Newsletter Signup

Since ChatGPT was introduced in November 2022, customer service automation has stormed its way into almost every industry, including ecommerce. This leap in technology has paved the way for companies to increase their support efficiency dramatically, as demonstrated by the buy-now-pay-later service Klarna, which recently resolved two-thirds of customer service chats with AI. 

The business gains arising from automation are evident. Faster and smarter tools mean less time handling mundane tasks and more time improving the customer journey with meaningful conversations, personalized experiences, and seamless upselling opportunities.

At Gorgias, our mission is to elevate customer experiences with automated solutions. To determine the impact, we analyzed data from over 14,000 merchants who use automation compared to those who do not.

Our data revealed a 36% increase in repeat purchases, a 37% reduction in first response time, a 52% reduction in resolution time, a 27% decrease in the ticket-to-order ratio, and a 1% increase in CSAT when automation is used.

These compelling results assert our belief in automation as the next, inevitable step for scaling support teams.

“AI is going to help us transform ourselves into deeper thinkers by taking over simple, standardized functions” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi 

The shift in customer service: doing more with less

Before automation, customer service teams scrambled to hire more agents as their customer bases grew. When Black Friday and other peak seasons arrived, hiring more agents was the Band-Aid fix. Today, companies are opting for leaner support teams as automation allows them to do more with less. The benefit? Teams can scale and improve the quality of service without temporarily bringing on new staff.

Automation works like a junior support agent but at a higher efficiency. It can handle frequently asked questions like where is my order? and customize responses according to brand voice. So, as repetitive tasks are handled in the background, agents can focus on more complex tickets, such as product-specific questions or technical issues that require troubleshooting.

“Before, agents had to handle it all. Now, they rarely take a ticket about frequently asked questions. They’re only handling escalations, special product-related questions, and things like that.” —Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience, Jaxxon

Automation is redefining customer experiences

The flexibility of automation makes it the ideal tool for personalized customer service. Aside from being a keyboard shortcut or macro, automation can be a hands-off assistant that can engage customers and influence as much as 25% of revenue.

At Gorgias, automation is at the core of our products, powering almost every feature in Helpdesk, Automate, and Convert. It allows merchants to deliver delightful and personalized customer interactions across various channels and touchpoints in the customer journey.

While automation is only one of many factors, we’ve found it to positively impact support performance metrics. Based on our data, merchants who used automation saw clear improvements in repeat purchase rates, response times, resolution times, tickets per order, and CSAT scores.

Automation led to 36% more repeat purchases

Retaining customer loyalty is challenging even when brands launch loyalty programs, as customers are discouraged by the effort required to receive rewards. However, Gorgias data shows that simply using automation can increase repeat purchase rates. Within 28 days, merchants who automated up to 20% of tickets increased their repeat purchase rate by 8 points.

‎Yoga apparel brand Manduka used Gorgias Convert's on-site campaigns to influence customers to purchase multiple products. The campaign convinced shoppers to hit a $100 order total for free shipping by recommending small additional items they may be interested in. Their campaign brought in nearly $12,000, proving that automation can directly affect revenue.

“We want to be able to target our repeat customers who have purchased a lot, and say, ‘Welcome back! Here's a new product that would go wonderfully with the item you bought last time.’ It would be a wonderful translation of the in-person retail experience where staff know what you like, so they can assist you better.” —Jessica Botello, Customer Service Manager at Manduka

Automation accelerated first response time by 37%

‎Automated responses resolve tickets in zero seconds and result in faster first response times. On average, merchants using automation respond 37% faster than ones who don’t automate customer service.

Responding to customers as quickly as possible is especially important during busy seasons like Black Friday and Cyber Monday so that revenue-generating questions don’t get pushed to the backlog. The customer experience team at health supplement brand Obvi was able to drive 3x more purchases from support conversations compared to previous years.

Faster response times also mean agents are able to make stronger connections with customers. For Obvi’s CX team, it translated to more time to engage with their vibrant Facebook community:

“Instantly, our CX team had time to prioritize important matters, like being active in our community of 75,000 women instead of sitting answering emails.” —Ron Shah, CEO and Co-founder at Obvi

Customer issues are resolved 52% faster with automation

When customer tickets are automated, resolution times improve dramatically. Merchants using automation resolved tickets 52% faster than those without.

Automation is especially helpful in answering pre-sales questions. High-end luggage retailer July deflected 450 tickets a month immediately after activating Quick Responses, one-click FAQs that live in Chat. Their Head of Operations and CX, Alex Naoumidis, notes that setup was “so easy, with a huge payoff.”

This significant efficiency gain ensures customers are well-educated about their products, leaving agents time to personalize the rest of the customer journey.

Automation decreased ticket-to-order ratio by 27%

As automated responses provide quick solutions to customer issues, customers need to contact support less. Based on our data, brands that automate 10% or more of their tickets see a decrease in billable tickets per order. Brands with little to no automation do not see a significant improvement in the ticket-to-order ratio.

For apparel brand Shinesty, automating more than 10% of tickets greatly decreased the number of tickets per order by 27%. Self-serve tools like interactive conversations called Flows and Article Recommendations enabled customers to solve issues relating to discounts, subscription policies, and returns on their own.

“Automate would be useful for any ecommerce company that needs to lower their ticket counts, or wants to provide a more consistent experience.” —Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty

30 days of automation allow brands to scale faster

‎Thirty days after setting up automation in Gorgias, brands enjoyed a 1% increase in CSAT score, a 4.51 score compared to 4.46 for non-automating brands. Even though satisfaction only nudged an inch, the positive effects reached support teams, improving agent morale and team alignment.

Molly Kerrigan, Senior Director of Retention at Shinesty, emphasizes the importance of preserving quality customer interactions during growth, "We get a lot of praise from our customers, and they talk highly of our CX team after 1:1 interactions. We can’t lose that as we scale." 

Since Gorgias provides in-depth conversation analytics, CX teams are finally able to see their impact.

“Tracking customer satisfaction scores in Gorgias is a really big help to us. Before, we didn't know if we were doing well or not, but now we can see people like the service we provide. We use the KPI tracking data for internal monthly meetings to review performance and see where we can improve,” says Deja Jefferson, Customer Experience Manager at Topicals.

Clearly, balancing automation with personalization significantly improves the customer journey. Given that customers with positive customer experiences are 2.7 times more likely to do repeat business, the value of automation is unmistakable.

In the future, agents will be AI coaches

AI progress has advanced in a short amount of time. But to remind you, this is only the beginning of what automation and AI can do in customer service. We envision AI as a constant work in progress, meant to intake information until it is capable enough to handle more complex tasks. This means agents will spend more time building strong customer connections and finding ways the business can grow.

Gorgias is at the forefront of this evolution, developing automation and AI-driven solutions like an AI-generated Help Center, an AI Agent, a generative AI assistant that autonomously answers customer questions, and an Interaction Quality Score to measure and report on AI-customer interactions. Gorgias aims to transform how support teams and customers interact with AI, paving the way for more impactful customer experiences on a human scale.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

Today, we’re sharing that we raised $29 million in Series C-2 funding from our existing investors, including Shopify. 

Throughout the lifetime of Gorgias, we’ve always believed that great CX can be the main channel for growth for brands. Now, we believe that AI empowers any brand to realize that potential. 

Most CX leaders agree, with 94% out of 1,000+ agreeing automation is becoming more essential to CX.

Funding will specifically be used to support AI Agent – a fully autonomous AI teammate built on brands’ own knowledge bases, data, and integrations, powered by OpenAI's newest model, GPT-4o.

AI and the next evolution of customer experience

AI has changed the landscape of digital technology. The best comparison is in the early 2000s, when the internet boomed and innovation followed. 

Brands like Netflix embraced the change, evolving alongside their customers' expectations, while brands like Blockbuster tried to stick with the old ways. Now, one of those brands is a Fortune 500 company and the other is a nostalgic throwback.

Now, in the 2020s, artificial intelligence is lowering overhead, automating cognition, accelerating processes, and so much more. Brands – from software companies like Gorgias to ecommerce brands like the ones we serve – must lean into these new technologies to continue growing. 

That’s why we’ve made the conscious decision to go all in on AI and automated CX. We truly believe that AI-powered solutions are the best way to help ecommerce brands on Gorgias grow and succeed.

The case for AI-powered CX 

Our recent research shows that brands who automate their CX see:

• 52% reduction in resolution time
• 26% lower ticket-to-order ratio
• 36% more repeat purchases

AI is your instant Level 1 support. Use it to handle repetitive, basic questions quickly, to meet customer expectations, at a lower cost than hiring human staff. 

Reliable AI frees CX teams to do more than what they previously thought possible, such as opening up new channels like Voice or Live Chat and freeing up your team to focus on high-impact conversations, strategy, and other important projects that get neglected when you’re drowning in tickets.

“The combination of AI and human agents is the future of support,” said Tosha Moyer, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Psycho Bunny. 

Leveraging millions of ecommerce data points

Gorgias has processed 500 million tickets — every single one of them from ecommerce brands — which give us the data points and knowledge we need to build the best AI tool for ecommerce.

We also integrate deeply with 100 ecommerce apps like Shopify, Recharge, Loop Returns, and Klaviyo. This means that AI built with Gorgias has access to more data from your ecommerce tech stack, and can push updates to those apps as well.

“The combination of AI and human agents is the future of support”

— Tosha Moyer, Senior Customer Experience Manager at Psycho Bunny

We cannot stress enough the value of these data points and integrations to power CX. Without these, AI can only offer ChatGPT-style answers. It cannot pull up customer information to personalize a response or find information like order status and loyalty points. Likewise, it cannot process a partial refund or update a subscription. 

With more data and integrations than any other CX tool built for ecommerce, we’re confident our AI will provide accurate, personalized, and helpful answers to our brands’ customers. 

AI that integrates seamlessly with your team

We’re committed to developing AI solutions that put you in full control. You’ll be able to:

• Feed the AI from your private knowledge base
• Teach the AI your brand voice and policies
• Set guidelines that tell the AI exactly when and how to respond to specific scenarios
• Review every single AI interaction
• Provide feedback to improve the AI over time

And much more!

This means the way you work will shift: before, CX work was answering repetitive tickets over and over (and over). Now, you’ll use some of that time to monitor and improve your AI Agent and use the rest to tackle CX projects that have been on the back burner for months (if not years).

The next chapter: AI Agent 

‎

Powered by the latest ChatGPT model, GPT-4o, AI Agent can instantly answer tickets, perform actions in other apps, and match a brand's tone of voice, all while ensuring that human hand-off is always possible and smooth for the customer. It can drastically reduce your support time while earning higher CSAT scores than 95% of human agents. 

Launching in July, AI Agent is already being used by leading brands like Psycho Bunny. They’ve combined Automate and AI Agent to automate over 40% of inquiries across all channels, responding to and resolving them in minutes, not hours, all while achieving a higher CSAT than their human team.
Join the waitlist

“The AI Agent actually personalizes responses better than our human team, who sometimes just apply a Macro and hit send. The AI Agent restates parts of the customer’s questions helping them feel understood. Plus, of course, it’s super fast.”

— Anneliese Field, Customer Experience Manager at Love In Faith

AI Agent is just the next step in our evolution as a company. 

Looking into the future, we’re using this new round of funding to develop AI-powered solutions to help you provide instant responses, gather insights to improve your CX, turn support agents into top sellers, and help you drive LTV through amazing customer experiences.

Almost 50% of consumers depend on ecommerce influencers to guide their purchasing decisions.

Partnering up with an influencer your target audience resonates with can help you attract new customers, cultivate your community, and grow your sales.

We've discussed the benefits of social media for customer service, but in this blog we'll discuss using social media influencers to expand your brand's reach. Here’s what you’ll learn in this guide:

• What influencer partnerships are all about and how can you use them
• Why companies similar to yours choose influencer marketing
• How to find the right influencers and get started on your first campaign

What is influencer marketing for ecommerce?

Influencer marketing is the process of working with social media influencers to advertise your ecommerce products on their social channels to their followers. Usually, you'll work with influencers whose followers are within your target audience.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

How to leverage influencer marketing

You know how it works, how to use it, but you’re still not sure how to create an influencer marketing campaign. Don’t worry, it’s not that complicated. 

Here’s what you need to know about launching an influencer campaign.

1. Create a marketing persona

You can’t pick a partner if you don’t know who you want to attract. That’s why creating a “marketing persona” needs to be the first thing you do. Determining what age, gender, and interests of your average customer can help you a lot. 

Let’s say you’re selling women's clothing. You do your homework and find out that most of your visitors are ladies in their 40s from North America and Canada. This knowledge narrows your search down. You need an English-speaking influencer that appeals to middle-aged women. 

That can get things going. 

2. Select social platforms

Once you get to know your audience, you’ll easily find out what are some of their social media platforms on the Internet. Consider platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for a universal solution, then you should reach out to Instagram influencers, since the platform has one of the most diverse user-bases. According to Social Media Today, Instagram is the most active influencer platform. 

3. Look for the right influencer for your store

You of course want a partner with a good reach. Contacting a person with less than 1,000 followers doesn’t make any sense, correct? That person can’t be even called an influencer. But you shouldn’t get stuck on every metric.

Engagement is what you’re looking for.

Sometimes, smaller is better. You might be surprised to know that micro-influencers are far more effective than big ones. In fact, an average micro-influencer gets 7X more engagement than a far-reaching one.

4. Reach out to multiple influencers

As soon as you nail what type of audience you’re targeting and what kind of person would suit your store best, you need to start getting in contact with influencers. However, you can’t just reach out to one and hope you get a response right away.

You need to contact a few social media personalities at the same time. Using a platform such as FameBit, or #Paid you’ll be able to contact several influencers, sort them by followers, age, and other metrics that can be helpful for your marketing campaign. 

5. Evaluate your potential partners

As we keep saying, you need to find someone that your buyers will find relatable. Relatability is twice as important as popularity if you want to attract the right kind of people. 

Talk to the influencers, see what their values are, do they align with your values, and see whether or not they’d shop at your store if you didn’t reach out to them. 

6. Set the objectives for your partnership

Like any other form of marketing, your influencer strategy can and has to be measured. You can’t expect to have a successful strategy without some tweaks along the way. And you can’t really make any corrections to your strategy if you don't know how it’s performing in the first place. 

According to research from the Digital Marketing Institute, these are the biggest KPIs for measuring your effectiveness:

• Reach and Awareness
• Audience Growth
• Referral Traffic
• Conversion Rate
• User Engagement

Your KPI choice depends on your needs and ambitions. Sit down with the rest of your team, discuss in which direction you want to take things, and only then select important KPIs. 

7. Select a platform to measure your campaign

For three-quarters of business owners, measuring ROI is the biggest challenge of an influencer marketing campaign. Nonetheless, measuring success should be one of the most important parts of your campaign. 

You need to have the right tools if you want to get the job done right. NeoRech can help you track referrals and monitor the effectiveness of every single influencer you have, while TapInfluence can help you measure your ROI more effectively. 

8. Launch your first influencer campaign

Once you have your influencers in place, your KPIs all set, and all of the measuring tools in place, you can give your partners permission to start the campaign. 

For the first couple of days, the surge of visitors might not be huge. However, after a month or so, you can expect to see some serious results from the campaign. 

9. Ask for testimonials 

This is a perfect opportunity to get some content for your website. You can always ask for a couple of testimonials from the people you’re working with and place the quote alongside their pictures on your website. 

Now your visitors can see who works with you.

Every person that visits your website will know that the influencer vouches for your store, products, and organization. That testimonial will allow you to build your brand, establish credibility, and boost trust among your consumer base.

10. Make the partnership mutually beneficial

Last but not least, try to make the partnership mutually beneficial for both parties. By that we mean, consider offering the influencer some discount codes or some of your products. 

The influencer can and will send a good number of users your way. That shouldn’t be a one-and-done deal. More than a third of influencers like to work with brands long-term. If the first campaign turns out as planned, why not do it a few more times? 

Why businesses rely on influencer marketing

A business can’t rely only on influencers to increase sales. You should look at this as an enhancement tool for your current marketing strategy.

It’s a great, cost-effective way of improving marketing efforts. Nearly 90% of marketers feel that influencer marketing has a better ROI than other, more traditional marketing channels. 

Let’s look at a few more ways influencer marketing can help your store…

They have real sway with their followers

While a niche influencer may not be able to reach millions of people, they can still have a lot of influence over a small group of users. Niche influencers attract are comprised out of users who share the same interests, buy the same products, and visit the same stores. 

Therefore, by working with an influential person, you’ll be able to reach that small amount of people and turn them into regular customers. You just need to find a person that caters to your target audience. For example, if you go into a random gym in your area, you’ll probably find someone wearing Gymshark clothing. The company is huge. At the moment, it’s valued at about $200 million.

And how did the company manage to find the right influencers? By knowing their target audience. 

Their gym clothing was aimed at millennials. As soon as Gymshark launched a line of women’s clothing, they sought out young fitness influencers like Nikki Blackketter to team up with them. Soon after, their “Flex Leggings” became a huge hit among millennials. 

‍

They're really relatable 

As we established, while celebrities may be influencers, they’re usually seen as spokespeople for certain brands and companies. Why is that? That’s because celebrities live completely different lives than 99% of us. 

Simply put, the average person can’t relate to most celebrities. Relatability is everything if you want your campaign to generate real results. Almost 90% of Gen Z-ers and Millennials follow influencers because they’re relatable. 

They can help niche or taboo businesses 

If you’re selling niche products that aren’t considered mainstream, you may have trouble finding success with mainstream advertising. For instance, anything that Google deems “dangerous advertising” is heavily prohibited. 

Everything CBD and marijuana-related products to martial arts equipment and hunting gear all fall into that category. Stores that sell similar products can get a healthy amount of visitors and brand exposure from influencers. 

Partner up to get your profits up

If you want to partner up with an ecommerce influencer to grow your online store, you should start by thinking about how that partnership can help your store increase sales and help your brand become more known. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Influencer marketing works perfectly on people who dislike traditional marketing
• Social platforms allow influencers to make the most out of their connection with users
• Continuously investing in influencer marketing can be beneficial for both parties 

And remember: even though influencer marketing is still new and always adapting, it’s just a regular marketing strategy that needs to be monitored and measured. For that, you need the best tools. Speaking of which, check out our post on the best social media integrations for Shopify.

If you are starting out with an influencer campaign, especially on Instagram you may see a spike in engagement on your Instagram feed. If those users are commenting on your posts - especially your products, don’t just ignore them, welcome them to your community.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

Quick summary:

• Positive scripting means using polite, pre-written responses to make customers feel acknowledged and taken care of
• Benefits: less frustrated customers, better customer satisfaction, and faster first response times
• Negatives: can make customer service teams sound overly friendly or robotic and may lead to slower resolution times when agents rely solely on scripts

A great customer experience relies on much more than positivity and kindness — your customers expect personalization at scale, self-service options, and concrete benefits like free shipping. That said, using the right words is an important factor in customer conversations.

Positive scripting is one practice that can help your customer service representative steer customer interactions toward desired outcomes (like upselling shoppers and bringing first-time customers back for a second purchase).

However, over-relying script templates in customer support is a shortcut to unhelpful customer care interactions. Read on to learn how to make the most of positive scripting while also avoiding its pitfalls.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

What is positive scripting? (AKA positive phraseology)

Positive scripting is the practice of creating canned responses for customer service interactions that use positive language to limit customer frustration and promote desired outcomes. 

With positive scripting, brands can provide support reps with resources such as scripts and templates that they can use to help ensure positive customer interactions. These scripts and templates can also be used as training resources to provide reps with examples of constructive interactions and positive language.

‎Goals of positive scripting

There are several goals that brands can accomplish with positive customer service scripts, including:

• Promoting constructive customer service experiences that contribute to customer satisfaction
• Alleviating customer frustration and de-escalating angry customers
• Maintaining a consistent, positive brand voice
• Speeding up response times to customer queries

Where can positive scripting be used?

Positive scripting can be used across numerous contact centers and customer support channels. 

Like any customer support practice, positive scripting should be tweaked for each channel. 

Call centers

Providing support via a phone call requires reps to be quick on their feet, and this is where the practice of positive scripting first originated. 

Providing call center scripts to your call center agents can go a long way toward helping agents stay positive and on-brand when there isn't much time for them to formulate a response.

SMS support

Agents have a little more time to think about their SMS responses, but not much. Customers contacting your support team via SMS still expect swift responses, and positive scripting can help ensure that your SMS responses are swift, positive, and on-brand.

Live chat support

Like SMS, live chat conversations tend to be fast-moving — and this is one of the primary reasons why many consumers list live chat as their preferred customer support channel. 

With positive scripting and live chat tools like Gorgias live chat, you can provide fast, convenient, and helpful support via this advantageous channel.

📚 Recommended reading: Find out how Gorgias customer Ohh Deer used Gorgias chat to generate $12,500 in revenue — per quarter.

Email support

Support reps can typically put a little more time and thought into their email responses. 

Nevertheless, email templates with positive scripting can still help keep these responses positive and consistent while also enabling reps to respond to email queries more efficiently.

Social media support

Providing support via social media is a great way to meet your customers where they're most comfortable — and positive scripting helps keep these responses positive and on-brand. 

This is especially important when responding to comments and posts that other potential customers are likely to see.

Scripts and templates

Scripts, templates, and automated responses should all be built using positive scripting. 

If you use a helpdesk, chances are you can build a library of templates in the tool for agents to use during customer conversations. 

For example, you can use Gorgias Macros to build positive templates and autoresponses. Unlike most templates, Gorgias Macros pull customer information from ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, as well as other ecommerce tools (like Klaviyo and ShipBob) to automatically personalize the response. 

Even better? Thanks to automated Rules, Gorgias can automatically send these personalized templates to customers for basic interactions — like WISMO (where is my order), questions about shipping and return policies, and so on. 

This way, your customer service team time saves time while still fostering a great, personalized customer experience.

Customer support training programs

You can use positive scripting to guide customer service training by using customer support scripts with positive language as examples of beneficial customer interactions. 

This helps new team members get a feel for expectations regarding your company's voice and tone, which they can reflect in their individual customer interactions.

Benefits of effective positive scripting

When used correctly, positive scripting can improve the quality of a brand's customer support services in several key ways, including:

Enhance customer experiences to encourage repeat business

Did you know that 54% of customers say they would stop purchasing from a brand after just a single bad experience? If you want to promote customer loyalty and repeat business, it's vital to provide positive experiences throughout every step of the customer journey. 

Likewise, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers, according to our data from over 10,000 ecommerce brands. Repeat customers place repeat orders, place larger orders, refer friends to your store, leave product reviews, and more. 

While many different elements go into crafting positive customer experiences, facilitating friendly and welcoming customer interactions with positive scripting is one important step.

Avoid or de-escalate angry customers

Using positive words and language may not solve a customer's problem, but it can help ease their frustrations. Positive scripting is an effective way to de-escalate angry customers — and a great way to prevent customers from ever becoming angry in the first place.

Become more consistent with customer communication and policies

Your customer service agents don’t just need to be positive, they need to follow the same policies and procedures, especially for common customer interactions. Using scripting to guide 

Of course, you can also specify which policies agents can bend, and when. For example, if repeat customers ask for an extension on refund eligibility, it’s probably in your best interest to permit the return rather than frustrate a repeat customer.

📚Recommended reading: Our guide to creating a customer service policy that actually provides value. 

Maintain a positive brand voice

Positive scripting helps you maintain a consistent brand voice, but, just as importantly, it also helps you maintain a positive brand voice. By using positive scripting to guide your brand's messaging, you can carefully (and intentionally) design your language to encourage customer satisfaction and beneficial outcomes.

Examples of positive scripting

A majority of customer interactions can become more pleasant and productive with positive scripting. Here are some scenarios that would benefit from positive scripting:

• Greeting: "Good [morning/afternoon/evening], thank you for choosing [Company Name]. How can I help you today?"
• Apologizing: "I'm sorry to hear about the inconvenience you've faced. Let me look into this for you."
• Offering assistance: "I'd be delighted to assist you with that" or "I'm here to make this right for you."
• Expressing appreciation: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention" or "We appreciate your business and your feedback."
• Providing assurance: "Rest assured, we'll resolve this for you" or "We'll do everything we can to make this a positive experience."
• Suggesting solutions: "Let me find that information for you" or "May I suggest an alternative solution?"‍
• Ending interactions: "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" or "I hope you have a wonderful day."

The pitfalls of positive scripting

The biggest potential drawback of positive scripting is one that we've already touched on; customers who contact your call center or other customer support channel want to feel as though they are talking to a real human and not a robot regurgitating a script. 

It's also vital to remember that customers are ultimately much more interested in resolving their problems quickly than in the language that your reps use. Many times, a simple message with the information they're looking for (such as a tracking number) will suffice with no flair or positivity required.

To prevent positive scripting from harming your customer interactions rather than improving them, here are a few other key mistakes and pitfalls to avoid:

• Not giving support team members the freedom to deviate from their script or inject their own flair
• Scripting entire customer interactions instead of just using scripts to save time on the most common, process-heavy elements
• Focusing too much on positive language and too little on actually solving customer issues as quickly as possible
• Writing scripts that sound too robotic or overly-friendly
• Using vague empathy statements rather than training your agents to be genuine and sincere

These are all serious mistakes to avoid if you want to make the most of positive scripting. When used appropriately, though, the benefits of this practice far outweigh its cons.

How to use positive scripting for customer service: 7 best practices

Positive scripting is a powerful tool for ecommerce brands to leverage, but it's important to use it correctly. Here are the seven best practices that you should employ to make the most of positive scripting (and avoid its pitfalls).

1) Use scripts as a starting point, not for the entire interaction

The scripts you give your support reps should be used for the most common, predictable part of customer interactions rather than mapping out the entire conversation. 

For example, your agents might use a script to greet customers and share information about your shipping policy (in response to a question about shipping). But, the agent should be flexible enough to include unique information or handle follow-up questions that may not be so predictable.

“I like to think of Macros as guidelines. When you open up a Macro, it's not 100% the right thing to say, because you have to match the customer’s tone and specific query. And it's up to the agent to understand that and adjust along the way — but Gorgias gives you the tools to do that.” 

— Leeor Cohen, Founder and CEO at CreateCX

If you require your agents to follow a script from start to finish, you risk sounding robotic and not providing agents with the flexibility they need to keep customers happy.

2) Prepare positive responses for common situations

Customers who cannot track their order, received the wrong item, or want to make a return are just a few examples of common situations where customers are sure to welcome a little friendliness and empathy — along with helpful information and clear next steps. 

Using positive scripting to create responses to these common situations helps your brand handle these issues consistently and ensure that they are handled with care and positivity. 

All you have to do is identify the questions that your support team receives most frequently and then load positive, brand-consistent responses into your helpdesk:

While each brand varies, some of the most common situations include:

• WISMO, or “where is my order?”
• Questions about refund and returns policies
• Questions about product availability
• Product-related questions (sizing, compatibility, ingredients, etc.)

3) Encourage customer support to enhance scripts with their own unique flair

Customer service reps should be free to deviate from scripts when needed or inject them with their unique flair. Encouraging your reps to use scripts as a guide rather than a word-for-word requirement ensures that your brand doesn't script away its human touch.

We love this example of an agent bending a policy and sparking up a delightful conversation:

4) Use scripts for training representatives

Along with using customer service scripts to guide customer interactions in the moment, you can also use them as resources for training your representatives. Once again, not everything that your agents say will be scripted, so ensuring they understand the principles behind positive scripting is just as important as providing the scripts themselves. 

Using scripts to showcase what positive customer interactions look like will allow your agents to leverage positive language even when they aren't using a script. For example, you can use scripts to demonstrate mock customer service interactions and then dive into the specifics of why the scripted responses you've created work well for those situations.

📚 Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training.

5) Avoid sounding like a robot

Several of the tips we've already covered are geared toward preventing support agents from sounding wooden or robotic, and this is an essential consideration when using positive scripting. 

By using scripts to initiate an interaction rather than scripting the entire conversation, giving agents the freedom to add their own flair to the scripts, and adding personality to the scripts you create, you can avoid this common pitfall of positive scripting. 

It's also vital for your reps to demonstrate genuine empathy throughout customer interactions to avoid sounding uncaring and robotic. This can't be easily scripted, making it important to ensure that your reps know how to adopt an empathetic tone and approach.

📚 Recommended reading: The ultimate guide to offering personalized customer service at scale. 

6) Nail the greeting

Your agent's initial greeting to a customer sets the tone for the rest of the interaction. It's also one of the easiest parts of customer interactions to script since the initial greeting will largely remain the same regardless of the customer's specific issue or sentiment. 

Stating the company name and the agent's name, asking the customer's name, telling them good morning/good afternoon, and assuring them that you are happy to assist them are all great elements to consider including in your greeting script.

7) Test, iterate, and refine to perfect your customer service interactions

Like almost every aspect of ecommerce, positive scripting in customer service is something you can continually improve with proper testing. CSAT surveys are one excellent way to gather customer feedback following a customer support interaction. You can use the feedback you gather from these surveys to fine-tune your customer support scripts. 

For instance, if many customers complain that your reps sound unempathetic or robotic, you may want to revisit the language of your scripts or encourage your agents to inject more of their own personalities. Throughout testing and refining your scripts, keep in mind that script building should be a collaborative experiment, with customer service teams working alongside reps and using data from past customer service interactions to guide the process.

Offer positive, fast, and helpful customer service with Gorgias

Positive scripting is one effective way to improve the quality of your brand's customer support and encourage more positive customer experiences. However, it's also just one small element of high-quality, revenue-generating customer support. 

If you would like to offer the type of fast, positive, and helpful customer service that will set your brand apart from the competition, it's important to use the right customer support tools.

With Gorgias' industry-leading customer support platform, you'll be able to leverage a range of advanced customer support tools and capabilities — all designed to boost customer satisfaction by improving both the speed and helpfulness of your support services. 

To get started offering positive, fast, and helpful customer support via the best ecommerce customer support platform on the market, be sure to sign up for Gorgias today!

{{lead-magnet-2}}

The buyer’s journey is full of questions: When will this arrive? Is this ethically made? Will I be able to return it if I don’t love it? 

Pre-sales support grows your business by proactively answering these questions to help customers make more confident buying decisions. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, businesses with solid pre-sales strategies convert 40-50% of new customers.  

Whether you’re aware or not, most shoppers need a lot of information before they trust you with their credit card number: information about sizing, shipping costs, production materials, and so on. And if they can’t find an answer, they might venture to Amazon or another store that provides this information upfront. 

Below, learn how to structure a more effective pre-sales strategy that bolsters customer satisfaction and supports a healthy sales cycle. 

{{lead-magnet-1}}

What is pre-sales support?

Pre-sales support is the process of providing shoppers with the answers they need to feel confident in making a purchase. 

Especially as the shopping experience moves online, customers have new questions (e.g. “Is expedited shipping available?”) and more suspicion (e.g. “Does this product really show the accurate color of the product?”). The ability to answer pre-sales questions is an important factor in your online store’s conversion rate. 

Example of pre-sales questions that impact customer sales

A lack of pre-sales questions is a major pain point for shoppers, resulting in lost sales. While your store’s complete list of pre-sales questions will depend on your unique product and industry, use the list below as a starting point that covers most ecommerce fundamentals. Below are some common questions that your support team should be prepared to answer. 

Product details

• What size should I get?
• How does this product work?
• Who is this product for?

When trying to identify the best product for their needs, customers typically ask questions about size, color, durability, warranty, user-friendliness, safety, and so on. Another common question is how the product compares to its competitors.

For example, tech accessory brand Native Union’s product pages include quite a lot of information to proactively answer pre-sales questions about this product. On top of a detailed description, the page includes tech specs, compatibility, a section on “Why we designed this,” and products that work well with this one:

Your agents must answer these questions and point out how each product feature will add value to the customer’s life. If necessary, the agent can recommend other available products that might be a better fit for the customer’s budget or other requirements.

Inventory details

• When will you get this item back in stock?
• Does this include refills? 
• Does this come in any other colors? 

On top of questions about specific products, customers may have pre-sales questions about inventory levels and product availability. Think of this as the equivalent of asking the clerk whether they have any additional sizes in the back.

For example, ABLE responds to inventory-related questions on its Instagram posts: 

Shipping questions 

• How long do items process before they ship?
• Do you ship to my location?
• How much does shipping cost? 
• How long will shipping take?

Shipping-related concerns are common among pre-sales shoppers. Including a robust shipping FAQ page and self-service order tracking once orders ship can go a long way toward quelling those concerns. 

For example, Vancouver-based dress shop Park & Fifth has a detailed FAQ page that lists out answers to many shipping questions. To help brides understand how long they need to order a wedding dress from their white collection, they even specify how long those dresses take to ship. 

Technical support

• Will this item fit in my space? 
• How will I know how to install it once it arrives?
• Will this be compatible with my other devices?

Technical questions often require detailed measurement guides or a human touch so that shoppers can ensure they make the right choice. 

For example, car accessory brand GOBI shares installation guides and product specs within every product page. Since the brand creates roof racks for many different car models, customers need to ensure they’re purchasing the right one. 

Sourcing, ethical concerns, and brand values

• Do you use fairtrade and sustainably sourced materials?
• Are your operations eco-friendly?
• Are your sheets OEKO-TEX certified? 

More and more customers prefer getting their goods and services from socially responsible companies. Pointing out that your company adheres to ethical practices can convince shoppers with those concerns to make a purchase.

For example, fashion brand ALOHAS makes its sustainability practices well known across its website.  

Pricing frustration or confusion

• Can I get a discount?
• Do you have any upcoming sales? 

Most customers are looking for a bargain, so it’s not unusual to hear questions like the above. If a customer complains about prices or missing sales, you can offer a coupon to help get the customer to make a purchase. If giving a coupon is not feasible, inform the customer about upcoming sales.

If your brand doesn’t do sales, let shoppers know why your products are worth the price by explaining your unique selling points (USPs). You can also sway undecided prospects by offering free returns if the product falls short of their expectations.

For example, jewelry brand Jaxxon’s chat widget includes a button labeled, “Do you have any current promotions?” This way, customers can quickly find any promotions without having to leave your website or wait for an agent’s response (both of which would delay, or even derail, the purchase): 

Doubts about product efficacy

• Will this help my hair grow back?
• Are these vitamins really effective? 

When a potential customer doubts a product’s efficacy, telling them the product works is not enough to clear their doubts. 

On your website, make sure to list the product’s ingredients or qualities and explain why each one can deliver the results the prospect seeks. Case studies, positive reviews, and science-backed research that showcases the product’s effectiveness also go a long way in the battle for customer trust.

For example, vitamin brand Ritual shares information about the research team who formulated its vitamins and where it sources its ingredients on its website. 

{{lead-magnet-2}}

7 ways boost revenue with pre-sales support

Pre-sales support helps to stop shoppers from leaving your page to research products on other sites, and provides crucial objection handling that can make or break sales. In fact, Harvard Business Review found that optimized pre-sales processes converted 80 to 90% of repeat customers. 

Your support team must also act as sales reps in order to answer any questions, handle objections, or provide the assistance shoppers need to make a purchase. 

1) Make your website informative and easy-to-navigate

Shoppers won’t make purchases if they get confused on your website, or if it doesn't provide the information prospects need to confidently place an order. Your website’s browsing experience is your first line of defense against pre-sales questions that could block a sale.

There’s no limit to the ways you could optimize your website, but here are some of the best opportunities:

• Provide delivery estimates early in the checkout process
• Use banners to notify customers about temporary announcements (like delivery delays or new promotions)
• Make your shipping and return policy easily clickable from any page
• Create detailed product descriptions that provide information about the products production, compatibility, use cases, sizing, and more
• Create detailed sizing guides or a sizing questionnaire
• Use product quizzes to help customers find the right product for their needs 
• Provide multiple product photos (or even videos and 360-degree images) on each product page

You can also do market research to figure out what kinds of websites are easiest to navigate or for tips and tricks you can adopt to improve your website’s functionality. 

You can also look at your website traffic and perform data analysis to figure out what’s working and where you could use some optimization. For example, if you have incredible shipping and return policies that barely get any traffic, you may want to make links to those pages more prominent.

📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to ecommerce conversion optimization with A/B testing. 

2) Provide proactive self-service resources

On top of information dispersed across your site, you can also centralize answers to pre-sales questions in a self-service resource (like an FAQ page or Help Center knowledge base). 

If customers with questions are directed straight to your email, that’s a problem. You want to create a path to these answers (and the purchases that follow) that doesn't require leaving your website or shopping app — especially before an order is placed when leaving your site means abandoning a cart. 

A detailed, organized resource will quickly become your shoppers’ first stop for all questions and issues before reaching out to support. 

Once you build an FAQ page or Help Center, link it prominently on your website (like Jaxxon, who put a link in their website’s top navigation).

Once customers land on this resource, make navigation as easy as possible so customers can quickly answer their questions. A search bar is your best friend here. Your next best? Clear categorization, titles, and headers so customers can find exactly what they’re looking for. 

For example, furniture brand Branch offers an FAQ page and Help Center organized to answer common pre-sales questions from shoppers:

📚Recommended reading: Why Proactive Customer Service Is Your New Growth Strategy

3) Provide self-service answers to the most common questions in your chat widget

If your customers can’t find help on your website or help center, they’ll likely open up your live chat widget to ask a question. Fortunately, you have one more line of defense: Pre-loaded FAQs in your live chat. 

To save both your support team and your shoppers time, you can use a feature like Gorgias’ Quick Response Flows. These add interactive buttons to your chat widget that customers can click for an instant answer.

Take a look at ALOHAS’ Quick Response Flows to get the idea:

Quick Response Flows are a great match for pre-sales questions because your customers don’t have to leave your website (or wait for an agent’s follow-up response) to get the information they’re looking for.

Plus, Quick Response Flows don’t mimic or replace human agents — if customers aren’t satisfied with an answer, they don’t have to fight with a frustrating chatbot or open up an email to contact your team. They can easily click “I need more help” to be connected with a customer support agent or salesperson. 

How did Jaxxon Increased Revenue by 46% with Quick Response Flows? With Gorgias, Jaxxon is able to automate responses to common pre-sales questions and give customers instant answers around the clock, leading to happier customers, 46% more revenue, and time saved for the team to handle higher-impact conversations.

Read the case study.

4) Automatically answer common pre-sales questions your support team gets asked

If customers end up asking a question to your support team, you still have an opportunity to provide an answer with the help of automation. We recommend using a helpdesk that leverages omnichannel communication to receive and send messages via email, live chat, SMS, or any other channel.

With help from Gorgias, you can automatically detect common customer questions and fire an instant response based on a pre-written Macro template.

Gorgias’ Intent Detection capabilities can understand when customers are looking for specific information, so you can provide a helpful response without waiting for an agent. 

Setting up automated responses provides instant, helpful responses while improving project management for agents (they won’t have to answer as many questions) and create better workflows for them.

Save your time for better things

Unlock your customer support with Automate in Gorgias. Leverage tools designed to resolve common customer inquiries so you can focus on conversations that no robot can answer.

5) Use chat campaigns to reach out to live shoppers in real time 

Chat campaigns are automated outreach to customers via your site’s chat widget — kind of like an in-store sales team member approaching a shopper to see if they need help and know about the latest products and promotions.

Chat campaigns can offer updates, news like product launches or recent collabs, or ask shoppers if they have any questions they need answered. 

For example, if you use Gorgias, you can set up a prompt for users who have been on the site for a while: 

While the above example is a welcome message for all website visitors, you can get much more specific. For example, you can create chat campaigns for:

• Premium product pages to offer high-touch support
• Shipping pages to remind customers about your free shipping eligibility
• Checkout pages to offer a discount to get shoppers over the finish line

📚 Recommended reading: Learn more about chat campaigns, including examples to move shoppers down the sales funnel. 

6) Create custom pre-sales views within your helpdesk

To help support agents filter out pre-sales conversations, set up rules to help tag and prioritize pre-sales tickets within your helpdesk. 

In Gorgias, you can set up views and create tags and rules within those views so that agents can filter for only pre-sales questions. If you do this, be sure to clearly define to agents what qualifies as a pre-sales question. It’s anything that a shopper needs answered in order to justify a purchase. 

7) Monitor social media for pre-sales questions (and answer them publicly)

Help potential customers learn more about your products without ever leaving the social app they’re using. 

Because social media comments and direct messages come in across apps and usually in large quantities, this task should never fall on your marketing team. Instead, set support agents up with the information they need to answer customer questions on social media. These questions can often remove the barrier a shopper needs to make a purchase. 

For example, fine jewelry brand Fewer Finer often answers questions via Instagram Stories to help sell different pieces in its vintage and signature collections. 

How to measure pre-sales support

Most brands don’t think customer support teams offer much in the way of lead generation or sales. This couldn’t be farther from the truth: Pre-sales customer support teams can be a huge facilitator of sales — it’s just a matter of proving so. 

Here are three ways to measure revenue that comes in through support.  

1) Use a revenue generated by support dashboard 

Create or monitor a dashboard that shows all revenue that your support team generates. If you use Gorgias, you can see this in the Revenue Statistics part of your account. Gorgias attributes revenue to a conversation with an agent within the last 5 days before a sale. 

2. Track traffic coming into your help center

The traffic you get to your help center can also be another great indicator of pre-sales questions answered, an indicator of revenue generated by support. 

If a shopper visits your help center before making a purchase — especially an article containing pre-sales questions — it’s most likely because they’re interested in your brand, have questions, and are actively interested in learning more. 

Keep an eye on traffic here to prove your impact as well as understand how you could better organize and link your knowledge base to improve discoverability. 

3. Track the automation rate of pre-sales Quick Response Flows

If you automate responses in chat for common questions (called Quick Response Flows if you use Gorgias), you can measure their traffic.

For example, if you see that 200% more people click the response for “Do you have new products,” that’s a good sign your pre-sales support is funneling traffic to product pages. If you see a spike in purchases following that, count that as a win. If you use Gorgias, you can find these stats in the Revenue Statistics Dashboard. 

Post-sales support 

Post-sales support is an effective tool for supporting existing customers, encouraging exchanges over returns, and creating repeat business. 

The difference between pre-sales and post-sales support

Pre-sales support means answering the questions customers ask before making a purchase plus leading customers through the sales process and closing deals. Support agents turn into sales representatives to guide a customer from being a prospect to becoming a satisfied shopper. 

Customer support team members handle post-sales support as well — and this activity impacts your brand’s bottom line as well. By creating a good impression and meeting customer needs through quality post-sales, customers are more likely to become return shoppers, boosting customer retention and lifetime value. 

Proactive post-sales strategies 

After a customer places an order, keep them at ease but eager to keep shopping by sending:

• Detailed order confirmations: Share order confirmation emails that include a link to a customer’s order portal where they can find status updates like shipping times or return information. This helps to reduce WISMO (where is my order) requests. 
• A thank you note: Appreciating a customer goes a long way in showing that you value their patronage.
• Review request: Asking for feedback shows clients that their opinions matter to your company, and can help you make necessary improvements to the post-sales process. 
• Product suggestions: Product suggestions are a great way to keep customers engaged while awaiting their orders. Sending them product suggestions that match their searches also increases the chances of the customer making more purchases.
• Shipping updates: Send shoppers shipment updates until their order arrives. The updates can contain personalized alerts about ongoing discount offers, upcoming promotions, and more, to bring customers back to your store.
• Marketing communications: Send out email newsletters or nurture campaigns to re-engage shoppers and encourage repeat purchases.
• Offer fast customer support wherever your customers are: According to a study by AMA, you can use live chat to improve post-sales customer support by 39%. Lowering your average response time can also help meet customer expectations. 
• Take an omnichannel approach: Customers expect to get support on their preferred channel, whether that's SMS or Facebook Messenger. Make that a reality for them by employing omnichannel customer service. 

Strengthen your pre-sales activities with Gorgias

Gorgias can support your support agents and your customers as they embark on a pre-sales journey. While most customer support teams and tools focus on troubleshooting issues, Gorgias focuses on generating more qualified leads and improving conversion rates for online stores.

Book your demo to try out the most revenue-generating helpdesk in ecommerce. 

TL;DR:

• A service level agreement (SLA) is a promise of how quickly and well a company will help customers.
• Setting SLAs helps support teams meet customer expectations and business goals.
• You can easily create and customize SLAs in Gorgias for different channels like chat, social media, email, and contact form.
• Track how well you’re meeting your SLAs with Gorgias Statistics.

Customer expectations are becoming more demanding as AI technology redefines the meaning of great customer service. Support teams need to catch up, which means monitoring performance with a service level agreement (SLA) to meet efficiency expectations.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about SLAs, including what they are, why they matter, how to create and measure SLAs in Gorgias, plus some SLA best practices.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

What is an SLA?

A service level agreement or SLA is a document that outlines the expected level of service a company will provide to customers, how responsive the company will be, and how performance will be measured.

In ecommerce customer service, SLAs typically include metrics like first response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction score (CSAT). 

Brands can create an internal SLA for support agents and display a customer-facing SLA for customers.

How brands benefit from setting SLAs

Setting clear expectations and measurable goals with SLAs provides several advantages to your brand and immediate customer service team.

Here are some key benefits you gain from setting SLAs:

• Informs data-driven goals. SLAs can help dictate what business targets to set based on team and agent performance and customer expectations.
• Consistent support standards. The terms laid out in an SLA make it easier for every agent to deliver the same quality of service to customers.
• Manages customer expectations. The customizability of SLAs ensures expectations can be met no matter the customer or scenario.
• Pinpoints support performance gaps. SLAs enable teams to track individual agent performance, which can give insights into the gaps in your customer service operations and escalation processes.
• Enhances marketing strategy. Brands can use SLAs to market their commitment to exceptional customer service to appeal to new and existing customers.

How to create an SLA on Gorgias

Create SLAs with just a couple of clicks with Gorgias, no matter your plan. You can use templates based on support channel benchmarks or create an SLA from scratch to customize your first response and resolution target times.

Follow these three easy steps to get started.

Step 1: Create your SLA

Go to Settings → Productivity → SLAs → Create from Template. For a brand new SLA, click Create SLA.

You can select from three templates based on your channel needs:

• Chat
• Email
• Social media

These templates give you baseline recommended first response and resolution times, allowing you to start supporting customers instead of sweating the details.

Step 2: Customize the times 

Already know the amount of time responses should take? You can specify the time frame for the first response time and resolution time in hours, minutes, or seconds. Ensure the time frames are realistic and achievable for your support team.

Step 3: Activate or deactivate the SLA policy

Only admins and team leads can activate or deactivate SLA policies. This activation feature can be helpful during peak shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) when your team needs to switch SLAs to meet faster times.

Navigate to the bottom of the SLA creation page and toggle “Enable SLA” as needed.

How to track and measure SLA performance

Once your SLAs are in place, track your performance to ensure you uphold the terms of your SLA.

Here’s how to track SLA performance on Gorgias:

Find your SLA statistics under Statistics → Support Performance → SLAs.

You will see your SLA performance overview, which includes your Achievement Rate and Breached Rate:

• Achievement Rate: Percentage of tickets that meet the SLA terms.
• Breached Rate: Percentage of tickets that failed to meet the SLA terms.

You can filter SLA performance by channel (chat, email, social media, contact form, etc.), ticket tags, and date. 

The graph will change based on your activated filters. It sorts tickets by Satisfied, Breached, and Pending tickets.

In addition, you can gain insights into specific tickets and their achievement rate. This detailed view can help you set realistic target times and find out if agents need more training.

Best practices for creating SLAs

Remember that overpromising can backfire. To set realistic expectations, here are seven helpful tips to set up an SLA that delivers and improves customer satisfaction.

1) Determine the type of SLA to use

Never (ever, ever, ever) copy and paste because an SLA policy is rarely a one-size-fits-all scenario. Your SLA should be designed based on your customer support team’s capacity and target audience.  

There are three types of SLAs to consider:

1. Customer-based SLAs: This agreement commits to delivering a certain level of service to a customer. It focuses on organizing the customer’s obligations and expectations about the contract. Each customer might have a different SLA. A customer-based SLA may be used for an ecommerce store and a manufacturer.
2. Service-based SLAs: Determines the services that will be offered to customers. For example, an ecommerce store may use a service-based SLA to ensure they can support customers from 9 AM to 5 PM on weekdays. 
3. Multi-level SLAs: This SLA can take several forms and outline expectations if there's more than one service provider and one end-user.

2) Learn the standard SLA metrics for ecommerce brands

Track performance metrics to ensure you’re committed to your SLA’s terms. Consider the following customer support metrics:

• Average resolution time: The average time it takes to respond and resolve a ticket. 
• First response time: The average time it takes to reply to a customer’s initial inquiry.
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT): A measure of how satisfied customers are with your service delivery. CSAT is often measured through single-question surveys asking, “How satisfied were you with our service?”
• Uptime: The percentage of time your website is operating. 
• Downtime: The percentage of time your website is not operating. For example, if your brand provides 99% uptime, you won’t be available 1% of the time (this is your downtime).

Check it out: How exceptional is your customer service? (Gorgias customer service benchmark report)

3) Avoid ambiguous language

Don’t use vague phrases like “as soon as possible,” “fast,” or “quickly.” Instead, use clear measures of time like, “We’ll get back to you within 12 hours.” Concrete, measurable language lets customers understand your policies, avoiding confusion. 

Here’s an excellent example from olive oil brand GRAZA. Notice their live chat shows “Typically replies in a few hours,” not “We’ll be back soon.”

💡 Pro Tip: Avoid intimidating phrases like “we are not responsible for,” “you are required,” or “you must.” Set your boundaries, but also show empathy.

4) Design your SLA based on data

Basing your SLA terms on past support performance data will set your agents up for success instead of trying to achieve unrealistic goals.

Here is some support data to consider:

• What is our average first response time on [channel]? 
• What is our average resolution time on [channel]?
• What is our daily ticket volume?
• How many customers can one agent handle?

Want direct insights? Don’t be afraid to ask customers for feedback about your support services. Ask them what you could do better, if your speed is acceptable, and if your service is missing anything.

Most importantly, consult your support agents’ bandwidth and workflow to ensure your SLAs are achievable.

💡 Pro Tip: It might be time to revamp your SLA if you consistently fail to meet it. Are the expectations you’re setting too high? Are support agents facing roadblocks that prevent them from resolving tickets? Should you hire more agents? 

5) Make your SLA flexible

In ecommerce, peak shopping seasons like BFCM entail more customer support traffic. Adjust your SLA based on holidays, sales, and shopper behavior. For instance, provide 24/7 customer service during the holiday season to account for the increased shopping activity.

💡 Pro Tip: You may also want exclusive SLAs for high-value, repeat customers. For example, they might get support priority over first-time visitors.

6) Specify your business hours

Make information about service availability visible on your website. If your support hours are unclear, customers will assume they can contact you anytime — even when agents are offline.

For example, if you provide support from Monday through Friday during business hours, state it in your SLA. This way, customers know you’ll only handle their service requests during that time.

On Nashua Nutrition’s Contact Us page, you’ll find clear information about their operating hours and holiday closure updates. They also explain how they provide curbside order pick-up for local customers.

Besides the Contact Us page, you can also show your SLA on live chat, FAQ page, Help Center, or even on the header as Trimleaf does:

7) Outline your procedures for SLA breaches

Prepare for the unpredictable, like an outage, website crash, or server maintenance, by outlining what your support team will do if these critical issues happen.

When you’re transparent about your service, you build your credibility, and customers trust you more. 

Elevate your customer experience with Gorgias

Customer service efficiency and satisfaction are within reach with these SLA best practices. Gorgias offers the tools you need to create and manage SLAs seamlessly while delivering omnichannel communication to your customers.

Ready to take customer experiences to the next level? Book a demo with Gorgias today and drive success for your brand.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

Customer service professionals (and the customer service skills they possess) are at the frontline of creating great brand experiences. 

All too often, customer service workers aren’t valued as truly skilled or strategic members of the business. It’s a shame (and a missed opportunity), given how big a role customer service agents play in the success of a business. 

According to 2022 McKinsey research, three out of five customer service leaders view attracting, training, and retaining skilled customer service workers as a top business priority.

My name is Deja Jefferson, and I’m the CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals. We’ve upskilled our customer experience associates with both soft and hard skills to give our customers complete support and unwavering confidence when making a purchase.

Here are 16 of the most important hard and soft skills for customer support that we train for at Topicals, and that you should build your support team to possess. 

Top customer service soft skills to manage any situation

Customer service soft skills are the non-technical, interpersonal traits agents use while supporting shoppers. Ultimately, soft skills help to problem solve through good communication and clear thinking. 

These aren’t technical skills, nor are they easily quantifiable, but they are vitally important to improve customer communications.

1) Positive language

Your support agents need to have a firm understanding of how their tone of voice and word choice affect customer satisfaction. 

Using positive language is a valuable customer service technique that steers conversations toward positive emotions, which generate positive outcomes for customers and your business. 

Examples of positive language used in customer service

Here are some examples of how your team can use positive language in customer service situations.

• “Absolutely! We will definitely get this sorted out for you.“
• “Good idea! I will do everything I can to make it right.”
• “Oh, that certainly sounds like something I can help you with.”
• “I’m confident it will work out and we’ll get your product to you as soon as possible.”
• “Thanks! I hope you have a fantastic day. Please reach out again if I can assist you with anything else.”

For further clarification, here are a few examples of what these same interactions might look like using negative language instead:

• “Oh no! I’ll see if I can fix your problem.”
• “That sounds awful; I wish that didn’t happen.”
• “Ah, I’m not sure if I can fix it, but I’ll try.”
• “Don’t be upset; this is why I’m here.”
• “There you go. Let me know if anything else goes wrong.”

Tips to use positive language in your customer service communications 

You can get a sense of a person’s positive language skills early on, even during an interview when hiring for customer service roles. 

If your support agents need help using positive language for any scenario, write customer service scripts or Macros that incorporate positive language. This helps all your agents stay positive, whether they're brand-new employees or established team members.

“I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.”

—Deja Jefferson, CX and Consumer Insights Manager at Topicals

2) Showing empathy

It's a key customer service skill to show empathy for a shopper, especially when a difficult situation comes up. 

When customers share their challenges and frustrations, it's essential for them to feel assured that their concerns are being understood by empathetic listeners. In the realm of targeted skincare for specific skin conditions, we must consider the vulnerability of consumers as they seek out new skincare solutions. Let's be honest — they've received recommendations from friends, witnessed numerous skin influencers endorse their preferred "featured" products for various skin types, and might be following advice from various dermatologists, (if they're lucky). I ensure that customer service provided by Topicals not only exhibits empathy when issues arise but should be seamlessly integrated throughout the entire transaction process. Our priority is to ensure that our customers feel fully supported at every step.

Examples of empathy in customer service

Take a look at this hypothetical customer issue with an angry customer:

• Hypothetical issue: “When my order arrived, it was three days late and broken. This was supposed to be a birthday gift for my daughter, and now I’m not going to have this in time to give it to her on that day. I’m angry, and I demand a refund.”
• Empathetic Response: “Wow. That does sound frustrating, and it’s not the experience you were hoping for when you chose to shop with us. I totally see why you’re angry. Let me find out what I can do for you.”

Tips to foster empathy among your customer service team 

Empathy is hard to teach. At Topicals, I train my team to get inside the customer’s mind. 

Our customers are real people facing challenging (and highly personal) skin issues, from Hyperpigmentation, Atrophic/Acne Scarring, Keratosis Pilaris, and so much more.

Sure, some customers lose their patience when they feel defeated — that’s unavoidable. But most of them are feeling frustrated and hopeless. And my team has an opportunity to give them hope that we can work together to help fix the customer’s issue. 

{{lead-magnet-1}}

3) Active listening skills

Whether in a physical retail setting or digital, active listening is a key step to adapting to nuanced questions or navigating tense situations with customers.

Active listening is listening with the intent to obtain information and understand it, rather than simply listening with the intent to reply. 

Examples of active listening in customer service

Active listening requires the agent to acknowledge that they understand our customers during a conversation, and provide feedback or ask follow-up questions when appropriate.

First, let’s look at a hypothetical customer issue:

• “Hey, I ordered the Post-Acne Kit several weeks ago and still haven’t received my package. I haven’t gotten an email with tracking updates. Can you tell me whether or not my order was shipped?”

Here’s what a generic, canned response looks like:

• “Thank you for contacting us. Did you receive a confirmation email with your order number?”

But when you use active listening skills, the reply becomes more like this:

• "Hi there, we apologize for the delay in your order. Rest assured, we're actively resolving the issue with our shipping partners to determine its status. If it's considered lost, we'll promptly send a replacement. It may take 24-48 hrs for us to hear back but we will provide and update to you tomorrow. We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.”

The second example response showcases that the support agent has heard the problem and is actively looking for a solution.

Tips to incorporate active listening in your customer service strategy 

Use active listening alongside a helpdesk like Gorgias, which helps your customer service representatives “remember” past interactions. It’s like active listening but at scale.  

Gorgias displays customer information like past conversations and orders, current orders, and data from your other apps (like loyalty points or product review scores). 

Your agents can use this information to avoid asking for information the customer already gave, and automatically pull it into their responses with variables like [Last Order #] or [Shipping Address]. 

Related reading: Our full guide on personalized customer service

4) Time management

Time management is the ability to get the most important things done, with a limited number of hours in a day. 

As a customer service skill, it's make-or-break: The better an agent's time management, the quicker their first response time and the more tickets they can resolve.

Customer service response times tremendously impact your store’s bottom line. If a response to a query takes too long, customer satisfaction plummets. 

Examples of time management in customer service

In a customer support environment, managing time effectively allows an agent to handle a larger volume of tickets (without breaking their back).

Effective time management is a team sport. You need to make sure: 

• Your automations (like Rules) are saving your team from repetitive tasks
• Your team is using resources (like Macros) to avoid typing messages from scratch
• Your team is prioritizing customer service requests to handle the most important tickets first

Tips to improve time management with your customer service team 

Your agents have better things to do than copy/paste order statuses all day. We use Gorgias’s Automate at Topicals to handle repetitive questions (like “Where is my order?” or “Where do you ship?”) so that my team can spend their time on issues that need human attention. 

Plus, Automate helps customers, even when my team isn’t online. 

5) Patience and awareness of tense situations

Support services is an industry that is stressful by nature, largely because most shoppers’ problems are a little tense. 

Your agents need to understand when a situation is tense and what to do to defuse the emotional heat:

• Recognize the situation as emotionally tense
• Detach from taking anything said personally
• Maintain control over internal negative emotions
• Employ empathetic responses to the customer

Examples of patience and awareness of tense situations in customer service

We know we can’t make everyone happy, but we can always make sure people feel heard. In this example, a shopper shared on Instagram that the product we were featuring didn’t work for them. 

Instagram comments are public-facing and we always want to be sure we address feedback from disappointed customers in this kind of arena. 

So, we apologized and recognized what the commentator said. Then, we suggested carrying the conversation to a private DM so we could find a solution. 

Tips to boost patience and handle awareness of tense situations 

In addition, support agents need to care for themselves, drink plenty of water, and get enough rest. 

"People underestimate the emotional and mental resilience that working in CX requires. It’s hard not to take things personally sometimes."

—Grace Choi, Customer Experience Team Lead at TUSHY

When an agent takes time for self-care, they are prepared to be resilient to the job's stresses and approach customer problems with understanding. It’ll improve both a customer's patience with your rep as well as their ultimate satisfaction.

6) Reflecting

Reflecting is the act of repeating a concern to the person speaking — and it’s a crucial customer service skill your agents must master. 

It will make your shoppers feel heard, which is the foundation of a great experience.

Reflecting accomplishes three things:

1. Enables the speaker to hear their own thoughts spoken back to them so that they can focus on what they have to say and what they feel.
2. Displays empathy to the speaker, letting them know that you are trying to understand the concern at hand.
3. Encourages the speaker to continue expressing themselves.

Example of reflecting in customer service

Let’s see what reflecting looks like in action in a customer support context.

• Hypothetical issue: “I’ve been having trouble getting my Scar Primer to work properly. I’ve written in three times for help with the same problem, and it keeps happening. Does this product even work?”
• Reflective response: “Hi, I’m happy to help. Sounds like the Scar Primer is giving you trouble. Are you not seeing results, or is it causing a breakout? I’ve got some solutions to try for either.”

Tips to improve reflection in your customer service strategy 

Sometimes, the most challenging part of solving a problem is understanding what the problem actually is.

Here are a couple of clarifying phrases to keep in your back pocket. 

• “It sounds like ..., is this correct?” 
• “Did I miss anything?” 
• “Is there anything else you want to make sure I understand?” 

7) Maintaining brand voice

A strong brand voice is crucial for any brand, but keeping the brand tone consistent in customer comms is a challenge — especially for technical tickets.

Example of maintaining brand voice in customer service

Skilled customer service reps know that maintaining brand voice in customer communications goes a long way toward improving customer experiences. 

Personalized Macros help brands plug in automated responses for commonly asked questions. You can build pre-made responses that are infused with your brand voice, so you can maintain fast and effective response times without sacrificing your core messaging.  

At Topicals, we use Macros to help maintain brand voice while handling a high volume of customer service tickets. We’ve built a library of templated responses based on our audience persona of skincare-obsessed Gen Z-ers and millennials.  

As a result, 69% of tickets at Topicals are now dealt with using automations.

Tips to encourage customer service reps to maintain brand voice 

In addition to Macros, consider following up with customers using SMS messaging. 

At Topicals, we tested out SMS so customer service reps could follow up with customers. The less formal format made it easy to keep up with our brand persona of Gen-Z and millennials who prefer quick messaging over emails or phone support.  

We were blown away by the positive response. Customers were willing to open up about their experiences and were happy to chat about how much they loved our products. 

Important hard skills for any customer service rep

Beyond the soft skills we’ve discussed above, there are hard skills every customer service representative needs to master.  

Customer service techniques or hard skills are defined as the hands-on, technical requirements of the job. This entails understanding the company's products and the tools and technology that your customer service team uses. 

8) Product knowledge 

The most obvious customer service skill your agents (and your virtual assistants) must possess is the ability to answer questions and communicate information about the products you sell. 

An essential part of customer service training is making sure your agents really understand the product, so they can answer in-depth questions and questions about how to use the product:

• “Can I use Faded with my retinol at night?”
• “How long will it take for me to see results?”
• “Will this work on my melasma?

If hiring, you may occasionally come across an applicant who has existing knowledge of your products, which is a bonus. Still, you should maintain a knowledge base that gives your support team (and your customers, if you chose to make your knowledge base public) easy access to the information they need.

Product knowledge includes product ingredients, uses, compatibility, troubleshooting, and more. Your training should also include process and policy information, like shipping times, packaging, returns and exchanges, and other common questions in ecommerce.

Tips to expand your product knowledge 

• Create a comprehensive knowledge base or FAQ page so support agents can easily access the product information they need.
• Have your product development team brief support agents on new products and product updates.
• Identify frequently asked product questions and ensure that your agents have canned responses to these questions.

↗️ Check out our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training for more guidance.

9) Language and grammar

Your support staff doesn’t need to illustrate beautiful images with their wordplay — actually, that risks confusing the customer. However, they do need a sharp understanding of the language they’re using and know how to use proper grammar and spelling.

Test your prospective agents on the following:

• Spelling
• Punctuation
• Word use

Tips for improving your language and grammar

If your agents are having trouble with spelling or grammar, consider giving them access to tools they can incorporate into their day-to-day work. 

A few great language and grammar tools to consider include:

• Gorgias, which includes spell check
• Grammarly
• ProWritingAid
• Hemingway App

10) Typing speed

Typing speed may not sound like the most crucial skill on this list, but when you break it down faster typing speed = faster response times. 

90% of customers rate an immediate response as "important" or "very important" when they have a support request. So, the faster you can move through tickets, the more satisfied your customers are likely to be.  

Tips to optimize typing speed

Take a typing speed test to know exactly how your typing ability stacks up. 

Generally speaking, here’s a ranking of words per minute (WPM): 

• Below average: 20 WPM or less 
• Average: Between 20 - 40 WPM
• Above average: 40 - 60 WPM 

If you’re a professional typist, you’re likely typing at a whopping 60 - 90 WPM (or more!) 

11) Email

A bulk of communication with your customers will take place via email. 

Make sure your support staff has excellent email communication skills in place and that they understand how to leverage your email platform’s features.        

One great way to make email customer support more streamlined and convenient for your team is to utilize a single platform for all of your customer support channels. 

With Gorgias, agents can respond to emails, SMS messages, and social media messages from a single, easy-to-use dashboard rather than having to master each channel individually. 

Tips for better emails

• Include the recipient’s name in the body of the email, and use a professional signature at the end of the message.
• Speed up your email response time with automated responses to common customer questions.
• Create an efficient system for responding to email inquiries so that nothing slips through the cracks.
• Limit back-and-forth responses and reduce your resolution times by requesting all necessary information in your initial email to the customer.

↗️ Check out our email templates for a way to scale quality email customer service.‍

‍12) Indirect channels (like social media)

Considering 59% of the world's population uses some form of social media, it makes sense to arm your support staff to field questions and concerns that come through your social media comments. 

Build a clear protocol to handle public tickets. Will you move the conversation to another communication platform or handle it where it starts? Your support agent should know what you expect as well as how to use the social media platforms you promote your brand on.

If you don’t have a helpdesk, you’re missing out on opportunities to provide great experiences and turn more casual browsers into loyal buyers:

“Gorgias has so much integration between Shopify, Instagram, and Facebook. The Facebook ad comment has been very interesting. People have been converting right there, thanks to simple social interaction.” —Cody Szymanski, Customer Experience Manager, Shinesty

↗️ Learn more about how Shinesty earns more sales and answers questions faster with Gorgias.

Tips for social media customer service teams

• Move public negative customer interactions to a private channel (like DMs) so that they don't damage your brand image.
• Don’t worry about being on every social media channel, only use the ones where your customers are the most active. 
• Monitor social conversations that are relevant to your brand with social listening tools.

↗️ Read our complete guide on social media and customer service for more tips.

13) Omnichannel customer service

Most customer relationships span multiple channels. As your brand grows, make sure your customer service agents are comfortable switching from one channel to the next. 

If you don’t have a helpdesk, this will require a bit of tab-shuffling throughout the day to respond to comments and messages from all these different platforms. 

That said, a helpdesk will save your agents hours every week by unifying your omnichannel approach to one platform, where agents can see every past interaction — be it an hour-long phone call or a 5-star review — and respond to customers without leaving the platform.

Tips for omnichannel customer support

Offering customer support via multiple channels such as live chat, email, call centers, and social media provides customers with more touchpoints for contacting your company. 

A helpdesk that can unify customer support interactions across channels in one view is helpful for agents because it reduces the amount of app swapping they have to do. It also gives every customer's entire interaction history with your brand across all channels. 

Here are a few effective tips to optimize your omnichannel support approach:

• Use a centralized customer support dashboard so support reps can access messages from multiple channels in a single location.
• Offer mobile-friendly customer support options.
• Create a system for efficiently transferring customer interactions between support channels.

↗️ Check out our complete guide to omnichannel customer service for more tips.

Ecommerce-specific customer service skills

The skills we’ve covered so far can apply to agents that work to manage customer issues for in-person or online experiences. 

For those agents who solely work in ecommerce, there are four more valuable skills to help improve customer satisfaction with your brand. 

14) Live chat

Nearly 80% of customers told PwC that a speedy, helpful answer is the most important aspect of good customer service. So, brands are turning to messaging-based customer support channels (like live chat support, WhatsApp, and SMS texting) to meet these customer expectations. 

If your support team isn’t trained on these fast-moving channels, your customers miss out on opportunities for sales. 

Answering live chat is more involved than you may think: Agents must incorporate previous customer context, pull up the right information, and be proactive to think about a forward resolution (like being able to answer customer follow-up questions) — all at a fast pace, and potentially handling other interactions at the same time. 

Example to incorporate live chat in your customer service communications 

Here’s what answering a live chat in Gorgias looks like:

In addition to the technical skill required to maneuver these channels within your helpdesk, your staff should refine their skillset to drive sales with live chat. Live chat can boost your conversion rate by 12%, and it’s made a huge difference in raising our purchase rate and lowering our return rate here at Topicals:

https://gorgias.wistia.com/medias/yok5z1e4uo

Tips for enhancing live chat skills

• Use templated Macros to help your live chat agents address customer questions more efficiently.
• Use automated responses to filter out repetitive questions for your agents.
• Ensure clear communication by prioritizing proper spelling and grammar.

Check out our detailed guide to live chat support for more tips and tricks. 

15) Decision making 

When talking directly with customers you need to be able to solve their issues quickly — and that involves fast decision-making. 

It’s the responsibility of the customer service rep to take care of the customer by providing the best possible solution to their problem right away.  

Example of decision-making in customer service

Sometimes what the customer wants isn’t beneficial to your business’s bottom line. If that happens, your agents need to be able to weigh this one issue with the customers’ entire lifetime value. 

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. 

• “Hey, I ordered the Faded serum in the mail. When it was delivered, the box was damaged. The serum works just fine, but considering the way it was delivered, I’d like my money back. 

While the delivery person didn't take great care to keep the packaging intact, the customer was clear that the serum works as advertised. It might not be realistic for your brand’s bottom line to offer a replacement in this case. 

Instead of giving the customer something that could hurt your bottom line, a strong customer service agent might make a quick decision:

• “Wow, I’m so sorry to hear the package was damaged — our packaging is really cute and we’re proud of the design work. Luckily, it sounds like our Faded serum is living up to its expectations, which we are so happy to hear. We are happy to offer you 30% off your next order with this special discount code.”  

Sometimes, bending your rules to keep a customer happy (even if it’s not the most cost-effective) can pay you back with repeat purchases, positive reviews, recommendations, and more. 

Tips to empower your customer service team to make informed decisions

In your customer service policies and training, be extremely clear about what kinds of situations are black-and-white, where the agent must follow company policy. 

But also be very clear where there's some gray area, where the agent can deviate from the stated policy to delight a customer or make sure an interaction ends positively. 

Make sure your customer service reps know what they are allowed to do on their own, and when they need a manager's review.

16) Pre-sales support 

In a physical retail setting, employees can welcome customers, ask if they need any help, and give customers the information (and encouragement) they need to make a purchase. 

Pre-sale support means you are able to communicate with a shopper during their browsing experience — helping the shopper make a confident purchasing decision before they click “checkout.” 

It's tricky to pull this off in an ecommerce setting, but it can have a huge impact on the ROI of your support team. That’s why it's important to think critically about how your brand offers pre-sale support and give agents the skills to pull it off.

Examples of pre-sales support in ecommerce customer service 

Empower your customer service reps to speak with shoppers during their browsing experience. 

At Topicals, we offer a lot of education about our products, so we can arm agents with the knowledge they need to talk about Topicals with customers. 

Here are a few examples of common pre-sale questions your agents might see: 

• Product questions: How does this product work? 
• Inventory questions: When will this product be back in stock? 
• Shipping questions: Do you ship to my location? 
• Technical questions: How do I use this product? 
• Sourcing or ethical questions: Do you use sustainably sourced materials? 
• Pricing questions: When will this item go on sale?  

Tips to establish pre-sale support in your customer service communications

For brands that use Gorgias, chat campaigns let you proactively reach out to customers based on their browsing behavior. 

This way, you can ask if the customer has questions, remind them of a timely promotion or free shipping offer, point them to a product recommendation quiz, or even offer a discount to nudge them toward a purchase. 

Level up your customer service skills with training 

When you’re looking for a new agent, it’s a great idea to hire for the skills in this list right out the gate. Then, continue to offer training opportunities for your customer service reps to master their craft. 

Training for the skills listed in this article has a great impact on your company’s reputation and revenue.

• If you’re trying to level up your agents, take a look at our Support Leader's Guide to Better Customer Service Training. 
• If you’re trying to level up your own skills, we’ve compiled a list of excellent resources to gain customer service certifications. 

Once you’re ready to put those skills to use, sign up for Gorgias to turn your customer support team into a revenue-generating machine.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

Nick’s Top Advice:

• Sharpen your skills through classes, books, and other resources.
• Ensure your hires are all good communicators.
• Create rapport and maintain strong relationships with your network because this will pay off in your future endeavors.

Nick O’Brien didn’t think he would find himself back in the print packaging industry, a trade that’s been written in his family tree for four generations. Then 2015 came and Nick witnessed how difficult it was for New York City business owners to find print packaging suppliers. This reignited a fire in him, pushing Nick to start his own print packaging business called Templi in 2017.

Don’t end up non-technical

There were already “two big strikes” against Nick starting as a non-technical and solo entrepreneur. Although he had spent his younger years working for his family’s print shop Concept Print, Templi was new territory. Not only was there printing to worry about, there was also the coordination work of wrangling together a reliable group of suppliers, designers, and buyers.

He accepted this operations puzzle completely, “I worked through it by realizing, know what you don't know, and trying to get 1% better and more technical every day.”

Nick took it upon himself to fill in the gaps even without a background in business. Code Academy, an online learning platform for coding, was foundational to Nick’s learning and helped him overcome early obstacles. “You can’t run away from learning,” he says, “you have to try to get proficient in all of these areas before you make your hires.”

“You could start non-technical, but you shouldn't end up non-technical.”

Lead by example

The balance between leader and learner was hectic in the early days of Templi, and Nick could only survive as a one-man operation for so long. Building his team was ultimately a self-assessment of what duties he could and couldn’t handle as a founder. He was “basically replacing [himself] with the things he felt were the most easy to train — like customer service, bookkeeping, artwork.” 

For those beginning the hiring process in their startup, he advises to “start small with the technical hire to keep your costs low, then bring in administrative hires to relieve yourself of smaller tasks, so you can stay focused on sales and the customer relationship.”

‎Now, with 10 people on the team, maintaining a healthy workplace culture is top of mind. “Find people who are good communicators and who raise the standards of the team with each new hire.” As a CEO, that means being eager to receive criticisms from both employees and customers so you know which company standards need to be improved.

“How you deal with problems as CEO is how your culture ends up getting defined.”

Keep in touch with your network

In 2020, Templi was one of many U.S. businesses shocked by the global COVID-19 pandemic. When orders stopped coming in, Nick had to start selling personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep the business afloat, “I relied on some connections I had from living and working in China for a couple of years, and that gave us just enough money to keep the business going.”

Maintaining a network is crucial for Templi since they serve design agencies in charge of multiple brands. “Creatives, by nature, have higher standards, and if we do right by them, we make their life easier, they bring us more customers.”

“You may think that because you're in ecommerce, you're not physically connected to your customer, but I would implore you to get connected in every way you can — visit a customer, call them, understand deeply the problems you’re trying to solve. Those relationships will pay off for you and them.”‎ —Nick O'Brien on connecting with your customers

Optimize with speed-based KPIs

Nick often talks about iterating quickly, and to him, that means integrating customer feedback. He still makes sure to spend time with customers, whether he’s visiting their offices or getting their feedback through an email.

To make sure they’re on track, their KPIs address consistency and speed: “We're always trying to optimize for anything that involves those two things, like optimizing for repeat orders. We ultimately want to put these types of purchases on autopilot for the customer and create as much consistency as we can.”

Templi’s minimum order quantities (also known as MOQ) are at the high end of the spectrum, with coffee cup orders starting at a minimum of 2,000 cups per order and bar coasters at 2,500. At this level of manufacturing, printing errors and product defects can occur. How does Templi salvage them? Or, more importantly, how do they keep customers happy? 

“To retain a customer, sometimes you may not want to give a certain discount, but then you realize you need to retain them as best you can. That plays into your customer experience, doing whatever you can to keep customers happy, and optimizing the customer experience at every turn.” 

Focus and be present

When the work day ends, Nick comes home to his wife and three-year-old daughter. He is mindful about time, dividing his day into half-hour blocks. For Nick, a great day equates to 10-12 hours of focused work, which he uses carefully: “You need to be able to focus, turn off, and be present for your family.” 

Templi has already beat the odds of startup longevity as a seven-year-old business. Focus is also Nick’s mantra when it comes to leveling up Templi, “Just making those incremental improvements on focus is probably the best thing I've done in building the team.” 

Nick reminds aspiring entrepreneurs not to shy away from collaboration and to continue getting better 1% every day.

“I'm doing my best. I'm not perfect, so I always try and keep getting better everyday.”

{{lead-magnet-1}}