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Every year, businesses lose a total of $75 billion due to poor customer service. To prevent bad experiences with support from limiting your company’s growth, you need to prioritize improving customer satisfaction with a fast, low-effort, and helpful customer experience. 

Most brands would agree that customer satisfaction is important, but few realize just how much interactions with customer support matter for your revenue. In our analysis of over 10,000 online businesses, we found that raising CSAT score by just one point — from 4 to 4.9 — lifts overall revenue by 4%. 

In this article, we’ll dive deep into a metric that tells you a lot about your company’s customer experience and revenue potential: customer satisfaction score (CSAT). We’ll offer nine strategies to help you measure and boost your CSAT score, and share some tips to get more customers to rate their satisfaction so you have the best data to work with.

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The most important ways to improve CSAT scores and response rates

If you're looking for a quick summary, you've found it! Here are the top ways to raise CSAT and response rates:

• Review CSAT scores under four and look for common themes
• Reach out to low-scoring customers and ask them follow up questions
• Automate repetitive tasks to free up time for agents to help with more complex or unique questions
• Look for opportunities to improve the product experience and customer journey beyond the agent level
• Automate CSAT surveys after positive customer service interactions
• Personalize your CSAT email or incentivize longer CSAT responses

What is customer satisfaction (CSAT) score?

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is a customer support metric that measures how a customer feels after an interaction with your brand’s customer support. Brands measure CSAT by sending out customer satisfaction surveys as a follow-up to customer service interactions. The survey simply asks customers to rate the interaction on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being the worst and 5 being the best.

While customers rate the interactions between 1 and 5, many company’s run scores through a formula that will spit out an overall CSAT score somewhere between 0 and 100. However, we at Gorgias keep CSAT simple and just average all CSAT responses for an overall score from 1-5. Our recommended goal for CSAT is 4.8.

On top of the numeric score, CSAT surveys also usually include a field for customers to explain why they chose that rating. This qualitative feedback is a hugely important benefit of measuring CSAT because they help you understand your customer support’s strengths and weaknesses.

CSAT Formula

One way to calculate your overall CSAT score is to divide the number of respondents who rated their interaction as 4/5 or 5/5 by your total number of CSAT survey responses. Then, multiply by 100. The number you are left with is your company's overall CSAT score.

For example, if you have 500 CSAT responses and 400 of those responses are positive (4/5 or 5/5), then your CSAT score is 400/500 x 100 = 80.

However, you can also keep things simple by taking the average of all your CSAT responses and using that as your CSAT score. That’s what we do at Gorgias: If a company’s CSAT responses are 50% 4 and 50% 5, their overall CSAT score is 4.5.

What’s a good benchmark for CSAT score?

The average CSAT score varies from industry to industry, but here’s a general breakdown of CSAT score by industry:

• Consulting: 85
• Healthcare: 79
• Ecommerce: 74
• Digital marketing agencies: 67
• B2B software and SaaS: 65
• Education: 47
• Consumer services: 20
• Communication and media: 16

As mentioned, we at Gorgias simply average all CSAT responses to result in a score from 1-5. We recommend our customers, all of whom are ecommerce merchants, aim for a CSAT score of 4.8.

That said, if your CSAT score doesn’t line up with your industry, don’t be discouraged. Every brand starts somewhere. Rather than focusing on your industry’s benchmarks, focus on the changes you can make to improve your CSAT score one point at a time, month after month. You might even see your CSAT score shoot up when you start collecting more responses or start tweaking your customer service offerings. 

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9 strategies to improve CSAT score fast

The main point in tracking your CSAT score is to look for ways to improve it. If you would like to start creating more satisfied customers, here are nine effective tips to try:

1. Audit CSAT scores under 4/5 and look for common themes
2. Use natural language processing (NLP) to find common themes in CSAT feedback
3. Reach out to low-scoring customers for deeper feedback
4. Create a system to measure ticket quality objectively
5. Bolster your customer service training and resources around problem areas
6. Automate repetitive tickets to free up more time for agents
7. Look for opportunities to improve the product experience and customer journey beyond the agent level
8. Implement customer service best practices like omnichannel, proactive, and self-service support
9. Activate instant messaging channels like live chat, social media DMs, and SMS

1) Audit CSAT scores under 4/5 and look for common themes

Positive CSAT survey responses are great, but negative responses tend to offer the most value. Auditing CSAT responses lower than 4/5 can help you identify common themes and issues harming customer satisfaction.

If you use Gorgias, you can go to Statistics > Satisfaction to see every single ticket in chronological order and investigate tickets four stars and under:

Jot down common themes that pop up and tally up the number of tickets that mention those issues: Wait times, unclear answers, and unresolved product issues are all common offenders. Issues with lots of tallies are likely to be high-impact opportunities for improvement. For instance, if long wait times are a common theme in your negative CSAT responses, then you know what your support team will need to do in order to improve customer satisfaction — find ways to reduce wait times.

2) Use natural language processing (NLP) to find common themes in CSAT feedback

As your brand grows and receives more tickets, analyzing every single low-scoring CSAT response may not be possible. If you don’t have an internal team to help you analyze large amount of data, a thematic analysis tool that uses natural language processing (NLP) can quickly scan all your tickets and look for common themes.

Here’s how the process works:

• Download all your CSAT scores — if you use Gorgias, you’ll find a CSV download button in your Satisfaction dashboard
• Run your downloaded file through a thematic analysis tool like Thematic
• Watch the tool turn a mountain of scattered responses into a list of common keywords, pain points, and themes 
• Study those themes to gain important insight into your customers’ needs

Just like we described above, these themes help you isolate one or two areas to work on at a time, which is the most strategic way to improve your CSAT score.

3) Reach out to low-scoring customers for deeper feedback

CSAT surveys are great for forming a general idea of a customer's satisfaction level, but they don't always tell you everything you need to know. Even with the open-ended field, you may not get much detail about why customers pick a certain rating. In cases where customers give your company a low CSAT score, reaching out to them to get detailed feedback could reveal more about how you can prevent low scores in the future.

4) Create a system to measure ticket quality objectively

One issue that may cause lower CSAT scores is poor or inconsistent responses coming from your team. Creating a detailed rubric that breaks down what a quality ticket response looks like can provide both a valuable template for your agents and a more comprehensive system for objectively measuring ticket quality. By aligning your team’s efforts around this kind of rubric, you’ll be much closer to providing satisfying responses to all customer inquiries. 

In the rubric, you can include aspects like response time, accuracy (with company policy), alignment with brand voice and tone, and anything else you believe contributes to a great customer service interaction for your brand. 

While the purpose of the rubric is to help agents create responses that get high satisfaction scores, that may not always be the case. For example, if your brand voice is very punny and whimsical, a response with lots of puns will score high on the rubric. However, that ticket might not be clear enough to be satisfying for the customers. If you notice that interactions score high on your rubric but low on CSAT, then you may need to update the rubric.

5) Bolster your customer service training and resources around problem areas

Once you use CSAT surveys to identify areas with room for improvement, it's time to put that data into action. Bolstering your customer service training and resources can help you eliminate specific issues harming the customer experience and improve your CSAT score.

Creating an internal knowledge base so that agents have easy access to the information they need to assist customers can be one effective way to bolster the quality of your customer support. Providing your agents with templated responses is another way to ensure that every customer interaction is satisfactory and on brand.

6) Automate repetitive tickets to free up more time for agents

When agents have more time to give each support ticket their undivided attention and A+ effort, customer satisfaction is bound to improve. But chances are that most tickets that your company receives don't actually need an in-depth response from a live agent. And if those repetitive tickets take up too much time, agents won’t be able to take the time to give a high-quality response when it’s needed.

Support tickets such as "where is my order?" inquiries, common product questions, and other repetitive tickets take time and resources away from more complex tickets requiring a more detailed and personalized response. 

By using Gorgias to create automated responses to these repetitive tickets, you can free up time in your support team's daily schedule so that they can put more focus and effort into high-value or complex tickets. Specifically, you can use:

• Variable Macros to create high-quality, personalized templates
• Automated Rules to fire responses and trigger actions like “Refund order”
• Self-Service Flows to let customers find answers and modify orders themselves 

7) Look for opportunities to improve the product experience and customer journey beyond the agent level

Customer satisfaction doesn't begin with customer support, and it doesn't end there, either. Along with boosting customer satisfaction by improving your customer support quality, you can also improve your CSAT score by searching for opportunities to improve the customer experience beyond the agent level.

This can include: 

• Improving the quality of your product
• Creating clearer product descriptions to set expectations
• Improving your product photography
• Improving your shipping speed and reliability
• Offering free shipping to qualifying customers
• Creating a more helpful post-purchase experience
• A wide range of other opportunities to create a more satisfying customer journey

Of course, your support team will need to pass along customer feedback with ideas to improve the product and customer experience. Check out our post on collecting and sharing customer feedback for tips.

8) Implement customer service best practices like omnichannel, proactive, and self-service support

Meeting customer expectations regarding customer support is one crucial key to high CSAT scores. Consider incorporating customer support best practices like the following three suggestions to meet those customer expectations.

Omnichannel support is the strategy of creating and uniting customer touchpoints on many channels: email, social media, SMS texting, and more. An omnichannel approach gives you more chances to meet customers where they’re at. Plus, with a helpdesk that combines all of these channels, you can easily manage incoming messages without having to spend half your day switching between windows.

Customer self-service is any tool or resource that helps customers answer questions without having to reach out to an agent — resources like FAQ pages and knowledge bases, self-service flows, or chatbots. 88% of customers expect self-service resources because they are fast and low-effort. Fortunately, self-service resources also reduce the number of repetitive tickets your agents receive on a day-to-day basis. 

Proactive customer service is a strategy to reach out to customers before they think to reach out to support. Common self-service tactics include live chat campaigns that ask customers if they need help while browsing your site or welcoming customers with a DM when they follow your social media profiles. Proactive customer support gives you more opportunities to answer customer questions, offer discounts that boost your conversion rate, or find new ways to make happy customers.

9) Activate instant messaging channels like live chat, social media DMs, and SMS

Slow response times are another common customer support issue that can harm customer satisfaction. If you notice that long wait times are a recurring complaint in your low-scoring CSAT responses, introducing touchpoints that allow fast, one-to-one interactions can lower your response times (and hopefully, by extension, your CSAT score). 

The most effective of these conversational channels include live chat, social media DMs, and SMS texting. These real-time support channels enable your agents to quickly handle multiple tickets at a time, without hours of delay, which is common in emails. 

If you have the bandwidth to keep up with these channels, they can dramatically improve response times and resolution times. That said, be sure you’ve hired enough agents to respond to requests on these live channels within the first few minutes to keep your customer experience great.

Tips to improve CSAT survey response rate

CSAT survey responses are valuable, and collecting as many of them as possible is important. However, customers aren't always going to jump at the opportunity to fill out a survey. To improve your CSAT survey response rate and start collecting more valuable customer feedback, here are a few effective tips:

1. Automate CSAT surveys after customer service interactions
2. Send CSAT surveys while the interaction is still fresh
3. Keep CSAT surveys simple — at least 90% of the time
4. Make the survey visual
5. Personalize your CSAT survey email
6. Give incentives for CSAT responses

1) Automate CSAT surveys after customer service interactions

You should send out a CSAT survey following every customer interaction. One great way to ensure that every customer is sent a survey without further burdening your support team is to send these surveys out automatically.

With Gorgias, you can create CSAT surveys that send automatically following every customer service interaction, ensuring that every customer gets the opportunity to leave feedback.

2) Send CSAT surveys while the interaction is still fresh

Customers are more likely to respond to a CSAT survey when the interaction is still fresh on their minds. It is typically best to send out CSAT surveys immediately following a customer interaction.

The only exception is if you have a particularly complicated product, like a piece of software that the customer needs to set up. That’s because the customer might still need to configure something before they know whether or not your support team effectively addressed the pain point. But for most products, the sooner the better.

3) Keep CSAT surveys simple — at least 90% of the time

While detailed feedback is great, most of your customers won't be willing to answer dozens of survey questions. It's usually best to keep your CSAT surveys short and simple. A single question that asks customers to rank their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5, along with an optional form for providing more detailed feedback, is the tried-and-true best format for CSAT surveys.

With that said, there are certainly times when you will want to reach out to customers for more detailed feedback. We've already mentioned how reaching out to low-scoring customers can be a great way to identify issues and take another stab at satisfying them. However, it's best to use these long-form surveys and feedback requests as a follow-up to low-scoring CSAT survey responses instead of the initial survey.

4) Make the survey visual

Making it fun and interesting for customers to fill out your CSAT surveys can go a long way toward boosting your response rate. One simple way to make your surveys more appealing is to include visually engaging elements such as buttons, images, and stars:

5) Personalize your CSAT survey email

Something as simple as including the customer's name in your CSAT survey email can add a professional touch to these emails and help ensure that customers don't mistake them for spam. Referencing the ticket number in question is another effective practice for personalizing CSAT survey emails.

6) Give incentives for CSAT responses (or long-form feedback)

It might not be sustainable long term, but offering incentives such as discount codes or gift cards for CSAT responses can certainly improve your CSAT response rate. If you can't afford to offer incentives for every CSAT response, offering incentives for customers to complete your more long-form feedback surveys can effectively gather more detailed customer feedback.

Why is keeping track of your CSAT score important?

We recommend all brands measure customer satisfaction and use CSAT scores as a key performance indicator (KPI) for the customer support team. That’s true whether you have a large in-house support crew, outsource to a call center, or are a one-person business. Regardless, keeping tabs on your customer satisfaction will pay off. Here’s why:

It’s a leading indicator of customer loyalty and revenue growth

According to Shopify data, even small ecommerce companies with less than four employees spend between $21 to $533 on average to acquire a new customer, depending on the industry. So if your strategy is too focused on customer acquisition — and not customer retention — you’re building a ship with a hole. In other words, you’ll leak revenue from existing customer churn and sink under ocean-sized acquisition costs.

A high CSAT score indicates you don’t have a hole in your ship: Your customer loyalty is high and you’ll stay afloat at a much lower cost. And the best way to keep customer loyalty high is to deliver a customer experience that satisfies your customers. 

In our CX Growth Playbook, which analyzed data from over 10,000 ecommerce merchants, we also found that raising your CSAT from 4 to 4.9 could raise overall revenue by 4%, thanks to the number of repeat purchases that follow high CSAT responses.

It measures the quality of your customer experience

Customer experience is complex and multi-dimensional. Everything, from the quality of your website’s FAQ page to the email customers receive after a purchase, stacks up into a customer experience that’s either satisfying or frustrating. 

Tracking CSAT scores is one of your best bets to measure the overall quality of your customer support experience. And measuring the quality of your customer support experience is the first step to identifying where you excel and where you have an opportunity to better satisfy customer needs.

It correlates to other customer service KPIs like FRT and AHT

CSAT scores tend to directly correlate with other important customer service KPIs such as first-response time (FRT), average handle time (AHT), average reply times, and resolution times. Tracking all of these KPIs gives you a fuller picture of your customer support experience. 

For example, if your CSAT score and resolution times start to fall but your response times are high, the takeaway is that your support team needs to focus on quality responses, not just fast ones. Low CSAT scores and resolution times indicate that your responses — even if they’re near-instant — aren’t solving customer needs. For example, a cause of this might agents blindly applying canned responses, or Macros, without updating information or making it relevant for the customer.

It helps you identify areas to train your customer service team

Tracking customer satisfaction can help you pinpoint the root cause of issues harming the customer experience, whether that’s slow responses, low-quality responses, or some other aspect of the customer experience that customers find dissatisfying.  For example, while auditing, you might find that many customers are upset about a discount code not applying at checkout. Only once you realize it’s a pattern might you realize that you’ve been communicating the wrong discount code to customers.

By measuring your CSAT and digging into themes across qualitative responses, you may be able to triangulate issues that need customer service training or new resources like a knowledge base. Plus, with the right helpdesk, you may be able to see CSAT broken down by a customer service agent so you can see which agents need additional training or quality assurance.

It surfaces customer feedback you can share with other teams

Above, we explained how you can use the customer feedback from CSAT surveys to improve your customer support service quality. However, you can also use it to improve other areas of your business, too. For example, your team can pass feedback regarding the product itself to your product development team. Similarly, feedback regarding your website can be routed to your marketing or software development team.

Don't use CSAT as your end-all-be-all customer satisfaction metric

CSAT is an insightful metric for customer support teams to track, but it doesn't tell the whole story about customer satisfaction. For example, you could have a high CSAT but never get to 10% of your tickets — those customers would not be satisfied but never get the chance to fill out a survey. Similarly, CSAT may give you a skewed sample population if only your most engaged and happy customers respond to your survey requests.

For that reason, keep an eye on other signals of customer satisfaction, like social media mentions and customer referrals. Other important metrics to track include net promoter score (NPS), first-response time (FRT), average handle time (AHT), and customer effort score (CES).

Gorgias developed a new metric called support performance score, which is our best shot at creating a single north-star metric that measures the overall quality of your support. Support performance score combines CSAT, first-response time, and resolution time to estimate how fast, helpful, and satisfying your support is. If you use Gorgias, you’ll find your support performance score in your Statistics dashboard:

By tracking multiple customer support and customer satisfaction metrics, you can form a comprehensive view of how satisfied customers are with your company and better identify areas where there is room for improvement.

Boost your CSAT score — and revenue — with Gorgias

Improving your ecommerce store's CSAT score can improve customer retention, boost referrals, limit negative reviews, and provide a wide range of other business-boosting benefits. 

From freeing up your team via automated responses to repetitive tickets to speeding up first-response times via SMS and live chat support, Gorgias enables you to move faster, make more happy customers, and grow your store. 

Our platform also offers tools for collecting and analyzing customer feedback automatically so that the valuable information you need to improve your customer experience further is always at your fingertips. See how our customer, Ohh Deer, uses Gorgias' live chat to maintain a 4.95 CSAT score (and generate $50,000 in revenue annually.)

Get started with Gorgias now to see how our industry-leading customer support platform can help you track and improve your CSAT score.

It's tough to point to a single most important metric in customer service. But if we had to, first response time would be a top contender.

First response time (FRT) is the time between a customer asking a question and your team’s initial response. When your FRT is too long, customers are left wondering whether you even received their question, let alone will get them an answer.

"Of course, the best-case scenario is quickly answering the customer's question (or automating the answer). But even if you can't solve the question right away, letting the customer know you received their inquiry — and that it didn't get sent into the void — is great for customer confidence and satisfaction.” —Bri Christiano, Director of Customer Support at Gorgias

Let’s dive into first response time to understand why it’s so make-or-break for your team. Then, we’ll unpack best practices you can use to lower FRT for your team, plus how to use this KPI alongside other metrics to support your overall customer service strategy. 

Why is first response time important in ecommerce?

A quick first response time is a key way to build customer trust, letting customers know right away that you are taking their inquiry seriously and that you will resolve the issue as fast as possible.

Here are a few reasons a strong FRT improves your customer experience and your support team’s impact on the business:

Meet customer expectations 

According to our research, 90% of U.S. customers say an immediate customer service response is “important” or “very important.” Plus, 60% of people who need support want it in 10 minutes or less. 

In other words, near-instant FRTs are important to 90% of shoppers — and after 10 minutes, you’re disappointing over half of your shoppers. 

Drive conversion rate

First-response time is especially important for pre-sales support questions, like "Will this arrive before Christmas?" or "Which size is right for me?". Any customer reaching out about pre-sales support likely needs their questions answered before they commit to click checkout, or before they hop over to Amazon to buy it.  

A speedy response is just the thing to give the shopper the information they need to make a confident purchase decision and boost their trust in your brand — two factors that can contribute to high conversion rates. 

Increase revenue-related KPIs

First response time also impacts other important support metrics, including ones that impact your revenue:

• Resolution time: A fast response time often leads to a quicker resolution — and a customer who’s more likely to cite a positive shopping experience with your brand. 
• Lower return rate: Give a customer a fast response to their questions, especially in pre-sales moments, and they’ll have the information they need to make a confident purchase decision. This lowers the likelihood that they’ll need to return the item later. 
• Higher conversion rate: If a customer has a question about a product, they need a quick response to convince them to click checkout. Otherwise, they’re just going to go to a competitor. 
• Customer satisfaction: Fast response times go a long way to show a customer they are valued. Offer a quick response to increase brand trust, which leads to improved customer satisfaction. 

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How to calculate and track first response time 

Luckily, you don’t have to be a math wiz to find your brand’s first response time.  

Start by simply looking at your tickets. Compare the time the ticket came in with the time a support agent responded. That time difference is your FRT. 

For example, if a ticket comes in at 8 am Monday, and an agent responds at 8 am Tuesday, your response time is 1 day. 

You can also keep track of first response times across a certain period, or from a certain agent, to understand the average response time. Simply collect response times over a certain period, then, divide that number by the total number of resolved tickets during that same time frame. 

The equation looks like this: 

Total first response times during chosen time period / total # of resolved tickets during chosen time period = Average first response time

Here’s what calculating FRT averages looks like, using real numbers: 85,000 seconds / 900 resolved tickets = 94.4 seconds (average first response time) 

That means that, on average, your agents are able to respond to customer tickets within 94.4 seconds of receiving a request (for that period). 

If math isn’t your thing, don’t sweat it. Most helpdesks these days automatically calculate and report on average first response time for you. 

Gorgias calculates important metrics, like first response time, automatically. Plus, you can slice and dice the information to understand FRT by factors like: 

• Channel (email, SMS, social media, etc.)
• Contact reason (to understand what kind of questions to automate)
• Agent (to inform coaching)
• Time period (to understand if it changed after implementing something)

This way, you’re never left in the dark about how your support strategy is performing.  

First response time benchmarks by support channel 

Customers want the option to get in touch with your customer service team on the channel of their choice. Even more, Salesforce reports that 74% of shoppers want a variety of channels to choose from.   

If you’ve adopted an omnichannel support strategy, keep in mind different channels have varying response times. 

We’ve broken down a few of the most popular channels to give you an idea of what to expect — and what response times Gorgias customers achieve, on average. 

Email 

• Stellar: 1 hour
• Above average: 2 hours
• Average: 1 day
• Unacceptable: More than 24 hours

Gorgias customers see an average email FRT of 7 minutes and 57 seconds.  

Chat

• Stellar: Under 1 minute 
• Above average: Under 5 minutes 
• Average: 10 minutes 
• Unacceptable: Over 1 hour 

Gorgias customers see an average chat FRT of 7 minutes and 54 seconds. 

SMS

• Stellar: Under 1 minute
• Above average: Under 5 minutes 
• Average: 10 minutes 
• Unacceptable: Over 1 hour 

Gorgias customers see an average SMS first response time of 59 seconds.

Social media 

• Stellar: A few minutes
• Above average: Under 2 hours
• Average: 1 day
• Unacceptable: More than 1 day

Gorgias customers see a slightly different average FRT depending on the social media platform. 

• Facebook Messenger: 4 hours and 30 seconds 
• Instagram DM: 7 hours and seven minutes 
• Twitter DM: 7 hours and 58 minutes 

Automation is preferable to offer a quick response to your customers. Either an instant automated answer to their question, or an automation to let them know you’re on the way.  

5 tactics to reduce first response time 

Reducing your FRT is a great way to optimize for customer satisfaction. Luckily, there are a few tactics you can take now to reduce FRT that also reduce the load on your support team. 

1. Automate repetitive questions to reduce ticket volume

Automating responses to repetitive customer questions has a two-fold benefit:

• Automating answers with a helpdesk effectively means achieving one-touch resolutions for your most common customer inquiries.
• It reduces the overall number of tickets reaching your agents, letting them focus on high-impact inquiries that automation can’t handle. 

How this works in Gorgias

Gorgias Automate deflects up to 30% of tickets (meaning 30% of customer issues were resolved without human interaction.) If 30% of your helpdesk is cleared, that means you can get to the leftover tickets faster. 

Two great features in Automate are Flows and Article Recommendations, which provide personalized, automated answers to customer FAQs.

Both features give customers a 0-second first response time, but these interactions don’t impact your measured FRT since no ticket is created.

You can then track how much time and money automation saves your customers in first response time:

Take a look at how skincare brand Topicals implemented Flows to help shoppers navigate their product offerings. So, when a customer asks, “How do I find the right face wash?” Flows will ask a series of questions and offer a personalized recommendation based on the customer’s answers. 

2. Automatically send a message that you’re on your way

Even if you can’t use automation to answer a customer question, it can let customers know their message has been received and that an agent is on their way to help. 

Leaving customers in the dark about when they’ll receive a response is likely to make any customer anxious. An automated response not only lowers your FRT by responding immediately, but it also quells your customers’ fears that their questions will not be answered.

"Offer an automated message to fire almost instantly so customers know their question was received and someone will be looking into it shortly. Fire it off regardless of channel — the only exception being if your human agent happens to be available to respond."

—Bri Christiano, Director of Customer Support at Gorgias

Berkey Filters built a Rule using Gorgias to automatically reply to SMS messages as they came in.  

In their message, Berkey Filters starts by thanking the customer for reaching out. It also sets expectations by sharing customer support’s hours of operation. That way, if a customer messages outside of operating hours, they aren’t left waiting for a response. 

By adding in an "If the message from agent is false" condition, it also protects you from accidentally firing off this response if a live agent has already responded.

This is only one example of how to use Rules, or Gorgias automations, to automatically reply to tickets. With Gorgias, you could set this up for any channel, or set up a Rule so that it only fires outside of your set business hours, on live chat, when your agents are away, and so much more.

3. Assign and prioritize tickets automatically 

Some tickets need a more immediate response than others. Angry or upset customers require ticket escalation to try and salvage the relationship and prevent negative reviews, returns, or customer churn. 

Prioritizing your incoming tickets will help your agents lower FRT on tickets that need the fastest responses. They can respond to high-priority tickets first. Any other tickets that automation can’t cover can wait. 

Instead of manually sorting your tickets day in and day out, Gorgias can automatically prioritize tickets as they come in. 

Gorgias makes use of AI to analyze incoming tickets based on natural language processing (NLP). The platform also lets you create Rules to determine a ticket’s priority level. Then, it processes language on incoming tickets using the Rule you set in order to take an automatic action. 

This is also where Gorgias’s deep integration with Shopify really shines. The integration lets you pull in customer information, like order number and order status, to help prioritize tickets. 

For instance, you can prioritize cancellation requests from customers that placed an order in the last 24 hours, to avoid shipping products with the wrong shipping address. You could also prioritize messages from customers who have spent more than $100 (or any amount) from your store, to make sure your VIP customers are taken care of.

4. Drive support traffic to messaging channels (and away from email)

Email is notoriously one of the slowest customer support channels out there. The good news? This aligns with customer expectations: A customer who sends an email isn’t waiting at the computer for a response, whereas one who sends a live chat message probably is.

With all the faster options out there, don’t rely on email as your most prominent support channel. Deprioritize email by adding a live chat option, or by making your email address a little harder to find on your website. Consider also adding a robust Help Center and guiding shoppers toward self-service channels. 

You can easily use email as a springboard to push customers to other, faster channels. 

Berkey Filters does this by using an automated response to inform customers about faster options to connect with an agent. Plus, they share a link to the Help Center, so customers can see if they can find a solution to their problems themselves, without needing human interaction. 

Customers were informed right away that they were placed in the email queue, but were offered the option of texting or joining a chat with a live agent to resolve their problem even faster. 

5. Give your agents templates and Macros

One of the most time-saving tools you can give yourself and your team is templated responses, which help your agents avoid typing messages from scratch, or copy/pasting customer information. 

At Gorgias, these templates are called Macros. These are canned responses you can use to populate answers to customer questions. You can also personalize these responses by pulling data from your Shopify account. 

If you can't automate an answer, the Macro gives your agents a headstart so they aren't wasting time remembering what the right policy is, typing out a message from scratch, or manually copying/pasting the customer's information (like name or order number). 

First response time works best when it’s combined with other metrics

First response time isn’t a be-all, end-all KPI — it’s just one metric, best used in concert with others to get a broader understanding of how your team is performing. 

Average Resolution time

Average resolution time (ART) is the amount of time it takes your customer support team to fully solve a customer’s problem and close the ticket.

Gorgias customers have an average resolution time of 1.67 hours.

Read our guide on resolution time to learn best practices to improve this metric for your brand.

How Average Resolution Time works alongside FRT

The initial response time is vitally helpful to understand how quickly your agents can spring into action, but it’s your resolution time that speaks to how helpful your responses are. 

If you have a great first response time but have unhelpful answers, or just go back and forth with a customer, your resolution time is going to suffer. Calculating both helps you make sure you're balancing speed (FRT) with quality answers that lead to a full Resolution (RT)

OLIPOP grew quickly and needed help from Gorgias to keep up with their exceptional customer support. 

Gorgias helped them reduce Response Time by 88% and Resolution Time by 91%, which led to a 1,200% increase in revenue from customer support. 

"We wanted to make sure customers can reach out to us via any platform and we'd have the ability to quickly answer it all in one place." —Eli Weiss, Director of CX, OLIPOP

📚 Related reading: How OLIPOP decreased their response time by 88% and resolution time by 91% with 25x ROI

CSAT

Customer satisfaction score, or CSAT is an important metric to measure your customer base’s level of satisfaction with their shopping experience. 

The more satisfied a customer is, the more likely they are to become a repeat shopper, refer friends, or leave a great review. 

Using Gorgias, you can automatically send customer satisfaction surveys and track your scores over time. Learn more about our satisfaction survey and dashboard: 

How CSAT works alongside FRT

First response time is a metric that goes hand-in-hand with your CSAT. 

If you slow response time, you can expect your CSAT to be similarly low. A customer who has to wait days for an email response, or several minutes on hold during a phone call is likely to have an unsatisfactory experience. 

Decreasing your first reply times will inevitably increase customer satisfaction.

Read our Director of Support's guide to improving CSAT scores for more guidance.

Contact rate

Customer contact rate is a metric to measure the percentage of active customers in contact with your support team over a specified period. 

Generally speaking, you want your customer contact rate to be low. A low rate means most customers are satisfied with their shopping experience and don’t require further support. 

One tactic to lower your contact rate is to offer more self-service options, like a knowledge base or FAQ. That way, your customers can help themselves with frequently asked questions like “Where’s my order?” or “Do you accept returns?” Then, higher-priority tickets can be tackled by your reps. 

How Contact Rate works alongside FRT

While you want your first response time to be low, even better is reducing your contact rate. 

That means your customers are running into fewer issues that would lead them to reach out to customer support in the first place. Or, that they turn to self-service resources when they do have an issue. 

Gorgias: your ecommerce helpdesk for cutting first response times

If your support agents have to answer every question by hand, or toggle between a dozen different tabs to respond to different challenges, your first-response time will always suffer.

A helpdesk like Gorgias has an immediate positive impact on your FRT because it collects messages from every channel, automatically responds to basic questions, and gives agents powerful tools to respond to messages as fast as possible.

Before implementing Gorgias, Timbuk2’s customer service team took, on average, 2 days to respond to customer inquiries. They knew they needed to centralize and automate their customer support — that’s where Gorgias came in. 

Making the leap to Gorgias helped Timbuk2 streamline its support strategy, gaining a 96% faster response time and a nice 35% boost in revenue. 

"Increased customer support should go hand in hand with revenue growth. We want to turn customer experience into a profit center and we have more opportunities to grow with Gorgias." —Joseph Piazza, Senior Customer Experience Manager, Timbuk2

Gorgias helps ecommerce companies improve their first response time, along with other key metrics, to build exceptional customer experiences that drive revenue. 

‍Sign up for Gorgias or book a demo to start tracking and improving your first response time today!

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I firmly believe everyone should experience working in customer support because, let’s face it, working in support isn't always recognized for the challenging job it is. 

The importance of customer service for brand success has been proven time and again. Yet, customer support continues to get regarded as a necessary cost the business has to bite. It's often under-resourced and under-performs as a result, reinforcing the perception that support brings little value.

I’m on a mission to change that. 

I'm Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, and my journey has taught me that we customer support professionals have to be loud and proud about the importance of our work, since we're repairing a pretty damaged reputation.

In this article, I will share practical tips and firsthand experiences to help you showcase the significant impact of customer support on your bottom line, and make the case for more budget and respect in the organization.

Why is customer service important

A great customer experience is crucial to any business. And at the heart of that experience is good customer service.

Right now, every small business owner is experiencing the frustrations of rising customer acquisition costs. The solution? Leverage the relationships with customers you already have by focusing on repeat purchases and customer lifetime value (LTV). This strategy is much more profitable: Keeping customers costs much less than attracting new ones, and returning customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers (according to Gorgias data).

Your customer service agents are your brand’s frontline representation. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, great reps have the capacity to enable sales and keep customers coming back. And undertrained or ill-equipped reps have the capacity to drive new customers away and dissolve relationships with current customers. 

Simply put, customer service is important because it has a huge impact on your revenue. Let’s break that truth down into some specifics.

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7 ways customer service impacts your bottom line

From generating more referrals to increasing your average order value, there are several benefits to offering a great customer service experience. 

1. Excellent service increases conversion rates

The truth is, new customers are often hesitant to trust a company that they’ve never done business with before. 

Studies have found that 18% will abandon their cart if they don’t trust the website with their credit card information. And, even if a customer trusts your business enough to make a purchase, still roughly 70% of all online shopping carts are left abandoned. 

Why? Some of the top reasons are

• A complicated checkout process
• Questions about product pricing
• Problems with payment 

These are all customer problems that live chat support agents can address proactively, which will increase trust and decrease abandoned carts. Adding live chat to your website can boost conversions by 12%.

Tip: Provide pre-sales support

Picture a shopping experience where uncertainty is met with immediate guidance, and questions are answered before they even arise—this is the essence of Love Wellness' commitment to elevating pre-sales support.

On our product description pages, we prominently feature 

• Links to our general FAQ page
• A striking red button on the bottom right corner for customers to reach out and connect with our support team via email. 
• A FAQ block on the product page with answers related to the product being viewed.

In addition to what we do at Love Wellness, you can enable chat campaigns to proactively guide customers through the checkout process or answer common questions that are blockers to purchasing.  

Chat campaigns can trigger when certain conditions are met (like visiting/dwelling on a certain page or being a repeat shopper). You can hit these targeted shoppers with a message, like offering personalized product recommendations or providing a unique discount code. Now that’s an experience worth telling your friends about.

Remember: Customer service involves more than just resolving customer issues post-purchase. Support reps also act as sales agents, answering pre-sales inquiries and offering discounts to encourage orders.

Already using Gorgias? Learn how our platform integrated with referral platforms like Smile.io and LoyaltyLion to combine the forces of your word-of-mouth marketing and customer experience.

2. Personalized customer service drives repeat business

According to a report from Salesforce, 97% of marketers report an improvement in business results due to personalization. Customer service is no exception: including customers' names, avoiding asking for the same information multiple times, and providing customer-specific recommendations all help build customer loyalty.

Your customer support platform should make personalization easy by showing a customer’s order and conversation history with your brand, so reps have the full context when speaking to customers:

And, with a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can build templated Macros, which automatically pull customer data into your messages (names, order numbers, shipping addresses, etc). 

Tip: Offer premium support at key stages of the buyer’s journey 

One way we offer personalized customer support at Love Wellness is our “Shop with a wellness specialist” program. Shoppers can take a short quiz, get matched with an expert, and text that specialist directly to build a personalized wellness routine.

3. Customer service data holds key information

Customer service can be a goldmine of key data that benefits the entire team, serving as a wellspring of insights that drive informed decisions and overall business success. 

How? Customer service acts as a direct line to your customers' thoughts and experiences. By consistently collecting and analyzing feedback, you gain an understanding of pain points, preferences, and trends that can influence product development, marketing strategies, and overall business direction.

Tip: Collect customer feedback often

One word: convenience.

Your customers should be able to share feedback without leaping through hoops. 

And, when you've got a vault of feedback, don't let it gather digital dust. Your team has so much data they can review between channels like email, SMS, chat, and social media—both compliments and complaints. You need to be willing to listen to every customer’s needs. 

We have a channel in Slack dedicated to customer feedback. Dropping in feedback is part of the team’s daily and weekly responsibilities, which helps them get really familiar with all of the content. It also allows our team to dissect them and collaborate on how we can improve. You could also schedule recurring feedback share sessions with the Product or Website teams, or even invite them directly into Gorgias (at no extra cost) and create a dedicated view for product feedback, website feedback, and so on.

4. A great customer service experience drives referrals

Happy customers are much more likely to recommend your brand to others than customers who have a poor customer service experience. 

94% of U.S. shoppers will recommend companies with service they rate as “very good.”

Along with increasing the likelihood of organic referrals, a great customer service experience can earn your more positive reviews.

Considering 95% of customers report reading online reviews before making a purchasing decision, showcasing just how important these reviews can be when it comes to attracting new business. We have a whole page dedicated to this on the Love Wellness website.

There’s also a filter option on every product page review widget so that shoppers can see the most common things people are saying about a product and filter down accordingly. 

Tip: Train everyone on how to have a customer-first mindset

Customer service is one of the main ways we build trust with customers, which is especially important in the personal care and women's health niche. Our aim is to provide a safe space for questions that customers might not even be comfortable asking a doctor.

At Love Wellness, we believe that every single team member plays a vital role in creating a haven of care and understanding. That’s why we created an immersive customer experience training program that involves each and every one of us, including the president of the company and even our office manager!

This program is about truly understanding Love Wellness' purpose, from top to bottom. Whether I'm involved in customer service management, product sourcing, managing our online presence, or crafting compelling copy, I've come to realize that a customer-first mindset is the key. 

Bonus reading: See Gorgias’ tips on customer service training to help improve the quality of support.

Tip: Create self-service resources

Your customer support team can create self-service resources like an FAQ page or Help Center to educate customers about your return policies, shipping practices, and the quality of your materials or ingredients. And by proactively during the pre-purchase process, you can provide first-time customers with the answers they need to make a purchase.

Here’s what ours looks like at Love Wellness, which answers key pre-sales questions about each product, plus frequently-asked questions about payment, shipping, and more.

5. Satisfied customers have higher average order values

By addressing any questions or concerns that may be preventing a customer from making a purchase, proactive customer support can boost your AOV by encouraging customers to purchase additional products they might not have bought otherwise.

The proof is in the pudding: businesses that offer proactive live chat customer support generate a 10%-15% higher AOV than those that do not. 

At Love Wellness we have a proactive outreach program for delivery issues, with the goal of reaching out to the customer to triage before they reach out to us. Since starting this, of our ~250 tickets, 105 have received a CSAT and the score is a solid 5 across the board!

According to Gorgias data, repeat customers make up only 21% of the average brand’s customer base but generate 44% of that brand’s revenue thanks to these higher cart values:

Tip: Find opportunities to sell more

Another effective way that customer support boosts AOV is by providing your sales team with upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

For example, at Love Wellness we make sure to explain to customers how they should use the product on the description page. In this section, we also call out additional products that pair well with what they’re looking at.

6. Good customer service increases customer loyalty

One well-known rule of business is that attracting new customers is always more expensive than marketing to your existing customer base. 

And fun fact: A staggering 95% of U.S. consumers use customer service quality as a factor when determining whether or not to do business with a company. 

My point? By prioritizing customer relationships and positive customer experiences, you can ensure that the customers you attract remain loyal to your brand and offer as much value as possible over the full course of their relationship with your business.

Tip: Fulfill your promises to customers

Promises made, promises kept. Make sure you have the means to follow through on your claims—and the backup available when mistakes happen

My two-fold advice:

• Build trust: If you're advertising 2-day shipping, get the necessary resources and operational capacity to consistently meet this commitment. 
• Tip: during a high volume period, especially over holidays, if there's even a chance that your shipping commitment isn't going to be met 100%, temporarily remove that option to keep expectations realistic.
• Manage customer expectations: Claims like "better taste" are subjective. Highlight provable benefits, such as health advantages, to set realistic expectations.

When customers consistently receive what they expect, they are more likely to become repeat buyers and advocates for your brand.

7. Great customer service reduces marketing spend

Between social media, content, advertising, and SEO, marketing can get very expensive very quickly. For small businesses, these expenses cost thousands of dollars every month. 

I’ve already mentioned how exceptional customer service improves customer retention rate. By investing in your support team, your brand can generate positive word-of-mouth, reviews, and repeat customer service. 

This means you’ll draw more value from your existing customers rather than spending money trying to attract new ones, which is a much more cost-effective and sustainable path to growth.

Tip: Use tools that are well-integrated

In the past, we had a custom tech stack that operated in isolation, causing manual errors and a great deal of confusion. We were practically solving puzzles blindfolded when something went wrong.

After finally having enough, we dismantled our old tech stack and reconstructed it with components that had native integrations already in place. We've learned the hard way that a well-integrated tech stack is the backbone of efficient customer service.

There's no more frustrating tab-switching or tedious copy/pasting to handle tasks like creating discount codes, editing orders, and processing refunds — trust me, it’s saving us from a lot of hair-pulling moments.

One tool that has been a game-changer for us is Gorgias, thanks to its integrations with Shopify (ecommerce), Okendo (reviews), Yotpo (loyalty rewards and referrals), and Recharge (subscriptions). These integrations have streamlined our customer support process by helping agents make changes to those other tools (like refunding an order or updating subscription status) without changing tabs. It also helps our agents offer more personalized support (with less back-and-forth) by giving them the full customer context, right in the ticket view.

Tip: Take an omnichannel approach to customer support

Every customer has a different communication preference. Omnichannel support makes it easy for them to reach you on various channels like text (SMS support), live chat support on your website, and social media support).

Offering omnichannel communication is important and can be effective, but only if it's tailored to the consideration of your customers and business needs.

For example, the bulk of our inbox is subscription management, so tackling those tickets via SMS is not effective for us. The messages are too long, and often include details customers need to hang onto to reference back to, so email is by far the better channel. 

Want more tips? Read our list of customer service best practices.

What happens when customer service isn’t prioritized

We've all been there — waiting endlessly on hold, being bounced around different departments, and feeling the frustration mount. It's not a feeling we relish. 

Take contacting your bank, for instance. The last thing that crosses your mind after that ordeal is calling them again anytime soon. Instead, it's more like, "Phew, glad that's over. Hope I won't have to do that again."

Now, transpose that to an ecommerce scenario. A lousy customer service experience can easily push a shopper to the point of churn, or even talk bad about your brand online or to their friends.

Above, we discussed the impact of great customer service on your bottom line. But the real thing to be aware of is just how damaging bad customer service is — enough to tank a great product, brand, and company. 

The costs of subpar service are staggering, ranging from $75 billion to a jaw-dropping $1.6 trillion annually. Plus, according to Retail Dive, a whopping 73% of customers won’t return to your brand after just a couple of poor customer service expenses. 

There’s a compounding snowball effect beyond losing customers as well: your customer service team gets burnt out and quits, you hire quickly (and not carefully) to replace those reps, and you’re left with an untrained and understaffed team. 

As a result, your company has poor customer service, so execs never get to see the impact that good experiences could have on your bottom line, leading to even fewer resources for customer success. The cycle continues from there.

Thankfully, good customer service can have the opposite effect.

Example: Excellent customer service helped Best Buy overcome bankruptcy

CB Insights shared a story about how, in 2012, Best Buy grappled with a $1.7 billion loss due to rising ecommerce and Amazon's Price Check app. The company turned this around by putting customer service at the forefront by 

• Empowering sales staff with thorough training that focused on being friendly and knowledgeable
• Introducing a bold price-matching guarantee to keep shoppers engaged
• Reviving the employee discount program
• Offering personalized in-home consultation with a technology advisor

This customer-centric approach revitalized the brand. If they hadn’t made these improvements, Best Buy might not be here today.

Transform customer support into your new growth engine with Gorgias

Looking back, I've realized that nailing customer support is all about staying ahead of the game and making smart moves — fast.

Remember, your customer support situation can impact your revenue in ways you might not imagine, and profitability is essential these days. The goal is to ensure your customer support strategy cultivates loyalty rather than driving customers away. That's where Gorgias comes in.

Designed exclusively for ecommerce, Gorgias equips online stores with powerful tools to enhance customer interactions, ultimately driving revenue growth, including:

• A centralized view of support interactions from all your channels
• Live chat support widgets (including proactive chat campaigns)
• Customer self-service tools like Help Centers and self-service order tracking and management
• Deep integrations with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms to quickly cancel, refund, and modify orders
• Rules and Macros for automating tedious customer support tasks
• Detailed and flexible reporting and analytics features

I encourage you to book a short time with the team to learn all about it. Gorgias has been a game-changer for Love Wellness and I’m confident it can be for your brand too.

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At my company, every single employee — from office manager  to the CEO — must create a Gorgias account and spend 20+ hours answering customer support tickets. It’s an unusual program, but it’s incredibly impactful.

My name’s Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, a brand dedicated to helping women improve their gut, brain, and vaginal health. 

When everyone interacts with customers and learns how customer support operates, we become a more customer-centric, collaborative company. Below, I’ll share more details about this program so you can build something similar at your company.

Why you should have non-support employees answer support tickets

In my eyes, this program truly adds so much value back to the company. It always generates insights and improvements for the CX team (as well as other departments). Plus, it facilitates ongoing collaboration between support and other departments, long after the program ends. 

Here are some specific benefits, each illustrated by real-life wins, to help you understand why this program is so impactful:

Establish respect for support

Customer support was never disrespected. But this program helped the entire company understand how much we’re responsible for. Plus, it gives everyone a better idea of how our work impacts the rest of the business (and vice versa). 

At many companies, all kinds of decisions are made in silos that impact customer experience, and a handful of people on the CX team are left to clean up the mess. This program helps the rest of the company consider the downstream impact on the customer’s experience for whatever they’re working on — whether that’s updating the website, developing a product, or planning logistics. 

In other words, it helps give CX a seat at the table and encourages everyone to think proactively about how their work will impact customers. 

Find areas to improve support

Getting all kinds of skill sets and perspectives into the helpdesk has sparked many smart improvements to the CX team’s processes. A couple of examples: 

• Someone from our Ops team recognized a high number of DNRs (orders the customer never received). They suggested we turn on an “Order delivered” notification so customers can grab the order the minute it hits their doorstep, or can reach out to our team right away if they can’t find it. 
• Another Ops team member suggested an app that tracks delivery issues (like failed delivery attempts and returns to sender). Now that we track these issues, we can proactively reach out to impacted customers to better manage the issue. (By the way, the app we use is Trackhive, but it’s no longer available — a simple app like TrackingMore should work!)

Find areas of opportunity outside of support

When other departments get into the helpdesk, they discover tons of ways their work impacts the customer. This program always sparks ideas for changes in other parts of the business to improve CX:

• The Product Development Team noticed customer complaints about our packaging and pushed our manufacturers to update the packaging so it’s easier to open. 
• A marketing email was sent out with a broken link and an incorrect promotion, which led to an influx of support tickets. The marketing built a new process to test marketing emails before they go live, preventing countless mistakes going forward.
• Our Retail Team discovered a product issue caused by the way retailers stored one of our products. They jumped on the issue, and are now attuned to these kinds of issues, and quickly help solve issues stemming from retail orders. 
• Our VP of Finance learned we had an effective system to track replacement orders and was able to use that data to improve the company’s operational budgeting. 

Improve cross-functional collaboration

Once non-CX employees understand the value and processes of Support, they’re more likely to rope you into conversations and support your team down the road. 

Here are a couple of examples from my experience:

• When the company evaluated a new 3rd-party logistics (3PL) partner, we were roped into the conversation to ensure we chose an option that let us automate more support tasks, like canceling orders and editing addresses.
• During a particularly busy period, our small team of 5 needed help managing the support inbox. 3 non-CX employees (who had previously gone through this program) stepped in to catch up with our inbox. It’s a great strategy to manage the Black Friday — Cyber Monday surge!

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How I structure this kind of program

Getting non-CXers into the helpdesk and answering tickets requires customer service training and guidance. Especially since we’re pulling employees away from their roles, we need to make sure it’s an efficient and effective program. 

Here’s how my team manages it:

Train a cohort every 4-6 weeks

Training new hires one at a time would be a big timesuck for my team. So instead, we train a group of new hires (or anyone else we missed in the past) once every few months or so. For us, groups of 6-8 work well — but adjust for the size of your team. 

Onboarding is a 2-hour session run by me, where we cover the fundamentals of CX, the tools we use, and the processes they need to know to answer tickets. Here’s a checklist of what I cover:

• Customer Experience fundamentals (including Love Wellness’s CX philosophies)
• Where our information lives (the Help Center for customer-facing content, and Guru for employee-facing content)
• Shopify 101: A tour of the checkout flow and order details
• Gorgias 101: A tour of the helpdesk, including how to respond to tickets
• A tour of Macros (listed in the image below), so they rarely have to draft emails from scratch

Set up a dedicated View in Gorgias

During the last 30 minutes of onboarding, we give each employee their own Gorgias login and set them free to start answering emails. To make the inbox more digestible (and steer trainees away from complex emails), we set up a View with simple inquiries as a sort of training ground, in addition to adding them to a Training Team.

We prefer to manually add tickets to this view when the CX team stumbles across simple questions. But you could easily set up an auto-tag to send simple questions — like subscription renewals or requests to edit orders — to this View.

We also have a simple process for trainees to hand off tickets that become complicated to the CX team. They simply send the handoff Macro, which lets the customer know an answer is coming and automatically assigns the ticket to the CX team. 

Require 20 hours of support work over 4 weeks

Once training is complete, the cohort is set free! The expectation is that everyone who participates in this program spends 20 hours on CX over a month. 

How they choose to spend that 20 hours is choose-your-own-adventure style. They can answer 1-2 emails daily, for 3-4 days a week, to meet the 20-hour requirement. During lighter periods, they can also study past tickets or read FAQ content — anything that helps them better understand CX and how we communicate with customers.

Appoint a CX’er to be available for support

While trainees self-guide their 20 hours, one member of the CX team is available to answer questions or jump in to provide support. We also schedule a 30-minute, 1-on-1 shadowing session so the trainee and the CXer can deep-dive on any topics that come up. 

These 1-on-1 sessions are where we spark a lot of great ideas. Naturally, the trainee and the CXer learn more about one another’s departments and processes and find opportunities to collaborate or support one another. 

The CXer that manages the program has a few additional responsibilities over the 4 weeks:

• Monitoring a Slack channel where trainees can ask for help
• Sending weekly updates on each trainee’s stats
• Running a survey to gather feedback from the trainees

How to get buy-in

This program requires 20 hours from every employee, which is no small ask. If you’re excited about implementing something like this at your company, I recommend preparing a business case to convince your boss that it’s worth the investment.

Here are some tips as you prepare your case:

Find an executive champion

I was lucky that a previous boss had an operational background and understood how CX is deeply interconnected with other parts of the business. She was actually the one who suggested this program, and her executive support was essential to put the plan into action. 

If possible, find someone with leadership status to champion this program. They can help convince whoever has the power to approve the program and get the rest of the company excited to participate. 

Regardless of whether you’re trying to implement this program, I want to encourage you to frequently showcase the work of your CX team to executives and the rest of the company. It’s not often that CX gets a spotlight for their work — unless something is on fire. By showing how complex and impactful the team’s work is, you’ll boost team morale and get buy-in for out-of-the-box initiatives like this. 

Emphasize the cross-functional benefits

This program is great for your CX because you’ll get new ideas to improve processes and a trained staff of agents who can step in during busy periods. But the larger benefits — the ones to emphasize when building your case — are the cross-functional collaboration and improvements.

Be sure to underscore how this program orients the entire company to think about CX and adopt a more customer-centric mindset. Plus, share a few examples about how Marketing, Product, and other teams (like Logistics and Wholesale) could refine processes by understanding how their work overlaps with the CX team’s work. 

Share this article

A testimonial from someone with first-hand experience goes a long way — let this article be that testimonial! My anecdotes about the benefits of this program are 100% real, and I’m confident any company could see similar improvements. 

Plus, you’re welcome to use my structure as a template to get started.

Choose a helpdesk with unlimited seats

Most helpdesks charge per user seat, which makes this kind of program impossibly expensive. You’d have to pay for each account, limiting your ability to get additional help in a pinch or share CX insights from customer conversations with the rest of your team. 

One of the (many!) reasons we chose Gorgias is because it allows you to have unlimited users, so every single person in the company can create an account, interact directly with customers, develop a great understanding of CX, and find ways to refine processes and implement customer feedback throughout the business. 

If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend chatting with the Gorgias team — it’s a no-brainer for any ecommerce brand looking to make their CX more effective and efficient.

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TL;DR:

• Customer expectations for quick and efficient customer service are higher than ever.
• It's important to strategically choose a few customer service channels to focus on, rather than spreading attention across many.
• Self-service options, live chat and chatbots, email, messaging and SMS, voice and phone support, and third-party channels are essential customer service channels to consider.
• Each channel has its own benefits and should be chosen based on your brand and audience demographics.
• The future of customer service is omnichannel, where multiple channels work together to provide a cohesive customer experience.

Customer expectations are higher than ever. According to Intercom’s recent Customer Service Trends report, 83% of customer service teams are noticing an increase.

Most customers want an answer about their issues immediately, and without a hitch. That’s a big reason why you need to think strategically about how you communicate with customers and the customer service channels you invest in.   

While it’s tempting to sprinkle your attention across a dozen different channels, consider choosing just a handful. That way, you can focus your efforts on resolving customer problems and can become an all-around more efficient team.

Let's dive into the most commonly used channels, like self-service, chatbots, and SMS messaging. Then, we’ll break down exactly how these channels work so you can make a sound investment for your support team.

‎The 6 essential customer service channels for your brand

A majority of shoppers these days expect to have their issues solved quickly, successfully, and in their channel of choice. 

Salesforce reports that 78% of customers prefer to have access to a variety of engagement channels for support.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to find the proper channels that best suit your brand and audience demographics. That’s because customer service service channels aren’t one-size-fits-all — different audiences have different preferences. But, it’s helpful to understand basic channels and how they function so you can make an informed decision about where to invest your energy. 

We’ll walk you through the 7 essential channels that most organizations use to support their shoppers, like self-service options, email, and SMS messaging. 

1) Help customers help themselves with self-service

A growing number of shoppers prefer self-service options, where they can quickly help themselves to solve their problems — no human interaction needed.

Research from Nice supports the trend to self-service options: 81% of surveyed consumers say they want brands to offer self service. 

An added bonus for implementing self-service options? It frees up your team to focus on higher-priority, or more complex, tickets. 

How to implement self-service in your customer support strategy 

A help center, sometimes called a knowledge base, is an example of self-service in customer support. It’s designed to provide detailed information that helps customers answer simple questions, like “Do you ship to my area?” 

This kind of self-service option can reduce ticket volume for your support agents.

For example, office furniture store Branch’s help center created using Gorgias, is like a one-stop shop to help customers solve common problems. 

Branch’s help center has an extensive offering of resources, including detailed shipping and delivery information. It also includes informative articles dedicated solely to answering customer’s most frequently asked questions. 

Help centers are a great starting point to power self-service support. Used in tandem with Gorgias’ Automate features, like Flows, your brand can become a support powerhouse. 

If you’re not ready to create a comprehensive help center, you can start out with a simple FAQ page. Check out our free FAQ template generator to get started. 

Read our guide on customer self-service to learn about indirect ways to boost customer satisfaction.

2) Live chat & chatbots: Create better customer experiences

Shoppers expect a quick answer to their issues — and 90% of customers in the US agree that an immediate response from a brand is important. 

One way to meet these rising customer expectations is to consider implementing both live chat and chatbots that work in tandem to provide a seamless experience.  

This way, you can leverage live agents during working hours, then let the bots take over customer queries when it’s time for your reps to clock out. 

Similarly, you can use a Flow via Gorgias to build in personalized, automated responses based on customer input. If the issue isn’t resolved by the bot, it can be automatically elevated to a live agent. 

How to implement live chat and chatbots in your customer service strategy 

Live chat is one of the most preferred methods of communication for shoppers. So much so, that 86% would rather interact with a human over a bot. 

The team at CROSSNET made use of live chat to quickly handle support tickets. Their efforts resulted in massive growth, including $450,00 in a single sale. 

Weaving an automation option into your customer service strategy helps your team provide a seamless customer service experience, working 24/7 to answer customer tickets even after your reps have gone home. 

Gorgias offers a few automation options that act as quick-response tools, like Quick Response Flows, Macros, and Rules, to help resolve tickets faster. 

With Macros, you can build premade responses and set up Rules to that trigger them when a customer asks a common question, like “where’s my order?” 

3) Gain customer trust by responding quickly through email

Email is one of the most tried-and-true methods to communicate with customers. 

Unlike some of the other channels mentioned in this list, email support is an asynchronous method of communication. This is largely because a customer isn’t immediately connected to an agent or support resource. 

But, that doesn’t mean you can relax on your response time. Treat an email like the first step before a shopper leaves a bad review. Take steps to thoroughly read their message and offer a thoughtful response to resolve the issue.  

How to use email to support your customer service strategy

If an agent receives a customer service email from an angry customer, a great first step is to apologize right away. 

From there, the agent can take steps to de-escalate the situation and offer a solution.  

{{Customer First Name}},

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

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

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

{{Current agent first name}}

Read more about how to use emails in your customer service strategy + templates to respond to angry customers.

4) Messaging & SMS: Make your support convenient

Customer service SMS is quickly rising in the ranks as a preferred way for shoppers to get in touch with a brand. 

One reason for messaging’s popularity may lie in the fast response times. Most customers expect to have a response to their message within 10 minutes. 

Plus, a text message is convenient. Most people have mobile devices and they’re more willing to respond to a quick text in their day-to-day life. For some shoppers, it’s just easier to send a text than it is to find a contact-us page, or type up an email. 

How to implement SMS messaging in your customer service strategy

OLIPOP has seen an 88% decrease in response time since implementing SMS messaging — powered by Gorgias — in their customer support strategy.  

"Don't treat SMS like email - talk to these folks like they're your friends. That's something that OLIPOP does via SMS really well." - Claire Goodill, Head of Partnerships, Postscript

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5) Voice & phone support: Creating person-to-person relationships

Reliable phone support is one of the most traditional forms of customer service channels out there. Voice support is one of the most powerful ways for support agents to foster empathy with customers. 

This empathy can lead to positive support outcomes as well — letting agents earn customer trust and boosting customer satisfaction metrics, or CSAT.

“I've seen that a phone call can actually turn things around,” says Bri Christiano, Director of Customer Service at Gorgias. “Some people just need to be heard on the phone, especially people who are more used to having conversations over the phone. I've called angry customers, and if you let them speak and hear them out, and repeat back to them their frustrations, that alone will save that customer in the end.” 

Gorgias’s customers prove time and time again that voice is a powerful tool: Our customers that use phones in their support strategy have an average Satisfaction score of 4.56 out of 5. 

How to use voice and phone support in your customer service channels 

Phone support works really well when it’s integrated into your organization’s overall support strategy. 

Try The World invested in Gorgias to help merge its customer contact channels into one cohesive platform, including phone. 

"Another big time-saver is the fact that chats, emails, and phone calls are united under one customer view. This way, when a customer calls, we immediately see previous conversations with them," says Amanda, the Customer Support Manager at Try The World. 

In Gorgias, when a customer calls for support, agents can pull up all other points of contact with the customer. This makes it easy for agents to give detailed and personalized support to handle customer issues. 

6) Third-party channels: Leverage social proof to boost brand awareness  

By 2025, Gartner estimates 60% of your customer base will turn to third-party channels, like social media or forums, for information about your brand. This makes a compelling case to invest in these channels and thoughtfully integrate them into your larger support strategy. 

It may be scary to think about shoppers talking about your brand in a place where you have little-to-no control of the narrative. But, third-party channels have a few benefits.

It’s a massively useful form of brand awareness that taps into social proof — aka, that your brand and its products are as great as they seem on your website. Plus, you can turn great posts from customers into marketing collateral, like user-generated content (UGC). 

When you take the time to respond to customers in third-party channels, it also shows prospective shoppers that your brand is dedicated to providing a really great experience. 

“It's really important to be monitoring social posts, even if you don’t have a massive following. These are public platforms where potential new customers are going to look at your brand and see immediately how you engage with customers,” says Bri Christiano, Director of Customer Service at Gorgias. 

Meet customers where they are on social media

A growing number of younger shoppers — particularly Gen Z-ers — treat social media like a search engine. These shoppers use social platforms to answer their questions about brands and products by scrolling through content created by real customers. 

As social media customer service becomes more common, more and more shoppers will turn to social media platforms, whether through comments or DMs, to engage with brands.

Ecommerce, or direct-to-consumer brands, might see more success on platforms like Instagram or TikTok, while B2B organizations might want to lean heavily into a more professional platform like LinkedIn. It all boils down to where your target audience is already spending time online. 

A helpdesk can help your team keep track of customer communication on social channels.

These platforms are designed to integrate into your existing social media presence.

Gorgias, for example, pulls social media channels into one central space for your agents to easily monitor, respond to, and track comments or tags from customers. 

For example, Everyday Dose turned to Gorgias to help manage the massive influx of comments and DMs they received from shoppers on their social profiles. 

The main goals were to lower first-response and resolution times while maintaining high CSAT scores.

After implementing Gorgias, Everyday Dose met their goals, reducing response time by 60% and saw resolution time reduced by 45%. On top of this, the brand was able to convert 30% more tickets into sales, giving their revenue a nice boost.  

Build community with your audience on forums

Online forums are excellent spaces for community building. For shoppers, forums are useful to swap experiences or get information about a brand and its products. 

Some brands opt to build their own forums from the ground up, but there are many free options available you may already be familiar with, like Discord, Reddit or Facebook groups.

Do your research before building from scratch to see if your brand already has a word-of-mouth presence on a third-party forum.

Read more about the best practices to leverage online forums as spaces for community building. 

How to choose the right support channels to manage customer interactions 

We’ll let you in on a secret: When it comes to choosing the best customer support channels to invest in, there’s no perfect answer. 

You don’t need to use every channel out there in order to successfully and efficiently support your shoppers. The communication channels used by your team to manage customer expectations will differ across organizations. 

That’s largely because of who your target audience is and how your customer service team best communicates with them. 

For example, at Topicals, the customer support team leans into SMS messaging to follow up with customers. 

This works because an important part of their communication strategy is to sound relatable to skincare-conscious millennials and Gen Z-ers. 

SMS messaging is less useful for a company like Comme Avant, who sees a bulk of their customer support tickets come through social media DMs. 

To choose the best right channels for your brand, start by thinking about your audience. Some questions you may want to ask include: 

• Where is my audience already hanging out online?
• How does my audience prefer to communicate? 
• How do our support agents typically interact with shoppers? 
• Does my audience want a self-service option over a service agent? 
• Is there a process to route complex customer issues to a different channel? 
• How long is my audience willing to wait in a queue to troubleshoot their issues? 

The future of customer service is omnichannel

The old-school way of customer service was single-channel, mainly by way of call centers. 

Then, as technology evolved, customer service became increasingly multi-channel. This meant customers could reach a brand through channels like email, chat support, or phone calls, etc. 

Now, customer service has become about omnichannel support — allowing multiple channels to work together to form a cohesive system. 

Gorgias leverages omnichannel support by connecting a customer service team’s tools into one simple system. That way, agents can handle tickets across social media, SMS messaging, live chat, and more. 

It also gives your customers multiple touchpoints to reach your brand and allows them to communicate through a preferred channel for troubleshooting issues. 

Achieving true omnichannel support with a consistent customer experience across all channels is tough, but it is possible with support from a modern help management platform, like Gorgias. 

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Chatbots have become a go-to customer service tool for many brands. Their promise? Efficiency and scalability, powered by artificial intelligence (AI). But when it comes to ecommerce, these bots often miss the mark in providing a solid service experience.

The customer service chatbot has its place in answering straightforward questions. But it often falters when faced with intricate questions, or inquiries that require managing orders. When customers need to see their order status or request a return, a ChatGPT-style answer is annoying, not helpful.

Instead, a better customer experience comes from customer self-service automation that’s built with these ecommerce use cases in mind. Below, we’ll explore the downsides of chatbots and share some powerful alternatives to help your support team automate repetitive tickets to save time for interactions that really need a human touch. 

What is a customer service chatbot?

A customer service chatbot is a digital tool on your website or app designed to mimic human interactions and answer user questions. At a basic level, chatbots aim to interpret customer inquiries, generate responses with AI, and resolve the issue without any agent effort. 

For an ecommerce business, implementing a chatbot promises to deliver 24/7 automated customer support at scale without requiring as many human customer service agents. 

Should you use customer service chatbots?

Chatbots aren’t terrible, but they struggle to respond accurately to more complex or nuanced customer questions. And most chatbots can’t actually change a customer’s order, or show up-to-date information specific to that shopper. Even if the chatbot doesn’t have an answer, it will still try, resulting in confusing or inaccurate information for the customer. 

While chatbots can help handle basic FAQs, they’re less effective for ecommerce-related customer interactions. Chatbots regularly fail to deliver satisfactory results when customers want to change an order, inquire about order status, or ask more complex questions. 

Before implementing chatbots, consider their limitations in meeting your customer’s needs and the customer relationship you want to build with buyers.

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How AI-powered chatbots are used in customer service

While chatbots promise many customer service solutions, their capabilities are narrow. Though they’re helpful for high volumes of repetitive questions, chatbots have limited aptitude as a comprehensive customer service solution. Their strength remains relatively basic automated assistance.

Here’s how chatbots are used in customer service:

• Providing 24/7 assistance. A 2021 study from Drift found that 44.2% of respondents cited engaging buyers 24/7 across the globe as a top benefit of implementing an AI chatbot. Chatbots eliminate the need for brands to have customer service agents available to respond at all hours of the day. 
• Answering simple questions. Chatbots provide immediate responses to basic customer inquiries on live chat channels. Their scripted dialogues resolve common FAQs, reducing response times. 
• Responding immediately to customer queries. Chatbots provide instant automated responses to questions submitted on live chat, day or night, providing timezone coverage across countries.
• Accommodating international support. Chatbots are often multilingual, answering questions in various languages. This facilitates a better user experience for international shoppers.  

Downsides of customer service chatbots

At first glance, chatbots seem appealing. Who wouldn’t want round-the-clock availability and limitless scalability? However, their limitations emerge when testing the limits of conversational AI for satisfactory ecommerce customer service.

Often unsatisfying for customers

A 2022 Userlike survey of 415 respondents found that 60% of respondents who chatted with a chatbot could not solve their issues because they needed to speak with someone. Approximately 50% indicated the chatbot did not know how to solve their issue, and nearly 40% indicated that the chatbot didn’t understand them. 

While chatbots aim to use machine learning to respond accurately to customer issues, their capabilities crumble in complex scenarios. Yet, they still try to spit out a response, annoying customers.

Adds another layer between the problem and solution

Given their limited problem-solving capabilities, chatbots often fail to resolve more complicated customer issues fully. This forces customers to painfully repeat explanations of their issues across different channels, seeking out an actual solution. 

Adding these unnecessary repetitions and delays only further frustrates customers who want their ecommerce order issues quickly fixed on the first try.

Bots struggle with more complicated queries

For straightforward FAQ-style queries, chatbots manage fine. However, they struggle whenever contextual complexities enter the equation. Their canned scripts struggle to dig deeper into dynamic customer issues. 

Chatbots disappoint customers who expect tailored, back-and-forth dialogue when describing complex order scenarios or product problems.

Only works in a chat window 

For the most part, chatbots operate solely on your website’s chat window, so they can’t support customers across channels like email, social media, voice, etc. This limits their ability to handle multifaceted issues. Customers understandably seek and expect omnichannel customer service, especially options that provide a swift resolution.

A better automation solution to manage customer requests

The right automation focuses more on resolving customer issues than imitating humans. That’s why self-service options — like self-service order trackers, FAQs, and product quizzes — are a great alternative to chatbots. A 2022 Salesforce Research report found that 66% of respondents have used self-service account portals, with 66% of millennials and 61% of Gen-Z consumers preferring self-service for simple use cases.

Gorgias Automate serves as an advanced chatbot replacement. This suite of automation tools is built for ecommerce, and customizable for your brand’s unique needs. Below, we’ll show you how each feature takes a more straightforward approach to solving customer issues than chatbots. 

But activating automation doesn’t mean forgoing live chat altogether — or needing it 24/7. With the right solution, you can offer automated options only during select hours or have customers use them before contacting an agent. 

Answer common questions in seconds 

The ideal customer service solution instantly resolves frequent, repetitive questions through robust automation. When customers have questions like, “What’s your return policy?” or “What product is right for me?,” they deserve an answer at the click of a button. And that’s exactly how Flows work.  

Gorgias Flows

Gorgias Flows are buttons in your chat widget and Help Center (and soon, email) that provide instant answers — personalized to customers, where needed. 

Whether buyers seek product recommendations, pricing, or your sizing chart, they only have to click a button to get a pre-written response (that you know is more accurate or on-brand than an AI-generated answer). If you want to personalize the answer, you can program the Flow to ask follow-up questions to understand the customer’s location, preferences, etc., for the most accurate answer.

TUSHY, an ecommerce company that sells modern bidets that attach to toilets, uses Flows to respond to common questions swiftly. 

Queries like “Which TUSHY is right for me?” and “Will TUSHY fit my toilet?” are automatically answered through these self-service flows without customers needing agent assistance.

And if customers have follow-up questions or still want to speak to an agent, they can get connected to the TUSHY team with the click of a button:

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Automate access to order tracking, refund requests, and cancellations

The right customer service solution doesn’t just answer FAQs, it helps customers track and manage their orders. 

Rather than relying on agents (or chatbots with limited capabilities), automation enables customers to get answers and close the loop on routine issues independently, boosting customer satisfaction. 

Gorgias Order Management Flows

Gorgias Order Management Flows provide customers with self-service options to track orders, report issues, and request refunds or cancellations without needing agent assistance. Customers simply access Order Management Flows through the chat widget or Help Center.

Customers log in with their email or phone number (no need to remember an order number!) to independently check the order status, initiate returns or exchanges, and make other changes. This feature closes the loop on common post-purchase requests and empowers customers with instant DIY resolutions, letting your support reps focus on more complex interactions that actually need human support.

Loop Earplugs, which sells high-quality audio earplugs for concerts and loud environments, uses Gorgias Order Management Flows to let customers handle post-purchase requests independently. This automated self-service enables tracking shipments, reporting order issues, and initiating returns or cancellations without chatting with a support rep. 

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Here’s what it looks like to log in, see recent purchases, and request a return:

Provide article suggestions

One advantage of chatbots is they can answer a variety of questions. While you can only have up to 6 Flows, another great solution is leveraging content from your knowledge base or Help Center to answer a wider range of customer questions. 

Gorgias AI-powered Article Recommendation in Chat

Gorgias’ Article Recommendation in Chat harnesses advanced AI to analyze incoming chat tickets, pinpointing and sharing the most pertinent help center articles as immediate responses. This ensures customers receive precise, relevant information in real-time, streamlining their query resolution process. 

And again — your customer experience is free of potentially incorrect or off-brand AI-generated responses. AI only steps in to provide the correct human-created content at the right time. 

Here’s an example from Sol de Janeiro, a skin and body cream brand using Article Recommendations to answer customer questions about their products:

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Automatically respond to customers' email common questions

Chatbots only work on your live chat window. But ideally, when customers submit inquiries via email or contact forms, they also get an immediate answer. 

Gorgias AI-powered Autoresponders

Gorgias Autoresponders use AI to scan every single incoming email and contact form submission for frequently asked questions, like “Can I get a return?” or “Where is my order?”

When one of those questions is found, the Autoresponder instantly replies with a pre-written and designed email that gives personalizes support answer to the customer, pulling data from Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento. 

Other alternatives to customer support chatbots (and how to use them)

While chatbots have become a popular AI customer service tool, they’re not the only solution worth exploring. Brands have many options at their fingertips, each catering to buyer needs along the customer journey. 

Live chat, for instance, offers real-time interactions, bridging the gap between immediacy and personalization. On the other hand, for customers who still want to leverage chatbots, Gorgias integrates with leading providers like Siena AI, combining the benefits of automation with specialized support. Diversify your customer service strategies and embrace alternatives to ensure that every customer touchpoint is addressed.

Live chat

Your team doesn’t need to choose between a chatbot vs live chat. When shoppers face pressing issues or need assistance on the fly, live chat steps in as the hero, providing real-time, personalized support from human agents. Plus, amplify live chat support efficiency using templates and automation, reserving agent’s energy for complex concerns.

Gorgias Live Chat

Gorgias Live Chat provides an instantaneous bridge between customers and brands. Real-time interactions allow customers to get swift, personalized responses to their queries or concerns. Enhanced with automation and templates, this feature guarantees swift support and consistent quality in communication, making every customer feel valued.

Parade sells comfortable, size-inclusive, sustainable underwear made from recycled materials. They use Gorgias Automate alongside Gorgias Live Chat, available to their website visitors during business hours. This allows for the best of both worlds — easy and automated responses for simple questions and a human touch for more complex queries. 

Contact forms

Every customer’s concern deserves the attention it needs. With contact forms, shoppers can detail their queries, complaints, or feedback when it works for them, even if you’re not online staffing the chat. This format, which prompts customers to categorize their message and provides details, also gives your team everything they need to (hopefully) resolve the issue in one response.

Gorgias Contact Form

The Contact Form, which is available standalone or in the Help Center, streamlines the customer messaging process. It offers customers a direct and structured way to submit their concerns and questions. Incoming communication arrives organized, making it easier for your customer service team to prioritize, tag, and resolve tickets.

Comfort One Shoes, which sells high-quality, stylish footwear that fits just right, uses the Gorgias suite of products, including the Help Center Contact Form. This form on their website lets customers get specific about their asks, including attachments to add every detail.  

Help Centers

Help Centers are like the libraries of customer service — organized, exhaustive, and empowering. Customers can independently navigate these centers to find order-related answers, leading to instant resolutions. And if they can’t find what they’re looking for? That’s when support agents step in to handle more intricate or unique questions. 

Gorgias Help Center

The Gorgias Help Center is a comprehensive hub for customer support, allowing brands to create, import, house, and categorize resources to assist users. Whether it’s FAQs, guides, or tutorials, customers can find the answers they need without the wait times.

Parade hosts their resources on a Gorgias Help Center, which has an abundance of articles for customers to find the answers they need on a host of topics:

• Returns and exchanges
• Product and sizing
• Sustainability
• US orders
• International orders
• Refer-a friend

Email support

In the age of instant messaging, email remains a steadfast channel for customer service. Customers can lay out their concerns in detail, asynchronously. On the other hand, brands can prioritize email requests based on current customer demands, getting away from the immediacy and urgency of live chat.

Gorgias Email

Gorgias Email is tailored to redefine email-based customer support through its shared workspace format. Its advanced tools facilitate a more organized, efficient, and rapid response to incoming queries by keeping track of email threads and allowing agents to respond quickly with Macros. 

By integrating with other platforms and using its automation capabilities, Gorgias Email ensures that each customer email is handled with precision and timeliness, elevating the standard of customer service.

Read more: Customer service email strategy: A guide for ecommerce brands

Community forums

Community forums are essentially marketplaces of ideas and solutions. Here, ecommerce customers can tap into the collective wisdom of their peers, crowdsource advice, and find solutions to questions that others have faced before. They reduce the number of repetitive inquiries to customer service agents and foster a community spirit among first-time shoppers and brand loyalists alike.

Streamline support with Gorgias Automate

Enhance your customer support capabilities with Automate. Tailored to address high-volume routine inquiries, the top 10% of Automate users deflect at least 30% of overall questions, while the top 5% automate up to 45%.

But it’s not about replacing the human element; quite the opposite. When Automate complements your current strategy and pairs with a genuine human connection, it crafts a harmonious and effective customer support environment. 

‍Book your demo today to learn more about Gorgias and Automate.

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With a decade of experience in customer service roles, I’ve recognized that ecommerce customer service goes beyond answering questions. 

The best experience you can give customers is proactively providing them with what they need so they don't have to contact support at all. In instances where customers do need to talk to someone on the team, interactions that surprise and delight help keep them coming back. 

Ecommerce customer service may feel less personal than it would in person, but there are a multitude of ways you can make it special.

Whether you’re building an online store from scratch or need extra hands to handle your growing customer base, I’ve rounded up the top 15 best practices for ecommerce customer service that you can start using to improve your support team.

The top 15 ecommerce customer service best practices to implement

1. Use a customer service helpdesk specifically built for ecommerce stores

‎If I could only recommend one tool, it would be a helpdesk. A helpdesk is a customer service software that allows support agents and teams to manage customer data, inquiries, and orders in one platform.

If you run an online store, Gorgias is the perfect helpdesk specifically designed for ecommerce tasks. It smoothly combines order management, order fulfillment, and customer service in one tool, so that you can speak to customers and resolve their issues while being able to pull up their order data in one window. 

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2. Combine all your support channels on one platform

‎When customers can receive help the way they want — whether that’s a phone call or Facebook messages — they feel more comfortable initiating a relationship with your brand. Establishing a positive first impression can be the fuel you need to turn them into returning customers.

💡 Tip: Phone support can be the key to keeping customers. Throughout the years, I’ve seen first-hand how a simple 10-minute phone call can turn a sour interaction around. Most customers may prefer written communication, but being able to hash out an issue over a voice call can be the difference between losing a customer and keeping them.

The top support channels you should offer: 

• Email: Provides customers a channel to voice in-depth and detailed inquiries.
• Chat: Useful for quick questions that can be answered within one interaction.
• Social media: The best channel for new customers who want quick answers.
• Voice/phone: A valuable channel to explain and resolve complicated issues. 

3. Automate responses with reusable Macros 

‎To cut down first response times, use Macros or customer service scripts. On Gorgias, Macros are pre-written responses that can be applied to the most common customer interactions.

The best way to use Macros is by applying them to what I refer to as empty-calorie tickets. Empty-calorie tickets are repetitive inquiries that people ask over and over again, such as “Where is my order?” Automating the responses to these low-effort tickets is the easiest way to incorporate Macros into your workflow. 

When to use Macros:

• Welcome emails
• Order status emails (transaction completed, order shipped, order delivered)
• Refund processed emails
• Customer loyalty emails

4. Trigger shopping cart abandonment notifications

Customers who abandon their carts are inevitable, but you don’t have to leave it there. Sending an email to a customer who still has items in their shopping cart can be the final push to trigger a purchase. You can even pair the notification with a discount to make the purchase more appealing.

Acquiring new customers is expensive, so it’s extremely important to recapture customer attention when you have the chance. 

5. Respond to social media comments quickly

Pay attention to your social media presence because 26% of people learn about a product through social media, according to a 2023 study by Statista. Public social media comments have the power to either bring in new customers or completely turn them off from your brand. For this reason, it’s important to actively engage with social media users who mention your brand. 

Having an active social media presence is an easy way to show you care about what your customers have to say. When you address comments publicly, prospective customers will trust you more for your ability to be transparent and authentic.

📚 Related reading: 5 tips to leverage social media for your store

6. Send order status and shipment update emails

Customers like to know when an action they’ve taken was successful. When it comes to ecommerce, you can easily check this best practice off your list by making it a routine to send order status emails, like when an order has been shipped.

On Gorgias, we take the manual work out of sending routine emails with Macros. If you’re a Shopify store, Gorgias automatically populates your emails with important customer information pulled from Shopify such as customer name, order number, tracking number, and more.

7. Offer self-service options

88% of customers like to find answers on their own and expect a brand to have a self-service portal, according to Statista. You can help make the search easier by filling your website with self-service options. 

Self-service options are resources for customers to get the answers they need without contacting an agent. These include FAQ pages, help centers, chat widgets, and interactive quizzes.

Here’s how each self-service option can benefit you:

• FAQ page: Centralizes customers’ most commonly asked questions on one page to prevent your inbox from being filled with the same questions.
• Help Center: Larger in scope than an FAQ page, a Help Center is a database of detailed resources like articles and how-to videos to help customers learn more about your brand and product.
• Chat widget: Chat widgets can turn into a self-service option with the implementation of Quick Response Flows, or preset conversations that can answer customers without a live agent.
• Interactive quiz: A fun self-service addition to online stores that carry highly specialized products, like skincare, health supplements, and apparel.

📚 Related reading: A guide to building an FAQ page

8. Collect email addresses

Data collection makes up a large chunk of customer service, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. The easiest way to gather customer data is by collecting email addresses via newsletter signups and contact forms on your online store.

Customer service is important and shouldn't stop when your agents are off the clock. On Gorgias, you can add a contact form to your chat widget when your store is offline, so you have the opportunity to turn first-time customers into loyal followers.

‎Benefits of collecting customer emails: 

• Allows you to entice new customers with promotional offers and discount codes
• Boosts customer data with requests for feedback
• Personalizes customer interactions

9. Optimize your website for mobile

Three-quarters of Americans are shopping with their smartphone. It’s time to shift your focus. To take advantage of this customer behavior, match a convenient tool like the smartphone with an equally convenient and optimized website.

A website optimized for mobile includes:

• A responsive layout that adapts to all device sizes
• An easy-to-use menu
• Limited popups and distractions
• Legible fonts and text sizes

10. Create a customer returns and exchanges portal

If your store accepts returns and exchanges, it’s a good idea to automate the process with a portal. Returning an item is essentially just one step: getting an item out of a customer’s hands. It shouldn’t require a live agent. So, when your customers can return an item on their own, it becomes a huge time-saver for both them and your agents.

For example, when I worked at Stitch Fix, every time a customer needed an exchange, they'd have to reach out to support. It was a huge friction point. Eventually, we decided to build an exchange tool that became part of our checkout flow. From then on, our customers didn’t even need to think about contacting support because it was just an automatic part of the process.

💡 Tip: The easiest way to make a returns portal is by connecting Loop Returns with Gorgias. Loop Returns simplifies the return and exchange process by routing customers to a link, not an agent. By automating this part of the customer journey, your support team can deal with more urgent tickets.

11. Feature customer reviews to amplify your brand

Showcasing personal experiences can be the magic ingredient that adds credibility to your product. When potential customers read about real-life encounters with your product, they gain trust in your brand. Customer reviews can even nudge hesitant buyers toward making a purchase.

For example, PuffCuff does an amazing job at making their product shine. Not only do they feature reviews, but they also include a customer review video. Being able to add a visual element that shows how conveniently your product solves a problem can convince customers who are on the fence.

Where to feature customer reviews:

• Homepage
• Product pages
• Social media posts
• Welcome emails

12. Create a loyalty or rewards program

Attracting new customers requires extra marketing that you may not have the budget for. Here’s a different approach: increase the value you get from your current customers with a loyalty program.

With a loyalty program, customers who already love your brand are incentivized to buy more while earning exclusive perks. An easy way to set up a program is by integrating LoyaltyLion with Gorgias. You instantly get customer retention features like shopping cart rewards, in-site notifications, and loyalty emails. 

13. Use high-quality product photos

Without a physical storefront, your product photos will be doing all the talking. Customers want to get as close to the product as they possibly can to make an informed purchase. In short, gaining customer trust depends on the appearance of your products.

Here’s how to build trust through product photos:

• Standardize product photos across your website. Using the same high-quality camera, lighting, and background will show customers your brand pays attention to details, allowing them to trust your products more.
• Display multiple angles of your product. Allow customers to envision how your product will fit into their lives with accurate photos.
• Implement zoomable photos. Letting customers zoom in on your products can show them the exact qualities of your product, such as color, texture, and build quality.

📚 Learn more: Improve your product photography with these 3 tips

14. Improve your checkout experience 

When customers get to checkout, they’re inches away from the finish line. Don't risk hampering their journey by subjecting them to a bad checkout experience. In fact, a staggering 17% of US online shoppers abandoned their orders in 2022 because of a "too long/complicated checkout process," according to Baymard. 

Here's how to improve the checkout experience:

• Offer guest checkout. Customers want fast service and that means letting them skip the tedious account creation process.
• Present all extra fees and costs. Surprise fees can turn customers off from buying a product. Be transparent by including any extra fees at the checkout page to avoid losing their trust.
• Accept a variety of payment options, including Buy Now, Pay Later. A brand that caters to all wallet sizes is likely to bring in more customers.
• Include a checkout progress bar. Visually guiding your customer through the buying journey allows them to feel at ease with manageable steps and provides them with a sense of achievement once they reach the end.

15. Track trends by using customer service metrics

‎You’ve got pages of customer emails, buying behavior data, and feedback — now what? The next step is to use this data to track customer buying trends and your support team’s performance. With Gorgias, you can track how well your customer service operates with Support Performance Statistics. 

Track these support performance metrics to improve your processes:

• First response times: The faster you answer tickets, the more satisfied customers will be.
• Average resolution times: How effectively is your team resolving tickets? You can track this number to pinpoint gaps and inefficient steps in your process.
• Average number of tickets: A high number of tickets may indicate that you need more self-service options.

💡 Tip: Great customer service should have clear KPIs that are aligned with company goals such as customer retention and revenue generation that clearly demonstrate how your customer service creates value for the company and enable you to evaluate the effectiveness of your support program.

The bottom line: Delight your customers at every stage  

Making every customer interaction delightful goes a long way. Customers are more motivated to keep interacting with your brand and can even inspire new customers to join in. When you show customers that you care, you give way to loyalty. 

At Gorgias, we quickly get support teams the customer trust they need with an all-in-one helpdesk. Our helpdesk streamlines the customer experience with omnichannel communication, ecommerce platform integration to Shopify and BigCommerce, Revenue Statistics, and automation in one convenient platform. 

Ready to put these best practices into practice? Book a demo now.

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Customer service messaging (also known as conversational customer service) is a powerful way to elevate the customer experience and delight customers beyond their expectations. For customers, texting with a support agent feels much more convenient and casual than slower channels like email. And, SMS is a much better channel for “on-the-go” communication, since most people always have their mobile phones and can usually reply to text messages quickly.

That’s why customer service messaging is one of many recent customer service trends shaking up how ecommerce and D2C businesses offer support.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how your business can implement or improve this type of customer support and other conversational channels in your customer service strategy. 

Let’s get started with why it’s important for businesses to offer SMS customer service.

What is SMS customer service?

SMS customer service is when support teams resolve customer questions and issues via text message.

Why SMS text messaging improves the customer service experience

Customers love these one-to-one messaging channels for customer service because they’re so quick and convenient. When implemented well, conversational messaging allows customers to reach your CS team and get answers quickly — within 42 seconds, most of the time. Especially considering that 42% of customers prefer communicating with customer service on messaging apps over any other channel, introducing a conversational channel may do wonders for your brand’s customer satisfaction.

Your customer support team can also use these channels to proactively reach out to customers with important updates and timely discounts.

SMS customer service is especially attractive to your customers because they don’t have to stay glued to your website or check a social media app for new DMs. They can get answers to their questions on a device they already check 96 times per day. Let’s take a closer look at SMS, a channel that’s quickly gaining ground as a standard support option. 

10 tips to successfully incorporate messaging into your customer service strategy

Adding each messaging channel at one time might overwhelm your customer support team. Likewise, a new channel may have low adoption if you don’t announce it to your customers. As you begin offering messaging experiences as a part of your customer care portfolio, use our top 10 techniques to maximize the effectiveness of your workflows on those channels.

1) Funnel all interactions to SMS or messaging channels and then move to email or phone if needed

For issues with easy solutions, there’s no reason for customers to engage with email or phone. Emails are slow and clunky and phone calls can lead to customer frustrations, especially if your wait times are excessive. Texts are far faster than either option and can provide simple, accurate information that leads to speedier solutions — and happier customers.

For that reason, we recommend setting up your contact page and information so that text and other live channels are your first line of communication — well, after self-service support. You can always move to email or phone if the customer requests it or if the problem you’re trying to solve is better suited to one of those channels.

Tip: Speed is an important factor in all customer service interactions, but it’s critical when sending any sort of instant message. First response time (FRT) is a key customer service metric you can measure with Gorgias through the analytics dashboard. Make sure to track the speed of your responses when you start your support messaging program.

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2) Consistently let your customers know that you’re available on quick messaging channels

To inform your customers they can now text your brand, we recommend adding “Text us,” plus your phone number, in some or all of these places: 

• The footer of your website
• The “Contact Us” page of your website
• Your Gorgias Help Center
• Transactional emails (order confirmation, return initiated, etc.)
• The signature of your support agents

You can put your messaging app information in the same spots, and make sure to say you accept support requests via DM in your social media bios so customers know they can shoot you a message.

Tip: Because conversational customer service usually takes place on a user’s phone, you need to keep responses short and friendly. The long, detailed macros and templates you might use for emails won’t work when communicating through short messages — depending on your platform and your customer’s phone, long messages might not send or might get broken into multiple text messages. Plus, depending on your brand’s tone of voice, conversational channels are a great place to use emojis, images, and GIFs to make the conversation even more friendly and casual. 

3) Use autoresponders for a lightning-fast first response

Start every messaging interaction with an autoresponder. This tactic lets your customer know that you received their request, and it gives your human agents a small buffer of time to finish up their current encounter before starting the new one. You can also include a link to your help center in case they want to look for their answer on their own.

You can use this tactic whether you’re incorporating chatbots for basic query automation, or using your customer service agents for all customer interactions.

See page XX for an example of an autoresponder Rule for messaging.

4) Create a system to categorize and segment priority tickets 

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

You can start by prioritizing:

• Tickets that have been open the longest. These are the customers who may be growing impatient, or even angry enough not to shop or work with your business again. This can be set up with a View of tickets that have been open for more than X minutes, where X is an amount of time corresponding to your service-level agreement (SLA).
• Tickets from VIPs and loyal customers. You can tag these customers and make a View based on that tag to surface their questions and concerns.
• Tickets that fall into certain intents, like “order/damaged,” which Gorgias auto-assigns through our proprietary algorithms. You can auto-assign these tickets with a “priority” tag using a simple automation Rule and set up a View that has all open priority tickets.

You can even set up dual priority queues for all priority-tagged tickets: One for priority tickets that are about to go past the first response time in your SLA and another for all other priority tickets. Then prioritize the former, followed by the latter, followed by other tickets, to keep your first response time and resolution time down while giving attention to important tickets.

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

5) Use Macro templates to respond faster to repetitive requests…

If you are responding to customer service messages on a platform like Gorgias that supports Macro templates, you need to take advantage of this time-saving feature. But you can’t just take your existing email templates and drop them into these conversations.

You need to create a specific set of Macros for messaging purposes, using the principles we mentioned earlier: short, friendly, personalized, etc. That means you need to use variables like [Customer first name] or [Last order number] to personalize messages. If you set up your Macros strategically for DM and SMS messaging, many can be reused for live chat, as well.

To prioritize building Macros that will have the highest impact, create Macro templates to respond to the most common questions that have come through your helpdesk. You can also ask your team which responses they end up writing out the most and add those templates too. 

Once you create and launch these Macros, you can automatically add Tags to Macros for reporting to see which Macros are being used the most. This will help you understand where you have gaps (or unhelpful Macros) and can make tweaks to improve your agent workflow and customer experience.

6) …Or deflect those repetitive requests altogether with automation Rules

If your customer service platform supports automation, as Gorgias does through our Automation Add-on, you can deflect up to a third of repetitive, tedious tickets instantly, with no human interaction. Much of this automation can be applied to customer service messaging, as well.

When we mention automated answers, some support professionals say something like, “We don’t want to send low-quality automated responses to our customers.” We completely agree: For many tickets, automation doesn’t provide the best customer experience. 

However, as you know, most tickets your support team receives are repetitive and low-impact, like questions about order status (WISMO) or your refund policy. We recommend setting up automatic responses for these tickets, so customers get instant answers and agents have more time to respond to tickets that actually need a human touch.

Look through your reporting dashboards to see the tickets that are taking up the most time on your support team, and prioritize those requests for automation with Rules, where appropriate.

7) Go beyond text-only interactions with multimedia messaging

WhatsApp Business, Facebook Messenger, and SMS support images, and luckily so does Gorgias. This is a more engaging way to interact with customers, and it also allows you to exchange relevant images like broken parts, malfunctioning equipment, and screenshots for more helpful instructions.

If you want to go this route, maintain a catalog of fun, topical images that your support team can use in their customer conversations, and give them the freedom to collect their own images to insert. It’s a great way to make your support feel more personal and human, but use common sense: Frustrated customers don’t want to receive a picture or meme, they want their problem solved as quickly as possible.

8) Provide proactive support at scale on platforms that allow it

SMS and other personalized one-to-one support channels can get a little complicated because not everyone wants to interact on the same messaging application. True SMS support goes out over cellular networks and lands in users’ actual text messages, the same way messages from their friends and family do.

But you may need to be ready to handle other support channels that use similar short, text-based communication. These include Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and your website’s web chat. Certain channels may be a better fit for your unique customer base — for example, Instagram attracts a younger audience than Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp is more common outside the US. Likewise, you may have other specialized messaging channels or messaging platforms that you need to support.

As a rule of thumb, you need to be where most of your customers are, which varies across businesses and industries. But to reach the desired level of customer engagement, most businesses need to be reachable via most, if not all, the major applications and support channels. 

That’s where a unified customer service platform can be really useful. By keeping all of your customer conversations in one feed, you can handle more channels more strategically, through triage and routing to dedicated agents for specific tasks. For example, you could have one agent who just handles messaging and route all messages to that person for a quicker response.

On platforms like WhatsApp Business, you don’t have to wait around to hear from customers. This allows for a wide range of strategic and proactive support interactions. 

For example, you can send out text blasts:

• When you have an issue affecting all customers (i.e. website downtime) to let them know what’s going on (and avoid getting excessive tickets about the issue)
• When you have new product launches or add-ons, driving revenue and customer education
• When you have relevant announcements for customers: limit these to news that actually affects customers (i.e. shutting down your community or a time-sensitive sale), not company news (i.e. your latest fundraising) 

A proactive approach builds trust with your audience — they will see you going above and beyond with these efforts, and know that you’ll be upfront with potential issues.

9) Integrate your SMS support with your marketing efforts

SMS marketing is a useful tool for your ecommerce store, but it becomes even more powerful when you integrate your SMS marketing tool into Gorgias. Send out SMS blasts and have support agents on hand to handle any questions you get in response, to help nudge those customers closer to a sale.

With certain integrations — Klaviyo, for example — you can even use Gorgias attributes to segment and build campaigns. Use this function for win-back campaigns, or to send a special offer to customers who posted low CSAT scores.

10) Conduct surveys using text messages to collect feedback from customers

Text messages are an effective method for collecting feedback from existing customers, too. Once customers opt in to SMS communication, you can use this point of contact to launch quick surveys that provide valuable feedback.

Response rate is always an issue with email surveys, and other channels see higher response rates. Using a multichannel approach will supply you with more responses and help you make more data-driven decisions with the results.

Note: In a customer service tool like Gorgias, you would use one of our integrations with Klaviyo or Attentive to send the survey to entire segmented lists of customers or prospects, all at once.

SMS customer service templates for common response types

Ready to start implementing an SMS customer service strategy but not sure what to say? We get it: Staying concise yet friendly is tough, and so is conveying all the needed information in such a short space.

We’ve put together a collection of proven templates you can start using today. Adapt as many of these as you need to fit the contours of your business, and bring them into your customer service platform of choice. In Gorgias, you could auto-populate these responses through our Macros.

Note: We’re sharing these templates as text messages, but they can easily be adapted to other conversational channels like social media DMs and live chat. 

Ticket received template

As we mentioned earlier, it’s a good idea to set up an autoresponder. This tactic can buy your team time to finish up a previous interaction or send an email, yet it shows you’re on top of the interaction and will be back soon.

Here’s our template for a ticket received autoresponder:

Thanks for texting {Brand Name}. An agent is reviewing your question now. We’ll get back to you shortly :)

Introduction message template

The introduction message is the point where your autoresponder or chatbot passes off the reins to a human agent. It’s the first point of personalization, and you want to make a solid impression. Still, your agents don’t need to be typing these out every single time. Use a template like this one to break the ice (just with a little less repetitive stress injury):

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Thanks for messaging us. What can I help you with today?

Hours of operation template

There are two frequent scenarios where an hours-of-operations text makes sense. One is as an answer for when customers message you on social media or elsewhere just to ask when you’re open. In those cases, use this template:

Hello, {Customer First Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Our hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Best, {Your Name}

The other scenario is when a customer reaches out via a messaging channel and there’s no one on the other end. If your helpdesk isn’t open 24 hours a day, use a template like this when the team isn’t live:

Hello, {Customer First Name}! Our live chat helpdesk is open {list hours}. You’ve reached us outside those hours. Leave a short message here and we’ll get back to you tomorrow.

By the way, if around-the-clock coverage is a goal of yours, you might be interested in introducing contact forms into your live chat widget. These forms let you keep your live chat on 24/7 and, when nobody’s available to answer, they ask customers for contact information so you can be sure to follow up. Learn more about Gorgias’ automation add-on and contact forms.

Order status template 

This one’s pretty obvious: You want to let the customer know the status of an order, and there’s no reason to manually type a whole message to do it.

Use this template when a customer asks for their order status. You can create variations of this one for delays or other order status updates, and even customize it further to include tracking information.

Hey {Customer First Name}, great news: Your order has shipped! It will arrive on {delivery date}. Let me know if I can help you with anything else!

Payment reminder template

Customers with recurring subscriptions sometimes forget the frequency they sign up for or when their next payment will be. Use this template if customers frequently ask your brand when their next payment is:

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Your next payment of {amount} is coming up. Your card on file will be charged {due date}. Questions? Reply here or call {phone number}.

Pro tip: While there’s nothing inherently wrong with soliciting payment via SMS, many consumers will view this with suspicion. Text channels may not be the best avenue for inviting bill payments or collecting credit card information. It could also lead to more cancellations, which makes it a balancing act, though customer clarity is important to have. Always track the impact of changes to your process and be mindful of how new touchpoints could affect it.

Deals or rewards template

If you’re trying to build brand loyalty or win back an upset customer, sometimes a simple discount code can go a long way. At the end of an SMS conversation, there may be times when you can surprise and delight customers by sending over an exclusive deal. Here’s a template (though you’ll certainly need to customize this one further to fit the details of your offer):

{Customer First Name}, thanks for being such a loyal customer. We’d like to give you {details of the offer}! Click to redeem: {short URL}

Refund issued template

Refunds happen, and they don’t always require a massively complicated interaction with your contact center. If you’re able to resolve a ticket and issue a refund with a simpler interaction, this template can finish the one-to-one portion of the encounter. 

Notice the template specifies that the interaction will finish up asynchronously (via email). It’s a great way to tie off the synchronous, real-time interaction and lead the customer right to the next step (check your email.) 

Here’s the template:

Hey {Customer First Name}! We’ve issued a refund for your last order. We’ll send all the details to your email, but feel free to let me know here if you need anything else.

Pro tip: You can tie discounts and future order credits into this template, but make sure your entire team is aligned on your official policy as you update the Macros to match it. You may also want to have different tiers of intervention (and offerings) depending on the severity of the issue.

Customer check-in template

The customer check-in is another asynchronous message that occurs outside of an active conversation. Perhaps the customer walked away from a previous encounter or seems to be stuck on the customer journey based on other CRM data.

Whatever the reason, a gentle, well-timed message can sometimes get the customer back on track.

Here’s a model:

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Just checking in to make sure everything is working well for you. If you have any issues with our {products/service} or need anything else, let me know!

Templates for SMS marketing and relevant integrations 

Though a customer service platform can handle the above templates, you’ll likely want to expand even further through additional integrations with the platform. If you take that approach, here are some opportunities that open up:

Discount template

If you’re running a sale or trying to drive traffic to your site, a great way to do so is by texting a discount code to customers on your SMS list. Because their phone is probably close by, it’s great way to promote your sale and make sure it gets noticed. Here’s a template you can use (but remember to update with your own promotion!): 

Flash sale, this weekend only! Up to 40% off, including our latest collection. Shop now: {insert URL} 

Appointment reminder template

Medical offices and other organizations that schedule appointments or meetings can bolster attendance and reduce no-shows by providing yet another reminder — one that reaches patients and customers directly via phone.

If your SMS system supports it, you can invite an auto-reply to confirm or cancel an appointment, too. Use this template:

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Your appointment is scheduled for tomorrow at {appointment time}. See you then! Reply Y to confirm, N to cancel.

Order confirmation template

Order confirmation messages simply confirm that your business has received and is processing a customer order. These don’t typically take place during an active one-to-one customer service interaction. Instead, they’re sent automatically and asynchronously, whenever the order confirms.

Still, you can set them up as personalized messages and enable replying so that, if something happens to be wrong, the customer knows how to reach out.

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Your order #{order number} has been received, and we’re working on it now! We’ll message you again when it ships. Questions? Reply here.

Pickup notification template

If you’re in an industry that offers pickup services (whether curbside pickup, custom goods like eyeglasses, or anything else), a text message is a great way to let someone know their order is ready for pickup. SMS reaches customers when they’re on the go in a way that email frequently doesn’t.

Here’s an example:

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Your recent order #{order number} is now available for pickup at {location}. Stop by to grab it anytime today before {closing time}!

Survey or poll template

This message asks your customers to respond to a survey or poll. It’s a data-gathering tool that can pull in responses from people who ignore your emails or the messages at the bottom of store receipts. Try a script like this:

Hello, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. We value your opinion as a customer and we’d love specific feedback on {topic}. Here’s a 5-minute survey: {short URL}

Membership renewals template

Membership renewals, like payments, ought to be set up as automatic occurrences. Still, it’s helpful to remind a customer that a charge will hit their bank account soon — you don’t want to track down non-payments, and you don’t want angry customers who weren’t prepared for a bill.

Here’s an example:

Hi, {Customer First Name} {Customer Last Name}! I’m {Your Name} from {Brand Name}. Your annual membership renewal is coming up on {date}. Your card on file will be charged on that day.

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Is conversational and SMS customer service right for your business?

At Gorgias, we believe any industry can find value in conversational support, though some industries and brands will get more bang for their buck with these channels. 

For ecommerce brands that deliver physical products, conversational support is a no-brainer. Imagine your customers get shipping updates via SMS and can just respond to the message if the package isn’t delivered correctly to get immediate help. No need to open up a laptop and log into a support portal or compose an email.

If you’re on the fence about offering conversational customer support, consider whether any of these points are relevant for your business:

First, consider your primary audience. If you sell to millennials and Gen Z, conversational customer service deserves serious consideration. These groups value speed and convenience more than anything: Millennials prefer live chat over every other channel, and 71% of people between 16 and 24 agree that faster customer service would drastically improve the shopping experience.

These two generations grew up texting. It’s a very natural communication style for them, so they’ll feel right at home texting and DMing your brand. They’re also absolutely massive groups — combined, they make up a staggering 42.3% of the U.S. population.

If you’re targeting an older generation, texting may not feel as natural. They have a higher tendency to prefer email or phone, although that’s changing by the day.

Is your marketing team already sending SMS campaigns?

One of the biggest hurdles to implementing conversational support is getting the systems, hardware, and staff in place to respond to SMS texts and messaging app requests at scale. If you’re already sending SMS marketing campaigns, then you already have some of that infrastructure in place.

So, if you’ve already made the investment in SMS for marketing purposes, then integrating messaging with your customer service platform and team requires minimal additional investment.

Fortunately, your helpdesk and SMS marketing software may integrate to give you a centralized way to spark conversations if customers reach out via text or respond to SMS campaigns. With Gorgias and Klaviyo, for example, customer responses to SMS marketing campaigns get assigned directly to an agent for fast response times.

Are customers abandoning conversations on other channels? 

One of the benefits of messaging is that customers don’t have to stay on the phone or by their computer — they can easily continue talking even if they have to take the dog out, go to work, or even fall asleep and respond in the morning. Plus, while email conversations often span multiple days which is frustrating for customers with simple requests, requests on messaging channels usually get resolved before customers lose interest or patience. 

If you notice that your brand currently sees lots of unresolved email threads or phone calls, you might need to offer customers a more convenient and flexible channel to talk to your team. This is a perfect use case for SMS and other messaging channels.

Are you already active on related channels?

It’s important to show up where your customers are. That’s why most brands post and engage with customers on social media pages. But if you’re posting on social media and not providing support to customers who reach out via DM, you’re missing a big opportunity. 

By adding conversational support via Facebook Messenger and Instagram and Twitter DMs, you can maximize your presence on those platforms and provide an omnichannel customer experience for both existing and prospective customers.

Are you struggling to gather customer feedback?

We often discuss the importance of customer feedback to monitor brand perception and constantly improve the product and customer experience. But as most brands know, getting feedback via email can be a challenge because of low survey open rates and lack of follow-up from customers. 

Business texting lets you ask your customer base for feedback on a channel they are less likely to ignore. Text messages have a whopping 98% open rate. Consider sending CSAT, NPS surveys, and other requests for customer feedback on this channel to raise your response rate for more accurate customer support metrics. Of course, with great power comes great responsibility: Spamming customers will quickly damage customer relationships, so don’t send too many messages to their personal devices.

What to look for in text messaging tools

SMS customer service is an avenue that customers are growing to expect. But managing yet another communication channel — much less one that demands real-time responses — takes careful planning.

Implementing a messaging strategy requires using tools built for that purpose. Some customer service messaging platforms offer SMS support natively, while others integrate a third-party SMS integration tool to add this functionality. 

As you consider the available options, make sure the one you choose offers the features you need. Some tools are full-fledged SMS marketing solutions. Others focus specifically on SMS as a support channel.

It’s easier for most businesses to use an all-in-one customer service platform like Gorgias to support an omnichannel approach. With this kind of helpdesk platform, SMS tickets can be handled in the same feed as your other tickets and benefit from the same workflows and automation.

Here are some other features your customer service tool needs to have to handle SMS ticket effectively:

• Conversation history (for SMS and other text-based channels like Facebook Messenger or webchat) so your agents know what this client has asked about or needed support for in the past
• Ability to create and customize macros as replies to SMS questions
• Ability to send and receive images or videos (this is great if your support teams need to see the damaged item to issue a refund, for example)
• Routing or triaging capabilities to make sure SMS conversations don’t get lost in a queue of tickets
• Integration with other ecommerce tools so your agents have all the context they need to reply in a single space (e.g., surfacing Shopify customer data or CRM data during a support interaction)

Ecommerce SMS marketing tools to complement your customer experience

As we mentioned earlier, SMS marketing lets brands connect with consumers in a personalized and measurable way, just like with customer service. According to Attentive, average read rates of 97% within 15 minutes make SMS a prime channel for connecting with prospects and customers.

If you’re looking for the right SMS marketing tool to work in tandem with your new SMS customer service channel, consider these four leading tools. Each one integrates with Gorgias, along with most of the rest of your tech stack.

Each tool offers a slightly different feature set. Revisit the list of features we compiled earlier in this article to help determine which are the most important to you, then vet these four tools against your customized list.

• Klaviyo, a Gorgias preferred partner, is a leading customer data and marketing automation platform that leans heavily on SMS communications. Automatically create tickets in Gorgias if customers reply to Klaviyo SMS messages, and send Gorgias events into Klaviyo to create targeted audience lists based on support experiences. 
• Attentive, also a Gorgias preferred partner, sends automatic text messages to your subscribers at each step of the customer lifecycle. It collects real-time behavioral data on customers as well, and the Gorgias integration allows you to see that customer data within the Gorgias sidebar. If a customer replies to an Attentive SMS, it’ll automatically create a ticket in Gorgias for agents to reply to. 
• Postscript is an SMS messaging tool that drives revenue growth and improves the customer experience over SMS. If a customer replies to a Postscript SMS, it’ll automatically create a ticket in Gorgias for agents to reply to.
• SMSBump is a D2C focused SMS customer journey automation tool by Yotpo that boasts powerful results: 45% conversion rate and 25x ROI for D2C brands. By connecting SMSBump with Gorgias, tickets will automatically be created if customers reply to SMSBump campaigns. 

Integrate your SMS tool with your helpdesk for a seamless customer experience

Integrating any of these SMS marketing tools with Gorgias is a great way to unify your marketing and support efforts to improve the overall customer experience.

For example, if customers respond to an SMS marketing blast from a tool integrated with Gorgias, the response gets brought into the helpdesk. The agent can see the initial marketing message and the customers response, so they can answer any follow-up questions. It's like an alley-oop from your marketing to your support team.

Also, these integrations help your marketing team be more aware of active support conversations to avoid tone deaf marketing. For example, by integrating Gorgias and your SMS marketing tool, you can pause marketing campaigns on customers awaiting a response from support. (Nobody wants to get marketing messages if they're waiting on a delayed order, or troubleshooting their last purchase).

Message your customers in real time with Gorgias

Customer service messaging across a wide range of message-based platforms can be a powerful addition to your customer service channels. Of these, the SMS channel is one of the most powerful options for businesses that want to reach customers directly where they are.

The scripts and tools provided in this guide should put you well on your way toward a successful SMS support rollout. But make sure that at the core of your customer service operation, you have a platform robust enough to handle everything you need to do — and whatever functionality you might add in the future. For more examples and tactics to launch a successful rollout of SMS support, check out our playbook of Berkey Filters, an online store that released SMS support to great adoption.

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Gorgias is the customer support and helpdesk platform built for ecommerce businesses like yours. Our live chat tools and 150+ integrations equip you to reach your customers — whenever and however you choose.

See how Gorgias supercharges customer support and helpdesk via SMS. Alternatively, check out more information about our integrations with:

• Instagram messages
• Facebook messenger‍
• WhatsApp messaging