If you’ve ever worked in customer service, you know that unhappy customers are unavoidable. Customer satisfaction has plummeted since 2018, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. 

That’s why top brands don’t wait until angry customer emails arrive to decide how to respond. By setting up processes and templates ahead of time, your customer support team doesn’t need to craft responses from scratch. Especially while emotions are running high and angry customers are waiting for responses. 

Below, you’ll find step-by-step instructions on how to process and respond to angry customer emails, considerations for handling angry or rude customers without making the situation worse, and tips to prevent angry customers by improving your customer experience (CX). We'll also share templates and sample emails for how to respond to:

• Customers who are having product issues
• Customers with shipping and delivery problems
• Customers with missing or late orders
• Customers who got the wrong product
• Customers who have a cancellation request (purchase or subscription)
• Customers who want a refund or exchange
• Customers who had a bad support experience
• Customers with no clear reason to be upset

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Is it worth it to deal with angry customers? 

When customers aren’t happy with your product, service, or customer support, the stakes are high. You could lose them as a repeat customer, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Angry customers also go and tell their friends and family, either by word-of-mouth, on social media, or via a Google review. 

The Effortless Experience found that 96% of disgruntled customers who had a high-effort or bad experience with a brand feel disloyal to that brand afterward. In other words, a frustrating, high-effort experience will irreversibly damage your brand's reputation for almost any customer, whether they’re first-time or regular shoppers. That spells trouble for your bottom line.  

Also, your customer service team doesn’t want to respond to nasty emails all day long. Customer service can already be an emotionally challenging role, and spending all day dealing with angry customers is a quick path toward burnout and quitting.

📚 Related reading: Read our guide to hiring A+ customer service agents, written in partnership with customer service agency Helpflow.com.

8 steps to take when responding to frustrated customer emails

Respond to angry customer emails by acknowledging the customer's frustration, owning any mistakes, gathering additional context, confirming you understand the entire situation, and fully resolving the issue.

These messages are high-stakes: When someone writes to your organization with an angry message, they’re angry enough to sit at their keyboard and express their anger. You’re lucky they wrote to you — the next message could be on a review website or social media. 

You’re lucky they wrote to you — the next message could be on a review website or social media.

It’s imperative to respond to every single angry customer email — ideally with fast response times.

0) Set up automated responses if you can’t quickly respond

If you have a small team or are only online for certain parts of the day, consider setting up a standard automated reply to confirm receipt of their email. We listed this as step 0 because it’s not a catch-all solution: You should not send this kind of email if you’re able to provide a human response within an hour or two. Nobody likes an extra, unnecessary email.

If you do choose to activate this kind of response, it should:

• Confirm that you received the customer’s email so they don’t have to wonder if it went through
• Tell the customers when they can expect to receive an email response from a human agent
• Thank the customer for writing in

Here’s a mockup of how to create this kind of automated response with Gorgias Rules:

📚 Recommended reading: Get more tips and tricks to improve your response times.

1) Read the email first

This may seem obvious, but unless you address every point the customer makes, you’re only prolonging the correspondence and further irritating them. 

It’s easy to overlook something the customer says, particularly if the email’s pretty emotive or raises several points. So, try to summarize what they’re complaining about in a separate text document or as a note on the ticket in your helpdesk. 

Consider bullet-pointing each issue to ensure you answer every aspect of their message, as shown in the internal note above. 

2) Do your research to understand the problem and context

Before responding, consider if there’s any research you can do on your end to resolve the issue faster. For example, if a customer asks whether an item will come back in stock, you may look up similar items currently available if that customer is in a time crunch (like for the holidays). 

You’ll also want to ensure you have all of the context you need to provide a full resolution for that customer. 

For example, if a customer is trying to track down a lost package, take a look at the package history and order date to better understand why they’re upset and whether you’ll need to re-send the item or reach out to the carrier on their behalf. 

Ideally, your helpdesk has integrations with shipping software (like AfterShip) so you can see this information right next to the customer’s message (rather than having to navigate to a new tool).

3) Escalate if necessary (based on policy)

Some requests, whether from a VIP customer, the urgency of the issue, or its scale, need to be escalated right away. Based on the policy you’ve set out for your support team members, encourage them to forward major concerns to the correct team quickly. 

📚 Recommended reading: Read our Director of Support’s guide to prioritizing customer service requests.

4) Thank them for writing

Yes, you've already done this in your automated message – but it doesn't hurt to do it again. So, always say thank you at the start of your email. You must acknowledge their complaint and show you care about their feedback.  

For instance, if a customer has written to complain, you could start with something along the lines of:

Thank you for contacting [your company name] and letting us know about your experiences with our [insert name of the product/situation]. We appreciate you contacting us to let us know. We value customer feedback so that we can work to provide you with gold-plated customer service.’

5) Use their name and take a personalized approach

If you're not already, it's time to take a personalized approach to customer service. While this means taking a more holistic approach to the service process in general, the first step is to take note of small details, like using a customer’s name in correspondence. 

Consumers crave a personalized experience; they want to be treated as individuals, not as just another support ticket. That means avoiding asking them for information they’ve already given you again. It also means using a customer support tool that provides all of their historical account information in one place. Your helpdesk should show all past orders, correspondence with support, shipping address information, and even marketing emails they’ve received and clicked on. 

For example, Gorgias’ Customer Sidebar provides customer information right next to the ticket that can help you personalize the message.

6) Acknowledge their problem

If your customer has taken the time to bring an issue to your attention, it’s polite and good practice to acknowledge that. So, in your response, reflect on what they’ve told you. 

For example, you could write something like this:

‘I can see that you’re frustrated [insert a suitable empathic summary of the customer’s feelings] about your experiences with our product/customer service. We can see how, on this occasion, we didn’t reach our normally high standards of delivery.’

7) Provide a solution

Always focus on solving the customer’s problem. Find a solution and clearly explain the resolution to the customer’s complaint.

For example, if they’re upset about a product’s quality or performance, you need to refer them to your returns and replacements policy. On some occasions, it may be necessary to escalate a complaint if it’s not within your power to resolve. In which case, again, follow the protocol your company has to handle the specific issue so that it complements your current chain of command. 

According to a research study conducted by Gartner and later coined The Effortless Experience, 45% of customers who have a positive support experience tell less than three people. In contrast, 48% of customers with a negative experience shared it with over ten people. 

While a positive, low-effort solution is a short-term expense for you, it could keep the customer on your side, netting future purchases or at least minimizing negative word of mouth and reviews.

8) Avoid offering the same solution twice 

If a customer is still upset after you’ve already offered a solution, chances are it wasn’t the right one. Ensure that you’re able to give the customer a few different options for a resolution in case the original one didn’t work for them (or wasn’t the result they hoped for). 

Of course, this should only go as far as your support policy states. If possible, tag in a customer service lead to see if you can make an exception to your policy. In a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can tag specific agents or an escalated team.

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Considerations when writing responses to angry customer emails

Above, we covered the steps to follow when responding to angry emails. Below, we’ll share some high-level considerations to keep in mind when crafting responses.

Check your language and tone

Use clear language and show empathy. Always consider your audience. Remember, your audience doesn’t know your organization's internal workings or technical aspects. 

Interestingly, 65% of online shoppers prefer casual over a formal tone in their customer service interactions. That said, if the customer isn’t happy with your response or solution, 78% said that an overly casual style would elicit an adverse reaction from them. 

Why? Because it sounds like you're not taking their problem seriously.  

Also, consider the words you use. For example, remove any uses of the “but” from your responses. By eliminating negative terms like this, you’ll exude more of a positive tone, which works wonders for altering perception. 

For example:

“Thank you for contacting us, but we don’t provide that service.”

Vs.

“Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, we're unable to provide that service. We do, however, provide the following….”

See the difference?

Through practice and experience, you’ll be better positioned to sense your customer’s tone. For example, if the customer’s frustration radiates through their message, show empathy by offering reassurance and the right level of apology. 

Check your grammar and spelling

There’s nothing worse than grammatical and spelling errors. Re-read your response and run it through a spelling and grammar checker. If in doubt, ask a colleague to double-check it for you. 

Some reputable online spell checkers include Grammarly, Reverso, and Language Tool. Your organization may already have a subscription for marketing or other purposes, so check what’s available. 

Decide whether they are frustrated or truly irate 

The key to understanding whether a customer is truly angry is empathy and context. 

Use empathy to dissect the tone and language a customer uses in their correspondence with you. Then, use the context they've given you and that you have about their order history to piece together their entire situation. 

For example, a customer might write in about a lost or delayed package. Based on the language they’re using, and the fact that they paid to upgrade shipping to get it in time for a friend’s birthday, tells you that this customer is angry and in need of a fast resolution. 

You should strive to provide top-notch support no matter if a customer is merely frustrated versus angry. But, your communication, time to resolution, and the solution you offer need to be even more considerate when dealing with someone who is truly irate. 

Deal with profanity in a professional manner

Sometimes, angry or frustrated customers will use profanity when complaining about an issue. The best responses to rude customers involve focusing on what the problem is to help get them to a solution. 

Some customer service phrases to use include: 

• “I understand why you’re upset – I would be upset as well in this situation. We will figure out a solution that makes you happy and that fully resolves this issue for you.”
• “I understand how frustrating this must be, especially since it sounds like we really missed the mark here.” 
• “I understand how disappointed you are. What kind of solution do you feel would make this right for you?”  

17 email templates you can use to respond to different customer issues

You may already have a series of customer service email templates you and your team use to handle various customer complaints. However, it’s always worth doing a little housekeeping to ensure they reflect your commitment to great customer service.

This is especially true if your customer service software comes with a set of templates already in existence. Don't make the mistake of just using these as they are. Instead, personalize them to reflect your own brand’s voice and tone. 

With that in mind, we’ve put together a summary version of some of the examples above to illustrate how to respond to an upset customer:

Dear [insert customer name],

Thank you for contacting us. I'm very sorry to hear you experienced poor customer service from the [insert your brand name] team.  

It’s important to us that our customers are happy, so we're sorry we could not provide our usual high service standards to you.

Possible paragraph:

Having investigated your complaint about [insert a summary of the complaint]. I'm happy to tell you; we can offer you the following solution [insert an explanation of the answer]. 

Alternative paragraph:

We're currently investigating your complaint about [insert a summary of the complaint]. Because your complaint involves several departments/strands/suppliers, it will take us a couple of days to get to the bottom of why, on this occasion, you received less than a gold standard of service from us. Thank you for your patience while we investigate this matter. I'll get in contact with you in two days to update you on our progress. 

Once the complaint is resolved, you could offer a discount to reduce the number of returns, which are more expensive to your business than exchanges:

We’d like to prove just how important you are to us by offering you a discount of [x%] on your next purchase.  

Sign off:

Thank you for bringing this negative experience to our attention. Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience caused. 

If there's anything else I can help you with or you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me. 

Best wishes,

[Name and contact details]

If you use Gorgias, a helpdesk that deeply integrates with your entire ecommerce tech stack (including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce), feel free to use the copy above as a Macro (which is what we call templated responses).

Your agents can use the template as a starting point and tweak it to meet each customer's unique needs.

Below, we’ve put together a series of templates that you can implement for different angry customer situations. 

Customers who are having product issues

1) General frustration with the product or experience

Hi {{Customer first name}},

Thank you for reaching out and letting us know about your experience with us. This is not up to our standard and I've passed this along to our team to ensure this doesn't happen again. 

In addition, I've {{Insert policy: refund, added a credit, send a replacement, etc.}} to make this right. 

We truly value you as a customer and apologize for the inconvenience this caused.

Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers with shipping and delivery problems

1) Order/shipping status (Where is my order?): Not shipped

Hello {{Customer first name}}, 

Thank you for reaching out! Your order {{Number of last order}} has been received and we are working on getting it shipped out. Our processing time to ship an order is 3-5 business days, excluding weekends. 

We will email you a confirmation once it ships, which will include your tracking information as well. 

If you have any questions in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

Thanks, 

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Order not shipped because the item is out of stock

Hi {{Customer first name}},

We wanted to let you know that your most recent order {{Number of last order}} is currently out of stock. We’re doing everything we can to get more in stock soon and we apologize for the delay!

The good news is that our next shipment should arrive by {{Date of availability}}, and you should receive your order within {{Number of business days}} once the item(s) gets to our warehouse.

Thanks for your patience! We’ll get you taken care of as soon as possible.

{{Current agent first name}}

3) Item arrived damaged 

Hi {{Customer First Name}}, 

Thanks for reaching out about your recent order {{Number of last order}}. I’m sorry to hear about your experience. As we try our best to provide exceptional service, some factors like shipping and handling are out of our control and issues like this can happen.  

Please send us a photo of the broken/damaged item(s) you received and we’ll do our best to resolve this as soon as possible. 

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers with missing or late orders

1) Order is lost 

Hi {{Customer First Name}},

Thank you for reaching out! I’m so sorry to hear that you were unable to locate the missing package. Rest assured we will remedy this situation for you. 

I have two options to offer: we can ship a replacement to you or issue a full refund for the order instead. If you prefer a replacement order, we kindly ask that you confirm the shipping address of where you would like the replacement order sent. We look forward to receiving your reply.

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Order/shipping status (Where is my order?): Delivered, not received

Hi {{Customer first name}}, 

I'm sorry to hear that you haven't received your order yet. It does appear to be in a delivered status. Sometimes this can be due to an incorrect scan by the carrier. If the package doesn't show up in the next {{Insert the number of days according to your policy}} please reach back out and we will {{insert internal policy}}. 

In the meantime, I've contacted the carrier and will be investigating on my end. 

Please reach out if I can help with anything else and I will keep an eye out for your email regarding the package.

{{Current agent first name}}

3) Order is late 

Hi {{Customer First Name}},

We regret to inform you that your order {{order number}} has been delayed.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and we appreciate your understanding. The reason for the delay is {{reason for the delay}}.

You can track the status of your order using this tracking link {{Link to tracking portal}}.

If you’d like to return or exchange your order, you can do so here {{Link to return/exchange portal}}.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience. Please let us know if you have any questions or can provide further assistance. 

Best,

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers who got the wrong product

1) Wrong item delivered

Hi {{Customer First Name}},

Thank you for letting us know we sent you the wrong product. We apologize for the inconvenience. We are sending you the correct product, the {{correct product name}} and it will be shipped by {{estimated shipping date}}. 

We sent it using expedited shipping, so you should receive it {{estimated delivery date}}. Please return {{old product}} in the original shipping box and packaging using the attached shipping label and instructions. Please contact us with any additional questions. 

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers who have a cancellation request (purchase or subscription)

1) Order already shipped 

Hi {{Customer first name}}, 

Thank you for reaching out to us! 

Unfortunately, it looks like your order {{Number of last order}} has already been shipped from our warehouse. Therefore, I’m unable to make any changes to it at this time. 

If possible, refuse the package at delivery. If that’s not possible, please let me know and I will send you a prepaid shipping label so that you can send the order back to us. Once we receive the order back at our warehouse, I will send a {{Replacement or refund}} to you right away. 

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Order change/cancel before the item ships 

Hi {{Customer First Name}}, 

Absolutely! I’ve swapped out {{Item name}} for the {{Item name}} you originally selected for order {{Number of last order}}. 

If you need anything else, just say the word. 

Best, 

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers who want a refund or exchange

1) Item is eligible 

Hi {{Customer first name}}, 

Thanks for reaching out! For your order that was delivered on {{Shipping date of last order}}, we’d be happy to process a refund for you. 

To get the return process started, please go to our {{Link to returns portal}} and follow the steps. 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. 

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Item not eligible 

Hi {{Customer First Name}},

Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, your order {{Number of last order}} is unable to be returned because it is outside of the time window (30 days) outlined in our return policy.

I apologize for any inconvenience that you’ve experienced because of this. 

If there is anything else I can help you with, feel free to reply to this email or visit {{Link to help center}} at any time. 

Thank you again,

{{Current agent first name}}

3) Exchange request after the order arrives

Hey there {{Customer first name}}, 

Thanks for reaching out about your recent order {{Number of last order}}. I see that you are interested in a product exchange. We do allow exchanges, and I’m happy to help you with this right away. 

{{Exchange policy and instructions}}

Once you have {{Required action(s)}}, I can process your exchange and get a new {{Product name}} shipped out to you right away. 

Thanks again, 

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers who had a bad support experience

1) Non-escalation 

Hi {{Customer first name}},

Thank you for reaching out and letting us know about your service experience with us. This is not up to our standard and I've passed this along to our team to ensure this doesn't happen again. 

In addition, I've {{Insert policy: coupon, refund, added a credit, send a replacement, etc.}} to make this right. 

We truly value you as a customer and apologize for the inconvenience this caused.

Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Escalate to technical support 

Hi {{Customer first name}},

Thank you for reaching out and letting us know about your experience with us. This is not up to our standard and I've passed this along to our team to ensure this doesn't happen again.

I have CC’d {{Technical/Lead agent first name}} on this email. They will be able to figure out what happened here and will follow up to ensure that we resolve this for you. 

{{Current agent first name}}

3) Customer hasn’t received a response or resolution to their problem

Hi {{Customer first name}},

Thank you for following up with us. 

We sincerely apologize that we didn’t get back to you — we’ve been overloaded with requests lately and yours slipped through the cracks. This is not the type of support experience we strive to provide. 

To answer your original question {{Provide context and a resolution to the original issue or request}}. 

I hope this helps! 

All the best, 

{{Current agent first name}}

Customers with no clear reason to be upset

1) General, sincere apology 

{{Customer First Name}},

Thanks so much for your feedback on {{Concern or issue they had with the brand or their experience}}.

We strive to provide an amazing experience for all of our customers, and sometimes we fall short of doing that. We sincerely apologize for the experience you’ve had with our brand. 

As a token of our appreciation, we’d like to offer you {{Discount code, free gift, free shipping on next order; whatever aligns with your policy}}. 

Have a great day, 

{{Current agent first name}}

2) Reply to a bad customer review 

{{Customer First Name}},

Thanks so much for your feedback on {{Customer survey, review site, etc.}}.

I wanted to check in and get a little more information from you about your experience. This will help our team improve future experiences for you and other shoppers. If you’re open to it, you can just reply to this email and share your thoughts.

Thanks for your time, 

{{Current agent first name}}

How to identify an angry customer (with examples)

Angry customers use harsh language and accusatory words, and often make demands to your company or service team. 

Some examples of phrases and words to look out for include:

• I’m very frustrated 
• I’m upset because… 
• I needed this for an {{important event}} and it’s not here
• You need to fix this right away 
• This is all your fault 
• I’ll never shop with you again 
• This is ridiculous 

Additionally, keep an eye out for any language that includes profanity.  

As your team grows, you can also use a helpdesk with Intent and Sentiment Detection, which automatically scans tickets to tell you what a customer’s looking for and how they’re feeling. The main benefit is that you can send different automatic responses depending on the customer’s intent and sentiment. 

How a frictionless customer experience can prevent angry customers

While every brand deals with angry customers from time to time, the best ones design a customer experience that, hopefully, doesn't produce so much frustration. Customer experience is a broad term, but there are a few areas of opportunity to mitigate customer frustration more proactively. 

Build customer self-service resources 

Customer self-service resources is a type of customer experience automation (CXA) that allows customers to quickly solve their own problems. They include:

• Help centers
• Forums
• Order status portals
• FAQ sections
• Quick answers in chat

Being able to self-serve information gets them an immediate resolution and saves them the time and hassle of reaching out to you. You might be surprised how many angry emails you avoid by: 

• Making your shipping policy easily accessible
• Creating a simple returns process
• Offering real-time order tracking
• Providing visual product troubleshooting guides in your help center

Create a seamless post-purchase experience

A positive post-purchase experience sets the customer up for success from the very beginning, starting with quick order confirmation emails to fast order fulfillment and going all the way to returns. 

A great post-purchase experience involves: 

• Figuring out the touchpoints on your customers’ journey where you need to be in contact with them 
• Setting up email campaigns like welcome emails, order confirmation details, shipping and tracking information, an order tracking page, and notifications when an item gets delivered
• Providing a fun and exciting unboxing experience
• Sharing links to your help center and to how-to content for assembling and using your products
• Creating a simple returns and exchanges portal via a tool like Loop Returns 
• Share information about rewards and loyalty programs 
• Ask for feedback, both positive and negative, and implement it 
• Involve new customers in your brand community
• Provide omnichannel support to meet new customers where they are 

Introduce faster support channels 

If customers need to reach out to you to ask a question, either pre or post-purchase, your best bet is to make it quick and easy to do so. Channels like live chat support, social media support, and SMS messaging support are more immediate channels where customers can see fast responses. 

Live chat and social media, for example, can help you make more sales by answering product questions to quell any objections before a customer makes a purchase. Water filter brand Berkey Filters even advertises their faster channels (live chat and SMS) on the website to steer customers to those fast channels:

The quicker and more seamless you make getting support for your customers, the more likely they are to reach out to you when they have a problem, rather than simply not purchasing from you again. 

In addition, some customers look at what support options are available before they make a purchase. Having these options available can help shoppers feel more comfortable and confident that if they have an issue, you’ll be there quickly to help them resolve it. 

📚Recommended reading: Check out our CX-Driven Growth Playbook for a more robust list of tactics to improve your customer experience, reduce customer anger, and boost revenue by up to 40%.

Are you ready to improve your customer service copy?

You’re now fully prepped to polish your customer support email copy, so even the most unhappy customers walk away happy. Exceptional copywriting isn’t rocket science; it's a skill you can certainly nurture over time, so keep practicing and paying attention to customer responses.

And when you pair great customer service copy with the right customer service automations, you can delight customers at scale. How? You can respond to low-impact tickets (like, "Where is my order?") with helpful, dynamic responses so you have more human time to deal with high-impact tickets like angry customer complaints.

And you don’t need us to tell you that happy customer relationships lead to higher profits. Check out our guide to customer service ROI to learn how to translate your customer service into meaningful business results. 

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TL;DR:

• Customer service email templates save time and boost consistency. They give your team reusable responses for common questions like order tracking or returns.
• Personalization is key for effective templates. Use customer names, order info, and brand voice to make messages feel human and relevant.
• Templates are most useful for high-volume scenarios. These include shipping updates, refunds, complaints, and technical issues.
• Automation tools amplify the benefits of templates. Shared inboxes and macros help teams respond faster without losing quality.
• If you're repeating the same responses manually, it's time to switch. Templates reduce workload and improve the customer experience.

If you're copy-pasting the same email responses or starting from scratch every time a customer asks, "Where's my order?" or "How do I return this?", you're wasting valuable time.

Customer service email templates solve this problem. They give your team ready-to-use responses for common questions while leaving room to personalize each message. The result is faster and more consistent replies, and more time for complex customer issues.

This guide provides essential email templates for common support scenarios, best practices for using them effectively, and tips for making templates work for your team.

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Customer service email best practices

Before diving into specific templates, it's important to establish guidelines that keep your email responses consistent, on-brand, and professional. These best practices ensure your team delivers quality support that reflects your company's values while meeting customer expectations. Keep these in mind as you build and customize your templates:

• Keep your language on-brand while staying empathetic. Even when delivering unwelcome news, clear and compassionate language makes the difference between a lost customer and a loyal one. Keep sentences under 25 words and avoid passive voice.
• Show empathy through simple acknowledgment. Phrases like "I understand this is frustrating" or "Thanks for your patience" show you're listening without sounding insincere. No need to add excessive exclamation points and enthusiasm.
• Balance professionalism with personality. Use contractions and address customers by name. Your customers want real people, not robots.
• Give agents access to customer context. Past interactions, order history, and previous tickets inform better responses. When customers don't have to repeat themselves, satisfaction improves.

Why use customer service templates

Templates create consistency across your entire support operation, ensuring every customer gets accurate information regardless of which agent responds.

• Speed. Agents respond faster when they're not starting from scratch, improving first response time and overall efficiency.
• Consistency. Standardized language ensures every customer receives on-brand information that reflects your company's voice and values.
• Scalability. Your team can handle more volume without burning out agents.
• Deflection. Well-written templates often include links to Help Center articles or FAQs, redirecting customers to self-service resources and reducing follow-up questions.
• Auditability. Managers can review template content during slower periods rather than auditing every individual message, catching issues before they reach customers.
• Confidence. Templates give your team the framework to handle high volumes while maintaining support standards.

Customer service email templates

Organizing templates by use case helps your team find the right response quickly. Here are customer service templates, categorized by onboarding, order updates, returns, complaints, technical support, renewals, promotions, feedback, and policy communications.

Jump to:

1. Welcome email templates
2. Shipping, tracking, and order email templates
3. Refund and exchange email templates
4. Complaint handling email templates
5. Technical issue email templates
6. Acknowledgment email templates

Welcome email templates

1. New customer email template

Subject: Welcome to [Company Name], [Customer Name]

Hey [Customer Name],

Thanks for joining us. We're thrilled to have you here.

To help you get started, check out these helpful resources:

• [Link to getting started guide]
• [Link to rewards club]
• [Link to Help Center]
• [Link to community or social media]

If you have any questions, just reply to this email. We're here to help.

Best,

[Agent Name]

2. Welcome to rewards program email template

Subject: Welcome to [Rewards Program Name], [Customer Name]

Hi [Customer Name],

You're officially part of [Rewards Program Name]. Here's what you can look forward to:

• Earn [X points] for every dollar spent
• Exclusive member-only discounts
• Early access to new products
• Birthday rewards

You currently have [X points] in your account. Redeem them for rewards at: [Link to rewards portal]

Check your points balance: [Link]

Program terms: [Link]

Thanks for being a loyal customer!

Best,

[Agent Name]

Shipping, tracking, and order email templates

3. Order confirmation email template

Subject: Order confirmation #[Order Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

Thanks for your order. We've received it and will start processing shortly.

Order number: [Order Number]

Order date: [Order Date]

Items: [Product Names]

Total: [Order Total]

Shipping address: [Shipping Address]

Estimated delivery: [Delivery Estimate]

We'll send you another email with tracking information once your order ships.

[Company Name]

4. Order shipped email template

Subject: Your order #[Order Number] has shipped

Hi [Customer Name],

Good news! Your order is on the way.

Tracking number: [Tracking Number]

Carrier: [Carrier Name]

Estimated delivery: [Delivery Date]

Track your package: [Tracking Link]

Let us know if you have any questions.

[Company Name]

5. Order delayed email template

Subject: Update on your order - #[Order Number]

Hello [Customer Name],

We're reaching out about your order #[Order Number]. Unfortunately, your delivery has been delayed due to [specific reason - shipping carrier delay, inventory issue, weather, etc.].

Original estimated delivery: [date]

New estimated delivery: [date]

We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.

Track your order: [tracking link]

If you have any questions or would like to cancel your order, please contact us at [support email/phone] and we'll be happy to help.

Thank you for your patience.

Best regards,

[Company Name]

Refund and exchange email templates

6. Return or refund request response template

Subject: Return request for order #[Order Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

We've received your return request for [Product Name] from order #[Order Number].

Since your order arrived on [Delivery Date], you're within our [X]-day return window. Here's how to return your item:

1) Go to [Return Portal Link]

2) Enter order #[Order Number]

3) Select items to return and reason

4) Print your prepaid shipping label

Once we receive your return at our warehouse, we'll process your refund within [X] business days.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[Agent Name]

7. Exchange response template

Subject: Let's find the right fit for you

Hi [Customer Name],

I'm sorry [Product Name] didn't work out. Rather than a refund, would you like to exchange it for something else?

Based on your order, you might like [Alternative Product 1] or [Alternative Product 2].

We'll cover return shipping and send your exchange right away. Just let me know which item you'd prefer.

If you'd rather have a refund instead, that's totally fine too.

[Agent Name]

8. Damaged item response template

Subject: Let's get you a replacement

Hi [Customer Name],

I'm sorry to hear [Product Name] arrived damaged. That's definitely not up to our standards.

Can you reply with a photo of the damage? This helps us improve our quality control and packaging.

As soon as I receive your photo, I'll ship a replacement right away at no charge. You can keep or discard the damaged item — no need to return it.

Expected timeline: [X] business days for delivery.

[Agent Name]

9. Product quality issue response template

Subject: Let's fix this - Order #[Order Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

I'm sorry to hear that [product name] didn't meet your expectations. Quality is important to us, and this isn't acceptable.

I'd like to make this right. Here are your options:

• Full refund
• Replacement product
• [Store credit amount] 
• [Discount code]

Just let me know which option works best for you, and I'll get it processed as soon as possible.

We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.

Best,

[Agent Name]

10. Policy ineligibility response template

Subject: About your request - Order #[Order Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

Thanks for reaching out about [specific request - return, exchange, refund, etc.].

I've reviewed your order, and unfortunately [request type] isn't available because [specific reason based on policy]. Our policy states [relevant policy explanation].

I understand this isn't the answer you were hoping for. While I can't [original request], here's what I can offer:

[Alternative solution 1]

[Alternative solution 2]

If you'd like to discuss this further or have questions about our policy, I'm happy to help.

Best,

[Agent Name]

Complaint handling email templates

11. Angry customer or de-escalation response template

Subject: I'm here to help with order #[Order Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

I understand you're frustrated with [specific issue], and you have every right to be. This isn't the experience we want for you.

Let me look into what happened and find a solution. I can see that [summarize situation to show you understand].

Here's what I can do right away: [immediate action].

Can you tell me a bit more about [specific detail needed]? That will help me make sure we fully resolve this for you.

[Agent Name]

12. Poor service experience email template

Subject: We'd like to make this right

Hi [Customer Name],

I'm sorry your recent experience with our team didn't meet expectations. You deserve better service, and I want to make this right.

I've reviewed what happened with [specific interaction or issue], and I understand why you're frustrated. [Acknowledgment of specific problem]

I’ve taken [Immediate resolution - refund, credit, etc.] and escalated it to [Team].

I've also applied [compensation - discount, credit, free shipping] to your account as an apology.

Your experience matters to us, and we appreciate the opportunity to improve.

Best,

[Agent Name]

13. Angry customer transferred multiple times response template

Subject: I'm taking ownership of this - Ticket #[Ticket Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

I apologize that you have been transferred between multiple agents. I understand how frustrating that experience can be, and it should not have happened.

I've reviewed your case, so no need to explain again. Here's what I understand: [brief summary of issue and what's been tried].

I'm personally handling this from here. Here's what happens next:

• [Specific action with timeframe]
• [Specific action with timeframe]

I will update you by [specific date/time] even if the issue is not fully resolved by then.

Best,

[Agent Name]

Technical issue email templates

14. Technical troubleshooting response

Subject: Help with [Issue Description] - Ticket #[Ticket Number]

Hi [Customer Name],

Thanks for reaching out about [specific issue]. I understand how frustrating technical problems can be, and I'm here to help get this resolved.

Based on what you've described, here are some troubleshooting steps to try:

1. [First troubleshooting step]
2. [Second troubleshooting step]
3. [Third troubleshooting step]

If you're still experiencing issues after trying these steps, please reply with:

• Screenshots or error messages you're seeing
• Relevant system information - browser version, device type, etc.
• When the issue first started

This information will help us identify the root cause and get you back up and running quickly.

Best,

[Agent Name]

15. Service outage email template

Subject: Update on [Service Name] outage

Hi [Customer Name],

We're currently experiencing an issue with [specific service or feature] that's affecting your ability to [impact description].

Here's what we know:

Issue started: [time]

Current status: [investigating/identified/fixing]

Expected resolution: [timeframe or "we're working as quickly as possible"]

We'll send you another update within [timeframe] or as soon as the issue is resolved.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Best,

[Agent Name]

Acknowledgment email templates

16. Address change email template

Subject: Address updated - Order #[Order Number]

Hello [Customer Name],

We've received your request to update the shipping address for order #[Order Number].

New address: [Full new address]

Order status: [processing/shipped/updated successfully]

[If order hasn't shipped yet:]

Your order will be shipped to the updated address. No further action needed.

[If order already shipped:]

Unfortunately, your order has already shipped to the original address. Here are your options: [provide alternatives like address intercept, return and reship, etc.]

If you need to make any other changes, please let me know as soon as possible.

Best regards,

[Agent Name]

17. Back in stock notification email

Subject: [Product Name] is back in stock

Hi [Customer Name],

Good news - [Product Name] is back in stock and ready to ship.

Order now: [Link to product]

This item has been popular and may sell out again quickly. Stock is limited.

Best,

[Company Name]

18. Feedback received email template

Subject: Thanks for your feedback, [Customer Name]

Hi [Customer Name],

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts about [specific topic or experience].

Your feedback has been passed along to our [relevant team] team. We're always looking for ways to improve, and input from customers like you helps us prioritize what matters most.

If you have any other suggestions or questions, feel free to reach out anytime.

Best,

[Agent Name]

Deliver better customer service with email templates

Email templates create consistency and speed across your support operation. They eliminate repetitive typing, help your team respond faster, and ensure every customer gets accurate, on-brand answers—no matter which agent they reach.

For customer service leaders building their support function, templates are foundational. They give your team the framework to deliver quality service while you focus on scaling operations and improving the customer experience.

Ready to take your customer service to the next level? Explore these resources:

• How to respond to angry customer emails
• How to structure your customer service team
• Ecommerce email marketing automation guide

TL;DR:

• Live chat apps let your team respond to customer questions in real time across your website, mobile app, and messaging channels
• The best live chat software combines AI automation with human support to resolve common inquiries instantly while escalating complex issues to your team
• Free options like tawk.to exist, but paid platforms offer deeper ecommerce integrations, better analytics, and revenue-driving features
• For ecommerce brands, look for live chat apps with Shopify integration, order management capabilities, and AI that can upsell and cross-sell
• Gorgias leads for ecommerce with conversational AI that handles support and drives sales through personalized product recommendations

A live chat app is software that enables real-time conversations between your support team and customers visiting your website or mobile app. 

For ecommerce brands, live chat delivers instant answers during the browsing and checkout process, reducing cart abandonment and increasing conversion rates. 

Unlike email support that can take hours or days, live chat resolves customer questions in minutes — often while they're still shopping. 

We evaluated 30+ live chat platforms to find the best options for ecommerce support teams, focusing on AI automation, Shopify integration, and revenue-driving features.

Why live chat apps matter for ecommerce support and revenue

Live chat directly impacts your bottom line. When shoppers have questions about sizing, shipping, or product features, they need immediate answers. If they can't get help quickly, they'll abandon their carts and shop elsewhere.

Beyond conversion impact, live chat makes your support team more efficient. One agent can handle multiple chat conversations simultaneously, while email and phone support tie up agents with one customer at a time. This efficiency reduces support costs while improving response times.

The best live chat apps also drive measurable revenue through product recommendations and upsells. When integrated with your ecommerce platform, chat agents can see what customers are browsing, suggest complementary products, and even apply discount codes to close sales.

The right live chat app doesn’t just answer questions — it helps you drive revenue, too.

Top 8 live chat apps compared

The best live chat apps in 2026 for customer support

The comparison table above shows pricing and features at a glance, but choosing the right live chat app requires understanding how each platform fits your specific needs. 

We evaluated these platforms based on ecommerce integration depth, AI capabilities, ease of use, pricing transparency, and support quality. 

Here’s what makes each platform stand out:

• Ecommerce platform integrations and order management
• AI and automation capabilities
• Omnichannel support (email, SMS, social media)
• Pricing model and value for money
• Team collaboration features

1. Gorgias

Gorgias is the only live chat app built specifically for ecommerce, with conversational AI that handles both support and sales. Unlike generic live chat platforms, Gorgias integrates deeply with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento to pull customer data, order history, and lifetime value directly into every conversation.

AI Agent resolves common tickets like WISMO (Where Is My Order), returns, and product questions automatically while maintaining your brand voice. This frees up your human agents to focus on complex issues and high-value customers.

Gorgias also drives revenue through Shopping Assistant, which provides personalized product recommendations, upsells, and discount offers directly in the chat. Agents can manage orders, process refunds, and cancel shipments without leaving the conversation, making it the most efficient platform for ecommerce support teams.

Main features:

• AI Agent resolves common support tickets automatically
• Shopping Assistant provides personalized product recommendations and upsells in chat
• Deep Shopify integration with two-way sync for order edits, cancellations, and refunds
• Unified inbox for chat, email, SMS, social media, and voice
• Self-service order tracking and returns through the chat widget
• Customizable chat widget with proactive messaging triggers
• Real-time customer data sidebar (order history, lifetime value, past conversations)
• Built-in Help Center creator

Ideal for:

• Ecommerce brands on Shopify, Shopify Plus, or BigCommerce
• Support teams looking to automate repetitive inquiries without sacrificing personalization
• Brands that want to drive revenue through support conversations
• Teams managing high chat volumes during peak seasons (Black Friday, Cyber Monday (BFCM), product launches)

Pricing:

• Starts at $10/month for basic plan (limited features)
• Pro plan from $60/month includes AI Agent, advanced automations, and revenue features
• Custom enterprise pricing for high-volume brands

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2. LiveChat

LiveChat is a solid all-around live chat platform with extensive customization options for teams that want complete control over their chat widget appearance and behavior. The platform excels at proactive messaging, letting you trigger chat invitations based on customer behavior like time on page or exit intent.

LiveChat offers robust chat routing and canned responses (their version of macros). It also has a message sneak-peek feature. This lets agents see what customers are typing before they hit send.

Pricing:

• Starter plan from $20/agent/month
• Team plan from $41/agent/month includes chat routing and advanced reports
• Business plan from $59/agent/month adds work scheduler and chat surveys
• Available on web, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

3. tawk.to

tawk.to offers completely free live chat software with unlimited agents and unlimited chats. This makes it attractive for startups and small businesses that need basic live chat without monthly costs.

The platform monetizes through optional paid services: you can hire trained chat agents at $1/hour if you don’t want to answer chats yourself, or pay for add-ons like branding removal and AI features. This transparent model builds trust and gives you control over costs.

Over 5 million businesses use tawk.to, from solo entrepreneurs to enterprises looking to reduce support costs.

4. Re:amaze

Re:amaze positions itself as a user-friendly platform with powerful automation through its Workflows feature. The platform lets you build complex automation rules without coding, making it accessible for non-technical teams.

Re:amaze’s standout features include Cues (proactive messages triggered by customer behavior), Workflows (automation rules for routing and responses), and Intents (AI-powered message classification that routes conversations to the right team). The platform also supports multi-brand management, making it useful for agencies or companies running multiple storefronts.

Note that Re:amaze doesn’t include built-in ticketing in its base plan — you’ll need to integrate with another tool for full help desk functionality.

Pricing:

• Basic plan from $29/agent/month
• Pro plan from $49/agent/month includes advanced automation and AI features
• Plus plan from $69/agent/month adds priority support and custom integrations

5. Zendesk

Zendesk offers enterprise-grade help desk software with live chat as part of its full suite. The platform excels at omnichannel support, unifying email, chat, phone, and social media messages into a single ticketing system.

Zendesk provides robust reporting and analytics, service level agreement (SLA) management, and escalation rules that enterprises need.

Important note: Live Chat requires the full Zendesk Suite plan, not the cheaper Support-only plans.

Pricing:

• Suite Team plan from $69/agent/month includes live chat, ticketing, and knowledge base
• Suite Growth plan from $115/agent/month adds AI and advanced analytics
• Suite Professional plan from $149/agent/month includes custom AI and advanced automations

6. LiveAgent

LiveAgent stands out as an affordable help desk with gamification features that motivate support agents. The platform includes badges, performance levels, and leaderboards that turn support work into a friendly competition.

This gamification approach increases agent engagement and makes it easier to track individual performance. Beyond the unique motivational features, LiveAgent provides solid multi-channel support across email, chat, phone, and social media with a unified ticketing system.

The interface looks dated compared to newer competitors, but the feature set remains competitive.

Pricing:

• Small business plan from $15/agent/month includes ticketing and email
• Medium business plan from $35/agent/month adds live chat and call center
• Large business plan from $59/agent/month includes advanced automation and reporting
• Free plan available with limited features (one chat button, one email address, seven-day ticket history)

7. HubSpot Live Chat

HubSpot Live Chat is a free Live Chat tool that integrates seamlessly with HubSpot’s customer relationship management (CRM) software.

The standalone value is limited compared to dedicated Live Chat platforms. However, the CRM integration makes it powerful for teams already using HubSpot.

HubSpot’s free plan includes the CRM, Live Chat, a chatbot builder, and ticketing. Paid Service Hub plans start from $15/month and add advanced routing, automation, and reporting.

8. Olark

Olark focuses on simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for small teams that want basic live chat without complexity. The platform offers quick setup, pre-chat surveys to collect customer information, and automated messages based on visitor behavior.

Olark automatically sends chat transcripts via email, making it easy to review conversations and identify training opportunities for your team. The platform includes visitor co-browsing as a paid add-on, letting agents see customer screens to provide better troubleshooting.

Olark lacks the advanced AI features and deep ecommerce integrations of competitors like Gorgias, but its straightforward approach appeals to teams that prioritize simplicity over sophistication.

Pricing:

• Standard plan from $29/agent/month includes unlimited chats and basic features
• Pro plan (custom pricing) adds advanced reporting, CRM integrations, and priority support
• 14-day free trial available

Still want more suggestions? Check out our list of the best live chat apps for Shopify or, if you don’t use Shopify, the best live chat apps for ecommerce.

How to choose the best live chat app (features and evaluation criteria)

The best live chat app for your team depends on your support volume, ecommerce platform, and whether you want AI to handle routine inquiries. Focus on these six decision factors to find the right fit:

Ecommerce integration depth: Look beyond basic Shopify or BigCommerce connections. The best platforms offer two-way sync, letting agents edit orders, process refunds, and manage returns without switching tabs. This saves time and reduces errors.

AI and automation capabilities: Decide what you want automated. Some platforms offer simple chatbots that answer FAQs, while others use conversational AI to resolve complex issues like order changes and returns. Building an effective AI-driven support strategy requires understanding these capabilities.

Omnichannel support: Does the platform handle just chat, or does it unify email, SMS, and social media in one inbox? Omnichannel platforms eliminate the need to switch between tools, speeding up response times and improving customer experience.

Pricing model: Compare per-agent pricing versus flat rates. Per-agent models work for small teams but get expensive as you scale. Some platforms charge per ticket, which can be unpredictable during busy seasons. Factor in costs for essential features — some platforms charge extra for AI, integrations, or branding removal.

Team collaboration features: Look for chat routing (automatically assigns conversations to specific agents), internal notes (let agents collaborate on complex issues), and collision detection (prevents multiple agents from responding to the same chat). These features become critical as your team grows.

Analytics and reporting: The best platforms track metrics like first response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction. For ecommerce, revenue attribution matters most — can you track which conversations lead to purchases? This proves the return on investment (ROI) of your live chat investment.

Benefits of live chat apps for ecommerce teams

Faster resolutions = higher satisfaction: Live chat provides real-time answers instead of email back-and-forth that stretches over hours or days. Customers get help immediately, leading to higher satisfaction scores and better reviews.

Increased conversion rates: Pre-purchase questions about sizing, shipping, or product features can stop a sale. Live chat answers these questions instantly, removing friction from the buying process and increasing conversion rates.

Reduced support costs: One agent can handle multiple chat conversations simultaneously, while phone and email support tie up agents with one customer at a time. This efficiency reduces the cost per ticket and lets smaller teams handle larger volumes.

Turn every chat into a revenue opportunity

Most live chat apps treat support as a cost center. Gorgias treats it as a revenue driver.

Our AI Agent automates routine support inquiries while maintaining your brand voice, freeing your team to focus on high-value conversations. Shopping Assistant turns every chat into a sales opportunity through personalized product recommendations and upsells.

See why Gorgias is the best live chat solution for thousands of ecommerce brands. Book a demo.

The best way to make customer service as convenient as possible is for ecommerce stores to meet customers where they already are. 

With that in mind, responding to customer interactions on a messaging platform can be an excellent way to provide better customer service — especially on one as popular as Facebook Messenger. 

According to research by Statista, Messenger has 106 million active daily users in America. And if a customer comes across one of your Facebook pages, your Facebook ad, or a Facebook comment that mentions you, the Facebook messaging app might be the first place they’ll go to ask you a question.

Below, learn how to use Messenger for business as an optimized customer service channel. 

Why teams use Facebook Messenger for customer service

According to data from Review42, 1.3 billion people around the globe use Facebook Messenger each month. This makes Facebook Messenger the second most popular mobile app for messaging in the world, behind WhatsApp (and, if you count it, SMS). 

Providing customer care via a channel customers already spend a lot of their time creates an easier, more comfortable experience for them overall. Here are some other benefits of implementing customer support on Facebook Messenger. 

Provide an omnichannel experience 

Asking customers to report a problem via your company's website or its customer support phone number may not seem like a big ask. However, allowing them to contact your company via the social media messaging apps that they are already most comfortable with increases the chances that they will reach out. If contacting support is too cumbersome or unfamiliar, they may simply take their business elsewhere without giving you the opportunity to make it right.

Answering customer queries seamlessly across channels is called omnichannel customer service, and it’s become a critical way for brands to offer better customer experiences. Research shows that getting support on the channels they love even influences purchase decisions.   

📚Recommended reading: How to usse social media for customer service. ‍

Make customer engagement more personal 

Messenger is one of the more personal communication channels to choose from, especially since many people use Facebook Messenger to communicate with friends and family. 

Because of this, managing customer relationships via Facebook Messenger is a more relaxed, natural, and personal way for customers to engage with your brand. 

📚Recommended reading: How to offer personalized customer service at scale.

Make public conversions private 

If a customer is upset, they might leave an angry comment on one of your Facebook posts. Bringing that conversation into a direct message takes that public conversation private, allowing you to offer more personalized support without the eyes of your entire follower base (or prospective customers) on you. 

• For curious or excited customers, you can have more personalized conversations, send over a small discount, and have a longer conversation that isn’t possible in public comment
• For escalated or upset customers, you can remove the heated conversation from a public forum and resolve the issues with minimal damage to your brand

Just be sure to ask them to message you first to comply with privacy standards. 

📚Recommended reading: How to deal with angry and escalated customers.

Integrate with a helpdesk and centralize communication 

When you open the floodgates to social media customer support, you or your team will likely be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of comments, questions, or posts that include your brand. While not all of these mentions will require support, the more you can stay on top of them, the better your brand perception will be. 

Facebook Messenger can integrate with a CRM or helpdesk that can centralize conversations from all of your other support channels (like email, live chat, SMS, voice, and social media) under one user-friendly dashboard. This makes it much easier to organize conversations so that reps can respond to things in real time or automate responses to common questions.

For example, Gorgias lets you create templated responses to common questions which saves your support reps time. It also lets you set business hours and automate responses to set customer expectations and let them know when you’ll respond. 

Learn more about how Gorgias integrates with Facebook Messenger. 

Messenger saves each customer's chat history and makes it easy to re-engage at any time

Even without any integrations, Facebook Messenger still automatically saves customers’ chat history. This makes it easy to re-engage with customers anytime you wish, which simplifies the customer service process and can potentially save your support team (and customers) a lot of time and hassle.

📚Recommended reading: Should You Delegate Social Media to Customer Support?

Use chatbots and automation to provide quick responses 

Chatbots offer near-immediate response and resolution times to simple customer inquiries. By addressing common issues without the need for a live support agent, chatbots can also reduce your support ticket volume and free your support team up to focus on more complex and pressing issues.

However, practice caution here. Most chatbots provide sub-optimal customer service. That’s why we prefer automation features that offer the same convenience (without deceiving your customers). While it’s not currently available on Facebook Messenger, take a look at how we build automation features into live chat to offer a better experience than chatbots:

https://gorgias.wistia.com/medias/gb277k8th0 

📚Recommended reading: 2022 Customer Service Automation Guide [+Benefits and Best Practices]

7 Facebook Messenger best practices for customer support teams

If you’d like to get as much value as possible from Facebook Messenger, here are seven best practices for using Facebook Messenger as a customer service channel.

1) Mind Facebook Messenger’s privacy policy 

Keep in mind that, as stated in Messenger’s privacy policy, you can only send messages to people who message you first. 

When moving from a public channel (like a Facebook comment) to a private channel, ask customers to make the move rather than messaging them. One way to maneuver this conversation is to ask the customer to message you something specific, privately, to resolve the issue. For example:

“No worries, {{Customer name}}! Your order hasn’t shipped so we can still change the mailing address. Please send us the new shipping address in a private message and we’ll make the change.”

2) Respond quickly, whether via a live chat experience or a chatbot

According to data from SuperOffice, 46% of customers expect a response time for customer service inquiries of four hours or less. Further, 12% of customers expect companies to provide a quick response in 15 minutes or less. 

‍Using Messenger chatbots can be a great way to ensure speedy responses to common customer questions. However, responding quickly is still important if you’re offering customers a live chat experience via Facebook Messenger rather than directing them to a chatbot. Even if you do use live chat, you can still set up chatbots to send an auto-response that thanks them for their inquiry and lets them know that an agent will assist them soon. 

Here’s how to set up that kind of automatic response Rule within Gorgias:

In all cases, it’s essential to make every effort to respond to customer inquiries as quickly as possible.

📚Recommended reading: Check out our case study of Berkey Filters, who achieved low response rates and high channel adoption rates after launching a new customer service messaging channel.

3) Automate simple questions that come through Facebook Messenger

In addition to lowering the average first response time of your customer support team, using bots to automate simple questions that come through Facebook Messenger can also free up a lot of time in your team's schedule. 

According to data from Tidio, 62% of customers would rather use a chatbot than wait for a customer service representative to take their call, making Facebook Messenger chatbots an excellent way to ensure that your customer service process is as speedy and convenient as possible. If you use a helpdesk, a plugin like ShopMessage can create this type of automation for you.  

If you use Gorgias, set up autoresponse rules to make each day’s workflow easier for your team. For example, set business hours and an autoresponse rule that fires if a customer does or doesn’t reach you during that time. 

For shoppers who message outside of business hours, automate text to let them know when you’ll be back online. For those who message during business hours, automate a message that approximates wait times: 

 4) Use content, FAQs, and knowledge base material to get customers to solutions faster

Resources like blog posts, FAQs, and knowledge base material can all serve as excellent customer service tools to supplement the support you offer via Facebook Messenger. 

Link your help center prominently on Facebook, send over links to your help articles for additional details or step-by-step walkthroughs once you answer their questions, or share blog posts that provide additional helpful information directly via chat.

Providing helpful self-service tools like these as part of your Facebook Messenger support strategy can go a long way toward making Facebook a more effective customer service channel.

5) Create short, Facebook-appropriate templates for FAQs

To save yourself or your team time, create templated responses for the most common questions that come through Facebook Messenger. 

Like a Facebook message would be, keep these responses short and sweet. Prioritize the messages that tend to come through Facebook. For example, shoppers will likely send in a message about an ad they saw or a product they’re interested in rather than asking for an update on their order status. 

📚Recommended reading: 10 Best Practices for Providing Exceptional Customer Service on Twitter

6) Seek out context to help customers with support requests

While it can certainly be beneficial for support agents to direct customers to resources such as knowledge base material, the reverse is true as well. Resources customers send in while seeking assistance can offer a lot of value. 

Facebook Messenger makes it easy for people to send photos, videos, and documents. These resources can provide helpful additional information about an issue support reps are attempting to resolve. For example, an agent might need to take a closer look at a crack in a defective product or see the color of an item they need to send a replacement for. 

Seeking context starts with having your agents ask customers the right questions. For example, asking customers how they are using the product that they purchased can provide agents with a lot more context regarding the issue that the customer is facing. Asking customers if there is anything else that you can help them with after the initial problem has been resolved is another question that can ensure that no issues go unaddressed. 

By making an effort to seek out as much context as possible, your customer support agents can ensure that they provide relevant information that fully resolves each issue. 

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7) Respond to every customer who sends you a message

It isn't always easy, but responding to every customer who sends you a message through Facebook Messenger is essential if you want to optimize customer satisfaction and reduce churn. This is especially evident when you consider the fact that Facebook Messenger shows users when their message has been seen. 

In other words, if you choose to ignore a customer's message, they’ll know about it. Thankfully, tools such as autoresponders and dashboards for centralizing customer conversations can make replying to each and every customer message a much more feasible goal. For example, if you use Gorgias, all open tickets will appear prominently until you close them.  

Respond to Facebook messages in your helpdesk to provide omnichannel service

Centralizing all of your customer conversations across channels under one easy-to-use dashboard makes managing Facebook Messenger conversations much more efficient for your support team. It lessens the possibility that high-priority messages will get lost, and allows teams to assign different conversations to the right agent who is best suited to support. 

This is where customer service platforms like Gorgias come in. Those that offer integrations will also show a customer's entire history with your business like their purchase history, past support conversations, and even social comments on different platforms. This allows your support agents to provide more helpful and personalized assistance. 

Omnichannel experiences help meet customers where they are, ensure a smooth, hassle-free experience, and let them message you from the app where they’re most comfortable. This increases the likelihood they will actually reach out to you, rather than deciding not to shop with you again instead. 

How to set up a Facebook customer service channel with Gorgias

With Gorgias, ecommerce stores can centralize customer conversations across multiple channels under one user-friendly dashboard, employ customer experience automation features complete with AI-powered customer intent and sentiment detection, create automated customer service workflows for Facebook Messenger, and much more. You can also expand your support messaging capabilities with our SMS feature.

Setting up the Gorgias and Facebook integration is quick and easy. Just visit Settings -> Integrations -> Facebook, Messenger & Instagram on your Gorgias dashboard. Make sure you’re logged into the correct Facebook account, authorize Gorgias on Facebook, select the page you want to add and your import settings, and then add the page! 

To see for yourself how Gorgias can streamline your customer service process by integrating with Facebook to create a unified customer service workspace, check out our social media features or sign up for a free trial today. 

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Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest retail days in a year, for most businesses.

A good number of online businesses 11 months analyzing data, planning discounts, and building inventories just to prepare for the Thanksgiving week. One mistake many ecommerce businesses make is not paying enough attention to logistics.

During the Thanksgiving rush, a single mistake can throw off your entire supply chain. The holiday rush can get so hectic that last year, UPS hired more than 100,000 additional employees, in order to handle the anticipated increase parcel volume.

Seeing how order numbers are about to skyrocket during Black Friday, it’s important to prepare your business to handle it. 

If your business isn’t ready just yet, this blog post is for you. We’re going to cover:

• What can you do to make sure your store is prepared for BFCM
• The biggest logistic challenges your store will face during the holidays
• How to create a complete logistics plan in five easy-to-follow steps 

So let’s dive into it. 

How to Prepare Your Online Store for BFCM

During the holidays, the competition for consumers’ attention can be fierce. By the time Thanksgiving comes around, most store owners have already spent months developing BFCM marketing strategies and planning deals.

But if your website isn’t fully prepared for the occasion, you say goodbye to BFCM profit. Check out our complete guide to BFCM for ecommerce for more tips.

Check Website Performance

Around 45% of consumers buy only from brands they trust. Nothing can destroy your credibility and customer relationship quicker than a low-functioning website. Having a website capable of handling a huge surge of visitors is especially important during the holidays. 

For starters, make sure that the store functions properly on both mobile and desktop devices. Last year, almost 40% of Black Friday online sales came from phones and tablets. 

There are a lot of things that can slow your website down. In order to see if everything is working as it should, you need to check it. You can do this by going to Google PageSpeed Insights and running a checkup for free. 

Have a Look at Your Inventory 

While keeping track of inventory may be low on your totem pole of customer support Black Friday tasks, it’s important to be aware of. Your inventory can affect everything from advertising to logistics. 

One possible solution is to start using inventory management software in the months leading up to the Black Friday weekend. One solution is to use the Emerge App, which allows you to keep track of every single piece of inventory.

Inventory management solutions will help you know which products need to be restocked and which ones you can start pushing early. If a certain item has failed to sell out after more than 12 months, you can put a high discount on it. Examine your inventory in time and plan everything accordingly. 

Prepare Your Workers

Once Black Friday comes around, your workers better be ready to handle the increase in orders, BFCM returns, and complaints. If you want to keep satisfaction levels high, customer service agents need to do their jobs correctly. And in order for them to do their job, you need to make sure that they’re trained.

Talk to your staff. See if they’re aware that things are about to become more frantic than usual. Some workers thrive under pressure. Others aren’t accustomed to working in stressful situations. The best way to eliminate their fear – and subsequent mistakes – is to put in work and train them.

If they want to nail customer service, your workers need to:

• Respond to inquiries immediately
• Use positive/professional language
• Take a proactive approach to problem-solving‍

Logistics Challenges During BFCM

Last year, many retailers were caught by surprise by BFCM. Due to high discounts, many consumers hurried to make their purchases early. Those discounts pulled a bulk of sales into a narrow timeframe. Unsurprisingly, some merchants weren’t expecting such a high demand. 

Since most people will do a majority of their shopping online this BFCM weekend, you can expect a busy year again. Here are some logistic challenges that you’ll face in 2022. 

The Demand Can Vary Significantly

The biggest logistics challenge is the lack of control retailers have during the Black Friday weekend. Year-to-year, demand isn’t consistent. This can happen for many reasons. For instance, this year, in the United States, the demand may not be so high.

That’s because the last November payday falls after Black Friday. This will eliminate the spur-of-the-moment purchases. On the other hand, more people have probably saved up money during quarantine. All of these factors make the entire ordeal hard to predict. 

Lack of Communication

As we said earlier, even the biggest players in the delivery game like FedEx are forced to add capacity to meet the ever-increasing demands during BFCM. No matter what company you’re working with, chances are, they might not be able to deliver all of your product on time.

But you have to talk to them and find out for yourself. 

If you’re not communicating with your logistics partner, you won’t be able to create a delivery commitment schedule that’s manageable. By making unrealistic claims, you can jeopardize your entire operation and lose a lot of customers. 

Unrealistic Delivery Expectations

Large online stores like Amazon, Walmart, and Target all offer next-day delivery. To compete with them, many small and mid-sized companies are offering this option as well. However, during Black Friday, this may be impossible to maintain. 

While you want to offer fast delivery you need to be realistic with yourself as well as your customers. You can discuss this with your delivery company. If the delivery company you're working with can’t handle the load, notify your customers. 

And don’t worry, most consumers prefer honesty over speed. 

How to Plan BFCM Logistics in 5 Steps

Black Friday is unpredictable and so are the consumers. If you really want to have a successful Thanksgiving week, you need to be able to adapt to any situation. And you can do this by making sure that your business is prepared for the unexpected. 

Here are five steps you need to take in order to bulletproof your logistics and get your store ready just in time for BFCM. 

1. Conducting Demand Forecasting

If you take the time to prepare for Black Friday, you can expect good results. And by results, we do mean sales. But make sure you’re communicating delivery times, and following through with orders. Otherwise, you risk a ton of complaints, emails, and negative comments. 

To be prepared, you need to do some demand forecasting.

What’s demand forecasting, you might ask? Simply put, it’s a way of calculating how many sales you can expect to generate during a certain period. 

Your supply chain management solution probably has the ability to give you a demand forecast. In addition, talk to your supplier, they’re probably watching Black Friday trends closely and doing their own market research. They can possibly help you find the right level of product you should be carrying on BFCM. 

2. Preparing Great Shipping Deals

When talking about customer satisfaction levels, you can’t overlook delivery. Your customers want to be in the know. They want to know exactly when their order will arrive. As a matter of fact, 9 out 10 shoppers feel that on-time delivery is extremely important.  

Timely delivery is one thing, but you know what will really make you look good in the eyes of your customers? Making the shipping free. Not sure about it? Well, just consider this: more than 85% of Black Friday sales Salesforce tackled in 2019 had free shipping. 

If you’re afraid that you’ll lose a lot of money this way, just consider this an investment. Your customers will be happy with their purchase and will surely come back after BFCM. Keep this in mind: 85% of customers prefer free shipping to fast delivery. 

If you need shipping support, check out our list of the top shipping software for ecommerce.

3. Making an Effort With Customer Service

Everyone feels overwhelmed at times during a Black Friday sale. But no matter how hectic things become, you need to make sure that every customer question and request gets answered in short amount of time. 

Customer service is important all year round, but during the holiday season, it’s extremely important. Many customers will come across your website for the first time during the BFCM weekend. You want to leave a great first impression, don’t you?

Some customers will contact you directly, while others will message you on social media. Your help desk should allow you to see and answer all of these messages as quickly as possible. With Gorgias, you can decrease your first -response time by 78%. 

4. Automate As Much As You Can

Many aspects of your business operations can be automated. Countless companies lose countless hours every month on needless tasks. Now is the perfect time to get ahead and start looking into customer experience automation. Customer support is a great place to start to solve tickets quicker and drive revenue. 

By notifying your customers about the status of their purchase quickly, you’ll undoubtedly let them know that they can trust you. Also, if you’re working with a small delivery company, you should check to see if your supplier is up-to-date.

According to a recent study, one-third of warehouses in the United States are working with outdated storage and management equipment. New equipment is much faster and will prevent any delays in delivery. Make sure that your 3rd-party supplier is legitimate. 

5. Setting Up Reverse Logistics

The reality of any holiday seasons is: people can change their minds in a second. That’s why we see so many abandoned shopping carts and returned products. Even though you’ll hope for no returns, you need to be prepared for them. 

You can do this by doing some reverse logistics. This should be a part of every supply chain. In reverse logistics, the goods move from the end user back to the seller. The returned products may be disposed of in some cases, but more often than not, they’re resold. 

Reverse logistics may relate to any of these activities after the purchase:

• Product returns
• Product refurbishing
• Damaged packaging
• Delivery failure 

To prevent delivery failure, you can easily set up an order tracking page that will allow your customers to know about the status of their purchase at any time. 

Don’t Forget to Keep Your Shoppers in the Loop!

Preparing for the Black Friday weekend can be stressful. There are dozens of business aspects you need to prepare for the increase in orders. Logistics is one of the most important elements of your operation, so you need to put in extra work. 

Let’s go over the basics again. In the months leading up to BFCM, your business should:

• What’s the demand for your products and restock accordingly
• Prepare good shopping deals for your customers worldwide
• Beef up your customer service and implement live chat 
• Automate tickets and work with automated warehouses
• Set up reverse logistics to prepare for product returns 

Keeping the customers satisfied should be your #1 concern. If you manage to do that during the BFCM weekend, they’ll surely come back to your stare after the holiday. 

You can’t leave the customers waiting for their shipment or a response. To ensure that, you need a handy helpdesk. That’s why you should try out Gorgias. 

Gorgias is an ecommerce help desk that allows users to provide multichannel customer service from a single dashboard. 

Go ahead, sign up for Gorgias, get your 15-day free trial, and see your customer satisfaction rates skyrocket.

Starting a new ecommerce business can be a whirlwind of responsibilities and decisions — like choosing which ecommerce apps you'll use to run your business. When your time and budget are limited, how do you determine which apps and plug-ins will: 

• Be easy to manage?
• Have the biggest impact on your business?
• Make sense for an new store’s priorities?

Some ecommerce apps are a must-have right out of the gate, while others can wait until you get more budget and staff. 

To help determine which apps are necessary for your new business, we share the most important criteria early-stage brands should look for in an app before covering nine ecommerce apps that every online business needs to download.

The best ecommerce apps for small-but-mighty brands

Now that we've covered the specific criteria that new ecommerce stores should look for in their apps, let's take a look at a few of the most essential ecommerce apps to set your business up for success.

1) Shopify: An ecommerce platform for building your online store

The first and most essential app for anyone starting a new ecommerce store is an ecommerce platform for building and hosting a shopping app or website. As the most popular ecommerce platform on the market today, Shopify makes it easy for new stores to offer online shopping essentials, like:

• Mobile optimization for shoppers on mobile devices
• Multiple payment options (like credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, and more)
• Simple checkout processes to limit cart abandonment

With Shopify, app development is easy-breezy: You can build a customized online store using simple drag-and-drop commands. Best of all, Shopify has an app store full of integrations with just about all popular ecommerce apps and tools, enabling you to expand on all of these features. For example, you can download a Shopify app to: 

• Sell your product on marketplaces like Amazon or Ebay 
• Search-engine optimize (SEO) your store
• Add pop-ups to reduce shopping cart abandonment

Take a look at how Shopify integrates with Gorgias to save time and provide personalized customer experiences. 

Key features

• Easy-to-use store creator
• Hundreds of customizable themes and templates
• Hundreds of apps and integrations available on the Shopify app store

Pros

• Intuitive and easy-to-use interface
• Affordable pricing
• Great customer support

Cons

• Not as customizable as more advanced ecommerce platforms such as Magento and BigCommerce
• Does not support email hosting

Pricing options

Shopify offers three pricing plans:

• Basic plan for $29 per month
• Shopify plan for $79 per month
• Advanced plan for $299 per month

While Shopify is a favorite choice for many, it’s not the only ecommerce platform. Popular alternatives include WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. We recommend staying away from general website builders like WordPress and Wix, which offer limited support for ecommerce. 

2) Huboo: Order fulfillment and tracking

Huboo is an order fulfillment solution that enables effortless order tracking and much more. With Huboo, you can outsource all of your company's order fulfillment responsibilities, shipping your products in bulk to Huboo warehouses, where they are stored, picked, packed, and delivered on behalf of your brand. 

Customers demand the ability to track their orders. 90% of consumers who engage in online shopping actively track their packages, with 20% of consumers tracking their packages multiple times a day. If you want to keep your customers happy and avoid a flood of "where is my order?" tickets, you will need to provide order tracking.

Using your Huboo Dashboard, you can see sales and listings by channel, courier tracking, inventory, costs, and billing, making it easy to provide order updates to your customers. 

To learn more about Huboo, check out our Huboo partner page.

Key features

• Capable of integrating with all popular sales channels and marketplaces
• Huboo Dashboard for easily tracking orders along with important fulfillment metrics and KPIs
• Wide-ranging fulfillment network in the EU and UK capable of fulfilling orders all over the world

Pros

• Helps eliminate fulfillment errors with 99.9% picking accuracy
• Removes the burden of order fulfillment and warehouse management

Cons

• Per-item pricing adds to your company's shipping costs
• Does not accept bulky, chilled, or frozen goods

Pricing options

Huboo charges per-item rates for every package shipped, varying based on the package size and how quickly it is delivered. For a detailed breakdown of these rates, check out Huboo's pricing page.

3) ShipHero: Warehouse management and order fulfillment

Another excellent warehouse management and order fulfillment app, ShipHero offers two solutions to ecommerce stores: 

1. A warehouse management system for managing your own warehouses more efficiently
2. Completely outsourced fulfillment. 

With ShipHero’s fully outsourced fulfillment services, store owners can ship their products in bulk to ShipHero warehouses, where they are picked, packed, and delivered with 99%+ shipping accuracy. 

ShipHero’s warehouse management system lets you automatically process orders and returns, manage your inventory, and access insightful analytics and reporting.

Key features

• Fully outsourced warehouse management and order fulfillment
• Built-in reporting features covering everything from COGS to Picker/Packer Efficiency to Replenishment
• Automation rules, including smart warehouse routing, shipping method mapping, and address validation

Pros

• Provides the option to manage inventory and order fulfillment yourself using ShipHero’s warehouse management system or the option to outsource these responsibilities
• Includes excellent automation features for improving order fulfillment efficiency and accuracy
• Enables 30% faster shipping and a 35% reduction in warehouse costs

Cons

• Somewhat difficult to set up and navigate by some reports
• Higher shipping costs

Pricing options

ShipHero offers three pricing plans for its warehouse management system:

• Standard WMS for Brands plan starting at $1,850 per month
• WMS for 3PLs plan starting at $1,995 per month
• Enterprise WMS for Brands plan with custom pricing available upon request

However, pricing for their outsourced fulfillment services is only available upon request.

4) Gorgias: Helpdesk and live chat

89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase with a company following a positive customer service interaction. While most brands want to offer great customer experience, doing so as a small team can be difficult. 

Luckily, helpdesks like Gorgias make it easy to offer great customer support without all the hassle, thanks to automation and self-service features. 

Thankfully, Gorgias makes it easy for brands of all sizes to offer personalized customer support via an industry-leading customer support platform. This includes features such as:

• A centralized dashboard for managing tickets and customer messages across numerous support channels
• Automation of tedious customer support tasks
• Help Centers and other self-service support options
• A fast-loading live chat widget for offering live chat support
• And much more

Key features

• Macros and Rules to provide automatic, personalized responses to common customer questions
• Centralized customer support dashboard that pulls in and organizes tickets from live chat, email, social media, SMS, phone, and more
• Advanced automation features to automatically respond to up to 30% of support requests

Pros

• Detailed customer support data and analytics for further fine-tuning your support services
• Broad range of customer support tools and features in a single platform
• Revenue-generation focused so that you can turn customer support into profits

Cons

• Can take some time to master all of Gorgias' tools and features
• Revenue statistics are only available on upper-tier plans

Pricing options

Gorgias offers five pricing plans:

• Starter plan for $10 per month
• Basic plan for $60 per month
• Pro plan for $360 per month
• Advanced plan for $900 per month
• Enterprise plan with custom pricing available upon request

5) Klaviyo: SMS and email marketing

Klaviyo is an SMS and email marketing platform with unparalleled personalization possitbilitieis. With Klaviyo, you can: 

• Design attractive custom emails and text for your ecommerce website’s shoppers without any coding experience
• Manage and segment contact lists with built in customer relationship management (CRM) features
  Create and launch automated SMS and  email marketing campaigns
• Track the results of those campaigns with detailed reports

Email marketing remains one of the most effective of all digital marketing channels and is something that every ecommerce store should take advantage of. Plus, SMS marketing has been one of the most trending marketing channels for the past few years thanks to texting’s highly visible push notifications. 

Take a look at how Klaviyo and Gorgias integrate for even more powerful experiences. 

Key features

• A/B testing and segmentation features for honing your email marketing strategy
• Drag-and-drop email builder
• Advanced campaign automation

Pros

• Easy to set up and use
• Affordable pricing, including a forever free plan

Cons

• Limited SMS marketing features
• Support team is sometimes unresponsive

Pricing options

Klaviyo offers three pricing plans:

• Free plan for $0 per month that supports up to 500 monthly email sends
• Email plan with pricing based on how many contacts your business has
• Email and SMS plan with pricing based on how many contacts your business has

6) Canva: Design and content creation

Whether it's creating graphics for your emails, website, social media posts, or anything in between, creating and running an online store requires you to design a lot of content. Canva makes content design and creation easy regardless of your artistic experience. 

With Canva, you can use attractive design templates and user-friendly drag-and-drop commands to create all manner of designs, including logos, flyers, banners, and much more.

Key features

• Drag-and-drop content designer
• Premium content library with 100 million+ photos, graphics, video, audio, and fonts
• Time-saving design tools such as Magic Resize and Background Remover.

Pros

• Very easy to use regardless of your design experience
• Advanced functionality that rivals expensive competitors like Photoshop

Cons

• Can't move one design to another, requiring you to create each design completely from scratch
• Limited video editing tools

Pricing options

Canva offers three pricing plans:

• Free plan for $0 per month
• Pro plan starting at $12.99 per month
• Teams plan starting at $14.99 per month

7) Typeform: Customer feedback surveys

Customer feedback is an invaluable resource for ecommerce stores of all sizes, enabling you to take a data-based approach to optimizing your store's customer experience. 

With Typeform, you can start gathering more customer feedback by using templates to create customer feedback surveys. 

Along with these customer feedback survey templates, Typeform also offers signup forms, report forms, order forms, and a ton of other professional templates.

Key features

• Hundreds of high-quality survey and form templates
• Quiz maker for creating customer quizzes (such as product recommendation quizzes)
• Brand kit for creating a set of custom fonts, colors, and media that you can use on any form

Pros

• Supports a long list of integrations with other popular ecommerce tools
• Makes it easy to create high-quality customer feedback surveys regardless of your design experience

Cons

• Only for creating surveys and forms; you'll need integrations to actually send these forms out and gather responses
• Offers mobile app for iOS but not for Android

Pricing options

Typeform offers three pricing plans:

• Basic plan for $25 per month
• Plus plan for $50 per month
• Business plan for $83 per month

8) Triple Whale: Analytics and reporting

Triple Whale is a complete ecommerce hub for Shopify stores that lets you track the metrics that matter most to your brand in one easy-to-use dashboard. 

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Triple Whale's attribution features allow you to track how much you spend on each marketing channel and your return on these investments. If you are looking for a single solution that gives your brand access to all of the data and insights it needs to grow and improve, you'll find a lot to like about Triple Whale.

Key features

• Six attribution models and journey mapping for unlocking key insights in real-time
• Creative analysis tools for measuring ad performance
• Mobile app for viewing your data on the go

Pros

• Real-time insights provide much more flexibility and proactivity than monthly reports
• Single source of truth for your ecommerce store

Cons

• Somewhat costly for the features that it provides
• Only available for Shopify stores

Pricing options

Triple Whale offers five pricing plans:

• Dashboard plan for $100 per month
• Attribution plan for $300 per month
• Full Whale plan for $450 per month
• Custom plan with custom pricing available upon request

9) Recharge: Subscription management

It might surprise you to learn that 54% of online shoppers are subscribed to at least one ecommerce subscription. Leveraging the subscription model is a good way to create a reliable, recurring revenue stream for your business. However, it's also a model that entails its own unique requirements and complexities.

The best way to create and manage a subscription service for your online store is to utilize a subscription management app, and Recharge is a great one to consider. Recharge lets you quickly set up a subscription program, packaging your products or services into monthly or annual subscription plans. 

The app processes recurring subscription payments and makes it easy to manage every aspect of your subscription programs, providing detailed analytics into the performance of your program. Recharge also allows you to create a customer-facing subscription management portal where customers can easily view, change, or cancel their subscriptions.

Learn how Recharge and Gorgias integrate for powerful subscription management. 

Key Features

• Developer Hub for quickly creating and setting up subscription offers
• Analytics suite that provides insights into revenue, customers, and subscriptions
• Subscription management via RechargeSMS or a customer portal

Pros

• Gives customers the option to skip or delay deliveries rather than canceling, helping reduce customer churn
• Makes it quick and easy to create subscription offers

Cons

• Limited customization options
• The only subscription management app on the market for Shopify stores

Pricing options

Recharge offers three pricing plans:

• Standard plan with no monthly fees and 1% + 10 cents per transaction
• Pro plan for $499/month and 1% + 19 cents per transaction
• Custom plan with tailored pricing available upon request

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Key ecommerce app features small businesses should look for

Most new ecommerce businesses don't have the budget or the sales volume to justify purchasing a broad range of ecommerce apps right away. So, you'll need to narrow down your selection to the apps with great bang for your buck. 

With that in mind, here are the most important features that small business owners should look for in ecommerce apps:

Provides flexible, affordable pricing

Some ecommerce solutions can cost thousands of dollars a month or more, putting them out of reach for most small businesses and early-stage brands. 

These high-priced apps are almost always geared toward larger organizations anyway, meaning that you aren't likely to need all of the features they offer until your business grows. 

The good news is that there’s also a wide range of affordable ecommerce apps designed to support smaller stores and brands — those are the ones we’ll focus on below.

Automates manual tasks and ecommerce processes

Starting a new business requires a lot of hard work. The more manual tasks and workflows you can automate, the more time you have to focus on important activities like developing new products and growing your audience.

Creating automated email marketing campaigns rather than sending out emails manually is one example of how apps that offer automation features can save you time. Using automation to provide canned responses to common customer questions is another example of the time-saving benefits that automation can provide.

Monitors ecommerce performance

Whatever function of your ecommerce business that an app is designed to facilitate (whether it's customer support, marketing, sales, or order fulfillment), it also needs to be able to track your store's performance in these key areas. 

This is especially important for small stores, who don’t have full time data analysts to pull insights from tools. Choosing apps that provide detailed analytics and reporting will give your business the data and insights it needs for continual optimization.

Integrates with other ecommerce tools

Integrating all your ecommerce apps can enable powerful new features and capabilities. For instance, integrating your customer support app with your order tracking and fulfillment app might allow you to easily provide tracking numbers and order updates when customers request them. 

Along with choosing apps that offer a broad range of possible integrations with other popular ecommerce tools, it's especially important to ensure that the apps you select are capable of integrating with whatever ecommerce platform you use.

Supports your most important ecommerce KPIs

When you don't have the budget to purchase every app you might want, it's important to focus on the apps that align most closely with your important KPIs. Business of all sizes, but especially small businesses, do well to focus on one area at a time. Are you looking to: 

• Increase customer satisfaction? 
• Boost conversion rate?
• Raise brand awareness? 
• Improve customer retention?

Identifying the KPIs most important to your business and choosing your ecommerce apps based on these KPIs will ensure that you purchase apps that will have the biggest impact on your store's success.

Offers "try it before you buy it" model

When budgets are tight, you need to ensure that the app you purchase will meet your business's needs before you break out your wallet. For this reason, small businesses should prioritize apps that offer a free trial, a free version, or, at the very least, a free demo.

Includes customer success or support

Ecommerce apps are often challenging to set up and use. And as a small business owner, you can't afford to spend all your time troubleshooting issues with your ecommerce apps. This makes it important to choose apps with high-quality customer support or customer success services.

Offers additional pricing plans

While it's great to find an app with free or affordable pricing, you also need solutions that can scale alongside your company. Choosing apps with multiple pricing plans allows you to upgrade your subscription as your company grows, without having to switch to a new app.

Learn why ecommerce stores of all sizes favor the Gorgias app

Choosing the right customer support platform is just one of the many vital decisions you will need to make as an ecommerce store owner. While you’ve got plenty of options, only one is exclusively built for ecommerce and offers features and plans that scale from small stores to large enterprises.

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If you want to get started enjoying the many benefits of the best ecommerce customer support platform on the market, sign up for Gorgias today!

Modern customers have high expectations when it comes to customer service. One survey showed that nearly half of customers expected an email response from businesses in less than four hours. If your average response time is much higher than this, you could be losing out on a lot of business. 

Of course, meeting customer expectations regarding response time is often easier said than done. If your customer support team is struggling to keep up, the good news is that there are some effective ways to shorten your response times without having to hire a team of new employees.

In this blog, we'll discuss why a fast response time is such a vital component of great customer service and go over seven proven methods you can use to achieve a faster response to customer service emails and messages. 

What is a good customer service response time?

When a customer reaches out to you, you should aim for a first response time of one hour for emails, 15 minutes for social media messages, 40 seconds for SMS messages, and even less than that for live chat messages.

Why response times are important for customer service teams 

No matter what product or service you happen to be selling, creating a positive customer experience is an essential ingredient in the recipe for long-term success. While there is a lot that goes into creating a great experience for your customers, prompt customer service goes a long way. 

Here are a few of the reasons why achieving fast response times is such an important goal for your customer service department: 

1) Customers continue to demand faster responses 

More and more customers have come to expect near real-time access to companies across multiple channels. One Hubspot survey showed that 90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. 

Furthermore, 60% of people who needed support defined "immediate" as 10 minutes or less. If your company isn’t responding to customer queries at least this fast, you risk falling short of expectations your competitors may be meeting. 

2) Poor response times reflect negatively on your company 

Fair or not, poor response times can hurt your brand image. Encouraging brand loyalty and return customers is a vital goal for any business, and poor response times can make this goal all the more difficult to reach. 

Keep in mind that customers expect fast response times since so many companies today can meet those expectations. If your company isn't keeping up with the customer service offered by the competition, it could damage your brand reputation among existing customers. 

3) Faster responses that lead to quicker resolutions can increase revenue

There are plenty of scenarios where responding to a customer query within a short time frame can lead to your business making more money. If a customer has a question about your product, for example, responding quickly before they move on to another product could lead to a sale you might not otherwise make. 

If a customer needs to return a product, prompt customer service could encourage them to exchange the product for another product or store credit rather than becoming frustrated and demanding a cash return. In instances such as these, fast response times that lead to quick resolutions can directly translate to more or retained revenue. 

4) Quick responses can boost customer satisfaction

Good customer service doesn't mean that you always have to solve a customer's issue on the first response. In many cases, simply acknowledging their email and letting them know that you’re working on a solution is enough to keep customers temporarily satisfied and buy your customer service team some time. 

Unless the issue is immediately resolvable, your goal in an initial response should be to acknowledge the customer's problem, let them know that you’ve assigned their ticket to a representative, and provide them with a time frame for when they can expect a resolution. 

Sending out an initial response that covers these bases can keep customers satisfied and patient while your team members work on their follow-up. 

Related: How To Measure Net Promoter Score (NPS)

5) Slow response times might increase your workload

Achieving fast response times may seem like a lot of work. Many times, though, slow responses can end up increasing the workload of your customer support team. If you don't respond quickly enough to a customer that needs assistance, they may end up contacting your company multiple times through multiple channels. 

This can lead to numerous support tickets being created for a single issue, bogging down your team and creating unnecessary confusion that could have otherwise been avoided if you had responded to the customer's initial query promptly. This is another reason it’s helpful to keep your average first response time as low as possible. 

How to reduce customer service response times

For all of the reasons listed above, responding to customer service emails in the shortest amount of time possible is ideal. Thankfully, there are many different methods you can use to speed up your response times across all your support channels that don't require huge investments or shifts.

1) Make sure you're measuring first response times 

Before you can test out solutions, determine what your average response time currently is (if you don’t already know). First response time is a crucial customer service metric to evaluate your team's impact because it affects revenue-related metrics like churn and retention rates.

To calculate the average first response time, all you have to do is add up all of your first response times for a given period then divide that number by the number of resolved tickets during that time.

Once you've determined what your average first response time is, you can then set goals for improvement and continue to measure your progress. Gorgias provides you with many analytic tools that allow you to track key customer service metrics, including average response time. By leveraging tools such as these, you can easily analyze your customer support team's efforts and set achievable benchmarks for more improvement.

Related: Customer Service ROI: How to Measure and Improve

2) Take advantage of customer service software

Responding to every customer email manually is a monumental task. If you’re still solely relying on traditional methods of responding to customer queries, achieving fast response times is going to be nearly impossible. Fortunately, there’s a wide variety of customer service software on the market today that can take a lot of the heavy lifting out of your workflows.

For example, help desk software allows your team members to see and reply to customer queries from any channel — like social media, ecommerce stores, WhatsApp, and SMS — from a single centralized dashboard. You can organize them based on factors such as the date and time received, priority, subject matter, and some other categories.

Customer service software also automates time-consuming tasks, like sending initial responses to customer emails. This is just a snapshot of the ways these platforms can help your team reduce your response times. We highly recommend leveraging software to optimize your customer support process. 

Related: Learn how Gorgias' support performance and live agent performance dashboards can help you measure

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3) Utilize customer service automation for 24/7 service 

We touched on it briefly, but customer service automation can free up your customer support team significantly during business hours. It provides customers with immediate, automated responses that you can personalize to make sound as friendly as a manual response. These small measures free up your team to focus on more complicated and pressing tasks.

That’s not all. Setting up an auto-responder allows you to send customers an all-important first response any time you like. There’s no need for a live representative, and a quick response could prevent another ticket or message from piling up to deal with in the morning. Most software lets you automate responses and send them via email, chatbot, app notification, text and more. 

Recommended reading: Ecommerce Customer Support Best Practices

4) Use scripts and email templates 

Having your customer service team type out a custom response to every new email they receive from a customer is inefficient. In addition to using an auto-responder to send out an automated first response, one simple way to speed up your reply time is to make use of scripts and email templates. 

To build your scripts, start by identifying common questions and issues that your support team encounters most frequently. You can then create helpful boilerplate answers with blank spots to plug in customer details using your software or other tools. 

One pro tip is to look back at positive customer feedback or five-star interactions to get ideas. See which answers made customers feel heard and satisfied while also solving their issues quickly. For live customer support channels such as phone calls or live chat, you can create scripts for each FAQ that representatives can follow. 

Leveraging scripts and email templates ensures that your team members aren't having to type out the same response over and over again to commonly asked questions, enabling them to provide service in a more efficient and timely manner. 

5) Create a system to categorize and segment priority tickets 

Some customer support tickets should take higher priority than others. A customer that’s reporting a fraudulent purchase with their debit card needs a quicker response than someone who’s asking if there are any discounts they can use.

• Start by prioritizing tickets that have been open the longest. These are the customers who may be growing impatient, or even angry enough not to shop or work with your business again.
• From there, you’ll want to prioritize the most complicated or resource-intensive tickets. This helps your team get a head start on the tickets that could end up taking a lot of time to resolve. 

Beyond prioritizing tickets, it’s also helpful to categorize them if they share similarities. Grouping similar tickets together boost efficiency. For example, your team can come up with one main solution (create a new discount code because the previous one is buggy) and easily resolve the entire group of tickets in a single pass. 

If you’re making use of email templates, a single rep may be able to clear an entire batch of tickets in seconds or minutes.  

6) Offer multichannel customer support options 

Every channel where you communicate with customers — from your main phone line and website to messaging platforms like social media and live chat support — should include customer support options. Having multichannel customer support options offers a couple of advantages.  

For one, it makes it easy for customers to reach out and engage with your company wherever they are. You may be serving customers across demographics, from Generation Z to baby boomers, all of whom have different communication preferences. The customer’s initial outreach is their first interaction with your customer service experience, and it’s great to start on a note of convenience and ease no matter who the customer is. 

Setting up multichannel customer support options can also give your response teams quicker access to the requests that they receive, allowing them to organize by priority no matter where the request originates.

Recommended reading: Customer Support Metrics

7) Leverage self-service to reduce tickets 

Any time a customer can resolve their issue on their own is a success for your business. Customer self-service support keeps your team’s hands-free and prevents one more support ticket from entering the queue. Here are some useful resources you can provide customers: 

• Company blog
• Product instructions, how-tos, and video tutorials
• FAQ page
• Community forum 
• Dictionaries or glossaries 
• Case studies 
• Knowledge base or help center

Equipped with this information, many customers will be able to answer their questions — and perhaps discover or try something new with your product. As you’re putting these resources together, think about how tech-savvy your audience is and how long they want to spend reading about their issue. 

With Gorgias Automate, you can improve your live chat widget with a self-service flows that let your customers track and manage their orders without any agent interaction. You can also enable a chatbot. Customers can type in their question or comments and the chatbot will pull up your content that matches those keywords. 

All of these tools combine to reduce the number of tickets your support team receives in the first place, which can ultimately result in faster response times for the tickets that do appear. 

Recommended reading on live chat:

• ‍9 Live Chat Support Metrics You Should Follow to Satisfy More Online Shoppers
• The Impact of Live Chat on Sales

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Gorgias helps support teams reduce response times

We’ve covered a variety of ways to roll back your response times, but that’s not all these best practices accomplish. They also optimize your customer service workflow overall, ensuring your customer service interactions are positive and helpful and your team isn’t overloaded or losing time to repetitive, manual tasks. 

At Gorgias, we’re proud to offer a number of different customer service software solutions, from live-chat solutions to chatbot solutions, to email auto-responders. To learn more about how Gorgias can help you speed up your response times in a way that is affordable and hassle-free, book a demo today.

As rising inflation, higher-than-ever customer acquisition costs, and the looming possibility of a global recession continue to weigh heavy on the minds of many brands, driving revenue via great customer service is now more important than ever before. In these turbulent times, many online businesses are doubling down on customer experience to retain and grow business through upsells, repeat purchases, and referrals — all of which offer higher ROI than pursuing new customers.

It’s clear that happy customers are a great path to growth. But how can you create a customer service strategy that leads to happy customers? We’ll suggest 16 tactics below to improve customer service in 2024, including new ways to incentivize your customer support team and self-service resources you can use to reduce customer effort. 

What’s the link between customer service and revenue?

Business leaders often view customer service as a necessary expense rather than an opportunity for business growth. However, every customer interaction along the entire customer journey presents a chance to create revenue for your business. Your customer service team’s exceptional customer service can generate revenue by:

• Answering pre-sales questions to improve your conversion rate
• Encourages happy customers to refer others to your brand
• Create loyal customers through helpful customer support
• Drive upsells and customer retention

According to data from Emplify, one in six customers will leave a company after just one negative customer care experience, while 86% of customers will leave a company after two negative customer service interactions. And 73% of customers will leave a brand after just a few poor interactions, according to a 2022 Coveo report. These negative interactions catch like wildfire and are an early warning of a sinking ship.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though — better customer service can be a huge differentiator for your brand, especially when you consider the value of loyal customers. According to data from 10,000 Gorgias, returning customers make up only 21% of a brand’s customers but generate 41% of orders and 44% of overall revenue.

‎16 tips to improve your customer service and drive more revenue

Let’s take a look at our top 16 tips to get your team on the way to creating a better customer experience — and generating more revenue in the process.

1) Incentivize your customer service agents to meet business goals

We already discussed the impact your customer service representatives can have on business outcomes. To get serious about providing the best customer service possible, align your customer service team’s KPIs around demonstrated business goals.

Here are a few business-related KPIs that your team can focus on improving:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
• Conversion rate
• Total sales from support

Consider going a step beyond setting KPIs and offering bonuses, gift cards, and other incentives for individual agents or teams that reach their goals as part of your customer support team management strategy. It’s common for sales — why not customer support, if they’re also driving revenue through customer interactions?

2) Build a user-friendly customer help center

When customers encounter a problem, they won’t reach out to you immediately. In fact, 88% of customers say that they expect companies to provide self-service support tools so that they can resolve issues on their own.

How can you help your customers help themselves? You need to build a good FAQ page or knowledge base, also called a help center, to help your customers answer their questions without having to contact an agent. Important considerations to keep in mind as you go about designing your help center include:

• Have a clearly visible search bar at the top of every page
• Include a prominent CTA to contact a human agent
• Organize your help center in categories like Product, Shipping, and Returns

For an example of an excellent ecommerce help center that accomplishes all of these objectives, check out our post on FAQ pages and help centers.

‎3) Use technology to remember 100% of customer details

Every customer has a unique conversation history, order history, and sentiment toward your brand. Whenever you talk to those customers, you should make an effort to personalize the conversation by using their names, acknowledging past interactions, using past order information instead of asking them to repeat it, and so on. Thankfully, technology makes offering this sort of personalized customer service much easier than it used to be.

Tools such as Gorgias’ Customer Sidebar can provide your customer support team with the data that they need to offer each customer a personalized customer service experience:

‎4) Prioritize complaints and pre-sale actions

Customer complaints and pre-sale actions are high-priority customer service tickets since they can directly impact your company's revenue. Addressing customer complaints prevents customer churn and encourages repeat purchases. Pre-sale actions such as questions about product sizing or your shipping policy present the opportunity to drive a sale home — if your agents answer in time.

You can develop your customer service team to prioritize these tickets manually, or you can prioritize them automatically within your helpdesk. If you use Gorgias, a combination of automated Rules and Intents can automatically identify certain ticket types — like customer complaints, pre-sales questions, or tickets from VIP customers — and flag them as high priority.

Check out our Director of Support’s post on how to prioritize customer service requests for guidance.

5) Only use positive/professional language

Sometimes, it’s not about what you say — it’s about how you say it. This rings especially true for customer service. You must make sure you sound level-headed, calm, and collected whenever you contact a customer.

If you’re delivering bad news, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. You need to be direct and professional about it. At the same time, you should also try to find a way to solve the problem.

For instance, if a customer has ordered something that was out of stock, an automated email telling them that you don’t have the product right now won’t cut it. You should tell the customer when you expect it to be available or perhaps offer some other products instead.

It's best to have a written procedure ready to respond to frustrated customers so your customer support agents know how to deal with them without having to worry too much. Of course, active listening is important to hear the customer’s response and settle on next steps.

See our post on customer support tips for more suggestions like this.

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6) Introduce proactive customer support to your strategy

‎The classic image of customer support is reactive. When your customers encounter a problem, they come to your customer service reps for a solution. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t approach certain problems proactively.

Case in point: shipping delays. In the past couple of months, ecommerce shipments have increased drastically. Recent reports indicate that there have been 47% more shipments since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With such an increase, shipment delays are bound to happen.

To keep your customers in the loop, you can send out proactive communication about shipping setbacks. This will set customer expectations right and prepare them for any possible delays.

Another great example of proactive customer service is Gorgias' live chat campaigns, a tool that lets your team automatically reach out proactively to visitors browsing your website to ask if they need help, offer product recommendations or discounts, and guide them through the buying process. 

‎Creating clear product descriptions and convenient self-help resources is another great way to be proactive about customer service and can help reduce ticket volume while also improving the customer experience.

7) Be as clear as possible about your policies

More often than not, customers are worried about the fine print. As a matter of fact, 67% of online shoppers will check a company's return policy before making a purchase. Sloppily-written policies will turn off a lot of customers. Every policy on your website needs to be clearly articulated so users can easily find what they’re looking for.

Creating or updating your refund and return policies? Our policy generator can help you get started. We’re a big fan of the detail and organization of Steve Madden’s return policy:

8) Use automation strategically to dedicate your attention to high-impact tickets

Many tickets that a customer service rep handles throughout the day are repetitive, straightforward questions. Many of your agents are likely spending hours each day simply telling customers where their order is. Answering these common customer questions is a key part of good customer service, but these tickets are not high-impact tickets for revenue generation.

Fortunately, a customer service platform like Gorgias can help you completely automate these tickets so that your team can focus on more impactful tickets (such as escalated complaints and pre-sale discussions).

‎By creating Macros with answers to common questions and automated Rules to trigger with zero agent effort, you can free up your support agents to go the extra mile and provide a more personalized touch to the tickets that matter most.

9) Nurture customer relationships with community engagement

For some, a community engagement strategy consists of asking customers to like their page on Facebook, follow their business on Twitter, and not much else. Having thousands of followers and likes is a good look for your business, sure. But you can’t let those followers go to waste.

Engage your followers and get them talking about the experience with your brand. Then, ask them for some feedback about your business, operations, and employees. You can then use that information to tweak your business.

Here are a few questions you should ask yourself before building a community:

• What do you plan on doing with the community?
• Are you doing everything you can to engage the members?
• What type of information can you get from the members?

10) Use post-interaction surveys to collect customer feedback in real-time

If you’re looking to improve your customer service, you should send a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey after every interaction. These short, simple surveys give you a snapshot of the quality of customer support you currently offer, which is a great first step toward improving customer support. 

Gorgias’ CSAT survey feature can be automatically sent out every time a customer interacts with one of your service reps. After every interaction, customers will get the following simple survey asking them to rate the interaction and, if they want, explain their answer:

‎Read our full guide to improving CSAT scores.

11) Train your employees in the areas where your customer service is weak

Many companies don’t place as much emphasis as they should on hiring and training talented customer service reps. Instead, they view the position as an entry-level, outsourceable role that doesn't justify a comprehensive onboarding process. However, if you want your customer service agents to perform like sales associates and drive revenue, then it’s essential to teach them the right customer service skills.

Your customer service reps are the front lines of your company and some of the only employees your customers will directly interact with. When you train customer service reps with an emphasis on revenue generation, you can turn your customer service team into a source of revenue that more than justifies its investment. Rather than simply instructing your agents to put out fires, train them on how to convert customer interactions into sales and promote customer loyalty. 

‎Read our complete guide to customer service training for more guidance. 

12) Follow up with the customer after they've had a chance to use your product or service

Following up with customers who have purchased your product/service (even if they don't contact you first) has many benefits: For one, it shows that you are committed to their satisfaction, even with their post-purchase experience.

It also provides you with the opportunity to collect valuable customer feedback. This feedback can be used to improve your product and overall customer experience and is something that many successful companies go to great lengths to collect.

Lastly, following up with customers can be a direct source of revenue generation. Recommending additional products to customers based on their experience with a previous purchase is an example of how following up with customers can lead to sales.

The most effective way to follow up with your customers is by setting up an automated email campaign that sends them an email after their purchase. What these emails include will depend on your specific goals (i.e., survey forms if you are trying to collect customer feedback or personalized product recommendations if you are trying to generate repeat sales).

13) Create a customer loyalty program

The more incentives you create for your customers to remain loyal to your brand, the better. While many considerations go into generating high ecommerce retention rates, creating a customer loyalty program is one proven effective option.

Customer loyalty programs give customers a financial incentive to remain loyal to your brand. They also turn the shopping experience into somewhat of a game, where reward points are the goal and making repeat purchases is how you score them. The more creative and fun you can make your customer loyalty program, the more effective it stands to be.

Along with repeat purchases, you can use customer loyalty programs to encourage other customer actions such as referrals, reviews, and survey responses by rewarding these actions with reward points as well.

Software solutions such as Smile.io and LoyaltyLion make it incredibly easy to create and manage customer loyalty programs – and they integrate with Gorgias to pull loyalty data into your helpdesk. These tools allow you to automatically track customer actions and reward loyalty-building actions with points and discounts.

14) Consider offering free shipping to qualifying customers

According to Small Business Trends, 66% of U.S. customers expect free shipping on every online purchase, while 80% expect free shipping if their purchase total exceeds a certain amount. 

Even if you have to raise your product pricing by a small percentage to maintain profitable margins, it’s still likely to positively impact both customer satisfaction and your conversion rates. Logical or not, a $50 subtotal plus free shipping is more appealing than a $45 plus $5 shipping.

If you can't afford to offer free shipping on every purchase, offering free shipping on purchases that exceed a certain amount can help you meet customer expectations and increase your average order value. For example, offering free shipping on orders over $100 will encourage many customers who have purchased just under that total to add an extra product or two to their cart.

Here’s what qualified free shipping looks like on apparel brand Woxer’s website:

15) Provide a solution for items that are out of stock

Create a policy for handling customer support tickets regarding out-of-stock products. Just a few ways to head off customer complaints regarding out-of-stock products include:

• Offering customers alternative products
• Placing an emergency order from your supplier
• Purchasing from an alternative supplier
• Offering customers discounts for their inconvenience

Along with offering one or more of these remedies, it’s also important to communicate effectively with customers trying to purchase an out-of-stock product. Follow up with them frequently to let them know the status of their order and when they can expect it to arrive.

Solutions for out-of-stock products can also be proactive and don't always require a customer to contact support. Giving customers the option to sign up for automated email alerts when a product is back in stock is one passive way to generate sales while improving customer satisfaction.

16) Add more customer touchpoints to shift to an omnichannel approach

According to a Salesforce report, 78% of customers prefer to choose between a variety of channels to reach a brand’s customer support. Depending on the issue, their mood, or the company, a customer may want to send a DM on social media, have a phone call, send a text message, or ask you their question on your website’s live chat. 

One of the biggest challenges support teams face when managing multiple channels is keeping up with messages spread across platforms. That’s why a helpdesk that unifies all these channels is so valuable: Your team can spend less time looking for messages and copy/pasting information, and more time providing quality care across all channels.

‎Examples of excellent customer service

Good customer service entails much more than being willing and able to help solve a customer's problems. If you want to transform your customer service team into a powerful source of revenue, here are some elements of great customer service to strive for:

• Your first-response time is below two minutes and your average-handle time is below one hour: Customers expect quick responses, making first-response/average-handle times two of the most important customer support metrics to track and lower.
• You have clear and lenient return and refund policies: Use Gorgias' refund policy generator to easily create a clear and well-thought-out return/refund policy for your store. (By the way, Gorgias data shows that offering free returns is actually cost-neutral because of the boost in revenue from customer loyalty it provides.)
• You reduce customer effort with self-service options like an FAQ page, a help center, self-service flows, and/or chatbots: Providing customers with self-service options can reduce the workload for your team members and improve customer satisfaction.
• You can clearly present the impact customer service has on revenue: Customer service teams often have to prove their ROI to earn the budget they need for additional agents and new tools, making it important to connect the dots between customer service and revenue growth.

Examples of bad customer service

Bad customer experience comes in many shapes and sizes. But some recurring elements leave customers feeling completely frustrated. Research from Hotjar reveals the top issues that have the most damaging effect on customer experience:

• Long waits and slow response times: If your customers are left waiting for your response for too long, they’ll probably go to your competitor.
• Failing to understand customer needs: Answering customer questions before truly understanding them will result in a frustrating customer experience.
• Unresolved issues and unanswered questions: Leaving tickets unanswered won’t leave a good impression and will leave your customer dissatisfied
• Lack of customer service personalization: Sending out generic responses to customer inquiries only shows that you don’t really care about your customers

Learn more about why customer service matters and how to measure it in this post from our Head of Success & Support: Evaluating Your Customer Service Program: Why, Challenges, and KPIs That Matter

Build a customer service engine that generates revenue

So far, the past few years have presented plenty of challenges for online retailers and 2024 will likely be no different. Moving forward, the ecommerce stores that can leverage customer service to their full revenue-generating potential will be the ones that succeed.

Want to learn more about how you can build a customer service operation designed to maximize your company's bottom line? Check out our CX growth playbook, a free resource that dives into 18 tactics to boost revenue by 44% by improving customer experience, based on 25+ interviews with top ecommerce brands and analysis of 10,000+ Gorgias customers.

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