Last Updated on September 1, 2023 by David
Guest post by Pete Boyle for Re:amaze. Pete is the chief copywriter and content manager for jumper.ai. A new tool that helps online marketers sell more products more easily through social media. Check out jumper for yourself with a free account here.
A couple of days ago I wandered into the Ted Baker (TB) store on Regent Street in London.
I was after a new pair of jeans. The pair I’m wearing right now have that annoying phone outline on the right-hand pocket which, if I don’t change them soon, will turn into a series of roughly rectangular holes.
After 2 minutes in the store a sales assistant offered their help. I outlined the problem and asked if the small selection of jeans on display was all they had available.
Surprisingly, it was.
We spoke about my needs and, when it became clear the trousers on the next rack weren’t suitable, I was advised to check out the sale website for Ted Baker as some of last seasons jeans might be there for a discount.
The whole experience took no more than 5 minutes. Sure, I didn’t get the product I wanted, but it was a quick and painless experience that led me to the discount site.
This is what eCommerce has been missing. Online stores have suffered because the communication has been simply too long and drawn out. But not any more.
The Shortfalls of Digital Shopping Experiences
My experience at TB highlights the main needs of shoppers and the shortfalls that are so prevalent in ecommerce.
If I needed guided assistance on their online store, I’d have to wait for hours before receiving advice or a resolution. Hours in which I could quite easily abandon and seek another pair of jeans on someone like Levi’s site.
A lost sale on an individual basis isn’t going to destroy your business. But it’s never an individual case. According to MarTech, 53% of shoppers will abandon a purchase if the support isn’t swift.
And sure, I could focus on the potential lost revenue of 53% abandonment rate, but poor customer service is worse than a simple lost sale.
Slow support is one of the most frustrating forms of poor customer service, and poor customer service has a domino effect with the overall growth of your brand.
You’re not only going to lose the repeat business of 56% of people who found your slow response frustrating, but 25% of them are going to warn their friends for your products and 2o% will drop a negative review destroying your social proof which costs the eCommerce industry $83 billion a year in the US alone.
Customer service is a key component of the success of your store. However, it’s only recently getting the attention it truly deserves.
The past decade has seen too keen a focus on actions like securing a lead’s contact details, opting images, crafting killer copy, and streamlining the UX for a more direct path to a sale.
I’m not calling these trash that need to be forgotten. Far from it. These are necessary tasks for running a profitable store and they were what we could focus on with technology at the time.
However, we now have the means to drastically improve customer service and offer swift resolutions to consumer problems. And if you want to continue growing your store, there’s one thing you have to do.
Take a Note From the Merchants of Old
In my opening of this piece I mentioned how Ted Baker helped me solve a problem by simply conversing with me.
It was a swift resolution to the problem I was having at that time, and due to the speed of that assistance, I ended up paying over £100 on their online store.
The assistant, knowingly or not, built a rapport with me which prevented me from jumping into the store next door to see what they had.
It’s something that simply couldn’t be done through online means until the very recent rise of conversational commerce and Messenger marketing.
Conversations are the next stages of ecommerce. They’re not a tactic to persuade people to look in a certain area of your site or a cheap copy gimmick to elicit an emotional response. Conversations have been at the core of commerce for millennia, and we’re now able to leverage them through online means.
With live chat and Messenger solutions you’re not throwing an optimized sales page out into the world and hoping the right people will see it. You’re discovering your store visitors have and are offering relevant advice to help them overcome those problems.
Sales aren’t made through manipulation, but through solving a problem for your users. If you can converse with them to understand their problems, then the sale is a logical next step for users who find the solution.
The question on everyone’s lips is how to best leverage live chat on your store. I’m going to examine a couple of tools and explain the best use cases for them.
On-Site Live Chat
There’s dozens of potential live chat services out there for you to choose from, but if you want to make the most out of live chat for your ecommerce store there’s a couple of key elements you need.
1 — Asynchronous Messaging
This is really just a fancy way to say that you can pick up messages whether you’re on desktop, mobile, or even email. The more places you can handle messages, the quicker you’ll be able to respond to customer queries.
2 — Smart Targeting with Re:amaze
Some of the more sophisticated live chat tools like Re:amaze with its Cues capability will allow you to target based on user action or activity, which is a huge conversion opportunity.
If someone is checking out certain pages, you want to be able to send a targeted message. For example, someone bouncing from one sneaker page to the next might respond well to a sale you have running on a certain sneaker range. It seems simple, but helping a customer save money is a sure fire way for you to make some.
Instead of offering a list of things they need to do, you simply direct them to the relevant sales page.
3 — Built In FAQs
Even with asynchronous messaging, there will be times when you’re not able to pick up customer queries. If you don’t have a 24-hour support team, overnight is going to be the time when you’re not able to offer the swift responses consumers expect.
Fortunately, there’s a workaround.
For common questions around delivery times, shipping prices, etc you could save yourself (or support team) countless hours by redirecting users to a pre-built FAQ.
One where users can find the answer themselves immediately. All you have to do is key in relevant keywords and write automated responses that direct people to the relevant entry.
Live chat services are the perfect addition to any ecommerce store. They’re the closest imitation to an in store assistant whose sole job it is to help consumers find what they need.
However, you’re also going to want to leverage methods to bring users from off site back to your store. Generally, we’d turn to email for this, but there’s another higher engagement method to leverage.
Facebook Messenger
Facebook is the juggernaut of the social media world. Even in the face of scandals and adversity, it continues to grow from strength to strength.
Messenger is their latest growth project, and with over 1.3 billion people it’s another great tool to leverage on your site.
A lot of folk still think Messenger is only to be used by those visiting your page. But it’s not. If you head to your page’s settings you can install a widget on your site to offer direct integration.
From a page of mine selling courses for freelance writers
When you’re in settings, click on the “Messenger Platform” tab, scroll down and you’ll see the below.
That will, apparently, allow you to install live chat through Facebook Messenger on your website. I say apparently as I’ve not used this method myself, instead favoring the tools I’m about to explain.
But before I do I just want to explain the benefits of Facebook Messenger over other live chat software. You might not have the advanced segmentation or ability to also host FAQs and trigger certain messages for particular segments through Messenger, but you are able to re-engage users who have left your site through the platform.
Say someone looks at your products, opts in to Messenger, then abandons. You don’t have to rely on email to bring them back but can leverage the far more engaging and effective Messenger platform.
In testing this at Recart, we saw Messenger massively outperforming email for cart abandonment.
Messenger allows you to leverage conversational commerce whether or not the user is currently active on your site.
You can bring them back to your site to buy the product they abandoned or reengage for a follow up purchase.
However, Facebook’s out of the box solution is somewhat lacking, so here’s a couple of tools you’ll want to explore to help you automate even more of your revenue driving conversations so you can spend time working on your store’s strategy.
1 — ManyChat
Talk about Messenger tools and ManyChat is one of the first most people think of.
They’re not specifically an ecommerce solution, but they have a huge number of features that translate well to ecommerce. Features that allow you to automate much of what’s needed to drive conversions.
Here’s a quick example of a follow up that’s triggered when someone clicks Get Started on your brand’s FB page.
Once the sequence is started, the user clicks on shop now to see the products.
2 — Recart
The biggest problem facing ecommerce stores today is that of cart abandonment. Around 80% of consumers who add an item to cart end up never purchasing. That means you’re losing $4 for every $1 you make.
Emails have long been the tried and true solution to this, however, Recart has taken the sequences that work so well through email and adapted them to the Messenger format.
It’s fully automated giving you the benefit of a traditional abandoned art sequence, however, success is far greater thanks to the insanely high engagement of Messenger.
3 — jumper.ai
Another awesome automated tool which is, by comparison, new on the market.
Whereas Recart helps you secure people abandoning their cart, jumper helps you secure more add to carts by targeting those at the initial engagement phase.
jumper focuses on your social media accounts and adds an automated checkout bot to any update you post.
You post a new product, attach one of jumper’s hashtags, and if a user comments with that hashtag they’re sent an automated message which allows them to buy right from their social media account.
Here’s a look at social selling at work.
It’s a great way to streamline the purchase process, however, it’s not ideal for high ticket purchases with a long sales cycle. However, for small ticket and impulse buy products it’s a perfect way to get people into your store with their first purchase.
4 — Quick Facebook Chat (Beeketing)
Beeketing has a huge amount of apps on the Shopify store.
One great addition is there Facebook Messenger on-site chat tool. Whilst ManyChat and Recart both offer on-site live chat, they use the default chat bubble which can sometimes look a little out of place.
Beeketing’s tool creates something that’s more in line with a live chat service in appearance which could go a long way in increasing perceived value.
It’s not as automated as it could be, however, it’s still a great tool to use.
LiveChat Will Dominate the Future of Ecommerce
Live chat, be it on-site or reengagement through Messenger will separate the successful brands form the failures in the next decade.
The trick is figuring out how to use live chat and Messenger side by side. The smartest solution is, of course, to find something like Re:amaze which integrates with Messenger, making that link seamless.
But whatever stage your business is at, you should be investing in one of the tools mentioned above.
Stop thinking about how you can optimize your images, create a better ad, or some other tired method. Instead, look at how you can take a step back from all this modern confusion and get back to building relationships that really make a difference.
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You can also find our multi-brand, multi-channel customer service platform at https://www.reamaze.com. Follow @reamaze.