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How to Prime Your Website to Automate CX

The dos and don’ts of making your website user-friendly so you can offer automated support as soon as possible.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • Automating customer experience (CX) can save costs, reduce agent burnout, and increase customer satisfaction
  • A good website user experience consists of fast load times, informative product pages, mobile optimization, and guest checkout
  • Automate CX by using automated chat, replacing email links with contact forms, updating your help center, and deploying onsite campaigns
  • Do not overcomplicate the user journey by only providing automatic support — route back to human agents

Nowhere is the customer experience more important than on your website. CX is so much more than post-purchase troubleshooting. CX that grows your brand makes the entire buying journey as effortless as possible, from the first ad to the 10th item purchased.

Your website isn’t only the marketing team’s domain. Your support team’s input is crucial to ensure customers can find all the answers they need without waiting around.

With a better website experience for your customers, you enable more sales and reduce the repetitive inquiries for your agents.

Here are some tips to enrich your website with CX automations that will delight your customers and your team.

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Why automating CX is essential

With 63% of consumers expecting service agents to know their unique needs and preferences, your efforts should be focused on improving support speed and responsiveness — and that starts with automation. 

Here are the five benefits of automating your customer experience:

  1. Cost efficient: Automating routine questions cuts down the cost of human labor, redirecting resources to more impactful areas of customer service.
  2. Reduced workload for agents: Your support team can focus on more complex issues instead of spending time on questions that can be answered with automated replies.
  3. Increased customer satisfaction: Automation provides fast answers, keeping the shopping experience uninterrupted.
  4. Enhanced navigation and user experience (UX): A website optimized for automation is easier to navigate and shop from, and reduces cart abandonment rates.
  5. Prevents support overload: Automation helps your agents from lessening their touchpoints with customers where it’s not needed, allowing customers to feel in control of their own journeys.

How website UX and CX work together

If done correctly, your website's UX should be so intuitive and smooth that shoppers barely notice it. For ecommerce stores, a well-thought-out website UX consists of everything from a logical menu to a straightforward checkout flow. 

Below, pay attention to the following website elements as they directly influence the buying journey and can impact customer satisfaction.

Informative product pages

Engaging and detailed product descriptions add substantial value by influencing buying decisions and simplifying the shopping experience.

Take a look at how Good Protein keeps descriptions engaging but short in three bullet points, includes social proof by displaying customer ratings, and provides flavor, size, and subscription options in one section:

Good Protein
Good Protein provides all important product information upfront.

Mobile optimization

According to Airship’s 11,000-respondent survey, 76% of shoppers shop through retailers’ mobile websites. With a significant portion of online sales coming from smartphones, it’s best to test your website on mobile devices. If users can’t complete a purchase through mobile, you lose out on a large fraction of sales.

Minimized distractions

Reducing distractions like unnecessary pop-ups and banners keeps the shopper focused on the main goal of conversion. Streamlining content to spotlight key campaigns or product launches can dramatically improve conversion rates.

Quick page load times

Fast-loading pages are crucial for keeping potential customers engaged. Delays can significantly deter shoppers, as studies show that even a one-second delay in page loading can reduce conversions by 7%.

Check out Google’s PageSpeed Insights to assess your website's performance.

Streamlined checkout process

Simplifying the checkout process and providing multiple payment options, such as guest checkout, removes common barriers to conversion by offering a convenient purchasing process.

Swimwear brand TRIANGL makes shopping easy and fast by adding a Quick Buy button to every product:

TRIANGL makes it easy for shoppers to buy products without making an account.

‎Exceptional customer support

Tools like live chat or help centers provide a portal through fast support. AI-powered support tools like Gorgias Automate combine automated responses with the option for human interaction, ensuring customer inquiries are addressed promptly.

This integration of website UX with automated customer experience strategies creates a more efficient, enjoyable, and productive shopping environment that exceeds customer expectations.

Related: Stop Marketing, Start Converting playbook

Implement these 5 strategies to prep your website for automation

Keeping your customer support options visible is the key to prepping your website for automation. 

Follow these five methods to provide easily accessible support routes, simplify communication, and help customers quickly find the information they need. 

1. Keep chat active 24/7

When you hear “chat,” you may think about not having enough bandwidth to offer live chat all the time. Well, that’s just a common chat myth

In fact, chat doesn’t require agents to operate 24/7. You can configure live chat to only be active during your busiest hours or even deactivate it altogether and replace it with automated FAQs to keep customer questions answered throughout the day. 

Here’s how ALOHAS keeps their chat running using Gorgias Automate’s Quick Responses:

ALOHAS uses Quick Responses to answer questions about shipping policy

‎Beyond automating common questions, chat can also accomplish other support-related tasks:

  • Email Capture: When live agents aren’t available, automation can ask for customer emails so that their inquiries can be routed to your support inbox.
  • Article Recommendations: Chat questions can be scanned and matched with the most relevant article, reducing the need to talk to an agent.
  • Order Management: Automate WISMO requests with an order management portal right in chat. Customers can track, return, cancel, or report an issue on their own without waiting for an agent to do it for them.

Don’t forget that chat is one of the most visible components on your website. Make sure the chat dialog can be minimized and hidden to avoid disrupting the shopping journey.

2. Replace email with structured contact forms

Leaving your customer support email on your contact page is the equivalent of leaving plain URLs on your website — it’s disorganized and can attract spam like no other channel.

Contact forms are far superior to email links because they collect all necessary information (like issue type and contact information). This helps agents provide resolutions as efficiently as possible because tickets are already structured and include the necessary details.

For example, Gorgias Chat includes Offline Capture to collect customer inquiries while agents are offline. Gorgias Helpdesk then uses the structured information to detect customer intent, making interactions easier to manage.

CALPAK uses email capture on Gorgias
CALPAK enables email capture so that chat inquiries can be handled even when live chat is offline.

3. Display your Help Center and contact form prominently

Make your Help Center visible no matter which page shoppers are on. Displaying important customer support resources like this in your website's header, footer, and various emails like marketing messages and order confirmations allows customers to self-serve, without having to contact a live agent.

With Gorgias, you can use one-page Help Centers to create a seamless experience from one page to another on your online store. This setup allows customers to quickly find the answers they need, improving accessibility while reducing the demand on your team.

Here’s what clothing brand Princess Polly’s one-page Help Center looks like:

Princess Polly keeps the user experience seamless by keeping the Help Center a part of their website, so customers can go back to shopping whenever.

4. Make sure your knowledge base is up-to-date and comprehensive

Updating your knowledge base, whether it's a Gorgias Help Center or another FAQ page, directly impacts the customer journey. Gorgias's AI Agent uses the Help Center as its primary source to autonomously handle over 30% of customer email inquiries, drawing on articles that cover necessary topics like shipping, orders, product information, and account management. 

To optimize your Help Center for AI, ensure your content is comprehensive and current, particularly in areas such as policies and product updates. All articles should be published, not saved as drafts, to be accessible to AI Agent. Regularly reviewing your articles encourages customer self-service and reduces reliance on agent assistance.

5. Maintain engagement with targeted campaigns

Targeted onsite campaigns on product pages educate customers and boost confidence, especially when tailored to your top-selling products. For instance, when items are out of stock, campaigns can redirect customers to similar products, as demonstrated by Glamnetic during their product launches.

Additionally, Gorgias Convert chat campaigns like those used by Manduka, which highlight product guarantees, provide valuable pre-sales information that mimics the support of a physical store.

Related: Convert Campaigns playbook

The 3 don’t s of website optimization

There are pitfalls to avoid when optimizing your website for better user experiences. Keep the user journey simple and always provide options for human assistance like live email or voice. Below are three key mistakes to steer clear of.

1. Don't complicate the user journey

The user journey includes all interactions from browsing to the post-purchase experience, and automation should make this process seamless, not hinder it. Avoid adding unnecessary steps or making critical information hard to find, as this can disrupt the shopping experience and force customers to seek help when it isn't needed.

For instance, include a guest checkout option on the checkout page to simplify purchases, and ensure that links to your Help Center or Contact page are easily accessible in the top navigation. 

Watch out for these common elements that can confuse the user journey:

  • Complex navigation: A convoluted menu system can make it difficult for customers to find what they need.
  • Hidden support information: Essential details like shipping costs and return policies should be visible and easy to find.
  • Excessive pop-ups: Overloading pages with pop-ups can frustrate users.

2. Don't only provide automated support

Automation is valuable but don’t rely on it — it's still important to provide avenues for human assistance when needed. This includes support options like live chat, email, phone, and social media

The key is balance: make it easy for them to reach out to human support once they realize self-service options are insufficient. This might involve including contact options in a Help Center or contact page rather than displaying raw email addresses everywhere.

3. Don't forget to test regularly

Maintaining an optimized website requires data-driven testing and optimization. You can improve your website by following customer feedback and suggestions. Once changes have been applied, monitoring performance metrics and user behavior can ensure the user journey remains solid.

Metrics to track: 

  • Cart abandonment rate: A high abandonment rate may mean that your checkout process is too complex, causing shoppers to exit early.
  • Page load time: Slow-loading webpages negatively impact the customer experience. 
  • Bounce rate: Difficult navigation, slow loading times, or an unattractive layout are all factors that contribute to a high bounce rate. 
  • Conversion rate: Conversion rate indicates which areas of your website are performing well and which are not. Pay attention to conversion rate to prioritize areas for improvement, such as optimizing landing pages or adjusting the user journey.

Automate 30% of CX for exceptional customer experiences

July, a leading luggage brand, uses the power of Gorgias Automate to deliver unbeatable user experiences. With Automate, routine tasks typically handled by level 1 agents are accomplished automatically. Agents are then able to free up valuable resources to focus on more complex inquiries.

Ready to elevate your CX game? Book a demo today and unlock the full potential of automation for your business.

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10 min read.

6 Ways to Increase Conversions by 6%+ With Onsite Campaigns

Find out how successful brands are using Gorgias Convert to create onsite campaigns that boost conversions by 6%+.
By Tina Donati
0 min read . By Tina Donati

TL;DR:

  • Create personalized onsite campaigns to enhance the shopping experience.
  • Activate exit-intent campaigns to reduce cart abandonment.
  • Implement upselling strategies to increase average order values.
  • Offer product education to boost customer confidence and purchases.

At this point, you’re already well aware that CX is now proving itself to be an invaluable acquisition tool — not just a retention lever.

But to drive the hammer home, we looked into our database to see how CX-focused strategies like onsite campaigns enhance the customer journey and drive substantial increases in sales and conversion rates, specifically with Gorgias Convert.

Using these well-curated campaigns, businesses like Manduka have witnessed a remarkable increase in revenue — approximately $130,000. 

We’ll show you how you can achieve similar results and why it’s a crucial marketing strategy — just as important as paid and email marketing.

Marketing strategies diagram

         

Ways to use onsite campaigns for sales without disrupting the shopping experience

Gorgias Convert is an onsite revenue generation tool that helps ecommerce brands boost their conversions by over 6% — and it isn’t your typical intrusive pop-up. This feature seamlessly integrates with your website, recommending products to shoppers in a subtle but still captivating way.

Targeting customer segments based on their browsing behaviors, Convert makes timely and relevant suggestions via chat.

Here are a few ways you can use it:

Create fluid shopping experiences that reduce acquisition costs

Imagine this: someone clicks on your social media ad for acne removal solutions, lands on your site, and isn’t just greeted with a standard product page but accompanied by a personalized message that offers valuable product education.

In fact, Gorgias users see that we typically generate $20 for every $1 spent. So think of onsite campaigns as a way to make your ad dollars work harder with a more personalized experience by:

  • Mirroring the language and tone of your ads within your onsite campaigns creates a familiar and comforting environment for your visitors. 
  • Populating welcome campaigns that kick in when a shopper lands on your site so that every new customer engagement starts with meaningful dialogue geared toward turning curiosity into sales.

Here’s a fun example from TUSHY, the modern bidet company. 

When customers visit a bidet page, they receive a message from TUSHY’s support team, letting them know about their toilet compatibility page to help them select the right bidet:

TUSHY

         

Personalize cross-sell and upsell messages on specific product pages

Here’s something many brands get wrong about ecommerce upselling: It’s not about pushing the most expensive items; it’s about showing customers the value of an upgrade that’s complementary to the problems they’re already trying to solve.

As your customers shop, Gorgias Convert suggests complementary items. It’s like when you’re in a store and an associate suggests a tie to match the shirt you’re buying.

Manduka uses these campaigns brilliantly. Targeting shoppers nearing the free shipping threshold, they suggest just the right little extras to tip the scales. 

Manduka

         

This makes it quick and easy for customers to top up their orders with relevant products.

The results? 

  • Total Campaign revenue: $11,788.91
  • Impressions: 37,586
  • Mobile Clicks Conversion Rate: 19.65%
  • Desktop Clicks Conversion Rate: 12.06%

Jessica Botello, the Customer Service Manager at Manduka, explains why this campaign works so well: 

“People want free shipping. So if they've already got over $75 worth in their cart, they're almost there. Then we pop up and suggest: check out these items. It’s a curated list of the easy little add-ons that you'll need anyway for your yoga practice, but will also take you over the free shipping threshold,” she explains. “What's really helpful is that it pops up, rather than the customer having to go through the menu and look for things.” 

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Winback browsers with exit-intent campaigns

You’ve likely tried exit-intent pop-ups before. You know, those pop-ups that trigger when a customer indicates they’re about to abandon their cart or browsing session. 

As more brands adopt these pop-ups, customers are becoming more accustomed to them. But what’s less obtrusive is a personalized message directly from your team.

There are many ways you can grab your customers' attention with these messages. Maybe it's offering a little nudge with a timely discount, waiving that shipping fee, or answering a last-minute question they had about the product.

Here, let’s look at two examples of how effective these campaigns can be.

Manduka’s exit-intent messages

Manduka uses these exit-intent messages to offer $20 on orders over $100 (a strategic way to not only reduce cart abandonment but also increase AOV and email subscribers simultaneously.) 

Manduka

         

By engaging visitors with personalized, timely messages right when they’re about to leave, Gorgias Convert helps transform potential bounces into real conversions.

You can read more about how Manduka set up these campaigns with Gorgias Convert here.

Glamnetic’s approach

Glamnetic has had particular success with an exit intent campaign offering a discount for new customers, new product promotions, and educational campaigns. 

Its most successful campaign offers a sweet 15% discount and boasts an on-ticket conversion rate of 18.39%. 

Glamnetic

         

Here’s how it works:

  • Using Gorgias Convert, Glamnetic detects when the mouse hovers near the top of the browser, a telltale sign of an impending exit.
  • The same 15% discount available through newsletter or SMS sign-ups is now presented via live chat. It’s straightforward, no strings attached. 
  • The campaign targets visitors who’ve been to the site three times or fewer and linger for at least 15 seconds. This specificity ensures the message is relevant and timely.

You can peek at the campaign setup below. It runs 24/7, ready at any moment to engage: 

Glamnetic

         

Strategically highlight new product launches

Countless new products pop up every day; consumers are bombarded with options. The challenge for brands is to launch new products in a visible and desirable way. 

As you’re well aware, that’s tougher than it sounds amidst all the noise consumers already experience daily.

This is where Gorgias Convert stands out and is different from the other pop-up tools.

Unlike your latest TikTok and Instagram ads, these onsite campaigns feel genuine because a friendly support agent makes the recommendation without disrupting the shopping experience.

For example, when Glamnetic unveiled its vibrant Rainbow collection in May 2023, the team deployed targeted, visually appealing onsite campaigns that immediately drew visitors’ eyes to the new products.

Directly on the homepage, visitors were greeted with eye-catching product images from live chat, featuring a seamless and effortless option to add new items to their cart.

Glamnetic

         

Mia, Head of Customer Experience at Glamnetic, shares the strategy behind the success: “The aim was to elevate the visibility of new releases without requiring customers to hunt for them. Our onsite campaigns proactively present our latest products through compelling visuals and straightforward navigation, simplifying the decision-making process for the buyer.”

That’s why Glamnetic prominently placed top-selling items in the product carousel, directly in the live chat box. The products were impossible to ignore, leading to a 49% sales increase for featured items.

Help customers be successful with product education

Product education is a powerful sales and retention tactic. By building trust with customers right away, they’ll feel more confident purchasing your products because they know they will use them successfully. 

Manduka uses onsite campaigns to educate potential customers. Triggered when visitors spend more than 15 seconds on the yoga props page, the campaigns guide customers through their yoga journey and help them choose the perfect props for their practice.

Manduka

         

Jessica Botello, Customer Service Manager at Manduka, highlights the campaign's impact: 

“This yoga props blog suggestion campaign is really great because we have several options, and that can feel confusing to someone who doesn’t know which one to get because they are new to yoga and aren't familiar with which props would benefit them. The blog explains in more detail how to use the different props in your yoga practice, and the different benefits of a round bolster vs a rectangular bolster. So it helps people go ahead and choose the right product for them.”

In other words, simply explaining the nuances between choices like a round versus a rectangular bolster helped customers feel more confident about the products they purchased. 

And the proof is in the pudding. Between April–August 2023, this campaign achieved the following:

  • Total Campaign revenue: $3,851.73
  • Impressions: 6,310
  • Clicks Conversion Rate: 11.5%

By proactively addressing potential questions and concerns, Manduka enhances the shopping experience, leading to higher satisfaction and fewer post-purchase issues.

Promote sales with holiday campaigns 

Holidays aren't just for festivities — they're prime opportunities for brands to connect with customers in fun, thematic ways. 

Take TUSHY, for example. To celebrate US Independence Day, TUSHY ran a cheekily-themed on-site campaign called "USofSPRAY," offering a patriotic 25% off all bidets.

Yes, you read that right — cleaning your bum has never been more patriotic!

TUSHY

         

Why it works: TUSHY’s approach to holiday promotions is smart and spirited. By aligning their campaign with a major holiday, they tapped into the celebratory mood of their customers, making it not just about a discount but about being part of a nationwide celebration. This not only makes the promotion more memorable but also more engaging.

The USofSPRAY campaign not only captured attention but also captured significant sales:

  • Influence on store revenue: A staggering 47.9% of the store's revenue during this period was influenced by the campaign.
  • Click-through rate (CTR): The campaign achieved a healthy 3.5% CTR, indicating strong interest and engagement.
  • Impressions: It racked up 65,000 impressions, spreading the word far and wide about the benefits of a cleaner, fresher bathroom experience.
  • Conversion rate: Impressively, 76% of customers who engaged with the campaign went on to make a purchase.

4 tips to create a well-thought-out onsite campaign

Investing time in well-thought-out onsite campaigns can significantly amplify your marketing efforts, driving a notable increase in conversion rates and better capturing paid traffic. 

Here’s how you can design campaigns that catch the eye and convert browsers into buyers.

Segment, segment, segment

The more targeted your campaign, the better your results — plain and simple.

By segmenting your audience based on specific criteria, such as the amount spent with your brand or past products purchased, you can tailor your messages to match the unique interests and buying habits of different customer groups. 

Note: Gorgias is deeply integrated with platforms like Shopify, so it’s easy to leverage shopper data to create highly personalized onsite campaigns that resonate with your audience. 

Identify your triggers to personalize messages

Set up your campaigns to activate based on specific behaviors, such as browsing certain products, adding items to the cart, or showing signs of exit intent. You can also use more niche triggers, like:

  • Total value of shopping cart
  • Products in cart
  • Time spent on a page
  • Number of visits
  • Total spent in the past
  • VIP status

For instance, by setting up a trigger for VIP customers, you can send campaigns to those high-value shoppers, like exclusive discounts or personalized style recommendations based on past purchases.

A/B test your campaigns

One of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal is A/B testing. By systematically testing messaging, design, or offer variations, you can uncover what resonates most with your audience and refine your strategies accordingly.

TUSHY provides a prime example of A/B testing done right. They conducted an experiment where:

  • Group A: 50% of visitors experienced the full suite of targeted on-site campaigns without any discount codes, focusing instead on providing personalized guidance for choosing the right bidet.
  • Group B: The other 50% did not receive any targeted campaigns during their visit.

The results were telling:

  • Conversion rate lift: Group A saw a 9.6% higher conversion rate than Group B.
  • Sales uplift: Additionally, sales increased by 14% compared to those not exposed to the campaigns.

This test highlights the effectiveness of providing personalized support over just using discounts and how A/B testing your offers and messaging — even for one week — helps you understand what makes your customers tick.

Keep track of your success in a detailed dashboard

Effective campaign management isn't just about launching strategies; it’s also about understanding their impact

With Gorgias Convert, every campaign you run is tracked in detail through the Campaigns Statistics dashboard. This gives marketers a granular view of performance across different time frames and campaign specifics.

Some specific features you can expect are

  • Revenue tracking: See at a glance the total revenue generated by each campaign. This allows you to evaluate the financial impact of your campaigns and prioritize those that deliver the best return on investment.
  • Engagement metrics: Monitor key metrics like impressions and click-through rates to assess how well your campaigns are engaging potential customers. This data is crucial for understanding which elements of your campaigns are capturing attention and which may need tweaking.
  • Conversion details: Dive deep into the data to see which campaigns are converting browsers into buyers. A list of converted tickets or interactions can highlight successful tactics and offer insights into customer behavior.

In addition to tracking basic metrics, the dashboard also provides insights into more nuanced aspects of campaign performance, such as engagement trends over time or the effectiveness of specific call-to-action placements.

Check out an overview of the Campaign Statistics page in the image below. 

Gorgias Campaign statistics

         

Start investing in onsite marketing

Onsite campaigns stand as pillars in digital marketing, carrying immense potential to captivate and convert visitors into loyal customers. Through them, you can get directly in front of your customers and showcase products or services – but in their capacity to tailor experiences, foster engagement, and ultimately drive conversions. 

Gorgias Convert's innovative approach makes revenue generation easy through onsite campaigns - you will find that you’re increasing your ecommerce revenue quickly and cost-effectively. By leveraging this tool, you can navigate the digital landscape with confidence whether you’re in CX or Marketing. 

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12 min read.
Customer experience insights 2023

Ecommerce Customer Experience in 2023: Insights & What’s Next in 2024

Find out how thousands of ecommerce brands delivered customer experience in 2023, then explore the CX trends of 2024.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR: 

  • Shipping status, refunds, and damaged orders were the top customer concerns of 2023
  • The average first response time was 7.6 hours, a resolution time of 18.6 hours, and a CSAT score of 4.5/5
  • On average, 15% of interactions were resolved with automation
  • Experts predict that 2024 will focus on strategic planning, optimized AI use, more real-time communication, and amplifying the voice of CX within companies

This year, we witnessed customer service teams from 16,140 brands support over 77 million shoppers and millions of tickets with Gorgias. 

As we turn to a new chapter, we want to spotlight how six of the top-performing industries delivered customer service in 2023. 

From food to fashion, we’ll see how quickly agents answered questions, then discover what customers were asking, and learn from experts about what customer experience trends to expect in the new year.

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Support teams resolved tickets in 2.5 business days

Step into the ecommerce world, where you’ll find a vibrant population of merchants, each with their own niche and groups of loyal customers. Together, they generated $1.45 billion in revenue in 2023. 

Of course, this would not have been possible without the grit of customer service teams and their dedication to customer satisfaction. 

Support teams across 20 industries answered customer inquiries within one business day and solved them in two and a half, resulting in very satisfied shoppers. Impressively, 15% of interactions were fully automated and resolved on average.

Here are the average industry support stats:

  • First response time: 7.6 hours
  • Resolution time: 18.6 hours
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Average support performance across 20 industries in 2023
 

From food to fashion: a cross-industry glance at support statistics

The most popular ecommerce industries — Apparel and Fashion, Health, Wellness, and Fitness, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage, Consumer Goods, and Luxury Goods and Jewelry — were the top performers. 

Using exclusive Gorgias data, we’ll look at how support teams from these industries handled tickets. Then, we’ll gain expert insight into the ecommerce experience in 2023, and how experts predict it will change in the coming year.

Apparel and Fashion strutted with a 4.5/5 CSAT score

Our first stop is the bustling market of Apparel and Fashion. We’re all familiar with how tricky online clothes shopping can be. Most likely due to issues with sizing and style, support teams mainly dealt with inquiries about:

  • Shipping status
  • Returns
  • Refunds

Yet, despite receiving the highest number of customer tickets among the six industries, Apparel and Fashion brands kept customers happy. They responded within one business day and resolved issues within two, with 15% of interactions being resolved with automation.

Here are their stats compared to the overall industry average:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Apparel & Fashion response and resolution times
According to Loop, over 50% of their merchants now charge for certain returns, including fees for exchanges and returns for store credit. This change aligns with consumer preferences, as their report shows 70% of shoppers are willing to pay for premium, convenient experiences, a trend already embraced by half of these customers.

Cancellations and returns were Health, Wellness, and Fitness’ biggest hurdles

The next stop on our tour is the thriving Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry.

Unfortunately, brands in this sector had a challenging year keeping up with unpleasant tickets about:

  • Shipping status
  • Subscription cancellations
  • Refunds

Perhaps support teams could have automated more than 15% of interactions to handle these repetitive tickets better. But despite their slower-than-average first response time, customers were still pleased with the support experience:

  • First response time: 9 hours (+1.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 18.3 hours (-0.3 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Health, Wellness & Fitness response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Amanda Kwasniewicz, the VP of Customer Experience at women’s wellness brand Love Wellness, highlights that personalized customer service has been a key trend of 2023. She’s observed that customers now expect to receive personal recommendations during their shopping journeys.

Cosmetics enhanced support with 18% automation

Now, take a peek at the fast-growing Cosmetics industry, and you’ll see how eager customers were to check out the hype around both small businesses and celebrity brands.

Given the boom of influencer marketing for these highly personal products, customers often inquired about:

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged orders

To solve these tickets, support teams automated 18% of interactions and attained faster times than average:

  • First response time: 7 hours (-0.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 15.8 hours (-2.8 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Cosmetics response and resolution times

Food and Beverage served it fresh with a 5-hour first response time

Getting hungry? This year, the growing appetite for Food and Beverage in the ecommerce world was unmistakable. Beef jerky or freshly squeezed fruit juice, customers savored their snacks. But it also didn’t stop them from being tough critics. 

The main issues raised to Food and Beverage support teams revolved around: 

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged products

Luckily, they cut down their first response time by automating 15% of interactions — nearly three hours faster than average:

  • First response time: 5 hours (-2.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.2 hours (-1.4 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5

Expert insights: Zoe Kahn, former Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps and now Owner of Inevitable Agency, saw inventory issues as a major challenge of 2023. The complexity of inventory logistics is difficult for consumers to understand, leading to higher outreach from customers wondering when items would be back in stock. "Quieting those concerns is really difficult," Zoe notes. However, after witnessing inventory issues over the last few years, Zoe realized that "it's inevitable that inventory problems will happen because of how challenging the logistics of selling a product are."

Food & Beverage response and resolution times

Consumer Goods has CSAT down pat with a 4.6/5

There’s a lot to explore in the all-encompassing Consumer Goods industry. You’ll find brands that sell everything from sustainable water bottles and furniture to everything else in between, like dog toys and mystery subscription boxes.

While Consumer Goods brands only automated 14% of interactions, their resolution time was two hours faster than the industry average, resulting in the happiest customers among the six industries:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 16.4 hours (-2.2 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.6/5 (+0.6)
Consumer Goods response and resolution times

The top tickets Consumer Goods brands received were about:

  • Shipping status
  • Damaged orders
  • Customer feedback

Expert Insights: Ren Fuller-Wasserman, the Director of Experience at TUSHY, notes that the impact of the macroeconomic climate was among the top challenges faced in 2023. “As there's talk of recession and inflation, people are really looking for products that provide added value,” she says.

Our partner Okendo, a growth marketing platform that has worked with well-known brands like SKIMS and Rhode, notes that tech stack consolidation has been the top priority in 2023. They saw that merchants who used a multifaceted product with app integrations resulted in a 15x return on investment

Luxury Goods and Jewelry polished interactions with 28% automation

Our final stop is at the small gem of an industry, Luxury Goods and Jewelry. Making sure their pricey wares arrived to customers safely was the top priority. That’s why the top questions support teams received were in regard to:

  • Shipping status
  • Discount requests
  • Damaged orders

Out of all the industries, Luxury Goods and Jewelry brands automated the most interactions at 28%, which certainly helped to shorten response and resolution times:

  • First response time: 6 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.1 hours (-1.5 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.4/5 (-0.1)
Luxury Goods & Jewelry response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Caela Castillo, Director of CX at Jaxxon, advises preparing early for BFCM but being flexible to change. She notes, “Sometimes you need a different perspective,” acknowledging that agents are valuable resources to gain customer insights, especially when it comes to planning new customer service strategies.

How to prepare for ecommerce in 2024 (according to experts)

It’s been a fruitful year of expediting the traditionally slow support process. However, with greater strides made in AI technology, ecommerce has only scratched the surface of providing accelerated service. 

We interviewed ecommerce experts who saw the rise and fall of trends in 2023 and are ready to use their learnings to make the new year better. 

Here are the top four actions ecommerce companies should take in 2024. 

1) Identify business goals to adapt to new tech

We’re constantly fed an endless stream of new technology, which can be a distraction to business goals. That’s why the CTO of ecommerce agency Novatize, Pierre-Olivier Brassard, highly recommends planning a robust strategy first. Clear business goals will help teams pick the best tools — not the other way around.

2) Maximize the use of AI to streamline support

Customer service management platform TalentPop saw AI as the top CX trend of 2023. They foresee late adopters using AI next year, while early adopters will focus on optimization. To get ahead of the game, TalentPop recommends that support teams research all AI options since CX will only become more saturated with AI tools.

Brandon Amoroso, Founder & President at Electriq and Co-founder at SCALIS observed similar trends. In 2023, many CX teams implemented more self-service options for customers. Going into 2024, Brandon notes that a “continual integration of AI into the entire customer experience” is likely.

3) Offer real-time communication options

As social shopping gains traction, marketing platform Yotpo predicts customers are going to look for more real-time communication with brands. In fact, HubSpot reports a 45% year-over-year surge in using social media DMs for customer service. Therefore, using tools that enable interactions through DMs or text, like Yotpo SMS, will be a crucial strategy in the upcoming year.

4) Amplify the voice of the customer

Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, advises CX leaders to ensure their contributions are recognized. Kwasniewicz notes that support teams often know the business better than any other department. "Beat the CX drum loudly. If you're not in the room, find a way in the room," she stresses.

8 min read.
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks

Further reading

Shopify Live Chat Support Mistakes

11 Shopify Live Chat Support Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

By Ashley Kimler
8 min read.
0 min read . By Ashley Kimler

Your customer service is the lifeblood of your business. And, live chat is a central communication channel for your online shoppers. Live chat can make or break your business. When leveraged properly, Shopify live chat can have a tremendous positive impact on sales. You just need to make sure you’re not turning prospects away. 

This article covers a few points.

  1. Why live chat is crucial for your online revenue
  2. Shopify live chat support mistakes you need to avoid at all costs
  3. Actionable advice to solve these common issues  

Now, learn why your growth depends on your live chat processes. 

Why is using live chat on your Shopify store important?

If you don’t yet have live chat or you haven’t experienced the potential of optimizing your communication processes on this channel, you may wonder what the big deal is. Yeah, your customers want to talk to you at all hours, but is it really that important? 

Let’s look at a few facts about live chat so you can think about it.   

  • 38% of online consumers are more likely to make a purchase if a retailer offers live chat support (Crazy Egg). 
  • Site visitors who engage with your live chat are worth 4.5X more than those who do not (ICMI). 
  • Live chat has the highest satisfaction level of any other customer support communication channel at 92% (Inc). 

Now, here’s what might happen if you leave your shoppers dissatisfied. 

  • It can take 12 satisfying customer experiences to make up for a single dissatisfying one (Invesp).
  • 95% of customers tell others about their poor experiences with a brand and 87% share positive experiences (Customer Thermometer). 

Are you convinced? If so, it’s time to make sure you get it right. Avoid these live chat mistakes and ensure that you’re getting the most out of one of the most powerful communication channels for online stores. 

Avoid these live chat mistakes on your Shopify store

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. Here are the mistakes you need to avoid when implementing live chat on your Shopify store. And, below each problem is a simple and actionable fix. 

1. No automation  

When you don’t implement automation, you’re forced to have multiple support agents online at all times or miss the point of live chat altogether. Your customers prefer this communication channel because they want the convenience of self-service. And, without some level of automation, customers might as well send an email because it will take just as long to receive a response. 

The quick fix: Learn your chat platform’s macros or automation processes

Source: Gorgias

Live chat platforms are designed to enhance the workload of your support team. So, naturally, the brand you work with will have a knowledge base with detailed instructions about platform use. Make sure your support agents learn how to implement macros or automations.

2. Too much automation

Before you get too excited and try to automate your entire live chat workflow, stop and think for a moment. It is possible to fully-automate your live chat communications. However, with automation, you can’t always get the answers right. Irrelevant responses to customer queries can trigger immediate dissatisfaction.

The quick fix: Refer to the Pareto principle

In marketing, sales, writing, and even customer service, the Pareto principle, better known as the 80/20 rule can come in handy. This principle states that 80% of the effects for many actions come from 20% of the effort. Spin this just a bit for an easy solution. 

Find out where most of your effort is being spent (maybe 20% of the customer support workload) and use live chat macros to answer the most common customer questions first. Then, the rest of your support agents’ work time to reply to the unique and personal queries (perhaps about 80% of the customer support workload).   

See Also: Love Your Melon Has Automated 25% of Shopify Support Tickets

3. Excessive wait times

While it may not always be possible, especially from the perspective of a brand, up to 79% of consumers want immediate responses and expect answers within 10 minutes. If you’re making your shoppers wait longer than this, you may be losing sales.

One of the biggest benefits of live chat for customer support is its speed .You need to find a solution to accelerate your responses.  

The quick fix: Enlist assistance from other departments

Much of the time, excessive wait times are due to the fact that customer support staff must reach out to external departments and wait for answers before replying to the customer. Try what Nomad did to decrease first-response time by 78% and implement an all-hands support strategy. 

Require each department to directly respond to a number of tickets every day. And, there’s no need to go overboard -- just a few tickets a day from sales, marketing, and/or product teams can have a dramatic positive impact on response and resolution times. 

4. Ineffective language use

Do your agents sound like robots? Are your chat communications overly-formal? If so, you run the risk of turning people away. Consumers appreciate AI, but if they can have better conversations with Siri or Alexa that they do your customer support team, your conversations could use some work. 

The quick fix: Parrot your customers 

Compile some data from your chat sessions and look for patterns. Do you see any recurring words or phrases in your customer communications? If so, add them to your macros and your agents’ vocabulary. When you speak the same language with shoppers, they’re more likely to trust you. 

5. Unskilled or untrained support agents

Customer service agents never get as much credit as they deserve. Without a small army of satisfaction soldiers, you will lose the eCommerce war. So, the work needs to be taken seriously. If you hire low-skilled agents who can’t answer your shoppers’ questions, you will end up with low-quality support operations. Eventually, this mistake can kill your business. 

The quick fix: hire and train well 

Unfortunately, for this problem, there isn’t a “quick” fix. However, if you put in significant energy in the beginning, you may be able to kick up your heels later. Onboard well. 

Fist of all, learn the core skills that your support agents need like active listening and product knowledge. Then, hire like you know what you’re doing. Make sure to ask the right interview questions. And, when onboarding, create stellar customer service training materials. The resources you invest when you bring on new agents will pay for themselves fast. 

6. Emoji overload

Once in a while, if you throw an emoji out there in a live chat conversation with a customer, it can be fun. Emojis can help adjust the mood and keep a message lighthearted. Forbes says that emojis can be worth 1,000 words. But, don’t go overboard. Too many smiley faces and penguins will come across annoying and unprofessional. 

The quick fix: Just stop 🛑 

If it seems like your agents may be on emoji overdrive, just ask them to stop. Remove the use of smileys and strong arms from your operations entirely. It’s better to have no emojis at all than to have too many. Now, if this hasn’t become a problem internally, then don’t worry about it. Skilled agents typically know what’s appropriate and what’s not. 

7. Extreme focus on quantity

In eCommerce and business in general, decision-makers spend end a lot of time looking at numbers. In customer service, you strive for the fastest first-response and resolution times. While this is best practice, don’t let quantity overshadow quality. Some teams become so focused on their numbers that they lose sight of their actual customer satisfaction. Don’t let this be your team. 

The quick fix: Audit your operations 

Instead of playing a numbers game and obsessing about the clock, focus on quality. Customer satisfaction should be the number one goal of every support team and every business, for that matter. Periodically, run an audit on your operations and make sure your satisfaction levels are balanced with your speed. 

8. No data collection

A few weeks ago, I called out to online store owners on Twitter to ask for their experience using live chat to increase sales. I wanted to level the playing field and reach beyond our internal data to find others who had the same experience. And, while each respondent knew that live chat had a positive impact on their Shopify sales, they couldn’t provide real numbers. Instead, they shared anecdotes and vague descriptions and stories. There are two key problems with no data collection for live chat. 

  1. When you have no performance data and statistics, you can’t determine the exact areas where you need to improve your processes.
  2. A lack of customer data leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction. 

90% of consumers value when an agent knows their account history and current activity within a company. 

The quick fix: Use a full-featured live chat plaform 

If your live chat platform is designed to collect data from your agents and your customers, you can get all of the information you need to collect helpful internal statistics.

Measure customer support success with relevant KPIs

Keep track of tickets created, replied, closed, messages, time to resolution. Sort your data by agent or event. Use real numbers from your internal processes to power your customer support strategy. 

With the right reporting system, you can inform your future decisions about hiring, automation, processes, and more. 

9. Missing optimal chat times

Do you know when your website traffic spends most of their time on your website? And, are you making certain that your agents are online during peak times? If not, you will naturally see low response and resolution times. Plus, the people who reach out when nobody is online may never return to your site. 

The quick fix: discover your peak times & make sure you’re staffed 

Use a tool like Google Analytics to generate hour of day and day of week reports. When you have determined the most active times for your website visitors, check to make sure you’re staffed during these times. And, if you see that there are active traffic times that you don’t have anyone available, make adjustments to your staff schedules. 

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10. Ignoring sales opportunities 

Customer support is an avenue for your team to keep shoppers happy. And, happy shoppers evolve into satisfied, long-term customers. But, you may be missing opportunities to upsell your website traffic on current promotions and increase sales even more.  

The quick fix: Share your current promotions with shoppers

When you’re running a promotion, contest, or sale, make sure your support agents are aware. At the beginning or end of every live chat conversation (you’ll have to test to see what works best for your audience), give customers a link to a page with the information or briefly tell them about the promotion. 

11. Disconnected processes

A major problem for many support agents that can kill satisfaction is processes that are disconnected. Your staff can be forced to open multiple tabs to keep a conversation going -- email, social media, live chat, web store. This can take up precious time and also give customers the feeling that your company doesn’t know who they are or what their status is. 

The quick fix: Make sure your live chat is integrated with Shopify and your other communication channels

Gorgias's live chat platform connects with your Shopify data so that you can streamline the resolution on orders, shipping, tracking, and return tickets. Furthermore, it integrates with your email, phone, and social media messaging platforms so that you have access to all customer data, no matter which channel they reach out on. 

Final thoughts

Now you know exactly what not to do and how to fix what you’re doing wrong with live chat on your Shopify store. Apply this advice today and watch your support team nurture more satisfaction with shoppers. If you need a Shopify full-featured live chat platform that provides the data you need to scale your customer support operations and the integrations that can streamline your operations, find out what we have to offer. 

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Gorgias 2021 Year in Review

Gorgias in 2021: 8,000 ecommerce brands turned support challenges into $1.1 billion

By Ryan Baum
7 min read.
0 min read . By Ryan Baum

As ecommerce grew this year, we continued to work toward a decentralized vision of commerce — a model where merchants take back their customer relationships from colossal marketplaces and connect one-to-one with the people who buy their products.

Our merchants had a record-breaking number of these personal interactions in 2021 and that’s worth celebrating. So we’ve collected all the firsts, upgrades and proudest moments to share with you.

Since January 2021 feels like 10 years ago (and also 10 minutes ago, somehow), let’s take a walk down memory lane.

  1. 8,000 brands with one thing in common
  2. 75 million chances to improve customer experience
  3. Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were
  4. Assembling the ecommerce A-Team
  5. Customer feedback drove our product roadmap
  6. Gorgias grew alongside our merchants
  7. Looking ahead to 2022

8,000 brands with one thing in common

This year, we helped 8,000 brands support over 290 million shoppers, bringing in customers like Bidabo, Biketart, Lillie's Q and Livinguard.

All together, our customers generated $1.1 billion from their customer support functions in 2021.

Those companies varied in size, from single entrepreneurs still proving their products to enterprise companies scaling beyond their wildest dreams. Differences aside, they united in prioritizing customer experience to grow their businesses.

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Some industries came up again and again on our roster, including: 

And because Gorgias powered growth across 110 industries, our customers’ customers were purchasing everything from medical supplies to maritime essentials.

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75 million chances to improve customer experience

Every minute of 2021, Gorgias customers closed out an average of 179 tickets. In more relatable terms, they helped more than 10,000 shoppers in the time it took to watch a new episode of Shark Tank.

At the peak of support volume — the five-day period from Thanksgiving and Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM) — our merchants answered 2.5 million tickets. Their support teams drove $25.6 million in sales during that time.

With tools made for that moment, they were able to stay on top of the ticket pile and turn the holiday rush into a gold rush.

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The impact didn’t stop there. On average, our merchants received a 4/5 satisfaction rating from their customers in 2021. The 75 million tickets they answered reinforced their brands, one loyal customer at a time.

After all, when your team has a million fires to extinguish, the only flames in customer support should be the emoji reactions to your five-star ratings.

And that’s exactly what you’ll be chasing as your performance metrics approach those from our top quartile of merchants. The top-performing teams clocked first-response times under two hours and resolution times under 8 hours, on average.

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Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were

As ecommerce becomes more decentralized, so do the channels that provide your customer feedback.

Still, it’s no surprise that email remains the most popular support channel, used by 92% of our brands. Together, they answered 64 million emails in 2021 (85% of all tickets). 

This next stat may be more of a revelation: 78% of our brands have brought Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter interactions into their Gorgias workspace. They answered 3.7 million comments across those three channels, with almost two-thirds coming from Facebook.

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These social channels were used even more than our live chat, phone, and SMS integrations. And Gorgias helped merchants meet their customers in all of the above, without ever leaving their dashboard.

Assembling the ecommerce A-Team

2021 also saw the launch of our long-awaited Gorgias App Store. This hub features 75 apps to extend the power of our helpdesk and centralize the information support agents rely on. 

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62% of our merchants are using at least one of our partner apps, and we’re exploring new partnerships all the time to continue streamlining the customer support process. 

This allows us, and all of our partners, to stay focused on being the absolute best at what we do.

Some of our merchants’ favorite integrations include: 

  • Klaviyo: An email and SMS marketing automation platform
  • Recharge: For subscriptions and recurring payments
  • Attentive: A comprehensive text message marketing solution 
  • Postscript: SMS marketing for growing ecommerce stores
  • Yotpo: For customer reviews, loyalty, referrals, and more

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So go ahead and close those 20 tabs out — you won’t need them where we’re headed.

Customer feedback drove our product roadmap

We released 91 features this year, 42 of which were led by your requests on our public roadmap

Our most requested features (that are all available today!) were: 

The quick adoption of our 2021 social media updates made it clear these channels were critical to our merchants’ success this year. We expect that to continue into 2022. (TikTok, anyone? Give it an upvote here!) 

And while voice support didn’t see the same volume of requests as the social channels, we knew it was essential for certain brands. To better serve these merchants, we built a native phone integration that’s easily set up for new and existing numbers.

Merchants responded by taking more than 4,000 calls from shoppers this year. As a result, resolution times were up to 34% faster than others who left phone service out of their strategies.

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And while we want to give our merchants a variety of tools to provide help, sometimes it's best to empower shoppers to help themselves. 

Our new Help Center feature provides FAQ hubs on merchant websites, to work toward this goal. The first 100 Help Centers that went live attracted over 100,000 views, answering inquiries before they could turn into tickets.

Another contribution is perhaps our most exciting release: Our Automate product allows for customization of self-service flows and deflects even more tickets to boost team efficiency. 

Hundreds of merchants used the add-on in 2021 to automate their tickets, increasing efficiency across their support teams.

Our self-service portal alone deflected up to another 33% of tickets specific to shoppers (like order status). This freed up agent time to provide a more personal touch to important conversations. 

Gorgias grew alongside our merchants

We tripled the size of our team in 2021 to continue building the best possible helpdesk for the specific needs of ecommerce brands. There are now 185 employees who work in 16 countries around the globe and speak 18 different languages.

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That means there’s more Gorgians building out integrations, furthering the product roadmap, and contributing to our merchants’ success.

And our customers have let us know how much these improvements impacted their businesses. We currently hold top marks among the helpdesk categories on G2, Capterra and the Shopify app store.

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Looking ahead to 2022 

2021 was a year to remember for the Gorgias team and our customers, but 2022 is shaping up to be even better. It might even be the year people learn to pronounce our name. (470 people asked how during this year’s demos; think “gorgeous.”) 

Fingers crossed.

Either way, we have some key new features on the roadmap and several surprises up our sleeves. We’ll continue building and optimizing channels so you can meet your customers where they are (including a much-requested Whatsapp integration). We’re also going to renew our focus on automation tools to increase efficiency across your team. 

Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter, below, to beam all of our updates directly to your inbox.

As for the rest of the ecommerce industry, we have high hopes for 2022 (and plenty of predictions). We’re expecting continued shift of support tickets to social channels, a bigger emphasis on self-service options and a sharper focus on app integrations across the ecommerce ecosystem. 

Until then, thanks for a great year!

Reduce Customer Support Load

3 Ways to Reduce the Load On Your Customer Support Team

By Ross Beyeler
8 min read.
0 min read . By Ross Beyeler

By Ross Beyeler, Founder and CEO of Growth Spark


Often, a support team answers the same questions over and over…


Or issues returns repeatedly for reasons that could be addressed internally…


Maybe the sizing isn’t well represented, the fulfillment house has mixed up SKUs, or your product images aren’t clear or detailed enough.


If you can lighten the load for your customer support team, you can save significant time and costs, while at the same time improving the buying experience for your customers.


The goals here are to:


  • Reduce repeat inquiries
  • Shorten first response times
  • Speed up problem resolution time
  • Lower overall customer care costs


The key is to address your customers questions and issues before they ask your support team. Here's how you do that:


A Better FAQ Page


91% of shoppers would gladly try to answer their own questions first using an online knowledge base or FAQ page before reaching out to a customer service team, according to a survey by Coleman Parkes for Amdocs.


This means that your FAQ page is a huge opportunity to answer your customers’ most common questions and issues so they don’t need to reach out to customer support.


FAQ information typically falls into one of two distinct buckets: product-specific and buying process.


Product Specific: Common questions about individual products may be better off addressed on the product pages rather than in a broad FAQ page. You may need to provide clearer or more comprehensive product descriptions, or consider more or better photography to clear up common product questions.


Buying Process: Questions about shipping, returns, policies, and other operational topics are best addressed in a single easy-to-find page like an FAQ.


When is the last time you cross-checked the content of your FAQ page with the data from your customer support team?


There are many customer support tools like Gorgias that will make it easy for you to track the reasons behind why users submit a ticket.


Once you begin tracking the topic, or tag, of your questions, you can easily identify the questions that top the list, and permanently add the responses to the FAQ.


Bonus points: Prioritize the FAQ page based on the frequency of each customer service inquiry so that the most relevant answers are closer to the top.


Your next step is to set up a monthly meeting with your head of customer service to review the feedback coming in from your customers and ask yourself:


  • What are the most frequent topics of support inquiries?
  • What issues take up the majority of your support team’s time and resources?
  • What issues are emerging or could emerge do to seasonality or new initiatives within our company?


Remember, an FAQ page is:


  • Easy to find
  • If shoppers can’t find it quickly and easily, they won’t use it and all your work answering all of their questions will go to waste. If you have an answer on your FAQ page, yet people are still inquiring, they might be having trouble finding the page.


  • Searchable
  • Include a search bar so that shoppers can easily find the answers for their specific problem without having to read through everything else.


  • Easy to read
  • Use simple, conversational language. Technical slang gives most of us a headache, and leaves most people reaching for the closest live human to explain it in terms they understand.


For more on FAQ pages, check out this Shopify article.


Now that you have your FAQ page squared away, be sure to track visitors to the page and note any changes in volume, and look for changes in your support ticket volume around those related questions.


Remember: You should never answer a support ticket only by referencing your FAQ page. Always include the information they are asking for directly within your response. After that, let the customer know that there is an FAQ page for more information, to avoid future tickets.


See Where Your Customers Get Tripped Up


Have you watched actual customers explore your online store to see where they stumble?


Customer behavior tools like Hotjar make it easy to review how customers navigate your website. One way that customer behavior analysis tools can help you understand exactly how your customers are using your site is with heat maps.


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A heat map is a visual representation of the most popular (hot) and unpopular (cold) elements of a website page. They can give you an at-a-glance understanding of how people interact with individual website pages. Elements that get the most views and interaction are shown in red, so you can immediately spot what your users are clicking on. Those that most people tend to ignore appear in blue.


Once you know which parts of your website are most (and least) useful to shoppers, you can tweak those elements to make the on-site experience easier to use.


Customer behavior data can inform on-site improvements, such as:


  • Identifying any “dead” pages so you can remove them
  • Recognizing “deep” content that requires too many clicks for customers to reach, and making it more visible or accessible
  • Ensuring that customers can easily see and access main links, buttons, and CTAs
  • Making sure that important elements are getting the attention they deserve
  • Checking whether any static elements are getting clicked too often, and adjusting them to clarify that they aren’t a linked object


It may require some A/B testing to ensure your changes deliver results.


Learn from Returns


According to a recent Shopify post, during the holiday season, Ecommerce returns surge to 30 percent (or as high as 50 percent for “expensive” products).


Return deliveries are estimated to exceed $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.


Many of those returns are probably associated with a customer support ticket - whether customers are asking questions about the product they received, or need help processing their return.


Anything you can do to reduce the number of returns - and the number of customer support requests associated with them - can mean a huge boost for your bottom line.


So, what causes returns?


Returns can often be traced back to a disconnect between customer expectations and the reality of the product once they receive it. It may be that:


  • It doesn’t fit the way they expected
  • It doesn’t look or feel like they thought it would
  • Delivery came later than they expected (or not at all)


All of these problems (and more) can be prevented in advance with improvements to your website content.




Sizing Issues

While fit can be a difficult factor to get right online, including detailed dimensions is a big step in the right direction. Some apparel merchants are taking sizing one step further with interactive fit guides, like the one above Nudie Jeans, which uses an app integration called Virtusize:.

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Appearance Issues

Poor quality or not enough product images can make it difficult for customers to accurately understand what your product will look like when it arrives at their home.


You can easily reduce your return rate by making sure your product photography is clear and high-quality, and illustrates all of the primary parts of each product. More complicated or detailed products can also benefit from a video or 360-view.


Detailed product descriptions can also help address confusion about product appearance and feel. Sol de Janeiro does this with a multi-tab product content area that defaults to a brief product highlight, with additional tabs to provide more details.


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Fulfillment Issues

Are orders not being fulfilled to the right customers?


Are deliveries taking longer than they should?


Analyzing your fulfillment data and using that information to make adjustments to your website content - such as average delivery times - can help eliminate a source of customer support calls.


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For example, maybe you want to be able to deliver every order within two days, but your current fulfillment resources simply can’t make that happen consistently. Being up-front and clear about realistic delivery times (like The Black Dog does in their Shipping FAQ page, above) will help set customers’ expectations appropriately.


Bonus: To get setup on two day shipping, consider our partners at ShipBob.


Final Thoughts


Continue to study your on-site data using Google Analytics or Shopify’s native analytics and look for high exit % pages. These may be pages where prospects or customers are running into a dead end and being forced to turn to support.


You can also create a goal in Google Analytics that corresponds to contacting support, then reverse the user path to determine which pages lead to them submitting a ticket / hitting that “contact” or “support” button.


Chances are, there are a few areas of “low hanging fruit” that can make significant improvements to your customer support load once you find them and address the root concerns. And with those small fixes, you could see a big impact on your bottom line, and a better on-site experience for your customers.


Read more about customer support on our trusted partner’s site, Growth Spark:


Best Practices for Shopify E-Commerce Customer Service

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Aircall

Gorgias Builds Strong Relationships With Aircall

By Sonia Moatti
1 min read.
0 min read . By Sonia Moatti

Aircall is a cloud-based call center software made for support teams. With Aircall, support agents can track everything from A-Z, on any device, with zero hardware to manage. The right tool to increase agent efficiency and customer satisfaction!

Aircall Makes the Gorgias Helpdesk Complete

After listening to early customer feedback, we quickly realized we needed to find a phone integration that empowered users to manage voice calls as easily as emails or chats.

Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer. This way, agents can see the full conversation history between the brand and the customer.

By building Aircall’s cloud-based phone into the Gorgias platform, agents can also quickly edit orders while on the phone based on the case history they see. After a call has ended, all notes will be added to the correct customer’s profile along with a link to the full call recording.

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Why Aircall was the Right Choice

Looking back, the partnership has been mutually beneficial and seamlessly implemented.

Aircall has a well-documented API that our dev team could easily use. We were able to build a working and robust phone integration with Aircall in just a few hours. Four days later, after QA testing, the new solutions were fully functional and ready to use.

Since Gorgias and Aircall both seek to provide the best customer experience possible, cross-company visibility has become a valuable source of new leads and sales. Furthermore, we conduct regular catch-up meetings and share a Slack channel to make sure both teams work hand-in-hand to create the best integration and the best results. The partnership with Aircall is super valuable for both our customers and our respective companies and we strongly recommend each others.

If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect Aircall. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

Gorgias for Magento 2

Announcing Gorgias’ Magento 2 Extension Launch

By Romain Lapeyre
2 min read.
0 min read . By Romain Lapeyre

You spoke and we listened. We’re excited to tell you that, we are ready to launch out of beta. Now, you can connect your Magento 2 store with your Gorgias account. Access your Gorgias and Magento data from one dashboard. 

The simplistic interface will enable you to display customers, orders, shipments, and credit memo data from your Magento eCommerce store next to your Gorgias support tickets. Learn more about the features you can take advantage of. 

Magento 2 support ticket system interface


Magento 2 users can leverage the benefits of Gorgias

Magento users now have access to the fundamental and performance-boosting advantages of the Gorgias help desk platform. 

  • Display Magento customer profiles next to your support tickets. 
  • View orders, shipments, and credit memos for each customer. 
  • Centralize all customer communications like email, live chat, and social messaging and comments in one place.  
  • Connect to Magento store and other third-party extensions to empower your support agents to reply to tickets quickly and within context. 
  • Leverage key automation features like phrase prediction or intent detection to create productive and revenue-generating conversations. 
  • Save up to 50% of your time spent managing support requests across all support communication channels. 
  • Insert Magento 2 variables like the last order’s tracking URL, into macros.
Insert Magento variables in each answer
  • Use Magento 2 data as a filter for rules. For example, to add conditions on the price of the last order of a customer.
Use Magento data to create filters and rules in your help desk

Soon, we will add actions like ‘refund’ or ‘cancel order’ to the dashboard as well.

Note: The Gorgias Extension is Compatible with Magento 2.3

Our extension was created for compatibility with the updated Magento 2 platform. So, Magento 2.2 users may need to upgrade to version 2.3 to properly access all of Gorgias’ help desk features.

How to Install the Extension to Your Magento 2 Store

By integrating with Magento 2, we are excited to serve a new rank of online sellers. We hope to recreate the satisfaction we’ve given our existing users. Here’s what you can do now. 

  1. Check out the Gorgias extension in the Magento Marketplace
  2. Learn how to connect your Magento 2 store to your Gorgias account
  3. Tell us how you like the new integration and what we can do to improve. 

Cheers!

October 2021: New Gorgias Integrations

7 new apps that integrate with Gorgias

By Morgan Smith
3 min read.
0 min read . By Morgan Smith

Gorgias connects to over 70 leading ecommerce applications, giving you the power to centralize customer data in your helpdesk, perform support actions from a single place, and streamline your store’s toolkit. 

This month, we launched 7 new integrations: 

  1. LoyaltyLion
  2. Twitter (No longer supported in 2023)
  3. Call Hippo
  4. Shipup
  5. Tolstoy
  6. Autopilot
  7. Sentisum
  8. Yotpo (updates to our existing integration) 

Read on to learn how you can use these tools to help manage your store, and visit the Gorgias App Store to activate them today!

1. LoyaltyLion

LoyaltyLion is a digital loyalty framework that gives ecommerce stores innovative ways to engage and retain customers. If you're using LoyaltyLion for your loyalty program, you can connect it to Gorgias to display information next to support tickets, and reward loyalty points using Macros. 


2. Twitter

Note: Gorgias no longer supports Twitter. You can still use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in Gorgias.

Give your support team the power to provide customer service to shoppers on Twitter, without having to log into another platform or share credentials with your social media manager. View past Twitter conversations, gain cross-channel message context, and customize your replies to provide exceptional customer support.

Note: This integration is currently only available for Enterprise plans. View pricing here.


3. Call Hippo

CallHippo allows startups and businesses to buy instant local support numbers from over 50+ countries around the world. With this integration, you can create tickets in Gorgias for phone calls and SMS conversations via Call Hippo. 

4. ShipUp

Shipup follows your packages in real-time to create a seamless, transparent, and branded delivery experience. With the Gorgias integration, you can easily share shipping information with your support team, immediately notify them with a ticket in Gorgias when an incident occurs, and find customer information right next to conversations. 

5. Tolstoy

Tolstoy is an interactive video platform, helping users create meaningful and personal conversations at scale. With this integration, Gorgias users can sync their Tolstoy videos and monitor every viewer interaction as a ticket, empowering support agents to engage without ever leaving the help desk. 


6. Autopilot

Autopilot is a data and customer journey marketing platform designed for businesses who sell online. With this integration, you can now combine your Shopify and Gorgias data together seamlessly in Autopilot. You’ll not only have a single view of your customer, but you’ll be able to deliver a more personalized marketing experience and get glowing reviews from satisfied customers.


7. SentiSum

SentiSum is an automated ticket tagging engine powered by natural language processing technology. With this integration, SentiSum tags can auto-fill form fields directly in Gorgias. From there, you can implement additional automation that saves agent time and improves customer outcomes.


8. Yotpo

You can now receive Yotpo product reviews right in Gorgias and reply to them as tickets! This gives your agents visibility into how shoppers feel about your product and allows them to address concerns without ever leaving the helpdesk. Each ticket will include the review details (like score and product) and allow you to either reply publicly or privately, so you can customize the support experience. 


To add these integrations and discover more, go to the Gorgias App Store.

Announcing The Okendo Integration

Announcing the Okendo integration

By Axelle Heems
1 min read.
0 min read . By Axelle Heems

Here at Gorgias, our aim is to provide the best customer support tools to our clients, whatever their specific needs. The more you grow, the more we work to develop our offer so that you can benefit from a tailor-made spectrum of integrations. As your business becomes more successful, you need to adapt your website to a fast-growing community of consumers, especially regarding the quality of your reviews and how they appear.

This is why today we are proud to announce our new partnership with Okendo, a customer-marketing platform perfectly suited for high-performance Shopify businesses.

Okendo helps Shopify’s fastest growing companies like oVertone, Paul Evans and Dormify build vibrant customer communities through product ratings & reviews, customer photos/videos and Q&A.

Along with this, Okendo gives you the tools to leverage customer generated content across other marketing channels such as Google Search, Google Shopping, Facebook and Instagram.

Since one of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one dashboard, we decided to design a straight-to-the-point integration:

If a customer leaves low rating review such as < 3 stars and/or with negative sentiment, Okendo can automatically create a ticket in Gorgias. This way, your staff can quickly engage in a conversation with them to understand what went wrong, and address the issue immediately.

Okendo-Review-screenshot-1

We believe this integration will take your customer support teams to the next level, as Okendo has already convinced some of our key clients.

"One of our biggest assets is our unique customer community, so being able to maintain it as active and engaged as possible is key for our business. And making sure that we address any negative experience efficiently and in no time is just as important: this is exactly what the Okendo integration within Gorgias has enabled us to do, by automatically creating a ticket for these cases with the review displayed right next to it."

Dan Appelstein, Founder & CEO at BeGummy

"Aside from being excellent at building shopper trust, reviews enable us to identify customers who, for whatever reason, have had a less than stellar experience. The Okendo + Gorgias integration enables us to flag these instances and automatically assign a Gorgias ticket to a member of our Client Services Team, so that we can follow up and do our best to assist them with whatever issues they're encountering. This integration, along with Okendo’s consistent availability and unwavering support, have made the integration between these two platforms seamless and successful!"

Jae Sutherland, Director of Client Service at oVertone

If you're already a Gorgias customer, we can introduce you to Okendo to implement the integration directly from your Okendo account. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

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Announcing The Recharge Integration

Announcing the ReCharge integration

By Astrid Parmentier
1 min read.
0 min read . By Astrid Parmentier

Recharge is the most popular subscription app in the Shopify app store and is the preferred solution for Shopify Plus stores. Over 10,000 Shopify merchants chose ReCharge to help sell products on a recurring basis, including stores like Dr. Axe, Hubble Contacts, and 5 Hour Energy.

The challenge is, when a customer has an issue with their subscription, the support team needs to jump between their helpdesk, Shopify and the ReCharge platform to fix the problem. This negatively impacts response time. Agents end up wasting hours per week going to ReCharge to skip a box for a customer, edit a subscription, etc. One of the key advantages of using Gorgias is to manage all your customer support in one place. A few months ago, our customer Darn Good Yarn asked us to build an integration with ReCharge. They no longer wanted to switch between ReCharge, Shopify and their helpdesk. This was completely aligned with our vision, so we decided to build it.

Today, we're excited to announce we've partnered with ReCharge to launch this integration.

Here are the key benefits:

  1. Display ReCharge subscriptions next to support tickets.
  2. Edit ReCharge subscriptions in one click from your helpdesk: refund charges, skip monthly payments or cancel subscriptions from Gorgias
  3. When a customer ask to edit their subscription, you can send them an auto-response with the link to manage the subscription.

“Gorgias gives us a holistic view of our customers. This way we can provide them with fast and personalized help”
Nicole Snow, DarnGoodYarn

Let’s take the example of Averill John. She wants to cancel her subscription to the Yummy Box and has just sent an email to your support.

Here is how your helpdesk looks like:

You can see that Astrid has been assigned to this ticket and that this ticket is tagged “Ambassador”. It means that Averill is one of your super loyal customers.

On the right, you can see the ReCharge account data of Averill. Here, Averill has a monthly subscription to the Yummy Box and will be charged on the 15th of October.

Astrid can skip the October charge in one-click on the “Skip charge on subscription” button. It will immediately set the action within ReCharge. Response time? Less than 1 minute!

If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect ReCharge. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

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