support could include self-service resources, like those described above. It also includes non-intrusive chat campaigns, which let you automatically reach out to customers who display certain behaviors to offer support. For example, you could reach out to customers who linger on a product page to ask if they have questions about the product or need a recommendation on sizing.

Here’s what Ohh Deer, an online retailer that sells delightful stationery, says about chat campaigns:

 “With chat campaigns, the goal is to remove any customer equivocation and get the customer to the product they really want.”
– Alex Turner, Customer Experience Manager at Ohh Deer 

Learn how Ohh Deer drives $12,500 each quarter through Gorgias chat.

Delight and retain your ecommerce customers with low-effort support 

The key to great customer service isn’t some sparkly delight. It’s efficient, convenient, and helpful support that customers can access in a variety of ways. 

With Gorgias, ecommerce brands can access the tools and integrations they need to automate time-consuming tasks, provide instant answers, and reduce the number of times customers have to write in and wait for your customer support team’s answer. Through our platform, your customer support team becomes more than just a team to answer customer questions — it becomes a revenue-generating machine.

Book a demo to see how Gorgias can help your ecommerce brand.

Today, we’re announcing pricing updates for our Pro, Advanced, and Enterprise customers, along with customers using our Automate product. We’re also introducing a voice & SMS add-on that will allow you to communicate with customers on even more channels, enabling brands to continue providing the best customer support for their loyal customers.

This follows our recent announcement of a $10 monthly starter plan (50 tickets), which makes our platform more accessible to all merchants.

Over the past few years, we’ve proudly shipped many new features to serve our mission: empowering all merchants to deliver an exceptional customer experience that drives revenue.

Now, with Gorgias, you can:

• Interact with customers on more channels, including DMs and comments on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook — plus voice, SMS, and native help centers
• Sell more products with chat improvements (including native Shopify product links) and revenue statistics
• Work more efficiently with ticket auto-assign, improved Shopify actions, and live statistics that keep your team on track
• Integrate with your favorite tools, including the most advanced Klaviyo integration on the market and 80+ other integrations since mid-2019

Here’s a snapshot of the new pricing, which will go into effect in the next few months and empower further innovation on our product:

What is changing with our prices and plans

Here's an outline of everything that's changing:

Pricing increases for Pro, Advanced, and Enterprise plans:

Pricing is changing for Merchants on the Pro, Advanced, and Enterprise plans.

Updated pricing

• Pro: $360/month or $3,600/year
• ‍Advanced: $900/month or $9,000/year
• ‍Enterprise: Contact us

Billable ticket limit decreases

We’re also updating the billable ticket limit for Basic and Advanced plans to better reflect the number of tickets merchants of this size typically see each month:

Updated billable ticket limit:

• ‍Basic: 300 tickets/month
• ‍Advanced: 5,000 tickets/month

Doubling down on Automate

Automate includes several valuable features that allow you to automate up to 25% of total customer interactions. This means you’ll spend more time driving revenue through high-quality support and less time handling repetitive tickets, such as where is my order (WISMO) interactions.

Some of the features only available in Automate include:

• Quick Answer Flows
• Help Center / Self-Service features
• Email Auto-Responders and Auto-Close Rules

We initially launched Automate with introductory pricing in late 2021. We had great feedback from early adopters, especially after improving features like updated Quick Response Flows and Self-Service Flows. Now that Automate is delivering on its promise, we're ending our introductory pricing for the add-on and the full price will be reflected for all add-on subscribers.

Here is the updated Automate pricing:

Updated pricing

• ‍Basic: $30/month or $300/year
• ‍Pro: $180/month or $1,800/year
• ‍Advanced: $450/month or $4,500/year
• ‍Enterprise: Contact us

Legacy Self-Service features added to Automate

Furthermore, some of our legacy customers currently have access to a smaller set of automation features, separate from Automate. We will discontinue support for those legacy automation features for monthly users by December 31st, 2022. For users on annual plans, we will honor their legacy features until their renewal date. We encourage all customers to explore Automate, which provides a superior automation experience.

Automate overages increasing

As part of this pricing update, overages for accounts with Automate will be increased to account for the cost increase for the account. This will help us avoid pricing anomalies and keep things fair for customers across the board.

New features for some of our earliest customers

Currently, some of our oldest customers are on plans that we no longer support. We will migrate customers to the plan that most closely matches their current billable ticket count. This migration will also grant access to a suite of new features that were unavailable on those legacy plans:

• Managing Instagram DMs in Gorgias
• Agent Statistics
• Customizable Help Center
• Any additional upcoming product releases

We’re introducing a $10 plan for merchants that are getting started

We’ve heard from merchants who just launched their stores that they need a way to chat with customers on their website and host help center articles that proactively answer common customer questions. So we introduced a $10 plan with up to 50 tickets, that includes most of the features available to other Gorgias users.We’re excited to serve more small businesses with this new plan.

When are these changes happening?

For our customers paying monthly, these changes will come into effect two billing cycles from today (September 21, 2022). Your plan and price will change by November or December 2022, depending on when you first signed up for Gorgias.

For our annual customers, we will update your plan and prices in 2023 on your billing renewal date. Any annual customers renewing before the end of 2022 will keep their existing prices and features for another year, until 2023.

Why are we updating pricing?

Our product has grown and evolved significantly in the past three years since we last updated pricing in mid-2019. In order to continue on this trajectory, we plan to heavily invest in our product to bring even more value to our ecommerce merchants, growing their businesses.

Here are the biggest recent areas of growth for Gorgias:

Interact with customers on more channels

As a merchant, you understand the importance of showing up where your customers are. We have made great strides in this arena to bring you to all of the places your customers are expecting you to be, all in your single Gorgias feed.

Our social media channels have evolved to best-in-class status, allowing you to interact with customers in all of the different ways they might reach out. Whether you’re responding to comments on your ads to increase return on ad spend or handling angry customers that slide into your DMs, we have you covered on major social networks.

And when you want to help customers help themselves, we now have a robust help center to answer all of their top questions without human attention. You can even upgrade your help center with self-service features like order tracking.

Sell more products

Your customer experience should drive revenue — happy customers are the best fuel for growth.

This belief is at the center of Gorgias’ philosophy and guides our product development. As a result, the Gorgias platform has gotten much better at driving revenue for our customers, resulting in $1.1 billion in support-driven revenue in 2021 alone.

Want to learn more? Read our CX growth playbook to drive 44% more revenue through customer experience.

Our chat improvements and native Shopify product links turn your agents into sales reps, and our revenue statistics show just how much impact your team has had.

And this is going to be one of our biggest areas of focus going forward, so expect lots of new features like refined chat campaigns, one-time discount codes, and advanced sales analytics.

We’re even building a full-featured Revenue Add-on to help you increase your revenue impact. More on that in our Series C announcement.

Work more efficiently

Gorgias is built around the unique needs of ecommerce merchants, and we’ve designed the tool to be the fastest platform for ecommerce customer service teams right out of the box.

Agent and team efficiency have been areas where our platform has seen some of the most improvement over the past few years.

We have Macro suggestions and a Rule library, now, to get you started fast and make sure you’re never at a loss for words. And you can make all the necessary edits to a given Shopify order without leaving the Gorgias platform.

Plus, our advanced dashboards keep your whole team on track and show the impact of your process improvements in real time.

When you spend less time on repetitive tasks and tickets, you can spend more time with the tickets that matter to your business — the ones that actually require human attention.

Integrate your favorite tools

In 2019, we had just started to connect with your favorite ecommerce apps.

Now, Gorgias is your command hub for the entire customer experience, integrating data from all of your favorite apps to make it all more actionable. That’s a major way we help you make better decisions and provide a world-class experience for your customers.

Our Klaviyo integration has been upgraded to enable even more advanced functionality, and we have also added 80 other integrations that upgrade your support process.

And we’re not done yet — with a host of new integrations coming soon, we’re going to keep bringing more insight to your first-party customer data — across all of the different platforms you use.

Questions? Reach out to our team

We understand you may have further questions about which changes will impact you. For further clarity, please check the emails associated with your account for a more detailed breakdown of the specific changes that apply to your account. You may also reach out to our support team or connect with your Customer Success Manager for additional details.

Our mission continues to be helping merchants deliver an exceptional customer experience. We believe this is how you’ll build long-lasting relationships with your customers to maximize retention and grow your business.

As an online shopper, you don’t typically take products at face value. You’ll only turn over your money if you feel like you can trust what the brand is offering, and product reviews are probably part of your decision-making process when considering a purchase.

Your ecommerce customers think the same way. They use product reviews to determine your product's true value and whether it’s worth buying. Product reviews are the heavyweights in the ring of online shopping, and this article explains how you can leverage them to get more sales and generate more revenue.

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Why are product reviews an important lever for ecommerce?

Product reviews are a powerful source of social proof, which builds trust and confidence in your brand. Adding reviews to your product pages can result in an estimated revenue lift of 1.5%, according to Gorgias’ data of over 10,000 ecommerce stores. This is possible because product reviews stand as testimonials for uncertain shoppers — perhaps more convincing than any sales or marketing you can create yourself. 

Plus, reviews increase traffic to your product page through SEO. Google My Business and search engines pick up keywords that customers use in their reviews and, with enough reviews, your page will show up on as a result for organic searches of those keywords. Also, getting more eyes on your product increases product awareness — and ultimately, conversions.

But not all reviews are good. There’s a delicate balance between good and bad reviews, and both of them have an impact on your bottom line. 

The impact of good product reviews

• Bright Local’s Consumer Review Survey shows that 94% of consumers are more likely to use a business because of positive reviews
• 79%  of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations by family and friends
• 70% of consumers use rating filters when searching for businesses: they filter for businesses with 4-star ratings or higher
• Five-star reviews are suspicious to consumers on their own and shoppers find a mixture of positive and negative reviews more trustworthy

The impact of bad product reviews

• Bad reviews turn customers away: 94% of consumers have avoided businesses with bad reviews, and 53% of consumers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week.
• Only 19% of consumers would use a business with a fewer-than-3-star rating.

How to get product reviews on your ecommerce website

If you use an ecommerce platform to power your ecommerce website, it’s easy to  turn on the setting to let users leave reviews. Here are some links to help you get started if you use Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento:

• Shopify’s Product Reviews app
• BigCommerce’s product reviews setting
• Magento’s native commerce review app

If you use another ecommerce platform, you’ll likely be able to find a setting or app to activate review functionality.

But just because customers can leave reviews doesn’t mean they will. Here are some tips to get more ecommerce product reviews.

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6 simple ways to drive more positive reviews for your products

The business impact of positive product reviews is undeniable. Below, we’ve described six ways to increase your chances of getting positive reviews from customers.

1) Have a pleasant post-purchase experience and ask directly in an email

The post-purchase experience is where you transform new customers into your brand’s biggest fans. This is particularly important since customer experience is the top factor driving online consumers' loyalty. An amazing post-purchase experience leaves customers confident that orders are being delivered and provides answers to their most pressing questions. It's also an opportunity for your brand to provide meaningful resources that help them use your products in the best possible ways.

Each confirmation email you send to a customer allows you to position your brand as an expert. But that’s not all: You can use this email to ask customers to leave a review and provide feedback on their experience. Both requests help you better understand how close you are to meeting your customer's needs and make adjustments as necessary.

Here’s a great, branded example of a review request email from Fly By Jing:

2) Incentivize customers to fill out reviews by offering discounts or freebies

Providing incentives increases the number of reviews a company is likely to receive. This is great, but there can be a downside: Incentives can sometimes influence customers to leave positive reviews even if their experiences with your products aren’t necessarily positive. This might sound great, but you want to be sure that you're striving for honest positive feedback. 

Incentives can be a great tool, but don’t overuse them since they can skew a review's honesty. Remember, honest insights are the ones that will help your ecommerce brand improve.

Anthropologie recently offered customers a 20%-off coupon for leaving a review:

3) Automate your “ask for reviews” process for easy reviewing

Automating the “ask for reviews” process allows you to get reviews from customers at exactly the right time. An “ask for review” automation could be as simple as emailing a rating scale that allows customers to rate their most recent experience with your brand. The trick is to send that message at just the right time.

Dmitry Dragilev, Founder of JustReachOut, reveals that automating the company’s review collection process tripled its rate of positive reviews. Automations helped them send review requests immediately after interacting with customers.

Several tools can help you automate the review collection process. Boast and JungleScout are two of the most popular options for ecommerce stores. You can also use Zapier to create automations specific to your preferred tools.

4) Make sure to target satisfied customers and to ask nicely for a review

Dragilev also mentions that one of the mistakes he and his team made was asking for a review after every customer support call. This resulted in only 10% of the reviews being positive. Also, they didn’t know whether the customers they were targeting had recently engaged with the product since they only sent out their review emails on Mondays.

It was only after automating sending review request emails to customers who were satisfied with the resolution to their support request that the number of positive reviews increased. The lesson here is that targeting satisfied customers leads to more positive reviews. 

5) Make the review process as simple as possible 

A simple review process reduces friction and increases the chances of getting a response to your review request. You can simplify the review process by:

• Offering multiple ways for customers to review your brand
• Providing access to the review form on platforms your customers frequently use
• Asking minimal questions — no more than three, and ideally one
• Making the questions easy to answer (e.g., an emoji scale as a way for customers to express how they feel about their experience rather than having them respond to an open-ended question)

Here’s a great, minimal review request from Book of the Month:

6) Use social media channels to request product reviews

Social media channels are where your customers likely hang out the most. This is why your ecommerce social media strategy should include requesting reviews. The beauty of social media is that there are many ways for you to both ask your customers for reviews and showcase what they have to say about your brand. For instance, you could create a competition based on user-generated content (UGC) that shows how real customers use your product and what they genuinely think about it.

The most powerful review sites to consider

It’s important to consider where you gather reviews from. Here are four of the most common avenues for ecommerce brands to consider:

Your own ecommerce site 

Imagine you’re searching for an affordable wedding dress online. You see a gorgeous dress you adore but you’re a bit skeptical since you aren’t able to see and feel the dress in person. Worse yet — you can’t even try it on. The next thing you do is scroll down to the reviews. How else will you know what to expect from this dress? To your dismay, there aren’t any reviews! You have two choices — trust your gut and buy the dress blindly or find another dress that has reviews. 

Chances are you’ll choose option two and you aren’t alone. 98% of consumers read online reviews before purchasing products. Reviews turn potential customers from skeptics into eager purchasers. Some ecommerce brands do this better than others. Parade’s review section went a step further, allowing reviewers to mark whether or not a clothing item runs big/small, is comfortable, and is good or bad quality. As an apparel retailer, this gives their shoppers valuable information they need to make a purchase decision.

Social media sites

According to a report by GWI, 77% of internet users turn to social networks when looking for information about brands. Also, 16% of internet users discover brands through posts or reviews from expert bloggers, and 23% of internet users discover brands through recommendations or comments on social media. The bottom line is that social media supports brand awareness, so you’re missing out if you don't leverage the social media sites relevant to your audience.

GWI recommends using Instagram for more direct sales since Instagram users are more open to commercial posts. If you’re ready to make Instagram influencer marketing part of your marketing strategy, check out our guide.

Online marketplaces

Online shoppers turn to popular online marketplaces when searching for products. Amazon, Etsy, and eBay are three of the most popular. Amazon is the largest online marketplace, accounting for 37.8% of the ecommerce market as of June 2022. On Amazon, product reviews and sales influence rankings. This means that the better your reviews, the higher up they appear in product search results, so it’s important to keep your average review as high as possible. The same is true for Etsy and eBay.

Here’s what Sol de Janeiro’s Amazon reviews look like:

Search engines

Billions of people use Google, Bing, and other search engines to find products. SEO-friendly product descriptions are one way to ensure your products show up in search engines. But product reviews also make you more visible on the search engine results pages (SERPs) since reviewers often use keywords that help with rankings. The more reviews you have, the greater your chances of being discovered in SERPs.

Review sites for your industry

Four review sites are responsible for 88% of all reviews — Google, Yelp, Facebook, and Tripadvisor. It would be wise to invest in your reviews on these popular channels, but boosting your presence on industry-specific review sites is also a good idea. These hyper-specific review sites help you reach a targeted audience, thus increasing your conversion rate.

How to get the most value out of your ecommerce product reviews

Getting reviews is great, but you’ll need to dig a little deeper if you want to glean actionable insights from them. Here are eight tips to help you get the most out of your customer reviews.

Add reviews to your product pages

As previously mentioned, adding reviews to your product pages can help increase revenue through more conversions, making this a great move for your ecommerce business. This isn’t surprising since reviews help build trust and attract buyers to your website, so adding reviews directly to product pages can help seal the deal once the customer lands on your site. 

Loop Earplugs has product reviews at the bottom of each product page, plus they curate testimonials pulled from reviews to support their on-page marketing:

Use white-label review management software

Review management software offers the most streamlined way to manage your online reputation. Any review management software you choose should be able to collect and deliver data from the review sources that matter most to your business in the most accurate, timely, and reliable manner. Some of the best options on the market include Grade.us and Podium.

Turn your best reviews into SEO-friendly web and social media content

Reviews are great for understanding the needs and interests of customers. When an awesome review comes through, highlight it on your brand's social media channels to showcase customer satisfaction and attract further attention. Ultimately, reviews from existing satisfied customers will help attract even more customers: It's social proof at its finest.

Allow people to leave photos and videos in reviews

One of the first things some customers do when looking at reviews is search for the images and videos that show the product in action. Product pictures and written reviews say one thing but seeing products in real, unedited photos and videos takes the experience to another level. It’s easier to make a purchase decision when customers reveal a product's good, bad, and ugly in a visual format.

Steve Madden lets buyers upload images to their reviews, which helps browsers see what the clothes look like on other people:

Address negative reviews head-on and explain what went wrong

The research doesn’t lie — 89% of consumers are more likely to use a business that responds to all of its online reviews, not just the good reviews. Research by Podium provides a possible explanation: 56% of consumers believe a response from a business changes their perspectives because these responses offer insights into how responsive, responsible, and caring a business is.

These stats may seem contradictory since so many consumers say a negative review convinced them to avoid a business, as we discussed earlier. But ignoring negative reviews altogether results in more people turning away from your business. This is precisely what you’re trying to avoid: Negative reviews are a natural part of the process, so don’t hide from them. Embrace them, respond to them, and try your best to resolve the issues expressed by the customer.

Use feedback from reviews to improve your product and customer experience

Product reviews help you learn more about what your business is doing right and wrong. Customer feedback surveys are great, but only a small fraction of your customers complete them. More customers are likely to leave non-incentivized reviews that share honest perspectives about their experiences. Use their unfiltered responses to fine-tune your product and customer experience so that you attract future purchases.

Thank reviewers with a discount to keep them coming back

A discount incentive can be a great way to get more reviews. But, as previously mentioned, incentives can influence reviewers to leave positive reviews even when their experiences weren’t entirely positive. So, you can give discounts as review incentives occasionally but try not to make this practice a habit. Otherwise, your reviews may be skewed in favor of your brand.

Let users sort reviews to find the information they need

Customers use various filters to find reviews, but the most common review filter is review recency. Research by Power Reviews shows that 97% of consumers consider review recency to be important when considering a purchase. In fact, the survey reveals that 64% of consumers say they’re more likely to buy a product with fewer, more recent reviews than a product with a higher volume of reviews published three or more months ago.

So, allowing customers to sort and see the most recent reviews is critical. Keep your reviews current — more customers are likely to trust your brand that way.

Woxer is a great example of an online store that provides a variety of review filters. You can pull up reviews that mention color, size, material, feel, comfort, and more. You can also use the sort feature to sort the reviews by rating or only show reviews with images:

Turn browsers into happy, repeat shoppers with Gorgias

Product reviews attract new customers and help with customer retention. This is why your product review strategy should focus on encouraging customers to leave authentic reviews, extracting customer feedback so you can improve your product, and responding to all reviews across platforms so you can build trust and resolve issues proactively. 

Gorgias is here to help your brand offer world-class customer support. Book a demo to understand how 10,000+ brands use our platform to drive revenue by making customers happy.

When customers order products from your ecommerce store, they expect the products to arrive on time and intact. Even if your shipping carrier is at fault for a lost package, customers will associate the issue with your store and the drop in customer satisfaction will ultimately impact your revenue. 

Unfortunately, 15% of all online orders shipped to urban areas fail to reach their destination due to either logistics issues or package theft. Many of the processes in your store's supply chain are probably out of your control, but there are things that you can do to prevent missing packages and salvage the customer relationship. 

We put together a step-by-step guide for how ecommerce businesses can deal with lost packages, as well as five tips that you can use to help ensure smooth and on-time package delivery.

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A step-by-step guide on how to deal with lost packages

Lost packages aren't typically the shipper's fault, but — fair or not — your customers will still look to you to make it right. Here are the steps that business owners should take when dealing with lost packages in order to ensure customer satisfaction:

1) Determine if your package was truly lost or if it was stolen

When a customer's package doesn't arrive, all that you know at first is that the package is missing. In most cases, the package has been lost or delivered to the wrong address. Sometimes, however, packages go missing because they are stolen. "Porch pirates," or people who steal packages from another person's porch, have become increasingly common with the growing popularity of online shopping. However, there are also rare cases when packages are also stolen in transit.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the top reasons for lost packages:

Contacting the shipping company is the best way to determine if a package was lost or stolen. If the carrier marks the package as being delivered to the correct address, but the customer never got it, chances are it was stolen.

What should you do if the package is stolen?

Stolen packages are tricky because the only person truly at fault is the thief who took them. Carriers don't typically offer reimbursement for stolen packages (except under rare, specific circumstances). This means that you will need to carry shipping insurance through a service such as Route if you want to be able to reimburse your customers for stolen packages — without the costs coming out of your own pocket.

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2) If the package was lost, file a refund or insurance claim

While carriers won't usually reimburse damaged or stolen packages, they are typically willing to reimburse lost packages. Along with recovering the cost of the item, you can also receive reimbursement for any shipping costs that you paid.

Filing these refund claims may be a bit of a hassle, but they have a high success rate, given that lost packages reflect poorly on a carrier. If you can determine that a package never arrived to the customer, usually due to a lack of updates from the carrier, filing a claim with the carrier is your best course of action.

Information needed to file for a refund

The exact information and documentation you must provide when filing a refund/insurance claim will vary from carrier to carrier. However, you will typically need to provide information such as:

• Package details such as the package's weight and tracking number
• Contact details for the package's recipient
• Credit card information used to purchase the package
• Receipts or invoices showing the value of the package
• Photos of damage to package or goods (if applicable)
• A repair estimate (if applicable)

Popular carriers' refund forms

Most carriers offer refund forms and portals that make it easy for shippers to file claims. Here are the links to the refund forms from popular delivery services:

• FedEx refund form
• DHL refund form
• UPS refund form
• USPS refund form

3) Replace lost packages to improve CX and lift revenue in the long term

Even if lost packages aren’t your fault, there's a good chance that your customers won't see it that way. In fact, 32% of customers say that they would be reluctant to order again from an online retailer following a failed delivery. This is especially true given the precedent large retailers like Amazon have set with no-questions-asked refund policies.

Replacing lost packages is no doubt an expense and a hassle, especially if the value of the item is high. But the value of the item may be small compared to a customer’s lifetime value (CLV) if you replace the lost item and retain a loyal customer. When you consider that repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers, it's easy to see how prioritizing customer satisfaction can be more profitable in the long run.

Again, the right insurance policy can ensure that the cost of the items is covered if they are damaged, stolen, or lost. Filing a refund/insurance claim with your carrier is another way to seek reimbursement so that you can reimburse the customer. Even if it means eating the cost yourself, replacing lost packages still tends to be a more beneficial approach for ecommerce businesses.

If you want to improve customer experience further, check out our guide on how to offer free shipping to your customers.

4) Consider using a tool such as EasyShip for secure shipping

EasyShip is an ecommerce shipping platform that helps merchants print shipping labels, access discounted shipping rates, and provide customers with real-time tracking notifications. This ability to easily track the location and status of packages and provide that information to your customers can often go a long way toward reducing the frequency of missing packages.

Shipping tools such as EasyShip also help mitigate lost packages by streamlining your order fulfillment process. EasyShip and comparable apps help eliminate errors on your end (such as incorrect delivery addresses that could lead to missing shipments) by making it easy for customers to choose their preferred delivery service for each order.

Other top shipping apps

EasyShip is an excellent tool to consider if you want to improve your order fulfillment process and provide customers with real-time tracking notifications. However, several other shipping apps offer comparable features and capabilities:

• ShipBob: Upgrade your fulfillment provide with the leading end-to-end fulfillment provider
• Shipup: Offer your customers a branded, flexible post-purchase experience
• ShippingChimp: Automate your shipping notifications to improve customer experience
• AfterShip: Improve shipping tracking for your online business
• Wonderment: Reduce “Where is my order?” tickets with shipping notifications

To learn more about creating an ecommerce shipping and fulfillment strategy empowered by cutting-edge order fulfillment tools, be sure to check out our ecommerce shipping guide: Creating a Shipping and Fulfillment Strategy.

5) Update your shipping and package replacement policies

No matter what your policy for replacing lost, damaged, or stolen packages happens to be, it's important to keep your customers in the loop. If you offer a generous refund/return policy, making sure that customers see it can boost customer confidence and may even improve your store's conversion rate. Or, if you aren't in a position to replace or refund missing packages, letting customers know ahead of time can set expectations upfront. This way, they aren't frustrated by finding out that they won't be reimbursed after the fact.

To ensure that customers know your policy for replacing or refunding missing packages, publish this information on your FAQ page or help center. You may also consider sending a link to this policy in your post-purchase email flow for even more visibility.

Here’s a great example of a reader-friendly shipping policy from Branch, well organized and easily accessible on their Gorgias-built Help Center:

Helpful tips to ensure that your package is delivered on time and intact

Ecommerce businesses need to have a plan and policies for dealing with missing packages, but there are also steps that you can take to prevent your packages from ever going missing in the first place. Here are five tips for how ecommerce stores can prevent lost, stolen, and damaged packages:

Ensure the customer provided the correct address

Incorrect delivery information is a common cause of lost packages. While you'd like to think that customers can enter their addresses correctly, this isn't always the case. Thankfully, many shipping apps include address verification tools that allow you to at least ensure that the delivery address you have on file is a properly-formatted address that actually exists. These tools will sometimes be able to correct minor formatting issues automatically. You can contact the customer to clarify if there are bigger problems with the address.

Using shipping apps to verify addresses and streamline your order fulfillment process can also help prevent errors on your end, such as typos when entering an address.

Enable real-time package tracking

Sixty-nine percent of customers say that the ability to track their order is one of their top three considerations when purchasing a product online. Along with helping your store meet these customer expectations, offering real-time tracking notifications to your customers can also help prevent lost and stolen packages.

Real-time tracking provides visibility that can prevent packages from being delivered to the wrong address or lost along the way. Tracking notifications also enable customers to make sure that they or someone else is home when the package arrives so that it isn't stolen.

Most carriers will provide a tracking number to forward to your customers in a post-purchase email. However, you can improve the customer experience even further by offering your own tracking portal. Shipping apps such as LateShipment.com and some of the others that we mentioned allow you to create branded tracking portals and shipping notifications that your customers are sure to appreciate:

And if you use Gorgias, you can integrate with tools like LateShipment.com to see order status and tracking information within your help desk, so you can quickly — or automatically — answer customer questions about order status, whether they come through social media, texting, email, or another channel.

Let customers schedule their deliveries

Letting customers schedule deliveries won't prevent packages from getting lost in transit, but it can help prevent them from being stolen. The vast majority of package theft occurs after the package has been delivered. If the customer can choose a delivery time when they’re home, then porch pirates have less opportunity to steal it.

Your ecommerce platform likely has add-ons that let your customers choose their delivery date and time, although it may be limited to local deliveries only. If you use Shopify, check out the following tools to see if they could fit your needs:

• Delivery Date Pro
• Order Delivery Date Manager
• On Time Delivery Date

Provide instructions to the delivery driver for safe delivery

Along with using proper packaging, one way to prevent damaged items is to provide your carrier with instructions on how they should handle packages. If you are shipping fragile items, this should be communicated to your carrier so that they can properly mark the package.

It's also sometimes necessary to provide additional instructions to your carrier to ensure that a package goes to the correct address. If the customer provides any additional shipping instructions during checkout (such as where to leave the package, gate codes, etc.), then your team should pass this information on to the carrier, too.

Require a signature or in-person delivery for valuable items

If the product is especially valuable, you may want to consider requiring a signature upon receipt of the package. Requiring a signature (which guarantees in-person delivery) offers a couple of protections to both you and the customer. For one, it guarantees that the package will not be stolen after delivery. It also prevents the customer from fraudulently claiming they never received the package. Lastly, requiring a signature upon delivery allows customers to inspect the package and ensure there is no obvious damage before they sign for it.

It probably isn't necessary to go to these lengths for every ecommerce product. But if the item you are shipping is worth several hundred dollars or more, it's probably worth (strongly) considering. Most customers will have no problem signing for high-value items — and will likely even prefer it.

Improve your customer experience, even after deliveries, with Gorgias

As an ecommerce store, dealing with missing packages correctly is one of the many elements of developing a great customer experience. At Gorgias, we help ecommerce stores create a post-purchase experience optimized for customer satisfaction.

Gorgias helps you educate your customers about your refund/replacement policies for missing packages, give real-time updates about the status of their order, and provide helpful support in case something goes wrong. Better customer service leads to a better customer experience, helping you build a loyal customer base — and boosting your revenue in the process.

As the world's leading customer support platform, Gorgias also provides all of the tools and features your support team needs to offer the swift, helpful support that customers expect when their packages are missing. With our platform, your team also benefits from several deep integrations with many of the market's top shipping and fulfillment apps.

See for yourself how Gorgias improves the customer experience, from browsing to post-purchase, by booking a demo today.