2025 Ecommerce Trends: AI Adoption and Smarter Tech Stacks
TL;DR
- Ecommerce teams are overwhelmed by app overload, with 42% using six tools daily—leading to inefficiencies, rising costs, and poor customer experiences.
- Top brands are consolidating their tech stacks, choosing deeply integrated, ecommerce-specific platforms to simplify operations and lower costs.
- AI adoption and excitement are accelerating, with 77.2% of ecommerce professionals using AI daily and 55.3% rating their excitement as an 8-10 out of 10.
- Gorgias powers AI-driven support and sales in one platform, through a single workspace that helps ecommerce teams resolve faster, sell smarter, and operate more efficiently.
At Gorgias, we work with over 16,000 ecommerce brands and one common challenge emerges over and over:
Ecommerce tools are essential, but too many tools becomes a burden.
With different teams responsible for different functions, brands risk creating a disconnected tech stack that causes inefficiencies, reduces productivity, and ultimately impacts profitability.
Ecommerce teams are shuffling between tabs, copying and pasting order numbers, searching for customer data, and trying to piece it all together. It’s not only inefficient—it’s expensive, frustrating, and unsustainable as you scale.
So we dug into that data.
Our 2025 Ecommerce Trends Report surveyed ecommerce professionals across industries and job roles to understand what they really think about tech stacks and AI’s role in it.
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Ecommerce professionals are approaching app overload
There is now an ecommerce app for every possible use case a brand could need. But as businesses adopt new technologies for each part of their customer journey, their teams end up working out of dozens of platforms.
The study found that 42.28% of ecommerce pros use at least six apps daily to perform their role. Regardless of the number of apps used, integration and compatibility are a must. When technologies don’t talk to each other, you spend time context-switching instead of focusing on customer experience.
For Audien Hearing, Gorgias’s open API allowed them to create an integration with its warehouse software to manage returns directly in Gorgias rather than a shared Google spreadsheet. This integration helped them reduce returns by 5%, protecting their margins and leading to higher customer satisfaction.
Read more: How Audien Hearing Increased Efficiency for 75 Agents and Reduced Product Returns by 5%
Consolidation is the smartest move a brand can make
The most successful ecommerce brands aren’t necessarily using more tools—they’re using smarter tools. Leading businesses are opting for platforms that are deeply integrated, AI-compatible, and built specifically for ecommerce needs.
A growing tech stack also comes with a growing tech budget. Each new app has new costs, including subscriptions, set-up, management, and development fees. They quickly add up.
Nearly 40% of ecommerce professionals spend $5,000 to $50,000 annually on their tech stack.
Different roles have different priorities
We asked ecommerce professionals what they actually value in their tools. Unsurprisingly, the answer changed based on who we were talking to.
Top tool benefits included:
- Revenue growth for support leaders, revenue-focused roles, and founders
- Simplified workflows and time savings for support agents
There’s a clear difference between what ecommerce leaders and agents value in a tool and considering both is key to success.
Why brands hesitate to consolidate
Despite the benefits of using fewer, well-integrated tools, there are a few things that hold brands back from consolidating their tech stacks.
We asked respondents:
What, if any, are the biggest deterrents to consolidating your tech stack?
Top concerns are:
- Compatibility issues with existing software (52.4%)
- Direct costs (fees for software licenses, subscriptions, or customizations) (47.6%)
- Time required (40.3%)
AI adoption is accelerating—and it’s driving results
AI is dominating the world of ecommerce. It impacts every aspect of the customer journey, from brand discovery to the post-purchase experience. AI is actively reshaping the way ecommerce professionals work, so we wanted to know how they feel about it.
- 77.2% of ecommerce professionals use AI and automation to perform their role in 2025, compared to 69.3% in 2024.
- 55.3% of respondents rate their excitement for AI as an 8-10, compared to 45.6% in 2024.
Despite growing usage and excitement, teams still have their concerns with AI:
Read more: 8 AI Trends in Ecommerce: What’s Changing and How to Prepare
The AI shift—From just a support tool to a sales engine
The most impactful use cases we’ve seen aren’t just about reducing support ticket volume. AI is now driving revenue, increasing conversion rates, and enabling 24/7 coverage without expanding headcount.
Gorgias’s AI Agent is now capable of virtual sales assistance through personalized product recommendations, dynamic discounts to reduce cart abandonment, and cross-sells and upsells.
Top brands are already leveraging these new capabilities and seeing results. For example:
- TUSHY uses a Gorgias AI Agent to accurately answer pre-sale questions, leading to a 15% conversion rate, with AI Agent driving 2x more sales than human agents.
- Trove Brands enabled an AI Agent named Wally that cut misshipments by 70%, meaning reducing unwanted charges, avoidable fulfillment costs, high return rates, and customer frustration.
- Caitlyn Minimalist uses AI to reduce response times by 99% and saw a 150% increase in ticket conversions.
Gorgias: A one-tab tool for Conversational AI
We asked one final question to make ecommerce folks really reflect on how they work:
How many tabs do you currently have open?
The average ecommerce professional works with 22 open tabs. We’re not here to judge, but if you’re looking to close a few of those tabs, Gorgias might be what you’re missing.
Gorgias replaces all that complexity with a single workspace. From support to sales, order management to automation, it all happens inside one platform.
Ecommerce businesses can now leverage Gorgias’s Advanced AI for both support and sales. Within the same AI Agent, ecommerce brands can
- Fully resolve customer inquiries, not just respond
- Provide order tracking details
- Cancel, edit, and manage orders in Shopify and integrated apps
- Process returns and exchanges
- Provide tailored product recommendations
- Drive conversions
- And much more!
Get your copy of the 2025 Ecommerce Trends Report
This blog just skims the surface of what we uncover in our 2025 Ecommerce Trends report.
Want the full story?
Download the complete 2025 Ecommerce Trends: AI Adoption & Smarter Tech Stacks report to access:
- Data-backed insights and trends from ecommerce professionals
- The biggest barriers to consolidation—and how to overcome them
- Real-world case studies from leading brands like TUSHY, Caitlyn Minimalist, and July that are winning with AI
- Tactical recommendations to future-proof your ecommerce stack through AI-powered consolidation
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TL;DR:
- Gorgias eliminated helpdesk outages by implementing multiple database connection pools with PgBouncer, achieving over 99.99% uptime.
- We accelerated data retrieval by organizing 40TB of data into 128 partitions, reducing query times to less than 4ms.
- Our streamlined incident response process with dedicated Slack channels and clear roles now resolves almost all incidents in under an hour.
- Looking ahead, we're strengthening security, doubling our SRE team, implementing production readiness reviews, and enhancing monitoring tools.
When customer service teams are at their busiest, they need a helpdesk that keeps up. That’s exactly why our Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team has been working behind the scenes to make the Gorgias platform faster than ever.
Over the past year, we've made remarkable improvements to our platform to eliminate bottlenecks, speed up data retrieval, and reduce incidents. For you, this means fewer disruptions, faster load times, and a more reliable helpdesk experience.
Here's how we did it.
Eliminating helpdesk outages by increasing our connection pools
The challenge
Our platform relied on a single, shared database connection pool to manage all queries. Think of it as having just one pipe handling all the water flowing through your house — when too much water rushes in at once, the whole system backs up.
In practice, this meant a single surge in database requests could clog the entire system. When lower-priority background tasks got stuck, they could prevent high-priority operations (like loading tickets or running automations) from working properly. This would cause the entire helpdesk to slow down or, worse, become completely unresponsive.
The solution
Using PgBouncer, a tool that manages database connections and reduces the load on a server, we implemented multiple connection pools. Instead of relying on a single pipeline to stream all requests, we created separate "pipes" for different requests.
Like how road traffic picks up again after an exit, routing our database traffic into separate connection pools makes sure high-priority customer interactions don’t lag behind automated background tasks.
This solution is future-proof. In the event that a lower-priority task is delayed in one connection pool, other functionalities of the helpdesk will continue working because of the remaining connection pools.
The benefits
The results speak for themselves:
- Complete elimination of helpdesk-wide outages caused by connection pooling issues
- Faster response times — 99% of automated rules tasks take less than 800 milliseconds to complete from inception
- Partial degradation instead of full outages if issues do occur — at worst, only a single feature might be affected instead of your entire helpdesk
We've eliminated incidents caused by connection pool issues in the helpdesk completely. This reduced major helpdesk outage incidents by around four per year and maintained an average uptime of over 99.99%.
Speeding up the helpdesk by organizing 40TB of data into 128 partitions
The challenge
As Gorgias grew to over 15,000 customers, so did the volume of data. We’re talking data from tickets, integrations, automations, and many more. The combination of more users and data meant slower searches within the helpdesk.
However, the amount of data was not the problem — it was how our data was organized.
Imagine this: An enormous storage room full of file cabinets containing every piece of data. Sure, those file cabinets kept data organized, but you would still need to spend time searching through the entire room, running up and down aisles of cabinets, to find your desired file. This method was cumbersome.
We needed a more efficient way to keep our data easy to find, especially as more customers used our platform.
The solution
The answer was database partitioning — breaking our large datasets into smaller, more manageable segments. Using Debezium, Kafka, and Kafka-connect JDBC, all managed by Terraform, we migrated over 40TB of data, including 3.5 billion tickets, without a moment of downtime for our merchants.
Instead of a giant room with thousands of file cabinets, we divided that giant room into 128 smaller rooms. So now, instead of looking for a file in one room, you know you just need to go into room number 102, which has a much smaller area to search.
This approach allows our system to quickly pinpoint the location of data, significantly reducing the time it takes to find and deliver information to users.
Additionally, database maintenance has become more efficient. Some of the partitions can probably sit without needing to be changed at all. We just have to maintain the partitions that are getting new files, which cuts down on maintenance time.
The benefits
Better database partitioning provides several benefits:
- Faster queries — We have an average of 600 lookups or updates per second across these databases, each taking less than 4ms
- More efficient database maintenance — We halved the number of automated maintenance runs and cut each run’s duration in half
- Better scalability as our infrastructure is now equipped to handle continued customer growth
Faster resolutions with a streamlined incident response process
The challenge
When incidents occurred in the past, our response process was inconsistent, leading to delays in resolution. It was sometimes unclear who should take the lead, what immediate actions were required, and how to effectively communicate with affected customers.
Additionally, post-incident reviews varied in quality, making it difficult to prevent similar issues from happening again. We needed a standardized framework to address incidents in a timely fashion.
The solution
To streamline incident management, we introduced a replicable, automated process:
- Dedicated Slack channels — Every incident gets its own Slack channel, ensuring our team is immediately notified.
- Clear roles & responsibilities — We defined specific roles so every engineer knows what next steps to take.
- Retrospectives — After each incident, we conduct thorough post-mortems to analyze root causes, identify improvements, and share learnings across teams.
- Proactive prevention — By improving our monitoring tools, we catch potential issues earlier, reducing the likelihood of major disruptions.
The benefits
With our improved incident management process:
- Response times have decreased significantly — almost all incidents are mitigated in under an hour
- Customers receive clearer communication during incidents, including our regularly updated Gorgias Status page
- 100+ smarter preventative measures to reduce the overall incident frequency or permanently fix recurring problems
What's next: Four ways we're improving the platform experience
With more brands catching on to how essential a solid CX platform is, our team's got our work cut out for us. Here's what's on the way:
- Enhanced security measures — We've hired a dedicated security engineer to strengthen our security infrastructure.
- A bigger SRE team — Our Site Reliability Engineering team has doubled, allowing us to address performance issues rapidly.
- Production readiness reviews — We're formalizing a process to audit new and existing services, ensuring they meet our reliability standards before deployment.
- Improved monitoring — We're investing in better monitoring tools to detect and resolve potential issues before they impact customers.
Count on a reliable future with Gorgias
Gorgias will inevitably face new challenges in performance — no system is completely immune to downtime.
But we've built our architecture with the future in mind, and it’s more resilient than ever as more and more brands realize the power of conversational AI CX platforms.
The result? A platform you can count on to help you deliver exceptional customer service, without technical issues getting in the way.
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TL;DR:
- AI is reshaping ecommerce, giving early adopters a competitive edge. From visual search to dynamic pricing, these tools meet rising customer expectations and drive growth.
- Conversational AI boosts support efficiency and customer satisfaction. Solutions like Gorgias's AI Agent automatically resolve up to 60% of tickets while personalizing responses across channels.
- Personalization now extends beyond product recommendations. AI is customizing everything from discounts to website layouts in real-time, creating unique experiences that convert.
- AI automation streamlines back-end operations for inventory and pricing. By predicting demand and adjusting prices dynamically, brands improve margins while reducing stock issues.
AI is no longer a futuristic concept associated with sci-fi movies and robots. It’s driving real change in ecommerce right now. Currently, 84% of ecommerce businesses list AI as their top priority. And it’s only getting bigger. By 2034, the ecommerce AI market is expected to hit $62.64 billion.
Brands that use AI to improve personalization, automate customer support, and refine pricing strategies will have a major competitive edge.
The good news? Most brands are still figuring it out, which means there’s huge potential for early adopters to stand out.
Let’s dive into the key AI trends shaping ecommerce in 2025, and how you can use them to future-proof your business.
1. Visual search
Instead of searching for keywords, shoppers can upload a photo and instantly find similar or matching products. Visual search eliminates the guesswork of finding the right words to describe an item and reduces friction in the search process.
In 2025, improvements in computer vision and machine learning will make visual search faster. AI will better recognize patterns, colors, and textures, delivering more precise results in real-time.
For customers, visual search simplifies product discovery while brands benefit from increased average order values. Visual search creates more opportunities to surface related products that customers might miss during manual searches, ultimately boosting conversion and revenue.
Pinterest is already doing it. With Pinterest Lens, users can take a picture on the spot to find similar products or ideas to help them with easier purchases or creative projects.
Pro Tip: Optimize product images and metadata (like color, size, and material) so your products appear accurately in visual search results. Clean, high-quality images and detailed tagging will make your catalog easier for AI to process and match.
2. Conversational AI
Conversational AI, like Gorgias’s AI Agent, already handles 60% of customer conversations. Brands that adopt it often see more than a 25% improvement in customer satisfaction, revenue, or cost reduction.
Soon, advanced natural language processing (NLP) will make it easier for customers to use text, voice, and images to find exactly what they’re looking for. These multimodal capabilities will elevate support conversations, resulting in fewer abandoned carts and support teams that can focus on more complex issues.
For example, Glamnetic uses AI Agent to manage customer inquiries across multiple channels, resolving 40% of requests automatically while maintaining a personalized touch. Their AI can automate responses to common questions, recommend products based on browsing history, and even track orders in real-time.
Pro Tip: Invest in AI chat tools that integrate with your customer support system and sync with real-time product and order data. Your responses will be accurate and timely, without losing the personal touch.
Read more: The Gorgias & Shopify integration: 8 features your support team will love
3. Product recommendations
According to McKinsey, omnichannel personalization strategies, including tailored product recommendations, have a 10-15% uplift potential in revenue and retention. But with only 1 in 10 retailers fully implementing personalization across channels, there’s a massive opportunity for brands to innovate.
In 2025, AI-driven product recommendations will become even more precise by analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history in real-time. Predictive AI will adjust recommendations on the fly, showing customers the right products at the right moment.
Take Kreyol Essence as an example. They use Gorgias Convert to track customer behavior and recommend products based on past purchases and browsing patterns. When a customer buys a hair mask, AI suggests complementary products like scalp oil or leave-in conditioner — increasing average order value without feeling pushy.
Personalization boosts sales by helping customers discover products they actually want. Plus, it creates a more tailored shopping experience, which encourages customers to return.
Pro Tip: Test different recommendation strategies, like “frequently bought together” or “you may also like,” to see which ones drive the most conversions.
Learn more: Reduce Customer Effort with AI: A Smarter Approach Than Surprise and Delight
4. Voice commerce
In 2025, more customers may use smart speakers and voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant to shop hands-free. AI will improve voice recognition and contextual understanding, so it’s easier for customers to find products they want.
Instead of fumbling with a keyboard, customers will be able to say, “Order more coffee pods,” and AI will not only recognize the request but also pull up the preferred brand and size based on past orders. Less friction will make the buying process more intuitive, especially for repeat purchases.
Voice commerce expands shopping accessibility and creates a more convenient experience for busy customers. It also opens the door for brands to surface product recommendations and upsell during the conversation.
Pro Tip: Optimize product descriptions and catalog structure for voice search. Clear, simple language and detailed product tags will help AI understand and surface the right products.
5. Dynamic pricing
A recent McKinsey report suggests that investing in real-time customer analytics will continue to be key to adjusting pricing and more effectively targeting customers.
In 2025, machine learning will allow ecommerce brands to adjust product prices instantly based on demand, competitor pricing, and customer behavior. If a competitor drops their price on a popular item, AI can respond immediately, so you stay competitive without sacrificing margins.
Machine learning will also refine pricing models over time, finding the sweet spot between profitability and customer conversion.
For example, AI might detect that customers are more likely to buy a product when it’s priced at $29.99 rather than $30, and adjust accordingly. More competitive pricing means higher revenue and better margins, but it also increases customer trust when prices are consistent with market trends.
Pro Tip: Test different pricing strategies and monitor how they affect sales and customer behavior.
6. Better customer insights
According to McKinsey, AI-driven personalization and customer insights can improve marketing efficiency by 10-30% and cut costs significantly.
In 2025, AI will analyze customer data like purchase history, browsing patterns, and feedback to generate smarter, more actionable next steps. Instead of guessing what customers want, brands will have the data to predict it.
For example, Gorgias’s AI Agent for Sales can identify a shopper’s interest level and purchase intent and then use it to adjust its conversational strategy. It analyzes shopper data like browsing behavior, cart activity, and purchase history.
Here’s how it would behave for different customers:
- A browsing customer: AI Agent will ask clarifying questions
- An interested customer: AI Agent provides tailored recommendations and handles objections
- A customer with an intent to buy: AI Agent assists with checkout, payment, and nudges purchase
7. Personalized shopping
AI-driven personalization leads to a 5-10% higher customer satisfaction and engagement. Yet, only 15% have fully implemented it across all channels — leaving a huge gap to fill.
In 2025, AI-driven personalization will go beyond product recommendations. Brands will be able to adjust website layouts based on customer preferences, highlight products that align with their style, and even customize customer service interactions.
A higher level of personalization will boost conversion rates and customer satisfaction. When customers feel like a brand “gets” them, they’re more likely to make a purchase and come back for more.
For example, AI Agent for Sales can adjust discounts and provide smart incentives to drive sales. When adjusting for discounts, AI Agent analyzes shopper behavior, including browsing activity, cart status, and conversation context, to offer a discount based on how engaged and ready the shopper is to buy.
Pro Tip: Use AI to test different personalization strategies and refine them based on performance data. Small adjustments, like changing product order or highlighting specific categories, can have a big impact on sales.
8. Automated inventory management
Keeping the right products in stock at the right time is about to get a whole lot easier. In 2025, AI will predict demand patterns and automate restocking decisions based on sales trends, seasonality, and customer behavior. Instead of manually tracking inventory, AI will handle it in real time to avoid stock issues.
For example, AI could notice a spike in orders for a specific product right before the holidays. It could then automatically increase stock levels to meet demand or scale back on items that aren’t moving as fast. Real-time tracking means fewer missed sales and less wasted inventory.
Efficient inventory management not only cuts costs but also improves the customer experience. When products are consistently available, customers are more likely to trust and stick with your brand.
Pro Tip: Implement AI-powered inventory management to sync data across all sales channels. This ensures accurate stock levels and seamless fulfillment, whether customers are shopping online or in-store.
Embrace AI trends in your ecommerce store in 2025
AI makes it easier for brands to deliver a personalized and efficient shopping experience. From helping customers find products faster with visual search to automating support with conversational AI, there are plenty of opportunities for personalization.
The brands that adopt and refine these strategies now will be better positioned to meet customer expectations and stay ahead of the competition. Start by implementing conversational AI and later test some other AI trends like personalized suggestions.
Ready to see how AI can upgrade your brand? Book a demo to see AI Agent in action.
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Featured articles
Stop Chargebacks Before They Start: The Power of Fast Customer Support
TL;DR:
- Most chargebacks occur due to poor merchant communication rather than fraud. Customers choose this path when they feel ignored or frustrated.
- 80% of customers report never being contacted by merchants after filing a chargeback. 23% file immediately after an issue and 38% file within 1-3 days if unresolved.
- The most common chargeback reason is "product not received" (35%). 79% of all chargebacks are actually "friendly fraud" filed for invalid claims.
- Prevention requires fast customer support and automated chargeback management. Combining Gorgias for AI-powered support with Chargeflow for automated dispute management provides a comprehensive solution with faster resolutions and higher win rates.
Chargebacks are more than a thorn in a merchant’s side — they’re a growing financial and operational threat. According to Ethoca, chargebacks are projected to more than double, from $7.2 billion in 2019 to $15.3 billion by 2026 in the U.S. alone. And while fraud plays a role, the primary reason customers file chargebacks is simpler: they feel ignored.
At Chargeflow, we recently published a comprehensive report analyzing why customers dispute chargebacks. The findings were eye-opening. While it’s true that fraud is a real concern, most chargebacks happen for a different reason: a lack of communication between merchants and customers.
Top stats from Chargeflow’s report:
- 23% of customers file a chargeback immediately after an issue.
- 38% file a chargeback within 1-3 days if unresolved.
- 80% report never being contacted by the merchant.
- 52% are likely to dispute if the response is too slow.
When customers feel ignored or frustrated, they often turn to their bank for a solution instead of reaching out to the merchant first. Understanding these behaviors is key to preventing disputes before they escalate and cause chaos.
So, what actually drives customers to dispute charges? Here’s what the data says.
Why customers file chargebacks
While chargebacks are often the cost of doing business, the truth is that many disputes are preventable — but only if merchants understand the root causes. We identified five key drivers behind chargebacks.
1. Customers take immediate action
According to our research, most customers file a dispute right away after encountering an issue, leaving no opportunity to resolve the problem. Another 38% file within one to three days if they don’t receive a timely response.
Why? Customers assume the fastest way to get their money back is by filing a chargeback, especially if they receive no response from the merchant.
2. Lack of communication leads to disputes
We found that 80% of customers never receive a follow-up after filing a chargeback. Additionally, 64% of customers state immediate communication is crucial, yet many businesses fail to reach out.
- 90% of customers tried to reach out to the merchant first.
- If they don’t receive a response, they quickly file a dispute.
Why? Customers expect businesses to be proactive. When they don’t hear back quickly, they assume the merchant won’t help, making a chargeback seem like the best option.
3. Chargebacks are too easy for customers
98% of customers report a neutral to highly satisfactory experience when filing chargebacks, and only 12% are denied.
Why? Many customers believe chargebacks are faster and easier than dealing with merchants directly, especially if return policies are unclear.
4. Transaction issues drive chargebacks
The most common reason for filing a chargeback is “product not received” (35% of the cases). Other common reasons included:
- Fraudulent transaction claims - 16%
- Product significantly not as described - 15%
- Unauthorized transaction - 15%
Why? When customers don’t receive clear shipping updates or experience delivery delays, they assume their order won’t arrive and file a chargeback rather than waiting.
5. Friendly fraud is a major problem
Friendly fraud occurs when a cardholder makes a legitimate purchase but later disputes the charge as fraudulent or unauthorized, leading their card issuer to reverse the payment.
Our research found that:
- 21% of customers admitted to not fully understanding the chargeback process.
- Another 20% aren’t even aware of what a chargeback is.
- 97% of consumers believe they’ve never filed a chargeback incorrectly, while only 3% admit they have.
According to our State of Chargebacks report, 79% of chargebacks are actually friendly fraud, meaning they were filed for invalid reasons.
Why? Many customers mistakenly believe that a chargeback is just another way to request a refund, rather than a process intended for fraud or merchant failure.
📌 The takeaway: Most chargebacks aren’t actual fraud, but rather a result of customer confusion, impatience, or poor communication from merchants.
The solution: how to stop chargebacks before they happen
Merchants who want to stop chargebacks before they happen need a two-part strategy:
- Fast, customer-focused support to resolve issues before customers dispute charges.
- Automated chargeback management to detect and fight disputes efficiently, so merchants don’t lose revenue to invalid claims.
Chargebacks result from slow response times, poor communication, and unresolved issues, not fraud. Adopting AI-driven customer support and chargeback automation allows businesses to significantly reduce disputes and retain more revenue.
How AI-powered support & chargeback automation work together
Instant responses prevent frustration-driven chargebacks
Many chargebacks happen because customers don’t receive a fast enough response. In fact, 52% say they will dispute a charge if the response time is too slow. AI-powered chatbots provide real-time support, resolving issues before they escalate.
Proactive communication reduces uncertainty
Customers expect updates regarding orders and refunds, but often don’t receive them. 80% of customers report never hearing from a merchant after filing a chargeback.
Automated order updates, refund confirmations, and proactive notifications keep customers informed, reducing unnecessary disputes.
24/7 availability ensures no issues go unanswered
Customers expect round-the-clock support, but most businesses can’t provide live assistance. AI-powered ticketing and automation ensure every customer receives help, regardless of the time zone or urgency.
The result? Fewer chargebacks, faster resolutions, and increased customer satisfaction.
Actionable strategies for improving response times
Prioritize long-term clients
It’s impossible to please every customer. On average, chargebacks take 50 days to resolve successfully. Focus your energy on retaining high-value, long-term customers.
Prioritize high-risk inquiries
Lost inquiries take on average 15 days to resolve, and lost chargebacks take 38 days. Prioritize cases based on impact.
Build efficient escalation systems
Advanced automated ticketing systems can route inquiries and prioritize urgent cases.
Use pre-approved resolution templates
Ensure customer service teams have quick-response templates to speed their resolutions.
Work closely with shipping carriers
“Product not received” was the most cited reason for delivery-related chargebacks. Work closely with carriers and third-party suppliers to improve fulfillment and reduce disputes.
Leverage chargeback management tools
Use automated tools for real-time analytics, enhanced communication, and proactive alerts, which will reduce response times.
Gorgias & Chargeflow: A fully automated chargeback prevention system
Successfully tackling chargebacks requires both proactive customer support and automated dispute management. That’s why Gorgias and Chargeflow work so well together to give merchants a comprehensive defense against disputes.
Post-purchase automation isn’t just about reducing customer support workload or quick replies. It's about finding the most effective ways to increase customer loyalty and prevent disputes.
Learn more about how AI-driven automation enhances post-purchase experiences here.
How Gorgias prevents chargebacks with conversational AI
- Automated real-time responses engage customers before they decide to dispute charges.
- Proactive customer communication ensures customers receive updates on their orders, refunds, and transactions.
- 24/7 availability ensures customers receive the support they need without increasing overhead.
How Chargeflow automates chargeback prevention & recovery
- Pre-dispute alerts notify merchants before a chargeback is finalized and provide proactive intervention.
- AI-powered chargeback responses to automate evidence collection and improve win rates.
- Smart analytics to help merchants understand why disputes happen and how they can prevent them.
Final thoughts: Stop chargebacks before they start
As you know, chargebacks are costly, frustrating, but most importantly, preventable. Our research shows that most chargebacks don’t stem from fraud, but from poor communication, slow response times, and customer uncertainty.
By prioritizing fast, AI-driven customer support and automated chargeback management, merchants can resolve issues before they escalate, improve customer experience, and protect their revenue.
With Gorgias handling proactive customer support and Chargeflow managing chargeback disputes, merchants get a powerful, end-to-end prevention system that ensures fewer chargebacks, higher dispute win rates, and, at the end of the day, happier customers.
Don’t let chargebacks drain your revenue. Take control today with faster, smarter automation.
Download Chargeflow’s full Psychology of Chargebacks Report to dive deeper into the data and start preventing disputes before they happen.
9 Ways to Use AI to Personalize the Customer Journey
TL;DR:
- Use AI across both support and sales. Ecommerce brands are using AI to drive revenue and efficiency by combining automation in chat, email, and customer data with personalized product guidance and upsells.
- Analyze post-purchase surveys with AI to uncover customer insights. AI quickly identifies themes, sentiment, and trends from open-ended feedback to inform product, shipping, and support decisions.
- Predict customer intent with AI before they take action. By analyzing behavior like cart activity or page views, AI can engage high-intent shoppers with personalized nudges in real time.
- Automate QA and proactive support with AI. AI reviews 100% of conversations, flags quality issues, and triggers outreach for known problems — all before customers even ask.
Shoppers aren’t just open to AI — they’re starting to expect it.
According to IBM, 3 in 5 consumers want to use AI as they shop. And a McKinsey study found that 71% expect personalized experiences from the brands they buy from. When they don’t get that? Two-thirds say they’re frustrated.
But while most brands associate AI with support automation, its real power lies in something bigger: scaling personalization across the entire customer journey.
We’ll show you how to do that in this article.
AI for customer data
Before AI can personalize emails, recommend products, or answer support tickets, it needs one thing: good data.
That’s why one of the best places to start using AI isn’t in sales or support — but in enriching your customer data. With a deeper understanding of who your customers are, what they want, and how they behave, AI becomes a personalization engine across your entire business.
Enriching surveys with AI
Post-purchase surveys are gold mines for understanding customers — but digging through the data manually? Not so fun.
AI can help by analyzing survey responses at scale, identifying trends, and categorizing open-ended customer feedback into clear, actionable insights. Instead of skimming thousands of answers to spot what customers are saying about your shipping times, AI can surface those insights instantly — along with sentiment and behavior signals you might’ve missed.
Try this prompt when doing this: "Analyze 500 open-ended post-purchase survey responses. Identify the top 5 recurring themes, categorize customer sentiment (positive, neutral, negative), and surface any trends related to product quality, delivery experience, or customer support."
Predicting customer intent before they even say a word
One of AI’s biggest strengths? Spotting intent.
By analyzing things like page views, cart activity, scroll behavior, and previous purchases, AI can identify which shoppers are ready to buy, which ones are likely to churn, and which just need a little nudge to move forward.
This doesn’t just apply to email and retargeting. It also works on live chat, in real time.
Take TUSHY, for example.
To eliminate friction in the buying journey, TUSHY introduced AI Agent for Sales — a virtual assistant designed to guide shoppers toward the right product before they drop off.
Instead of letting potential customers bounce with unanswered questions, the AI Agent steps in to offer:
- Personalized product recommendations based on shopper questions
- Compatibility guidance (especially for customers unsure which bidet works with their toilet)
- Real-time installation tips and links to helpful how-to articles
With a growing product catalog, TUSHY realized first-time buyers were overwhelmed with options — and needed help choosing what would work best for their home and hygiene preferences.
“What amazed us most is that the AI Agent doesn’t just help customers choose the perfect bidet for their booty — it also provides measurement and fit guidance, high-level installation support, and even recommends all the necessary spare parts for skirted toilet installations. It’s ushering in a new era of customer service — one that’s immediate, informative, and confidence-boosting as people rethink their bathroom habits.”
—Ren Fuller-Wasserman, Sr. Director of Customer Experience at TUSHY
Forecasting revenue by segment
AI also helps you see the road ahead.
Instead of looking at retention and loyalty metrics in isolation, AI can help you forecast what’s likely to happen next and where to focus your attention.
By segmenting customers based on behaviors like average order value, order frequency, and churn risk, AI can identify revenue opportunities and weak spots before they impact your bottom line.
All you need is the right prompt. Here’s an example you can run using your own data in any AI tool:
Prompt: “Analyze my customer data to forecast revenue by segment. Break customers into at least three groups based on behavior patterns like average order value, purchase frequency, and churn risk.
For each segment, provide:
- A projected revenue trend for the next quarter
- A key insight about their behavior
- One actionable recommendation to either grow or retain revenue from that segment.”
Here’s what a result might look like:
- VIPs (Top 5% by LTV): Predicted 15% growth next quarter based on repeat behavior
- One-time Buyers: 70% churn risk flagged—time to trigger a win-back campaign
- Discount-Only Shoppers: Revenue likely to dip unless incentive strategy changes
Instead of flying blind, you’re making decisions with clarity — and backing them with data that scales.
AI for sales
When used strategically, AI becomes a proactive sales agent that can identify opportunities in real-time: recommending the right product to the right shopper at the right moment.
Here’s how ecommerce brands are using AI to drive revenue across every part of the funnel.
Dynamic pricing that responds to the market (and the shopper)
Your prices shouldn’t be static — especially when your competitors, inventory, and customer behavior are anything but.
AI-powered pricing tools like AI Agent for Sales help brands automatically adjust pricing based on shopper behavior. The goal is to make the right offer to the right customer.
For example:
- Show a discount to a price-sensitive shopper who’s hesitating at checkout
- Recommend premium add-ons to high-LTV customers who are more likely to spend
With dynamic pricing, you can protect your margins and boost conversions — without relying on blanket sales.
Turning chat into a personal shopper (that never sleeps)
AI-powered chat is no longer just a glorified FAQ. Today, it can act as a real-time shopping assistant — guiding customers, boosting conversions, and helping your team reclaim time.
That’s exactly what Pepper did with “Penelope,” their AI Agent built on Gorgias.
With a rapidly growing product catalog (22 new SKUs in 2024 alone), Pepper knew shoppers needed help discovering the right products. Customers often had questions about styles, materials, or sizing, and if they didn’t get answers right away, they’d abandon carts and move on.
Instead of hiring more agents to keep up, Pepper deployed Penelope to live chat and email.
Her job?
- Instantly answer questions about fit, fabric, or product differences
- Guide shoppers toward the best option for their needs
- Recommend complementary products (like matching panties or bottoms)
- Free up agents to focus on higher-value 1:1 moments, like virtual fit sessions
“With AI Agent, we’re not just putting information in our customer’s hands; we’re putting bras in their hands... We’re turning customer support from a cost center to a revenue generator.”
—Gabrielle McWhirter, CX Operations Lead at Pepper
Let’s look at how Penelope performs on the floor:
Real-time recommendations
A shopper asked about the difference between two wire-free bras. Penelope broke down the styles, support level, and fabric in plain language — then followed up with personalized suggestions based on the shopper’s preferences.
Proactive engagement
Using Gorgias Convert chat campaigns, Pepper triggers targeted messages to shoppers based on behavior. If someone is browsing white bras? Penelope jumps in and offers assistance, often leading to faster decisions and fewer abandoned carts.
Intelligent upsells
If a customer adds a swimsuit top to their cart, Penelope suggests matching bottoms. No full-screen popups, no awkward sales scripts — just thoughtful, helpful guidance.
Support and sales in one
Penelope also handles WISMO tickets and return inquiries. If a shopper is dealing with a sizing issue, Penelope walks them through the return process and links to Pepper’s Fit Guide to make sure the next purchase is spot on.
By implementing AI into chat, Pepper saw a 19% conversion rate from AI-assisted chats, an 18% uplift in AOV, and a 92.1% decrease in resolution time.
With Penelope handling repetitive and revenue-driving tasks, Pepper’s team now has more time to offer truly personalized touches — like virtual fit sessions that have turned refunds into exchanges and even upsells.
Curating bundles with AI-powered sales data
Bundling is a proven tactic for increasing AOV — but most brands still rely on subjective judgment calls or static reports to decide which products to group.
AI can take this a step further.
Instead of just looking at what’s bought together in the same cart, AI can analyze purchase sequences. For example, what people tend to buy as a follow-up 30 days after their first order. This gives you powerful clues into natural buying behavior and bundling opportunities you might’ve missed.
If you’re looking to explore this at scale, you can use anonymized sales data and feed it into AI tools to surface patterns in:
- Frequently bundled items
- Follow-up purchases within a set time frame
- High-value product pairings with repeat potential
Try this prompt:
"Analyze this spreadsheet of order data and identify product bundle opportunities. Look for: (1) products frequently purchased together in the same order, (2) items commonly bought as a second purchase within 30 days of the first, and (3) patterns in high-value or high-frequency product pairings. Provide insights on the most promising bundles and why they might work well together."
Just make sure you’re keeping customer data anonymous — and always double-check the insights with your team.
Related: Ecommerce product categorization: How to organize your products
AI for support
AI isn’t just here to deflect tickets. From quality assurance to proactive outreach, AI can elevate the entire support experience — on both sides of the conversation.
Quality checks powered by AI
Manual QA is slow, selective, and often feels like it’s chasing the wrong tickets.
That’s where Auto QA comes in. Instead of reviewing just a handful of conversations each week, Auto QA evaluates 100% of private messages, whether they’re handled by a human or an AI agent.
Every message is scored on key metrics like:
- Resolution completeness
- Brand voice
- Empathy and tone
- Accuracy
It gives support leaders a full picture of how their team is performing, so they can coach with clarity, not just gut feeling.
Here’s what brands can do with automated QA:
- Save time by focusing only on the conversations that need attention
- Ensure consistency across agents and AI with a single scoring standard
- Improve agent performance with targeted coaching and feedback
- Deliver higher-quality support that customers actually notice
Let’s walk through a real example.
Customer: “Hi, my device broke, and I bought it less than a month ago.”
Agent: “Hi Kelly, please send us a photo or a video so we can determine the issue with your device.”
Auto QA flags this interaction with:
- Communication Score: 3/5 — The agent was clear, but could have shown more empathy in tone.
- Resolution Score: Complete — The issue was addressed effectively.
Proactive support that reaches out first
Reactive support is table stakes. AI takes it a step further by anticipating issues before they happen — and proactively helping customers.
Let’s say login errors spike after a product update. AI detects the surge and automatically triggers an email to affected customers with a simple fix. No need for them to dig through help docs or wait on chat — support meets them right where they are.
Proactive AI can also be used for:
- Order delay notifications with live tracking updates
- Subscription renewal reminders
- Back-in-stock alerts with support follow-up for next steps
This saves the time of your agents because the AI will spot problems before they turn into tickets.
Understanding sentiment at scale
Your customers are telling you what they think. AI just helps you hear it more clearly.
By analyzing reviews, support tickets, post-purchase surveys, and social comments, AI can spot sentiment trends that might otherwise fly under the radar.
For example:
- Multiple reviews mention “runs small”? AI flags it, so your team can update the product description or add a sizing chart.
- A sudden rise in “frustrated” language in support tickets? Time to check if something’s off with your shipping or product quality.
Related: 12 ways to upgrade your data and trend analysis with Ticket Fields
Personalization at scale starts with the right AI stack
Whether you’re enriching customer data, making smarter product recommendations, triggering dynamic pricing, or proactively resolving support issues, AI gives your team the power to scale personalization without sacrificing quality.
With Gorgias, you can bring many of these use cases to life — from AI-powered chat that drives conversions to automated support that still feels human.
And with our app store, you can tap into additional AI tools for data enrichment, direct mail, bundling insights, and more.
Personalized ecommerce doesn’t have to mean more work. With the right AI tools in your corner, it means smarter work — and better results.
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Should Brands Disclose AI in Customer Interactions? A Guide for CX Leaders
TL;DR:
AI is everywhere in customer service—powering live chats, drafting responses, and handling inquiries faster than ever.
But as AI takes on more of the customer experience, one question keeps coming up: Should brands tell customers when they’re talking to AI?
Legally, the answer depends on where you operate. Ethically? That’s where things get interesting. Some argue that transparency builds trust. Others worry it might undermine confidence in support interactions.
So, what’s the right move?
This guide breaks down the debate and gives CX leaders a framework to decide when (and how) to disclose AI—so you can strike the right balance between innovation and trust.
The legal landscape: What are the disclosure requirements?
Depending on where your business operates, disclosure laws may be strict, vague, or nonexistent. Some laws, such as the California Bolstering Online Transparency Act, prohibit misleading consumers about the use of automated artificial identities.
For maximum legal protection, it’s best to proactively disclose AI use—even when not explicitly required.
A simple disclaimer can go a long way in avoiding legal headaches down the line. Here’s how to disclose AI use in customer interactions:
- In email: Use your email signature to indicate that AI has assisted in generating the response.
- In chat: Update your Privacy Policy to clarify when AI is involved in customer interactions.
Truthfully, AI laws are evolving fast. That’s why we recommend consulting legal counsel to ensure your disclosure practices align with the latest requirements in your region.
But beyond avoiding legal trouble, transparency around AI usage can reinforce customer trust. If customers feel deceived, they may question the reliability of your brand, even if the AI delivers great service.
Related reading: How AI Agent works & gathers data
How does disclosure impact trust and satisfaction?
Research shows that 85% of consumers want companies to share AI assurance practices before bringing AI-driven products and experiences to market.
But what does “transparency” actually mean in this context? An article in Forbes broke it down, explaining that customers expect three key things:
- Clear disclosure: They want to know when AI is (and isn’t) used in customer interactions.
- Simple, non-technical language: AI disclosures shouldn’t feel like reading a terms-of-service agreement. Keep it digestible.
- Easy-to-find information: AI disclosures should be visible—not buried in fine print. A chatbot notification, a banner on your site, or a brief message before an AI-powered chat begins can make a big difference.
How you disclose AI matters just as much as whether you disclose it. At the end of the day, AI isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s all about how it’s implemented and trained.
The business perspective: Risks and benefits of AI transparency
The way a brand approaches AI disclosure can impact trust, satisfaction, and even conversion rates—making it a decision that goes beyond simple legal requirements.
While some customers appreciate honesty, others may hesitate if they prefer human support. Brands must weigh the pros and cons to determine the best approach for their audience.
Risks of disclosure
Let’s be honest: AI in customer service still carries baggage. While some consumers embrace AI-driven support, others hear "AI" and immediately picture frustrating, robotic chatbots that can’t understand their questions.
This is one of the biggest risks of transparency: customers who’ve had bad AI experiences in the past may assume the worst and disengage the moment they realize they’re not speaking to a human.
For brands that thrive on personal connection and high-touch service, openly stating that AI is involved could create skepticism or drop-off rates before customers even give it a chance.
Another challenge? The perception gap.
Even if AI is handling inquiries smoothly, some customers may assume it lacks the empathy, nuance, or problem-solving skills of a live agent. Certain industries may find that transparency about AI use leads to more escalations, not fewer, simply because customers expect a human touch.
Benefits of disclosure
Despite the risks, transparency about AI can actually be a trust-building strategy when handled correctly.
Customers who value openness and ethical business practices tend to appreciate brands that don’t try to disguise AI as a human.
Being upfront also manages expectations. If a customer knows they’re speaking to AI, they’re less likely to feel misled or frustrated if they encounter a limitation. Instead of feeling like they were "tricked" into thinking they were talking to a human, they enter the conversation with the right mindset—often leading to higher satisfaction rates.
And then there’s the long-term brand impact.
If customers eventually realize (through phrasing, tone, or inconsistencies) that they weren’t speaking with a human when they thought they were, it can erode trust.
Deception—whether intentional or not—can backfire. Proactively disclosing AI use prevents backlash and reinforces credibility, especially as AI becomes a bigger part of the customer experience.
Example: How Arcade Belts used AI transparency without losing the human touch
Arcade Belts, known for its high-quality belts, wanted to improve efficiency without compromising customer experience. By implementing Gorgias Automate, they reduced their reliance on manual support, creating self-service flows to handle common inquiries.
Initially, automation helped manage routine questions, such as product recommendations and shipping policies. But when they integrated AI Agent, they cut their ticket volume in half.
The transition was so seamless that customers often couldn’t tell they were interacting with AI. “Getting tickets down to just a handful a day has been awesome,” shares Grant, Ecommerce Coordinator at Arcade Belts. ”A lot of times, I'll receive the response, ‘Wow, I didn't know that was AI.”
You can read more about how they’re using AI Agent here.
Decision-making framework: Should you disclose AI?
We mentioned it earlier, but deciding whether or not to disclose your use of AI in customer support depends on compliance, customer expectations, and business goals. That said, this four-part framework helps CX leaders evaluate the right approach for their brand:
Step 1: Assess legal requirements
Before making any decisions, ensure your brand is compliant with AI transparency regulations.
- Research regional laws governing AI disclosure, as requirements vary by jurisdiction.
- Consult legal counsel to confirm whether your AI usage falls under any mandated disclosure policies.
- Stay informed on evolving AI governance frameworks that could introduce new compliance obligations.
Step 2: Review customer expectations and brand positioning
AI transparency should align with your brand’s values and customer experience strategy.
- Consider whether transparency supports your brand’s messaging—does your audience expect openness, or do they prioritize seamless interactions?
- Analyze customer sentiment through surveys and engagement data to determine if they prefer knowing when they’re speaking with AI.
- Review past AI interactions to identify patterns in customer reactions and adjust your approach accordingly.
Step 3: Test both approaches and measure the impact on CSAT
Rather than making assumptions, run controlled tests to see how AI disclosure affects customer satisfaction.
- Conduct A/B tests comparing interactions with and without AI disclosure.
- Track key support metrics like response time, CSAT scores, and AI resolution rates to measure effectiveness.
- Experiment with different positioning strategies—does framing AI as a helpful assistant improve customer perception?
Step 4: Adjust based on customer feedback and industry trends
AI strategies shouldn’t be static. As customer preferences and AI capabilities evolve, brands should refine their approach accordingly.
- Regularly collect customer feedback to understand how AI disclosure impacts their experience.
- Monitor industry trends to see how competitors and market leaders are handling AI transparency.
- Stay flexible—if sentiment shifts, be ready to adjust your disclosure strategy to maintain trust and efficiency.
Best practices for AI disclosure (if you choose to disclose)
If you decide to be transparent about AI in customer interactions, how you communicate it is just as important as the disclosure itself. Let’s talk about how to get it right and make AI work with your customer experience, not against it.
First, make AI part of your brand voice
AI doesn’t have to sound like a corporate FAQ page. Giving it a personality that aligns with your brand makes interactions feel natural and engaging. Whether it’s playful, professional, or ultra-efficient, the way AI speaks should feel like a natural extension of your team, not an out-of-place add-on.
Instead of:
"I am an automated assistant. How may I assist you?"
Try something on-brand:
"Hey there! I’m your AI assistant, here to help—ask me anything!"
A small tweak in tone can make AI feel more human while still keeping transparency front and center.
Read more: AI tone of voice: Tips for on-brand customer communication
Clarify the AI’s role
One of the biggest mistakes brands make? Leaving customers guessing whether they’re speaking to AI or a human. That uncertainty leads to frustration and distrust.
Instead, be clear about what AI can and can’t do. If it’s handling routine questions, product recommendations, or order tracking, say so. If complex issues will be escalated to a human agent, let customers know upfront.
Framing matters. Instead of making AI sound like a replacement, position it as a helpful extension of your support team—one that speeds up resolutions, but hands off conversations when needed.
Blend human and AI seamlessly
Even the best AI has limits—and customers know it. Nothing is more frustrating than a bot endlessly looping through scripted responses when a customer just needs a real person to step in.
AI should be the first line of defense, but human agents should always be an option, especially for high-stakes or emotionally charged interactions.
A smooth handoff can sound like:
"Looks like this one needs a human touch! Connecting you with a support expert now."
Frame AI messaging positively
AI disclosure doesn’t have to feel like an apology. Instead of focusing on limitations, highlight the benefits AI brings to the experience:
- Faster responses
- 24/7 availability
- Instant answers to common questions
It’s the difference between:
"This is an AI agent. A human will follow up later."
vs.
"I’m your AI assistant! I can answer most questions instantly—but if you need extra help, I’ll connect you with a team member ASAP."
The right framing makes AI feel like an advantage, not a compromise.
Monitor customer feedback and adjust messaging
AI perception isn’t static. Regularly analyzing sentiment data and customer feedback can help refine AI messaging over time—whether that means adjusting tone, improving explanations, or updating how AI is introduced.
When you follow these best practices, AI can be a real gamechanger for your customer support. Just take it from Jonas Paul…
When AI is done right: Jonas Paul’s success story
Jonas Paul Eyewear, a direct-to-consumer brand specializing in kids' eyewear, needed a way to manage high volumes of tickets during the back-to-school season without overwhelming their customer care team.
To streamline these conversations, Jonas Paul implemented AI Agent to provide instant responses to FAQs. This allowed human agents to focus on more complex cases that required personalized attention.
“Being able to automate responses for things like prescription details and return policies has allowed us to focus more on the nuanced questions that require more time and care. It’s been a game changer for our team,” said Lynsay Schrader, Lab and Customer Service Senior Manager and Jonas Paul.
Jonas Paul saw a 96% decrease in First Response Time and a 2x ROI on Gorgias’s AI Agent with influenced revenue. You can dive in more here.
Make AI transparency work for you with AI Agent
Whether or not your brand chooses to disclose AI in customer interactions, the key is to ensure AI enhances the customer experience without compromising transparency, accuracy, or brand identity.
So how can you get started? Gorgias AI Agent was built with both effectiveness and transparency in mind.
For every interaction, AI Agent provides an internal note detailing:
- The Guidance, Articles, or Macros it referenced
- The source of any account information it used
- A prompt for your feedback to continually refine and improve responses
Excited to see how AI Agent can transform your brand? Book a demo.
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Further reading
14 Best Shopify Live Chat Apps in 2023 (Pros, Cons, and Screenshots)
Live chat is changing the game in the customer support and service world. From improving customer experience, to driving sales, to growing retention, live chat has arrived as a new, useful way to engage and support customers.
Take a look at these live chat statistics:
- Live chat can bring a significant improvement in marketing awareness (+29%), early-stage sales development (+32%), and post-sales customer support (+39%)
- Website visitors that engage with a business via live chat are worth 4.5 times more than visitors that don’t.
- Average order value increases by 10% when reviewing the sales from customers who engaged in a live chat before making a purchase than those that didn’t.
So, your However, finding the best Shopify live chat app can become a nightmare when you have so many choices — 405 options, to be exact.
That’s why, as ecommerce helpdesk experts, we want to share a list of the best 14 live chat software for Shopify to help you find the app that works for your business. You’ll learn their main features, pros, cons, Shopify reviews, and pricing options — all in this post.
(Don't use Shopify? Check out our general list of live chat apps overall or the best live chat apps for ecommerce.)
The 14 best Shopify live chat apps
- Gorgias
- Zendesk
- Pure chat
- Takw.to
- PingMe (Facebook Messenger live chat)
- Chatra
- Reamaze
- Tidio
- LiveChat
- JivoChat
- Shopify Inbox
- Facebook Chat Box by Autoketing
- Formilla
- eDesk
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What the live chat apps on this list offer your business
We've already looked at several statistics showcasing the benefits of live chat for ecommerce stores. However, choosing the right live chat solutions can provide your business with features that extend beyond the base benefits of live chat customer support.
With the live chat solutions that were useful enough to make our list, you can look forward to beneficial features such as:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools
Live chat solutions that are powered via AI and machine learning technology allow you to automatically detect the sentiments of customers contacting you via live chat. From there, the customer is directed to the appropriate customer service channel.
For example, say that a customer contacts you regarding an order they want to cancel. In this instance, live chat solutions that feature customer intent detection will automatically trigger the cancellation and message the customer.
This process helps streamline your customer support process to both boost customer satisfaction and improve the efficiency of your support team.
Low-code or no-code setup
All of the live chat apps on our list are either low-code or no-code platforms. This means that these apps can be installed, customized, and used without any need for coding expertise or outside help from a software development service.
However, still look for some customizable features in your live chat. Your live chat tool will display on your website, so you don’t want it to clash with your colors and fonts.
Integrations with all of your other Shopify and customer service tools
Powerful integrations are essential for any Shopify app, and live chat apps are no exception. Most live chat apps will be a feature of the larger customer service platform you end up choosing. Choosing a live chat app and helpdesk that are able to integrate with all of your other Shopify and customer service tools can provide a range of benefits.
A live chat app that integrates with your email marketing tools, for instance, means that you can easily transition customer conversations from live chat to email. Integrating live chat with social media tools enables customers to contact live chat representatives via the social messaging apps that they are already most familiar with. These are just a couple of examples of how choosing live chat apps that will integrate with the other tools you happen to utilize can provide your ecommerce store with powerful capabilities.
Analytics capabilities
There are plenty of ways that you can leverage customer data to improve your company's customer service quality, but only if you are able to collect quality data and organize it in a way that makes it easy to analyze for insights.
Thankfully, all of the live chat solutions on this list feature analytics capabilities that make it simple to gather and analyze data regarding common customer issues, the performance of your customer service team, and beyond.
Automation features
Features designed to automate time-consuming customer service tasks such as creating and prioritizing customer support tickets can go a long way toward freeing up time for your customer service team. Some of the live chat solutions on our list are also able to provide canned responses to common customer questions, lowering your support team's ticket volume and further reducing their workload.
However, be careful of installing an unhelpful chatbot. Watch the following video to understand why we prefer self-service features in the chat widget over chatbots alone:
1) Gorgias Live Chat: 4.4 ⭐ (541 reviews)
Gorgias is the best help desk ticketing system for eCommerce merchants. It provides you with all the features you need to create an incredible customer support experience, improve team performance, and increase sales.
One of Gorgias’ most noticeable features is its tight integration with eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. Hence, Gorgias can pull relevant data like order tracking numbers, last order details, loyalty points, etc., from your Shopify dashboard and put it right in front of you.
Another exciting feature of Gorgias live chat is chat campaigns, which allow you to prompt chat messages on specific pages of your website. This way, you can quickly start conversations and guide specific visitors through the checkout process.
If you’re running a Shopify store, you can be sure Gorgias will integrate well with your website. It’s quick to install, easy to use, and affordable for eCommerce business owners.
Pricing: Basic plans start at $10/mo. A 7-day free trial is available.
Main features:
- Support omni channel communication, i.e., email, live chat, phone, and social media
- See full live chat and message history with a specific customer across different channels in one view
- Support for multiple stores
- Chat in real-time with customers currently on your store
- Respond in one click using pre-made templates
- See which pages customers are on and their purchase history
- Trigger live chat and popup form on important pages like checkout page
- Perform actions like rewarding loyalty points without leaving the chat
- Set up automated responses and bot for common tickets like “Where’s my order?”
Pros:
- Clean and intuitive user interface
- Offer affordable pricing plans
- Deep integration with Shopify and Shopify Plus
- Support many powerful live chat features
- Fantastic customer support team
Cons:
- No free plan
Who is this for?
As an all-in-one customer service solution for Shopify store owners, Gorgias is an excellent option for anyone who is looking for a comprehensive ecommerce customer service solution. Gorgias’ features include fast-loading live chat widgets in addition to a number of other powerful customer service features.
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2) Zendesk Chat: 3.6 ⭐ (151 reviews)
Developed by Zendesk, Zendesk Chat is a live chat app for Shopify stores. It allows you to communicate with customers over your Shopify storefront, mobile apps, and popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Twitter, and Line.
If you’re a Zendesk customer using the Team plan or above, you can use Zendesk Chat for free.
Pricing: Starting from $49 per agent per month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- Send targeted and behavior-based messages to customers
- Use pre-chat and offline forms to collect customer information
- Support chat ratings to gather customer feedback
- Share files like screenshots, product guides, or GIF images with customers
Pros:
- It’s a good choice if you're using Zendesk Support Suite
- Support all essential features of a typical live chat app
Cons:
- Non-user-friendly interface and steep learning curve for beginners
- Expensive pricing plans for Shopify store owners
- Bad customer support team
- A lot of technical errors when installing and using the app
- Not suitable for eCommerce businesses
Who is this for?
As an expensive and often difficult-to-use solution, Zendesk Chat is really best suited for those who are already familiar with Zendesk Support Suite. Nevertheless, Zendesk Chat does provide a lot of impressive features for those who can stomach its price tag and learning curve.
📚Related reading: Our rundown of Zendesk’s features, plus pros and cons.
3) Pure Chat: No official Shopify app store listing
Another top live chat app for Shopify in this list is Pure Chat. This app focuses solely on live chat, which means that if you want to manage customer requests across channels, from live chat to email and social media, you’ll have to switch to another app like Gorgias.
Pure Chat currently supports two plans: Growth and Pro. The Pro plan offers you unlimited websites, 10 agents, up to 1,000 SMS notifications, and Pure Chat branding removal. You can’t install Pure Chat from the Shopify app store, but you can install it from Pure Chat’s website.
Pricing: Starting from $49 per month. A 30-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- Unlimited chats
- Advanced widget customization
- Security roles like admin, power users, and operators
- Canned responses
- Chat notifications
- File transfer
- Real-time analytics
Pros:
- All features are the same in both Growth and Pro plans
- Extensive integrations
- Allows you to customize the look and feel of the chat widget
Cons:
- Technical errors occur when installing the app
Who is this for?
Pure Chat focuses only on live chat directly from your ecommerce website. This makes it an optimal choice for ecommerce store owners who aren't interested in offering live chat support via any other messaging platforms.
4) Takw.to Live Chat: 4.4 ⭐ (229 reviews)
Tawk.to Live Chat is an agent-centric chat application for Shopify stores. The best thing about this app is it’s 100% free — there’s no limit to the number of agents, chat volumes, or sites you can add widgets to.
Pricing: Free.
Key features:
- Video and voice
- Agent messaging, screen sharing
- Desktop notifications
- 1880+ emoji
- JavaScript API
- Unlimited history
- Fire transfer
- Report and analytics
Pros:
- Support 27 languages
- Easy to set up, free forever, and secure
- Available on web browser, desktop, macOS, iOS, and Android
Cons:
- Too many features cause the app not to be user-friendly
- Need to pay a small fee to remove the “Powered by Tawk.to” branding
- The customer support team isn’t always responsive
Who is this for?
For an app that is completely free to install and use, Tawk.to Live Chat is a highly effective live chat solution. This makes it an ideal option for store owners who want to try out the benefits of live chat before they make an investment in a more capable live chat app.
5) PingMe Facebook Messenger Live Chat: 4.9 ⭐ (427 reviews)
If you currently support your customers through Facebook Messenger, you may want to install PingMe Live Chat for your store. This app allows you to connect your Shopify store with your Facebook page, and then a Facebook Messenger icon will appear on your website.
Pricing: $9.99 per month. A free plan is available.
Key features:
- Add a live chat button to your website to chat directly with customers
- Schedule the working time to enable or disable live chat
- Save the history of conversations with customers.
- See a full overview of interactions on one page
- Leave an offline message to get back later when your customer supports are unavailable
- Connect to your Facebook page and live chat through Facebook messages
Pros:
- Simple and easy to use
- The pricing plan is affordable for eCommerce merchants
Cons:
- The chat function sometimes doesn’t work
- Errors happen when trying to connect the app with Facebook page
- Not an ideal choice if you need a professional live chat app
Who is this for?
Thanks to its powerful plugin with Facebook and Facebook Messenger, PingMe Live Chat is an ideal choice for anyone who wants to start leveraging Facebook as a customer support channel.
6) Chatra Live Chat: 4.8 ⭐ (638 reviews)
Chatra Live Chat claims to help you “sell more, answer questions, and alleviate concerns to help visitors place an order.” It also allows you to see a shopper's cart contents in real-time to identify the most valuable customers and provide tailored assistance.
Pricing: Starting from $17 per month. A free plan is available.
Key features:
- Contact customers stuck on the checkout
- See who’s on your website, where they’re from, and what they have in their cart
- Answer chat messages sent by Facebook users to your store’s page directly from the app
- Create group chats with other agents
- Save previous conversation history
- Correct answers after sending the chat message
Pros:
- Support a free forever plan
- Provide useful live chat features like typos correction and group chats
Cons:
- Most advanced features aren’t available in the free plan
- Lack of customization options
Who is this for?
If you would like to leverage live chat specifically for contacting customers pre-purchase in order to boost conversions, then Chatra Live Chat is an option to consider.
7) Reamaze Live Chat: 4.7 ⭐ (212 reviews)
Reamaze is a helpdesk, live chat, ticketing, chatbot, and FAQ for small, medium, and enterprise businesses. It allows you to handle support tickets across channels, including emails, live chat, Facebook pages, Messenger, Twitter, Instagram, SMS, VOIP, and WhatsApp.
Reamaze Live Chat aims to help you support customers faster by chatting with them in real-time. It offers many features that are similar to Gorgias’ and other live chat apps.
Pricing: Starting from $29 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- Support multiple stores
- Send products to customers in chat
- Support rules and automation to streamline workflow
- Allow to build chatbots to help, guide, and sell to customers
- Offer Live Chat and Bots to automatically engage specific types of customers
Pros:
- Flexible pricing, no contract
Cons:
- The user interface is a bit outdated and not user-friendly
- Macros and rules need improvement
Who is this for?
Re:maze Live Chat is a well-rounded live chat solution that offers just about everything you might need to start offering live chat support across a variety of channels. This makes it an excellent app for ecommerce stores of all sizes.
8) Tidio Live Chat: 4.8 ⭐ (1,549 reviews)
With approximately 1,014 reviews, Tidio Live Chat is currently the highest-rated live chat app on the Shopify App Store. Tidio merges live chat, bots, and marketing automation to provide you with a comprehensive live chat app.
Pricing: Starting from $39 a month. A free plan is available.
Key features:
- Support customers 24/7 with chatbots
- Reduce cart abandonment rate with the Abandoned Cart Bot works
- Free to design the live chat widget the way you want
- Customize the live chat to match with your brand
- Monitor results and automate chats with AI
Pros:
- Clean and modern user interface
- Many automation and bot templates
- Multiple languages supported
- Rich widget customization options
Cons:
- Not tight integration with Shopify and other ecommerce platforms
- Pricing plans are a bit high for Shopify merchants
Who is this for?
Tidio Live Chat is a top choice for ecommerce store owners who are looking for a live chat solution that offers plenty of automations for both customer support and marketing.
9) LiveChat: 5.0 ⭐ (98 reviews)
LiveChat is a messaging app that offers many unique features for its live chat service. It can integrate with most customer relationship management (CRM) like Zendesk and website platforms like Shopify.
Pricing: Starting from $16 per month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- See a real-time view of a customer’s cart
- Send product recommendations known as Product Cards right in the live chat widget
- Get more detailed customer information with Customer Insight
- Support more than 170 integrations
- Provide in-depth analytics, multi-channel capabilities, and data security
Pros:
- Chat window loads fast and is easy to use
- Clean and well-designed user interface
Cons:
- Not optimized for Shopify since LiveChat is also a CRM
Who is this for?
As a CRM platform first and foremost, LiveChat is an excellent choice for ecommerce store owners looking for an app that offers CRM solutions in addition to live chat capabilities.
10) JivoChat Live Chat: 4.4 ⭐ (105 reviews)
JivoChat is an all-in-one business messenger that teams use to talk to customers everywhere: live chat, phone, email, and social. The app also includes a built-in CRM allowing you to follow up and convert leads into actual sales.
Pricing: Free or starting from $8 per agent per month. A 14-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- Track visitors and chat with them in real-time
- See the message that visitors are typing before they hit send
- Support canned responses
- Transfer and invite agents to join the open chats with customers
Pros:
- A forever free basic plan is supported
- Prices are affordable for Shopify merchants
Cons:
- Doesn’t support rules and automation
- Not integrated deeply with Shopify
Who is this for?
If you are looking for an app that will make it easy to connect with customers via live chat, phone, email, or social then JivoChat Live Chat is worth considering. However, this app's lack of automation features means that it isn’t as effective in regards to streamlining your customer support as apps such as Gorgias.
11) Shopify Inbox: 4.5 ⭐ (1,499 reviews)
Shopify Inbox is Shopify’s native live chat function that allows you to have real-time conversations with customers visiting your Shopify store. It’s an extension to the messaging capabilities already available within Shopify Ping.
Note that all your chats are managed in Shopify Ping. Shopify also asks your customers to provide a phone number or email address in order to start a chat with you. Their information will be added to your Customer list in Shopify or matched to an existing customer.
Pricing: Free
Key features:
- Add and customize a chat button on your online store
- Respond to customers in real-time while they’re at your store
- Recommend products and share promotional offers in chat
- Capture customer’s contact information
- Track Shopify sales using your sales channel overview and Analytics pages
Pros:
- Clean and intuitive interface
- Free forever
Cons:
- A bit complicated for beginners to install the app
- To use Shopify Chat, you must use Shopify Ping on your desktop (shopifyping.com) or install it on an iOS, iPad, or Android device to receive and respond to messages.
Who is this for?
Shopify Chat is a worthy option for Shopify store owners who are searching for a free live chat solution that integrates deeply with Shopify.
Using Shopify Inbox? Learn why Gorgias is a top Shopify Inbox competitor.
12) Facebook Chat Box by Autoketing: 4.6 ⭐(489 reviews)
Apart from PingMe Live Chat, you can use Facebook Chat Box by Autoketing to connect with customers through Facebook Messenger.
Pricing: Free.
Key features:
- Send messages to your Facebook page through Messenger
- Show a popup with a discount code to encourage customers to join your email list
- Send a friendly reminder message to abandoned customers
- Show detailed notifications about the order status
- Create automated marketing campaigns through Messenger
Pros:
- Free forever
- Simple and easy to use
Cons:
- Can’t control when the chat box pops up
- Lack of customization options, rules, and automation
Who is this for?
Anyone looking for a free and easy-to-use solution for leveraging Facebook Messenger as a customer support and marketing avenue would do well to consider Facebook Chat Box by Autoketing.
13) Formilla Live Chat: 5.0 ⭐ (40 reviews)
Formilla Live Chat offers free live chat and premium services for your Shopify store. You can use this app to chat with your visitors live if they have any questions or need support from your store.
Pricing: Starting from $17.49 per month. A 15-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- See the number of active visitors on your website and start live chats with them. View each visitor’s page URL, referring site, new users vs. returning, and more.
- Support a Helper Bot to automatically respond to common questions at any time
- Customize the text of the live chat buttons, chat forms, and offline email forms
- Enable proactive chat to trigger live chat automatically with a visitor after a defined number of seconds
- Support file sharing, email messaging, desktop notifications, custom banners, and other style options
Pros:
- Easy and simple to use
- Fast connect with customers
Cons:
- Many features are available at higher plans
- Lack of rules and automation
Who is this for?
Formilla Live Chat is a solid solution for store owners who want to connect with customers while they are browsing the store. A lack of rules and automation features, though, means that this live chat app isn't quite as capable as some of the other options on our list.
14) eDesk Live Chat: 4.8 ⭐ (30 reviews)
eDesk is a comprehensive customer helpdesk designed for ecommerce. It helps you create a positive experience for customers across your marketing channels: email, live chat, social media, and online store.
Pricing: Starting from $69 per month per agent. A 14-day free trial is available.
Key features:
- Respond faster with snippets and templates
- Built-in autoresponder
- Instantly respond with live chat
Pros:
- Good customer service team
- Clean and intuitive user interface
Cons:
- Pricing plans are steep for Shopify merchants
- Not optimized for ecommerce
- Lack of essential live chat features
Who is this for?
If you would like to offer live chat support across multiple channels from a single platform, eDesk Live Chat is an excellent app to consider.
Benefits of a live chat app for Shopify
Choosing a powerful live chat app for your Shopify store is something that can offer a variety of different benefits. Here are some of the most significant benefits of incorporating a live chat app into your Shopify store:
Increases conversions and customer retention
Live chat apps allow you to contact customers while they are still shopping for products. This allows you to answer any questions or objections that might be preventing customers from making a purchase, provide product recommendations, upsell customers, and walk customers through the checkout process — all of which can help you improve your store's conversion rate.
By enabling you to resolve customer issues in a way that is as swift and convenient as possible, live chat can help you to boost your customer retention rates as well.
📚Recommended reading: Our guides to conversion rates and retention rates.
Reduces back and forth and customer frustration
Live chat customer support can reduce customer frustration by eliminating the need for extended, back and forth conversations via email. This lets your support team resolve issues in one session rather than dragging them out into email threads that take several days to resolve.
Cut the response and handle times
According to data from SuperOffice, 46% of customers expect companies to respond to customer service inquiries in four hours or less, while 12% of customers expect a response in fifteen minutes or less.
By enabling customers to instantly connect with a customer support agent and eliminating the need for extended back and forth conversations, live chat customer support can reduce both your average initial response time and average resolution time. This helps you meet customer expectations regarding customer service that are growing more demanding by the day.
📚Recommended reading: Our guides to response times and resolution times.
Personalizes and humanizes the customer experience
Communicating with a customer support agent in real-time via live chat personalizes the customer support experience much more than communicating with customers via email. Logically, customers are aware that they are communicating with another human being in both cases. The real-time conversations that live chat apps allow feel much more personal than email conversations, making customers more likely to walk away satisfied with the support that you provide.
Which Shopify app do you choose?
In an ideal world, there would be a Shopify live chat app that works for all stores.
But on the planet Earth, there’s no one-size-fits-all app for live chat software. As one of the most important customer service tools, it’s worth spending some time on before making a decision.
Our advice for you is to try a couple of apps above and check if they offer what you need. Your chosen live chat app should be the one that helps you increase customer satisfaction, make your team members’ job easier, and boost your bottom line.
In case you want a customer support tool solely focused on ecommerce, we recommend you give Gorgias a try. This is the ultimate solution that can bring your customer experience to a whole new level.
Why Proactive Customer Service is Essential for Growing Your Business
When you think of customer service, you likely imagine a team of agents responding to incoming customer complaints and questions. This type of customer support, called reactive customer service, is an important way to help customers, but it’s only one dimension of a larger customer service experience.
You can upgrade your customer service with a proactive customer service strategy that includes:
- Creating self-service resources like FAQ pages or help centers
- Live chatting with potential customers on your website to provide real-time help
- Offering tutorials, discount codes, and recommendations to help customers make a more confident purchase
With proactive customer service, you can set customer expectations, create more opportunities for positive customer interactions, and increase your brand’s conversion rate. All without requiring your shoppers to put forth the effort of reaching out to you.
Below, we’ll share a few strategies for proactive customer service that will support a happier customer base and, in turn, long-term sales.
What is proactive customer service?
Proactive customer service means that you make the first move, proactively providing customers with support resources, rather than waiting on them to contact your brand first. Proactive customer support can be provided directly via an agent messaging customers, or indirectly via self-service resources such as an FAQ page or knowledge base. Examples of proactive customer service include:
- Contacting a customer pre-purchase via a live chat widget to walk them through the purchase process (and boost sales)
- Providing automated product recommendation pop-ups that are triggered based on specific customer actions
- Offering customers a knowledge base where they can find answers to common questions
- Responding to social media posts that mention your brand.
What is reactive customer service?
Reactive customer service is the type of customer service that most people are much more familiar with. Despite the growing popularity of a proactive customer service approach, reactive customer service remains a vital form of customer support as well.
As the name suggests, reactive customer service involves reacting to customer issues when they are brought to your attention by the customer. Examples of reactive customer service include:
- Answering phone calls on your brand's customer support line
- Responding to SMS and email messages
- Engaging with customers via live chat support when the customer was the one to open up the live chat window
While examples of reactive customer service can be found in virtually any customer-facing business, Zappos executes especially effective reactive customer service. Part of their strategy is sending a personalized response to every single email that they receive. This level of personalization ensures that the customer feels seen and acknowledged, lending itself to more positive customer experiences.
Why more online stores are turning to proactive customer service
There are two main categories that customer service can fall into: reactive customer service and proactive customer service. If you would like to create a customer service strategy that is as efficient and effective as possible, it's important to balance both of these approaches.
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The numerous benefits of proactive customer service have led more and more online stores to adopt a more proactive approach to meeting customers' needs. According to data from MyCustomer, 73% of customers who are contacted proactively report a positive experience that changes their perception of the brand for the better.
Here are three additional benefits of proactive customer support:
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It gives you more opportunities to drive sales
Proactive customer service can be the difference between an abandoned cart and a placed order. Why? Customers need information — such as sizing guides, product details, and refund policies — before placing an order. However, a customer might opt to shop elsewhere before reaching out to customer service.
You can keep customers on your site by reaching out proactively via live chat to ask if they need any help in those key moments. With Gorgias live chat campaigns, you can even automate this process and trigger a live chat that offers support (or even a discount code) when customers reach certain cart values, linger on a purchase page, return to your site multiple times before making a purchase, or a number of other situations.
The result? Better customer support, higher conversion rates, and more opportunities to drive upsells.
It reduces tickets and shrinks your customer support team's workload
Adopting proactive customer service means that you will be able to resolve common issues without the need for customers to contact your customer service team. In many cases, providing proactive customer service does not require the assistance of a customer support agent at all. Self-service resources, for example, allow customers to find the answers to common questions on their own.
Self-service chatbots alone are estimated to save companies across the globe a projected total of $11 billion by 2023, according to data from Kindly. Not only can reducing the size of their customer support staff help save your company money, but shrinking your support team's workload via proactive customer support solutions can also provide your team with more time to focus on high-priority customer conversations. This can help you further increase customer satisfaction as your team can focus its efforts where they are needed the most.
Take a look at Rio de Janeiro’s help center, powered by Gorgias. Customers have access to a number of support articles about the product, the company’s shipping and returns policies, and more. Plus, they can even track and manage their orders without ever having to contact an agent.
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It improves customer experience and can boost customer loyalty
The entire goal of proactive customer support is to provide value to customers without waiting for them to make the first move. This isn’t always easy: you have to study the customer journey, from first exposure to repeat customer, in order to anticipate and proactively address customer issues and pain points.
Providing proactive customer support lets a customer know that your company truly cares about their needs. Today, offering great products alone isn't enough to ensure high customer retention rates. Customers choose, share, and stick with companies that offer a customer-centric experience in addition to excellent products and services — it’s the secret to Amazon’s success.
Want to learn more about live chat for proactive customer service? Check out these resources:
- The best live chat apps (general)
- The best live chat apps for ecommerce
- The best live chat apps for Shopify stores
- 22 live chat statistics
- How to add a live chat to your Shopify store
5 ways to implement proactive customer service and drive revenue
The benefits of proactive customer service are undeniable, but implementing an effective proactive customer support strategy requires a carefully developed plan. If you would like to start leveraging a proactive approach to customer support to create more happy customers, here are five strategies to consider.
1) Proactively chat shoppers with best-selling items in their cart to reduce cart abandonment
One of the most effective forms of proactive customer support is to reach out to customers while they’re shopping. It’s like a sales associate asking in a physical store asking a shopper whether they need anything — but easier to ignore if they’re happy shopping solo.
With the right helpdesk, you can automatically reach out to customers with best-selling items in their cart offering to answer questions, recommend accessories, or provide a discount code to incentivize a purchase. Customers may respond by asking for your opinion about sizing or other product details, or just feel delighted to save a few extra dollars. This kind of proactive conversation, which we call a chat campaign, can reduce cart abandonment or even lead to upsells.
Here’s an example of a customer adding a best-selling product to their cart:
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Customers with best-selling items in their cart are only one segment you can target. With chat campaigns, you can automatically start a chat with customers who:
- Add a certain amount of merchandise to their
- Linger on a product, help, or checkout page
- Visit your website multiple times without making a purchase
If you want an inside peek at how to set up chat campaigns in Gorgias, check out our help doc on the subject. Alternatively, book a demo (and ask about chat campaigns.)
By the way, this tip is part of our CX Growth Playbook, which offers 18 tactics to boost ecommerce revenue by 44% through exceptional customer service.
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2) Proactively welcome new followers on social media with a DM
Most brands already use social media for customer service. But in addition to managing incoming DMs and comments on your various social media accounts, you can nurture customer relationships by sending a welcome DM to new followers on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media platform.
You can say hello, thank them for the follow, direct them to some helpful new-shopper information, or even offer a unique code for their first purchase. Also, let them know they can chat with you right within your DMs should any issues come up now or in the future.
This kind of proactive, relationship-building activity reinforces the notion that your customer support team isn’t just there to respond to tickets (like the 21st-century version of a call center). Instead, they should find new ways to nurture long-lasting customer relationships and proactively provide the information and discounts customers need to make their first, second, or tenth purchase.
Here’s a template for welcome DMs you can use:
“Welcome to [brand] 🙌. [Personalized message related to your brand.] Here’s a 10% discount code for being a new member: [coupon]. Please explore our Insta and our products and reply here if you have any questions!”
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3) Celebrate key customer moments
Proactive customer support isn’t just helpful for new customers. You can delight your most loyal customers by proactively reaching out to celebrate key milestones like their birthday or the anniversary of their first purchase.
If you want to automate this process, you can use a tool like Zapier to trigger a workflow whenever a customer creates their first order and, if the customer spends more than a certain amount once those 11 months are up, create a support ticket in your helpdesk reminding your support team to send them a gift for their first purchase anniversary.
Plus, a customer may opt to share this special occasion on their own social media accounts, broadening your brand’s exposure in a very positive light.
4) Solicit customer feedback at every opportunity
Offering customers proactive customer support that is actually helpful first requires your brand to develop a thorough understanding of its customers' needs, pain points, and common issues. With that in mind, there's no better way to determine what your customers need from proactive customer support than asking them directly.
For this purpose, surveys and customer feedback tools can prove incredibly valuable, helping you gather direct feedback that you can use to fine-tune your proactive customer service approach — as well as other aspects of your product and customer experience.
If you don’t, we recommend at least measuring customer satisfaction (CSAT) with a field for open-ended responses where customers can tell you what they like and what they’d change about your business.
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Your CSAT score will give you a gauge of the quality of your offering, making it one of the most important customer service metrics out there. Plus, the qualitative feedback you receive can help you identify areas of the product and customer journey to improve, which helps you proactively avoid issues for future customers.
As you send your CSAT survey to more customers, you may get overwhelmed with responses. A customer service platform like Gorgias can give you a big-picture view of your CSAT across all tickets, as well as let you zoom in on low-scoring tickets to understand what went wrong.
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5) Implement self-service resources that proactively solve common issues
According to customer retention statistics from Microsoft, 66% of customers try self-service options before they decide to contact a brand's customer service team (see our full customer service statistics guide for more stats on consumer behavior). With this being the case, one of the best ways to provide proactive service to your customers is to offer them helpful self-service resources — such as FAQ pages, knowledge base pages, forums, and automated chatbots.
In addition to improving the customer experience by enabling customers to quickly resolve common issues on their own, self-service resources can also dramatically reduce a company's customer support ticket volume. This way, your agents spend less time answering repetitive questions and more time on high-impact tickets that require a human touch.
For example, childcare product brand JOONE gets notified when a customer's package runs late. JOONE passes on that information to customers rather than waiting for them to reach out and ask why their order hasn’t arrived yet.
"If we're more proactive,” says Clara Zaoui, JOONE’s Head of CRM and Customer Care, “the customer can be only happy to be informed and to know that customer service is following their package. It's a more personalized experience."
Take your proactive customer service to the next level with Gorgias
Proactive customer service offers a wide range of benefits — from improving customer satisfaction, to building empathy, to reducing the workload of your customer service team. However, implementing a proactive approach to customer service is also something that requires a very specific set of customer service tools.
As a comprehensive customer service solution, Gorgias provides everything that ecommerce store owners need to start offering effective proactive customer support, including social listening tools, live chat widgets, an automated customer service workflow builder, and self-service solutions such as FAQ pages and knowledge bases.
If you would like to start taking a proactive approach to customer service, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce the size of your customer support staff, then Gorgias is an excellent solution to consider. To learn more about the benefits that Gorgias can have for your online store, be sure to check out our comprehensive overview of Gorgias's many features and uses.
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22 Live Chat Statistics You Need To Know in 2023
How many times have you left an online store, mid-purchase, after trying and failing to find the answers you needed?
According to Baymard Institute, about two-thirds of carts end up abandoned. Luckily, live chat can help convert those customers — providing well-time customer service at the height of buying intent.
Companies that leverage live-chat tools on their websites provide a stronger customer experience, maximize the efficiency of their customer support agents and see bigger gains in revenue and customer retention.
Plus, it has exploded in popularity recently and continues to grow. Even if you don’t have live chat enabled on your website, there’s a good chance your competitors are in the 85% of companies projected to be using it in 2022.
In this article, we’ve listed 22 live chat and chatbot statistics that show just how beneficial these tools can be for your company and customer support team.
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1) 86% of live chat tickets end with a satisfied customer
Recent live chat statistics from the Gorgias platform demonstrate that the majority of customers are satisfied with their live chat experiences for support. In fact, we found 86% of live chat conversations on the Gorgias platform end with a 4- or 5-star CSAT rating. There are a number of issues that can arise with any type of digital customer communication method, but based on these statistics, it’s fair to say that live chat offers a clear path to customer satisfaction.
Source: Gorgias
2) 79% of businesses say offering live chat features has positively impacted sales, revenue, and customer loyalty
This data point drives home the win-win nature of live chat for companies and customers. If your company is going to invest in new technology and take the time to train your customer support team in how to use it, you’ll want to make sure it’s worth it.
If you’re still not convinced: In 2021, brands using the Gorgias chat widget generated an average of $38,702 from conversations involving chat.
Sources: ltvplus
3) Adding live chat to your website can improve conversions by 12%
Converting website visitors to customers is key to any successful ecommerce business, so most companies will do whatever they need to in order to boost their chances of a conversion. Recent statistics show that adding live chat can increase conversion rates by 12%. This data also tells us that visitors who chat via live chat are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those who do not engage in this form of communication.
This is much more attainable when you combine automation and a human touch in your chat strategy. (Not sure of the difference? Read our post on live chat vs chatbots.)
Source: ltvplus
4) Organizations that used chatbots in 2019 saved an average of $300,000
Leveraging chat tools on your company’s website can help save your company money on staffing and the costs of high churn, and can improve overall customer experience — which often leads to customers spending more money while on your site.
Source: Intercom
Keep reading with our list of 60+ customer service statistics you should use to inform your team’s support strategy.
5) Approximately 66% of customers expect an immediate response to their inquiries
Nearly two-thirds of buyers report that they expect an immediate response from a support team (“immediate” is defined as within 10 minutes). This may be partially because many customers are used to old-fashioned phone support, which usually results in an immediate solution to the problem.
This statistic should also tell you that when your customer success team is providing live chat support, they should either respond immediately, or set up an automated message that is sent immediately that states when a team member will be available to assist them.
With some live chat products, you can also provide a self-service solution. We have found that it can deflect up to 30% of tickets and provide your customers with immediate responses at any hour. You can see an example of the Gorgias self-service chat below.
Source: HubSpot
6) Most problems on live chat are resolved in 42 seconds
Speed doesn’t mean much for live chat customer service if the issues aren’t ultimately resolved. The good news is that a recent industry assessment shows that most customer issues brought to a company via live chat are resolved in less than one minute, once the agent gets to the ticket.
At the end of the day, your customers want to know they can rely on you and your team to help them out in a reasonable amount of time — especially if the issue is simple and straightforward.
Source: SnapEngage
7) 42% of customers prefer real-time online chat as their communication method
There’s no question that real-time support via chat is taking over traditional phone support. But it’s not just phone support that is losing to live chat — there are other forms of digital communication that are no longer preferred among customers. Only 23% of customers report preferring email communication for support, and 16% report social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and forums as their preferred mode of support communication.
If a customer has a question, they’re more likely to visit your company’s website and try to engage with a live chat agent. But the real takeaway here is that different customers have different support needs.
It’s important to choose a solution that unifies your support operation across all channels, so you can meet customers where they are without keeping 15 different tabs open.
Source: SuperOffice
8) 29% of customers report that scripted live chat experiences are the most annoying
Most people can agree that talking to a robot with scripted responses can be a negative and even entirely unhelpful experience. Furthermore, 38% of companies agree that their customers are most annoyed by scripted responses on live chat.
At Gorgias, we have found shoppers are less bothered by self-service features if they are fast and, more importantly, helpful in getting them to the right agent more quickly. But if you’ve ever typed “I need an agent” five times in a row in a live chat window, you know firsthand that those experiences can be rare.
Source: ltvplus
9) 69% of companies use canned responses in their live chat service
As we discussed earlier, many customers are still turned off by auto-scripted chat bots. Even though many companies agree with this notion, more than two-thirds of companies continue to use canned responses in their live chat services.
It is important to recognize that there is a distinction between a bot that provides automated responses, and a live customer service agent who refers to a script. Your customer support agents should be able to bring in their own personalities and styles when chatting with customers, but it’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel for each response.
For example, a script at Disney might look like this:
The above script is called a Macro, and it’s an example of how we strike this balance at Gorgias. Agents can use Macros to quickly respond in a way that is personalized and in line with your company’s voice. This allows for a warmer, more natural support experience. Plus, all the information is pulled in automatically.
Source: Forbes
10) People who spend more online are more loyal to companies that offer live chat
When the pandemic started, online shopping increased dramatically. A household can easily spend $250 per month online — especially if they’re ordering groceries or items they would have normally bought in person.
Statistics show that, out of consumers who spend between $250 and $500 a month online, 63% are more loyal to companies that have live chat services. They are also more likely to be repeat customers.
Live chat services can help customers feel seen and heard, so regular customers feel comforted knowing that someone from your customer success team is one message away. This level of service will keep them coming back time and time again.
Source: Kayako
11) 38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company if they offer live chat support
Even if customers don’t necessarily take advantage of your live chat support feature, over one-third of consumers report they are more likely to make a purchase from an online retailer if they simply have live chat support as an option. Live chat can help show customers that your company is available for any question they have, and that the company cares about their experience.
Source: Kayako
12) More than 30% of customers expect live chat on your website
To further support the fact that many customers in today’s retail landscape prefer live chat, close to one-third say that they expect to see a live chat option on a company’s website. Similarly, almost 50% of mobile device users visiting your website expect to see a live chat option. To ignore live chat is to ignore a large portion of your customers’ expectations, leading to a poor ecommerce shopping experience and ultimately, less revenue.
Source: Forrester through TechJury
Have Shopify? Learn how to add a live chat to your store.
13) By 2022, about 85% of businesses will use some form of live chat support
Recent data shows that by 2022, the majority of businesses are expected to incorporate some form of live chat experiences to their websites or mobile apps.
In addition to the statistical benefits of live chat, other benefits include an overall increase in customer satisfaction rate, better customer experience with personalized interactions, and fewer costs while providing simultaneous support to multiple customers.
Source: Software Advice
Keep your business ahead of the curve: Read about 8 must-know customer service trends for 2022.
14) More companies use live chat for sales than for customer support
Live chat is most commonly used among B2C businesses for customer support and to further enhance the customer experience. According to recent data, more companies use live chat for sales than support. Among B2B companies, 85% are using live chat mainly for sales and 66% are using it mainly for support. Among B2C companies, 74% are using live chat for sales more, while 67% are using it mainly for support.
Source: FinancesOnline
Drive more sales with these 9 tips for ecommerce upselling.
15) The global live chat software market is set to hit $987 million by 2023
Perhaps one of the most important statistics on this list, the global live chat software market is set to grow at unprecedented rates over the next year. The live chat software market is also registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% from 2017 to 2023.
As a business leader or owner, this is excellent news for your company because it means that you will have multiple options for live chat products. All live chat software is not created equal, so researching companies and asking questions to make sure a product can meet the unique needs of your business is key.
For example, you should consider:
- Website performance and loading time
- Front-end customization options
- The ability to use templated replies (we call them Macros)
- How easy it is to integrate other tools
- Availability options, if you don’t offer 24/7 support
Source: Allied Market Research
Related: Get our in-depth list of the best live chat apps for Shopify.
16) 95% of customers value high-quality support over speed with live chat
Research shows that almost all customers (95%) value higher quality support over speed when it comes to live chat apps. This isn’t to say that customers are content with long average wait times. Rather, it reveals that consumers prefer slower, more personalized live chat support when it leads to higher quality service.
Luckily, with a combination of live chat and a chatbot, you don’t have to compromise between speed and customer experience.
Source: Finances Online
17) Most customers prefer live chat because of the shorter wait times and added convenience
Among the reasons customers prefer live chat over any other form of customer communication are the lack of wait times (34%) and the increased convenience (26.9%). The data also shows us that customers appreciate that they can privately engage with a brand, express their concerns, and receive quick solutions to their issues.
In this case, live chat is a critical tool for building trust with your customer base and establishing long-term customer relationships.
Source: SoftwareAdvice
18) Online chatting with a human provides the quickest solutions
The time spent talking to a customer service agent is often cited as a reason customers prefer live chat over other customer communication options. In one study, chatting online with a human came in first place for the shortest chat duration, resolving an issue in just 24 minutes. This is compared to email (157 minutes), social media messaging (58 minutes), and online chat with a bot (27 minutes).
Source: TopBots
19) When initiating a live chat, 40% of consumers are skeptical they’ll receive help promptly
Although customers prefer live chat sessions over email, phone, and social media support, two-fifths of them lack faith that they’ll get the support they need in a reasonable amount of time.
While this lack of confidence isn’t ideal, it provides an opportunity for you and your customer success team to prove to your customers that your company’s live chat is fast and helpful. This is also a key reason many of our customers use self-service features in their live chat experiences.
Building trust with your customers turns them into lifelong customers, helps with your company’s ecommerce churn rate and lead generation, and can ultimately boost your customer success team's morale as they successfully resolve tickets.
Source: Kayako
20) Millennials prefer live chat for customer service over every other communication channel
When it comes to younger generations, speed and convenience are priorities. Among millennials specifically, live chat tools are the preferred method of communication when contacting a company.
According to a report by Software Advice, the top reason they prefer live chat is because it can dramatically decrease holding time. Even more, 71% of those surveyed between 16 and 24 years old think the customer experience could be drastically improved with quicker response times. That percentage drops only slightly (65%) for those between the ages of 25 and 34.
Source: Comm100
21) 29% of customers say they’ve shared a positive live chat experience with friends
As much as marketing and sales have gone digital, there’s still something extremely powerful about word of mouth. People are more likely to share positive customer service experiences over “just okay” experiences. Among younger generations like millennials and Generation Z, talking among friends and sharing experiences about online retailers is the norm.
Online shopping experiences have become even more widely discussed since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020, as many people have defaulted to shopping online instead of making trips to brick-and-mortar stores.
Source: Kayako
22) 58% of millennials want access to brands anytime, anywhere
Following up on how millennial customers prefer to communicate with brands, more than half expect to be able to engage with a brand whenever they choose.
To be available to them across all platforms, you need to ensure your live chat integrates into a customer support solution that can bring those channels into your dashboard. Otherwise, you’ll be clicking back and forth between different windows for every new ticket.
It may seem easier to just make them come to your preferred channels, but overlooking the preferences of millennials and Gen Z can negatively affect your business as their buying power grows.
Source: Comm100
Gorgias brings live chat to ecommerce businesses
Now that you’ve explored the latest data on chat tools, you can see why a live chat tool is a worthy addition to any ecommerce business. But as we mentioned earlier, all live chat solutions are not created equal. I
Gorgias live chat integrates into our leading platform for ecommerce customer support. You can handle live chat tickets alongside those from email, phone, and social media to more easily serve your online customers. You can even proactively reach out to customers to resolve more issues and boost sales. Then automate your most repetitive inquiries to make time for the conversations that matter to your business.
Our tool was specifically built to work seamlessly with major ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce, and our integrations go deeper than any other platform. Sign up today to see how our chat tools can help your business grow.
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How To Lower Average Response Times to Meet Customer Expectations
Your customer support team juggles a variety of responsibilities. But it will all come crumbling down if you can’t provide helpful responses to customer messages with a fast response time.
Customer expectations regarding average response time have become increasingly demanding in recent years. 90% of customers rate an immediate response as "important" or "very important" when they have a support request, with 60% of customers defining "immediate" as 10 minutes or less.
To help your customer service team meet these expectations, this article will cover everything you need to know about average response time — from how to calculate your average response time to seven proven tips for lowering it.
What is average response time?
Average response time, also known as average reply time, measures how long it takes for a customer support team to reply to a customer inquiry. This metric helps assess how quickly a company assists its customers and directly impacts customer satisfaction scores.
A lower average response time usually indicates faster customer service, while a longer response time can mean slower assistance. Companies often aim to reduce this time to provide better support and satisfy their customers.
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Why ecommerce merchants need to know their average response time (ART)
Average response time is a vital customer support KPI for ecommerce merchants because customers expect prompt responses. Even if your support team is friendly, professional, and helpful, your customer's experience suffers if they have to wait forever to hear back from you.
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By improving customer loyalty and thus boosting your average customer lifetime value, offering a low average response time can directly benefit your brand's revenue. In fact, brands that resolve their customers' concerns within six hours or less see an estimated revenue lift of 2%.
Average response time (ART) vs. average handle time (AHT)
The difference between average response time (ART) and average handle time (AHT) is that AHT is how long a support agent spends on a call or support ticket that they open, while ART is how long it takes to first respond to a customer support request.
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When you add AHT and ART together, you get average resolution time, which measures the total time it takes to resolve a customer's issue, including the amount of time they spend waiting for the first contact.
Average response time formula + how to calculate
There is a simple formula for performing an average response time calculation:
Average response time = Total amount of time to respond to tickets divided by the # of tickets
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Let's look at a real example. If you had four support tickets one week that took 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 25 minutes, and 20 minutes to respond to, here's what your average response time calculated would look like for that week:
Average response time = (10 minutes + 15 minutes + 25 minutes + 20 minutes) / 4
Average response time = 17.5 minutes
That said, calculating average response time by hand isn’t feasible for most brands, especially as your customer base (and number of responses) increases. Fortunately, most customer service platforms and helpdesks calculate these kinds of performance metrics for you:
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In Gorgias, you can also break down real-time support metrics (like first reply time, resolution time, revenue generated by support, CSAT, and more) broken down by:
- Agent: To understand each agent’s performance and workload
- Time period: To understand how a new process compares to an old one
- Ticket type: Using tags like Urgent, VIP, Return Request, and more
📚 Recommended reading: Our VP of Success’s guide to evaluating customer service
What is a good average response time?
The answer to this question depends on the customer support channel that you use: Each channel has different customer expectations and urgency. For instance, average response time benchmarks for email requests will naturally be much higher than those for live chat messages, when the customer is actively waiting for a response.
This is why it’s important to calculate your average response time for each specific channel.
Your industry can also impact what constitutes a good average response time. A company selling B2B software is likely to have longer response and resolution times than an ecommerce company due to the technical nature of their product and the expectations of their shoppers.
With that in mind, let's take a look at average response time benchmarks for each different type of customer support channel.
Average response time benchmarks by channel
Here are best-in-class, average, and below-average response time benchmarks based on the customer support channel that you are using according to our Director of Support, Bri Christiano:
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ART benchmarks for email
- Unacceptable: Multiple days
- Blow average: 1 day
- Average: 12-24 hours
- Above average: Under 4 hours
- Stellar: Under 1 hour
ART benchmarks for social media
- Unacceptable: Multiple days
- Blow average: 1 day
- Average: 12-24 hours
- Above average: Under 4 hours
- Stellar: Under 15 minutes
ART benchmarks for SMS
- Unacceptable: Over 1 hour
- Blow average: 1 hour
- Average: 10 minutes
- Above average: Under 5 minutes
- Stellar: Under 1 minute
ART benchmarks for live chat
- Unacceptable: Over 1 hour
- Blow average: 1 hour
- Average: 10 minutes
- Above average: Under 5 minutes
- Stellar: Under 1 minute
If your reply times aren’t close to these benchmarks, don’t worry. It’s much more important to continually improve on your current than it is to match industry benchmarks. Focus on developing your customer service automations, customer service training, and templates to help your team offer fast replies.
7 tips for lowering average response time
If you would like to improve your average first response time, here are some of the top strategies that Gorgias customers have used to speed up their response times!
1) Implement live chat, SMS, and other live support channels
Live support channels like live chat and SMS inherently support faster response times than social media and email channels — which is probably why 43% of customers list live chat as their preferred customer support channel.
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Adding a live chat widget to your website such as Gorgias Live Chat enables anyone who visits your website to quickly connect with a live support agent. Gorgias live chat also integrates with SMS, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and other social media platforms so that you can offer live chat support via these channels as well.
You can also incentivize your customers to use these faster channels by sharing a service-level agreement (SLA) that lets them know they won’t have to wait as long if they use live chat or SMS. Berkey Filters, a Gorgias customer, does this brilliantly at the top of their Contact Us page:
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How Gorgias helps
Gorgias offers fast-loading live chat widgets that let you offer live chat support directly from your website. You can also connect your live chat support to SMS and social media messaging platforms to offer chat support via these channels, too.
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The biggest benefit of Gorgias is the additional tools and features designed to speed up your response times and improve the quality of your customer support services even further:
- Automated Rules to auto-respond to simple tickets and trigger relevant actions (like order cancellations)
- Macro templates to reduce copy/pasting and writing from scratch
- Ticket prioritization to help you handle urgent support requests, fast
📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to omnichannel customer service
2) Install self-service menus in your chat widget
Installing self-service options (like chatbots and self-service menus) in your chat widget is an excellent way to ensure that customers on your website can find immediate answers to common questions. This directly lowers ART by reducing your support team’s workload so that they are able to respond to complex tickets that can’t be resolved with self-service faster.
However, practice caution when implementing chatbots. While some are strong, others diminish your customer experience. That’s why we believe self-service options that don’t pretend to be human are superior:
How Gorgias helps
Gorgias’ Automate lets you add Self-service Order Management and Quick Response Flows to your chat widget.
Self-service Order Management lets customers handle the following via self-service, both in the live chat as well as a Help Center:
- Requests returns
- Cancel orders
- Track orders
- Report issues
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Quick Response Flows let you add buttons to your chat widget that provide instant answers to FAQs, without roping in your agent:
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If the customer isn’t satisfied with the pre-loaded response, they can click “No, I need more help” to be connected with a live chat agent.
📚 Recommended reading: Learn more about how Gorgias Live Chat supports your team
3) Use automation to answer simple questions instantly
We've already touched on how you can use automation tools to provide immediate answers to common customer questions, and using Gorgias to add self-service menus to your live chat widget is one example of this practice in action.
However, you can also use automation to answer simple customer questions that come in via email, social media, and SMS.
For instance, creating automated responses to customer questions such as “where is my order” and “what is my tracking number” can eliminate a large volume of support tickets, providing an immediate response to these questions while at the same time speeding up the response to other tickets by freeing up your support team.
How Gorgias helps
Gorgias provides Rules, Macros, and Intent/Sentiment Detection features to create automated customer support workflows:
- Intent detection scans the language of all tickets
- Rules trigger when a relevant ticket is found, taking action (like canceling a recent order or updating a shipping address) and responding to the customer
- Macros are the templates that get sent to the customer, with variables that automatically populate with customer information from other tools like Shopify, AfterShip, and more
Here’s what an automated response to “Where is my order?” (WISMO) looks like in Gorgias:
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This automated workflow works across email, social media, live chat, SMS, and more.
4) Use autoresponders to acknowledge customers' requests immediately
Remember that first response time is an entirely different metric than resolution time. In other words, you don't have to immediately resolve a customer's issue to achieve faster response times — you just have to respond to the customer's request and let them know that you're working on the issue.
One great way to do this is to use autoresponders that acknowledge the customer's request the instant that they send it in. This way, customers know that your team got their message and is working on their request. While this automatic response might not resolve their issue, it is a response still the same and counts toward reducing your average response time. Another big benefit of leveraging autoresponders is that it allows your brand to respond to customer requests outside of normal business hours when live support agents are not available.
How Gorgias helps
You can set up a Rule in Gorgias, usually for live chat, SMS, and other instant messaging channels, to automatically respond to customers and let them know an agent is on their way.
Here’s what that kind of Rule looks like in Gorgias, from a real customer (Berkey Filters):
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5) Build out a knowledge base or self-service help center
By offering a comprehensive knowledge base or a self-service help center, you can provide the answers to common customer questions so that customers can find the information they need on their own.
This won’t be directly reflected in your average response times: If customers resolve the issue on their own, no ticket is created and nothing gets measured. However, if a bulk of simple requests get deflected from self-service options, your helpdesk will be much less cluttered with repetitive requests, letting agents respond to leftover tickets that much faster.
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Plus, separate from average response times, self-service options are great to boost customer satisfaction and provide the necessary variety of support channels to meet customers where they’re at.
Not convinced yet? Check out some of the other stellar advantages of customer self-service support options.
How Gorgias helps
With Gorgias, you’ll be able to create a comprehensive knowledge base — we call them Help Centers — that includes product information, information on your returns policies, general shipping information, and any other information that your customers commonly request. You can also offer self-service order management (described above) in Help Center, just like the chat widget:
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Gorgias makes it easy to create a helpful and attractive knowledge base for your brand that includes answers to all of your customers' most common questions.
Branch built an excellent help center using Gorgias. It's well organized, easy to navigate, and lets Branch customers find information on everything from returns to ordering to general product questions.
6) Prioritize customer service tickets automatically with a helpdesk
Some tickets demand a faster response than others. If you detect that a customer is upset or angry, then it's important to respond to their request as quickly as possible to prevent them from churning.
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Some companies dedicate a customer service agent to routing duty, where they manually assign incoming tickets. With a high-quality helpdesk like Gorgias, you can prioritize tickets automatically so your agents can focus on responding to the most important tickets without manually triaging each ticket. Since agents aren’t required to manually triage tickets that are prioritized automatically, they’ll be able to respond to them faster.
📚 Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to automatic ticket prioritization
How Gorgias helps
With Gorgias' Intent and Sentiment Detection features, you can automatically analyze each ticket using powerful natural language processing (NLP) technology.
From there, you can create Rules to atomically assign a priority level to each ticket.
Here’s an example of a Rule that automatically tags tickets with “Urgent Order Edit” whenever a customer requests changes to an order made in the last two days, so you can apply the change before the order ships:
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For more prioritization tips within and outside of Gorgias, check out our Director of Support’s guide to automatic ticket prioritization.
7) Create template responses for your most common questions
Before you can leverage automation to respond to common customer questions, you need to create template responses for each of these questions.
This starts by identifying your frequently asked questions and then creating a template response for each one. Along with reducing ART by empowering automated responses to common customer questions, these templates can also serve as helpful resources for your live representatives. This lets them respond to questions without recreating the wheel each time.
How Gorgias helps
Gorgias’ templates are called Macros, and they’re much more powerful than run-of-the-mill templates thanks to variables. Variables are like blanks in the template that automatically populate with personalized customer information pulled from ecommerce platforms (like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento) and other ecommerce tools (like Klaviyo, AfterShip, and more).
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Learn how Gorgias helps brands reduce response times by up to 96%
Reducing your average response time is a crucial part of providing a great customer experience — and it's one of the many advantages we help ecommerce brands achieve.
Using Gorgias, customers like Timbuk2 cut their average response times by up to 96%! Read the full story here to learn more about how Gorgias helped Timbuk2 lower their ART and generate 35% more revenue.
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10 Ways To Reduce Ecommerce Product Returns With Great CX
Online shopping is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, so is the rate of returned items.
In 2021, online shoppers returned over 20.8% of all merchandise ordered, according to the National Retail Foundation. Added up across all ecommerce businesses, this means $761 billion of merchandise gets sold but doesn’t actually become revenue.
We’ll cover some of the top reasons for customer returns below but most of the reasons boil down to one thing: a poor customer experience. If customers feel misled, duped, or unsupported, they’ll quickly send back an item and take their business elsewhere.
In this post, we’ll share 10 actionable strategies (including tools and examples) to help you develop a return-proof customer experience.
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The top reasons that customers return products
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No brand can completely eliminate returns, and that’s because customers return items for a wide variety of reasons — some of them outside of your control. The top reasons that customers choose to return products purchased via online shopping include:
- Item didn't match its product description and/or customer expectations
- Item arrived late and the customer no longer needs it
- "Wardrobing," defined as items returned by serial returners who never have any intention of actually keeping the products that they purchase
- Merchant shipped the wrong product
- Item was damaged or defective
When exploring how to reduce returns, examining these common reasons for online store returns and how they apply to your own business is an important place to start.
Why reducing returns matters for most ecommerce stores
According to data from the National Retail Federation, U.S. consumers returned an estimated total of $761 billion in merchandise in 2021 alone. Thanks in part to supply chain challenges and rising prices, processing the return of a $50 product is now expected to cost ecommerce stores an average of $33 according to Axios.
The cost of having a high return rate goes far beyond lost profits. In addition to losing out on a sale, processing a returned product also means that you have to pay return shipping costs as well as any labor costs associated with your returns process, like assisting customers with returns and restocking returned products. When you consider the fact that ecommerce return rates can climb as high as 30% or higher, these expenses can quickly add up. This makes reducing your number of returns an essential goal for your ecommerce brand.
10 proven ways to minimize returns from your ecommerce customers
- Encourage product exchanges over product returns
- Provide in-depth and accurate product descriptions
- Display multiple high-quality product photos that offer context
- Leverage reviews of your product that assist other customers (especially as it relates to size and color)
- Optimize the accuracy and speed of fulfillment
- Don't skimp on packaging that protects your customer's product
- Develop a clear, proactive post-purchase experience
- Identify customers who abuse your return policy
- Expand the length of your return policy
- Use gift cards and loyalty points
Offering high-quality products is the first step to reducing your return rate, but great products are just the beginning. Below, read more about the 10 additional ways to boost your customer experience and reduce returns.
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1) Encourage product exchanges over product returns
Encouraging customers to exchange products rather than return them for a refund won't eliminate all of the expenses associated with processing a return. Even with exchanges, you still pay for return shipping and any labor costs associated with your returns process.
However, exchanging a product rather than refunding it does mean that you get to keep whatever profit margins you earn from the sale, which can sometimes be a big boost to your company's bottom line. Plus, you still have a chance to delight the customer with a product and hopefully build up loyalty from there.
How you go about encouraging exchanges is ultimately up to you. Some online stores only offer store credit for returns, and state in their return policy that they will not provide cash refunds. However, refusing to offer refunds altogether may yield a returns experience that leads to a lot of unhappy customers. Another option is to encourage product exchanges with carefully-crafted messaging or incentives, like an additional store credit.
Example of exchanges over returns
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If you look at Jaxxon's FAQ page, you'll see the brand has a standard 14-day returns and exchange policy that allows customers to get a refund or new product for any reason. But Jaxxon uses Loop Returns as a self-service return portal, which has two major benefits:
- The portal is self-service, meaning customers can return or exchange an item without creating a ticket and waiting for an agent
- The portal gently guides users to request an exchange over a refund by giving bonus credit for exchanges and simplifying exchange shopping
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Bonus credit is exactly what it sounds like: Customers can have more in-store credit than they would get as a refund in the original form of payment. This strategy is effective: Shopify stores that use Loop issue 15% fewer refunds than brands that don’t. As a result, Jaxxon rescues a sale and keeps the opportunity to delight the customer for greater customer retention.
Learn how the Gorgias + Loop integration unites your helpdesk and returns management software.
Jaxxon also uses live chat support on their returns portal page, which is yet another line of real-time defense against an avoidable return. If customers are considering a return, they may instead reach out to customer support to resolve whatever issues drove them to the page.
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The customer service agent on the other end of the live chat might be able to fix the issue, especially if it came down to user error, and lead the customer to keep the item. Or, the live chat agent gives recommendations for products that won’t have the same issue to steer toward an exchange instead of a return.
Adding live chat to your returns portal is one of the revenue-generating tactics from our CX-Driven Growth Playbook, which is based on research of over 10,000+ top ecommerce brands. Check out the playbook for 17 more actionable tips to drive revenue by improving your CX.
2) Provide in-depth and accurate product descriptions
One of the biggest reasons why online purchases have a higher return rate than products purchased from brick-and-mortar stores is the fact that customers cannot examine products in person. This makes it much more likely for a customer who purchases a product online to end up returning their purchase due to it not meeting their expectations.
The best way to combat this is to make your product descriptions as in-depth and accurate as possible. When customers know exactly what to expect from the product they are purchasing, the odds of them being dissatisfied when it arrives are much lower.
This is especially true for apparel: size charts, size guides, and any other information to help the customer avoid buying the wrong size. Likewise, any sort of furniture must include clear dimensions, and any sort of technology must include detailed specifications.
Example of in-depth product descriptions
Marine Layer is one example of an online store that has in-depth product descriptions to minimize returns. To help customers choose the right clothing and accessories, Marine Layer offers details information in their product descriptions such as the exact dimensions of the item, the size of the model who is wearing it in the product images, and helpful size charts.
The brand uses tabs to include more information without making the page too long. Here’s the description for a pair of pants:
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3) Display multiple high-quality product photos that offer context
Keeping with the theme of letting customers know exactly what they are getting, there is no element of your product description more important than your product images.
Along with using high-quality product images that display your products in the most appealing way possible, it is also a good idea to use product images that provide context about the product. For example, you may wish to display photos of your product in action to show its intended use. Or, you can show your product next to household items to give customers a better idea of the size and dimensions. Even better, you can include product videos to show the product in action.
By displaying multiple high-quality photos that offer context, you can ensure that there are no unwelcome surprises when your customer uses your product for the first time.
Example of contextual product photography
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Native Union’s online store sells tech accessories such as charging cables and phone cases. They make use of multiple photos on each product description, including photos that display how the product is meant to be used. For example, the charging pad shown above clearly shows compatibility with iPhones, AirPods, and Apple Watches.
4) Leverage reviews of your product that assist other customers (especially as it relates to size and color)
Customer reviews are one of the most powerful sales tools that ecommerce stores have, since they provide customers with social proof and an unbiased source of information to guide their purchase decision.
Along with helping online retailers boost their conversion rates, customer reviews can also be leveraged to reduce return rates. Displaying reviews that provide greater details and context regarding a product — such as how an article of clothing fits certain body types or how the color of a product in-person compares to its photos — can go a long way toward helping your customers make informed purchases that they are much less likely to return.
Example of helpful product reviews
Steve Madden is one company that makes excellent use of product reviews. Each product page features searchable, filterable product reviews to set customer expectations. Steve Madden is an apparel brand, so they let you sort reviews by sizing, whether they contain images and videos, the age of the reviewer, the pros of the product (like “cute,” “comfortable,” or “value,”) and whether the reviewer recommends the product.
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They also have a section where shoppers can ask questions that people who previously purchased the product can answer (e.g., “Can you exercise in these shoes?”) as well as an overall sizing scale, which shows whether reviewers tend to think the product is true to size:
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5) Optimize the accuracy and speed of fulfillment
One common reason why a customer may choose to return a product is that the product showed up late and they no longer need it. To keep your customers as satisfied as possible post-purchase, optimize the accuracy and speed of fulfillment to make sure that every customer receives the exact products they purchase within the promised timeframe.
Tips to improve your shipping accuracy and speed
There's no better example of an ecommerce platform that has optimized its fulfillment process than Amazon. Offering two-day shipping on the vast majority of its products is just one way that Amazon can prioritize customer satisfaction and limit returns.
However, most brands can’t match Amazon’s speed of delivery, at least in-house — that appealing offer is only possible for massive-scale, high-GMV companies. One strategy to reduce shipping-related returns is to provide accurate shipping estimates for all customer orders: clear expectations are better than nothing at all.
Another strategy is to work with a fulfillment partner like the Shopify Fulfillment Network or ShipBob to achieve Amazon-like shipping. Both of these fulfillment partners help DTC brand offer expedient shipping that can both drive sales and reduce returns.
6) Don't skimp on packaging that protects your customer's product
Receiving a damaged product is another common reason why online shoppers make returns. While good quality control can ensure that a damaged product doesn't leave your warehouse, there's only so much you can do to prevent a product from becoming damaged en route to the customer. What you can do is protect your product as much as possible by using high-quality packaging. For some products, this might not be much of a concern. However, if your products are fragile or prone to damage, put some extra padding or structural protection into the packaging to protect them in transit. Reducing the risk of damage during transit can go a long way toward lowering your return rate.
Example of protective product packaging
Apple’s packaging is renowned for its minimalist, yet immediately recognizable design. While it looks simple from the outside, Apple’s product packaging features multiple layers of sturdy cardboard and styrofoam padding to thoroughly protect Apple devices en route to the customer.
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7) Develop a clear, proactive post-purchase experience
An amazing pre-purchase experience is essential for optimizing your store's conversion rate. But the buck doesn’t stop when a customer completes the purchase. A clear post-purchase experience can drive repeat business and proactively minimize your return rate.
There are several ways to offer a positive post-purchase experience for your ecommerce customers. You use self-service automation flows that let customers know about the status of their order, create and share help center articles that explain how to use the product, schedule a call to walk customers through the ins and outs of their new product or offer discounts — just to name a few.
Example of a great post-purchase experience
Warby Parker lets any customer try on a pair of glasses before confirming the purchase. In the post-checkout email, they include tips for the home try-on kit.
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While this is a little different than most use cases, since it’s a try-on shipment instead of a purchase, the step-by-step tips provide a strong example of the type of guidance that can set customer expectations, reduce avoidable issues when the customer receives the product, and directions for where to find support if an issue does arise.
8) Identify customers who abuse your return policy
The majority who return products have a legitimate reason for doing so. However, there are those known as “serial returners” who abuse ecommerce return policies. These dishonest customers purchase products with no intention of keeping them, essentially renting products for free at the expense of the store they purchased them from. If you can identify customers who are abusing your return policy in this manner, the best thing you can do is ban them from making further purchases from your store.
Resource for reducing return policy abuse
Most companies choose not to publicize their policies for dealing with serial returners. However, here is an excellent resource from Shopify on how online store owners can address this common problem.
9) Expand the length of your return policy
It may sound counterintuitive, but giving customers a longer window to return products can actually reduce the return rate for your ecommerce site. If you only give customers a short period of time to decide whether they want to keep or return a product, they often feel rushed to make a decision. Giving your customers more time to become comfortable with your product before they are forced to decide whether they want to keep or return it increases the likelihood that they will choose to keep it.
Example
New mattresses tend to take a little getting used to. To prevent customers from returning mattresses before they have the chance to break them in and become used to them, Mattress Firm allows customers to return their mattresses up to 120 days after the date of purchase.
10) Use gift cards and loyalty points
At the end of the day, returns will always happen. One strategy is to mitigate losses from returns by doubling down on a customer loyalty effort like gift cards and loyalty points.
In addition to driving long-term loyalty and repeat purchasers, loyalty points and gift cards can also be offered in place of a cash refund for returned products. This enables you to offset some of the expenses you incur when a product is returned, because it encourages customers to exchange their product rather than return it for a refund.
Example of gift cards and loyalty points
There are plenty of examples of companies that leverage gift cards and loyalty programs in a variety of different ways. The North Face's loyalty program, however, stands out because customers can earn points for many reasons — not just making a purchase — and the brand’s rewards are custom-tailored to each individual customer.
Easily manage ecommerce returns from one central customer support hub
Product returns can be a massive expense for ecommerce stores due to the high rate at which ecommerce products are returned and the high cost of processing online purchase returns. By following the 10 tips outlined above, you should be well on your way to reducing this frustrating expense.
As you read, improving your customer experience helps you lower your return rate and process returns more efficiently. Gorgias’ customer service platform helps you do just that. With Gorgias, you can limit product returns and boost customer satisfaction by offering fast, omnichannel, and self-service customer support.
Learn more about how Gorgias can integrate with returns management software and help you reduce your ecommerce store’s return rates with outstanding customer service — contact us today.
How and Why You Should Implement a Personalized Customer Service Strategy in 2024
In the quest for ever-increasing efficiency, it’s easy to lose sight of a core business reality: Your customers are humans, and they still like to be treated as such.
Customer service departments certainly should leverage automation technology and work toward greater efficiency — but not in a way that frustrates customers. Instead, businesses should use automation to enhance a personalized customer service approach.
In this guide, learn personalized customer service is a top trend in customer service. Then we’ll give you nine ways to start providing more personalized customer service that you can implement right away.
What is personalized customer service?
Personalized customer service is the strategy of using individual customer information to tailor customer interactions. This information can include the customer’s name, purchase history, past support tickets, and anything else that your business might already know.
5 concrete examples of personalized customer service
Personalized customer service can be delivered throughout the whole customer journey, from the pre-sales stage to post-purchase. Here are five fantastic examples of personalized customer service:
- Using a customer's purchase history to send them relevant product recommendations
- Customizing communications to include customer information such as name and most recent orders
- Sending birthday discounts on a customer's birthday
- Notifying customers about back-in-stock items based on their browsing history
- Sending a personalized check-in or follow-up message after a purchase, return, or exchange
9 steps to provide personalized customer service at scale
Providing excellent personalized customer service can seem overwhelming for many businesses, especially during periods of rapid growth. It’s true that developing a comprehensive personalization strategy takes resources and effort, but there are all sorts of simple ways to start transitioning to a more personalized approach:
- Proactively reach out before a customer even needs support
- Mention specifics in customer messages
- Use customer data to inform the support you provide
- Unify conversations in one platform
- Employ an omnichannel approach
- Use social media to your advantage
- Create low-effort experiences
- Ask for feedback
- Prioritize requests in order of importance or urgency
1) Offer proactive support
Proactive customer service anticipates when customers might need assistance, and offers help before they reach out. For example, some brands use proactive support as part of their marketing strategy. They might use an automated live chat pop-up to share product recommendations, offer to answer questions or help new customers make a purchase, or share that a live chat support option is available, should they need it.
Proactive support has many forms, like providing self-service resources like an FAQ page to answer repetitive questions or help with common pain points. It also might be an email that says “Can I help you with anything?” Offering help before people need it feels infinitely more personal than forcing the user to comb the website and find the right contact information.
Proactive support helped Gorgias customer Loop Earplugs increase their revenue by 43% with pre-sales flows. “When customers get a quick and honest answer, they often end up buying more than one product in a short span of time,” says Customer Service Manager Milan Vanmarcke.
The first step towards implementing a proactive strategy of your own is to take a look at past customer conversations and look for common threads. Once you identify your most frequently asked questions, create an FAQ page with them. Be sure to link to any policies you have as well, like shipping, returns, exchanges, and where folks can reach out to get more help if needed.
📚Recommended reading: Our complete guide on proactive customer service.
2) Mention specifics in customer messages
There’s a reason that car salespeople learn prospective customers’ first names within the first few seconds of an encounter. It’s a science-backed approach that builds trust and familiarity.
Using specifics like a customer’s name or last order number goes a long way toward making the customer feel trust for your brand. It also shows that you’re listening, that you care, and that you have accurate information in front of you. Though this type of approach can be more time consuming, using templates with dynamic variables can help. Plus, it’ll lessen the need to go back and forth with customers to get that information in the first place.
Next steps
Consider signing up for a centralized helpdesk. Some helpdesks allow you to use templates with dynamic fields that pull in customer data like tracking information or the date their recent order shipped. On Gorgias, these templates are called Macros, and you can use them throughout your communication channels, on chat, or via email.
3) Use customer data to inform support
As you work to further customize your approach, refine the way you use the customer data you already have from your other ecommerce tools to inform the kind of care you provide.
Analyzing data from your CRM (customer relationship management system) can help you identify trends and common issues. This data can help you find common questions that are better handled via a FAQ or knowledge base, or that can be generated through automated chatbots or emails, saving your CS teams and your customers time.
Take a look at the demographic information you have about your audience to learn more about what might be most important to them. Use metrics like CSAT to understand how your support is performing, or retention numbers to see how many customers make second and third purchases, especially after requesting support.
How Gorgias can help
With a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can use the Customer Sidebar to pull customer data from different app integrations. Pull loyalty information from LoyaltyLion, get insight into reviews from Yotpo, or get marketing data from Klaviyo.
This type of information can aid in your personalization efforts by providing further insights into how customers are feeling and what kind of support they’re looking for. For example, you might find some negative reviews and be able to send those customers a follow-up email to see how you can help.
4) Unify your conversations in one platform
Personalization at scale requires the use of tools that keep your customer data safe, centralized, and accessible so that agents can answer questions with a consistently high level of care.
Unifying all your customer touchpoints in one helpdesk platform lets reps see all past interactions and information, so they avoid asking customers to repeat themselves. They’ll be able to see information like past order history, returns, past support conversations and resolutions, and how long someone has been a customer.
That’s been a key differentiator for Gorgias customer Absolute Collagen. "We hear all the time in a Facebook group or on the phone how much customers trust us because they know we'll get back to them and resolve the issue quickly,” says founder Maxine Laceby. “It's a real point of difference for us that our customer service team can do that. And the reason they can do that is that all of our channels are in one place."
How Gorgias can help
Gorgias is an all-in-one platform for ecommerce merchants looking to improve their customer service and helpdesk functions, from chatbot-like menus to customer self-service. It’s the perfect place for DTC ecommerce brands to start scaling their personalization efforts and drive more revenue.
5) Employ an omnichannel approach
Customers want to interact with your brand in different ways, and an omnichannel approach to customer support takes customers’ preferences into account. By offering support across all channels, like social media, email, phone, live chat, and SMS, you can better meet customers where they are and give support on their terms.
To do this effectively, you’ll need to ensure that all of your channels connect (a helpdesk like Gorgias will do this for you). And, that you have a support strategy for each channel.
Unifying platforms into one place helped the team at Lillie's Q, a shop that sells authentic Southern barbecue sauces and rubs, offer a true omnichannel experience to its customers. Before using Gorgias as its centralized helpdesk, messages on different platforms were getting passed manually to customer support, a tedious task with a big room for error.
"We received comments and questions from Instagram and Facebook, organic and paid. Our digital content manager was passing a lot of these questions and comments on to our customer service team before we were with Gorgias," says Nicole Mann, the Marketing Director at Lillie’s Q.
📚Recommended reading: Check out our guide to omnichannel customer service.
6) Use social media to your advantage
Support requests come into social media channels for many reasons. For example, angry customers might send a direct message or comment on a post because it feels more immediate, especially if a brand is active. Or, they could respond to a post asking for more information about a featured product they’d like to purchase.
Whatever the reason, people spend 147 minutes on social media per day, which means that by offering support there, you’re able to engage with people directly within the apps where they already spend time. This also allows you to engage with people in positive ways by sharing relevant content with them, posting packing videos of their orders to make them feel special, or reposting a picture of them using your products in real life.
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7) Create low-effort experiences
According to The Effortless Experience, only 4% of customers who had a high-effort customer support experience will return to make another purchase from that brand.
When a customer decides to contact support, they’re already likely a little bit frustrated to have to put in any effort at all. But actions like having to go back and forth with a support agent to give simple information like order numbers, shipping address, or email can increase the time it takes to get a resolution.
This effort increases with the amount of time it takes for the agents to respond each time, and whether support even responds at all the first time a shopper reaches out. These high-effort experiences ignore the customers’ needs, which drives disloyalty and can make a big impact on revenue long term.
Self-serve resources or automated responses can get people an immediate response, which means a lot less effort for them, and takes the burden off of your team.
"We realize the impact of building relationships and trust with our customers,” says Caela Castillo, the Director of Customer Experience at jewelry shop Jaxxon. “Quick Response Flows help us do that by allowing us to provide a customer experience that meets expectations and drives lifetime value (LTV) up per customer."
Other options include using a centralized system that shows a customer’s information all in one place, eliminating the need for timely back and forth.
8) Ask for feedback
Customer feedback is valuable data collection for your customer service team. It can help you provide more personalized support based on the information you get.
All you have to do is make it easy for your customers to provide feedback, and take action on the notes you do receive, especially if they cite negative experiences.
A quick way to ask for feedback is to send an email survey that takes less than 2 minutes to fill out. A simple star rating on the experience and comment box should be enough to give you some valuable insight into where you can improve.
📚Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to collecting customer feedback from your helpdesk.
9) Prioritize customer service requests
Prioritize customer service requests to provide faster, more bespoke service to VIP customers. With customer acquisition becoming more costly and time consuming, keeping existing, loyal customers around can produce more revenue for your business overall.
These customers, especially those with a high lifetime value, should get your most real-time support. Other high-priority conversations include very angry customers and time-sensitive requests.
A helpdesk can help you assign value to tickets, and bring the most urgent ones in front of agents so that they can treat them with high priority.
The four benefits of personalized customer service
98% of companies say that personalization increases customer loyalty and 83% of customers agree, according to a 2022 study by Twilio. Continue reading to understand why personalization is such a key aspect of delighting your customers, making it an undeniable best practice for customer support. A more personalized approach to customer support can help you:
- Meet customer expectations
- Drive more sales
- Raise customer satisfaction
- Get more consistent business and loyal customers
Meet customer expectations
Regardless of whether a customer’s chatting with human customer service agents or some automation tool like an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, nearly 70% of them want to receive personalized communications. Personalization starts with simple steps like including the customer’s first name in email correspondence. Because that’s how people communicate with each other — by name.
Fun fact: While people want personalized communication, they would rather have prompt, helpful customer service. 90% of customers expect a near-instant response to questions, according to a HubSpot survey.
The takeaway? Only use personalization if you can do some promptly.
📚 Recommended reading: Our tips to improve customer service response times and resolution times.
Drive more sales
Personalization matters for another crucial reason: It makes potential customers more likely to place an order. As many as 80% of respondents to an Epsilon/GBH survey indicated they were more likely to make a purchase after a personalized message than a non-personalized one.
For example, imagine a customer asks a video game distributor’s customer support team which game they should get for their child for Christmas. Without personalization, you’d either have to ask follow-up questions or provide a generic recommendation. With customer data, however, you might be able to:
- Greet the customer by name
- See the customer’s previous orders to know whether their child has a Playstation, Nintendo, or X-Box
- See the customer’s location and tell them the last day they can place an order to receive it by Christmas
- See the customer’s 5-star review of the last game they purchased to offer a more tailored recommendation
This is just a short list of potential ways to personalize a message, but it’s clear that personalization offers the best customer experience and gives the customer a much shorter path to a confident purchase.
Joseph Piazza, Senior Customer Experience Manager at messenger bike bag brand Timbuk2 says it best: “Increased customer support should go hand in hand with revenue growth. We want to turn customer experience into a profit center.”
Learn how Timbuk2 raised overall revenue by 35% with Gorgias.
Raise customer satisfaction
Personalized customer service greets your customers quickly and personally. It also reduces the time to problem resolution because your customer service agents have better information at the point of first contact.
Absolute Collagen saw firsthand how fast, personalized service can raise customer satisfaction (CSAT) to near-perfect levels (4.9/5), thanks to mitigating non-personalized “pre-determined, pre-scripted” responses:
Lead to consistent business and loyal customers
When businesses improve their customer service efforts through personalization, they typically see an increase in brand loyalty. HubSpot found that 93% of customers were more likely to return as repeat customers at businesses they categorized as having an excellent customer service experience.
Customer retention doesn’t just lead to more repeat business. A loyal customer base also leaves reviews, refers new customers through word of mouth, and places larger orders than new customers. That’s why repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers.
📈 Want to gauge the impact of your customer support? Read our take on the importance of customer service and check out our guide to customer service ROI.
The challenges of offering personalized service
Most businesses would agree that personalizing interactions is wise. But we all know from numerous personal encounters with airlines, warranty call centers, and maybe even healthcare providers that personalized customer service is far from universal. Many businesses have yet to find a way to successfully bring that personal touch, tailoring their efforts to the individual customer — especially at scale.
Local and small businesses tend to have an easier time offering personalized customer service because they have fewer customers. Think of a local coffee shop or boutique retail outlet that sees regular, repeat traffic: Staff at stores like these tend to learn their customers’ names and preferences and can offer a level of service that big-box stores can’t match.
Digital-first businesses and large ecommerce brands can’t develop these in-person relationships so they need an alternative approach to offer personalized experiences. Specifically, they need tech solutions that collect and use customer data. This means storing customer data in customer relationship management (CRM) software, surfacing that data throughout the customer journey, and implementing it in smart ways.
Deliver world-class personalized customer service faster than ever with Gorgias
If you’re ready to offer personalized customer service, the right tools will help you get there. Gorgias empowers ecommerce businesses to deliver world-class personalized customer service and helpdesk services faster than ever, thanks to deep integrations with Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce — plus dozens of other ecommerce tools — to put customer data front-and-center.
Book your demo to learn more about how Gorgias can transform your customer support into a revenue-generating machine.
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Ecommerce Product Categorization: How To Organize Your Products
Ecommerce product categorization is an excellent way to streamline the online shopping process and optimize customer experience. But if your ecommerce company offers more than just niche products, then separating those products into different categories can be time-consuming — and your team's time is better spent on tasks that tie directly to revenue generation.
To help you organize your product listings to make it easy for customers to find the types of products they are looking for, let's take a look at everything you need to know about ecommerce product categorization.
What is ecommerce product categorization (taxonomy)?
Product categorization, also called product taxonomy, aims to create an organized and searchable shopping experience by breaking products down into intuitive categories and subcategories.
Why is product categorization important in ecommerce?
Product categorization isn't usually a concern for ecommerce stores that offer just a handful of products. But stores with large-scale catalogs of different products need a way of organizing them so that it's easy for customers to find what they need. Product categorization can also be strategic: Your product taxonomy can promote certain product types (e.g. “Accessories”), occasions (e.g. “Father’s Day”) boost average order value (e.g. “Best Sellers”), and more.
Today, the process of ecommerce product categorization is often done using machine learning and natural language processing (NLP). When fed with the right training data, these algorithms allow ecommerce platforms to categorize products based on their descriptions and customer behavior — without having to organize their catalog manually. We won’t go too in-depth into these advanced tools in this post, but will recommend additional tools and reading if this is the kind of information you’re looking for.
Overall, proper product classification and categorization create a better user experience — which, as we know, is mission-critical for any brand. Customers can easily find similar products, search for products using common keywords, and enjoy a more organized and streamlined shopping experience. Some of the top benefits of ecommerce product categorization include:
Organized ecommerce sites with clean organizations sell more
Create a path of least resistance for your customers. Better organized ecommerce sites make it as easy as possible for them to find what they’re looking for. When you can eliminate obstacles that might otherwise keep them from buying, you have a better chance at generating more sales.
Plus, effective product categorization can act as a kind of upselling or cross-selling strategy. If customers are looking for adorable earrings, for example, they’re more likely to buy two or three pairs if they see an entire category page full of great options.
Product organization and categorization enable better search functionality
If you have a search function on your store (and you should), then organizing and categorizing your store's products improves its functionality and accuracy.
Along with optimizing your website's search functionality, proper product categorization can help optimize your website for search engines like Google and boost its SEO. While the number of product searches that originate from search engines instead of marketplaces is shrinking as marketplaces like Amazon and eBay have come to dominate the ecommerce space, it still accounts for 19% of all product searches.
Product categorization helps with monitoring data
Breaking your products down into categories enables you to monitor which category pages get the most visits and which ones have the highest conversion rate instead of doing this for product pages alone. This provides additional data that you can use to generate more insights into customer behavior. If your ecommerce store uses Shopify, you can pull these metrics out of your Live View analytics:
Product organization creates a streamlined shopping experience for your customers
Imagine walking into a department store to find products scattered randomly with no organization: dishware next to gardening supplies, cosmetics on the same shelf as cat food, sports equipment on the same aisle as canned goods. Organizing these products into categories helps users find what they’re looking for quickly or discover new products based on their interests or the occasion. For example, tech accessory brand has categories based around collections (on top of more standard categories), which could catch a browser’s eye and draw them onto a product page:
A step-by-step guide for ecommerce product categorization
If you want to organize and categorize your store's products in a way that will create an optimized shopping experience for your customers, here are the steps that you should follow:
1) Collect essential product data
Product data includes any information that can be used to organize your products: brand, material, size, color, and any other important product attributes. If you don’t have updated product information from which to source this data, you can request it from your suppliers.
Once you have gathered all available product data, a Product Information Management (PIM) system like Jasper PIM (available as a Shopify app) lets you organize and analyize product datasets automatically and provides a centralized environment for managing product data over time.
However, before you dive too deep into your data, take a step back and brainstorm some taxonomy structures that might work for your shoppers.
2) Create potential categories for your products
Creating a baseline for product categorization is pretty straightforward. Before diving into a teched-out process, put yourself in the shoes of the shopper and brainstorm ways But if you have a wide range of products for sale, it can get a little tricky. Here are a few tips for creating great product categories:
- Look at established ecommerce sites for inspiration
- Avoid being so specific that you end up with an excessive number of product categories
- Navigate your online store yourself to get a feel for the experience that your product hierarchy create
- Create clear and easy-to-understand titles for your product categories — remember, clear is better than clever
3) Use keyword research for product category/page optimization
Putting carefully chosen keywords in your product descriptions and category pages can improve your store's product search functionality. It can also improve your site's SEO, bringing in more traffic from search engines.
You can find the best keywords for your store using keyword research tools like SEMRush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs. These tools let you see the search volume for common keywords and provide keyword suggestions based on your input.
4) Categorize your products based on user behavior
Based on our analysis of data from 10,000 ecommerce merchants, sorting your product categories based on user behavior (like past purchases) using tools like Crossing Minds and Wiser can increase revenue by up to 10%.
Here are a few examples:
Merchology, a corporate apparel brand, uses customer data to create “Gifts” and “Ideas” categories for products that are commonly purchased for specific reasons. They sort by user behavior by categorizing products into “Top 10s” for many occasions:
Similarly, Adika has a category called “Best Sellers” to promote its products with the highest conversion rates:
5) Scale and iterate your product categorization efforts
Categorizing your products based on user behavior is an excellent strategy, but user behavior sometimes changes over time. Therefore, don't be afraid to adjust and rearrange your product categories over time based on what your metrics tell you.
On top of your standard categories, you can also include “facets,” which operate more like tags that categories. Facets are details about a product that may not be in the product title or significant enough to be its own category. For example, the cut of or material of a dress:
Facets act like keywords to give your shoppers another way to browse your store and find the exact kind of item they want. As your store grows (and your products change), keeping up with facets — especially because it’s difficult to anticipate all the ways customers might go about searching for products.
As you scale your categorization efforts, it’s also important to be careful not to overcomplicate your store’s navigation. New products may require new categories, but it may also become necessary to combine and condense some categories to avoid overwhelming your shoppers.
Product Information Management (PIM) systems, which we mentioned earlier, will also likely offer automation and other features to manage product data and keep your store up to date. For example, you can use your PIM as a single source of truth for listings across your ecommerce platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, etc.) and marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. That way, you can iterate on product descriptions and categories in one place, rather than changing them in the backend of each platform.
Ecommerce product categorization best practices
As you go about organizing and categorizing your ecommerce products, here are a few best practices to keep in mind:
Adjust your product categorization based on geolocations
You don't want to show products to customers who can't purchase them. If you don't ship certain products to certain states or countries, then you will need to categorize your products based on geo locations using a product like Advanced Store Localization or Geo Targetly.
Shakti is one Gorgias customer that uses Advanced Store Localization to adjust their product categories based on the customer's location. Because Shakti doesn't ship all of its products to all countries, they use the tool to hide certain products from viewers in those countries.
Avoid using "other" as a category
Instead of creating an “other” category (which will only confuse your shoppers) simply put products into the category where they fit most naturally. Use keywords to ensure that customers can easily find them — even if it isn’t all that clear which category they should search.
Keep products limited to one category at a time — except special categories
Having products appear in multiple categories often makes for a confusing product catalog that is difficult to navigate. Instead, keep products limited to a single category at a time. While this can sometimes be a little tricky for products that could fit in multiple categories, assign the one that fits best and use keywords within the product description to make up the difference.
The only exception to this is special categories, like Best Sellers, Valentine’s Days, Last Chance, etc. These categories aren’t based on product or customer types, so overlap won’t be confusing.
Product categories should all be unique from one another
Keep your product categories as simple as possible to avoid overlap and confusion. For example, having an "athletic apparel" category and a "sports apparel" category is redundant and unnecessary — choose one or the other. There's no benefit to having a larger number of categories, so don't feel the need to force them if they don't already cluster naturally.
Keep branding tone in mind while creating product categories and descriptions
But branding doesn’t just apply to color schemes and company logos: It’s your messaging, too, so keep it in mind when developing your product categories and product descriptions.
Categories and descriptions need to communicate key product information above all else, so be sure that you aren't sacrificing clarity for the sake of branding. Include the basics (color, dimensions, materials, size, and any other relevant descriptive information) and use simple, jargon-free language. ASOS product descriptions do this particularly well, balancing their conversational writing style with clear, useful keywords.
Consider adding a product quiz to help customers find the right product
Ninety-three percent of marketers agree that interactive content like product quizzes are effective at helping educate customers. Product quizzes designed to identify a customer's tastes or needs can be great tools for further helping customers find what they're looking for.
Dr. Squatch is one example of an ecommerce company that uses these quizzes effectively. If you want to create your own branded product quizzes, consider using a tool like the Product Recommendation Quiz app.
Building a category tree for your ecommerce store
Large catalogs of ecommerce products are typically separated into different categories and subcategories to build a hierarchical category tree. For a pair of women's sneakers, the level-categories might look like: Clothing & Apparel > Women's Footwear > Women's Sneakers.
After separating products into different categories and subcategories, you can further break them down with product attributes and facets.
Going back to our last example, the pair of women's sneakers might be assigned product attributes like size and color. You can then assign values to those attributes (7, 8, or 9 for the attribute "size," and red, white, and black for the attribute "color").
Jaxxon’s online store, which sells mens jewelry, is one example of a great category tree. There you will find numerous product categories, subcategories for each, and attributes that allow customers to filter their search further. For example, Rings breaks down further into Best-Selling Rings, Tungsten Rings, Iced Out Rings, and Wedding Bands:
Take care of your ecommerce shoppers with Gorgias
With the right tools and strategy, you can create a categorization system optimized for customer happiness and revenue generation.
With Gorgias' industry-leading customer insight tools, you can fine-tune your ecommerce store to give your shoppers exactly what they want. On top of product categorization, you can provide self-service resources like FAQ pages, Help Centers, and automated Quick Response Flows so customers have more answers, faster.
Providing instant, self-service answers to customers is how customers like Loop Earplugs lift revenue by up to 43%:
“We’ve seen 43% increase in revenue from customer support since we launched pre-sales flows. Quick response flows give us the ability to build trust with our customers and that’s priceless. When customers get a quick and honest answer, they often end up buying more than one product in a short span of time. Seeing customers live the life we’re aiming to create for them in Loop Earplugs is extremely rewarding for us.”
- Milan Vanmarcke, Customer Service Manager at Loop Earplugs
Get started with Gorgias to get on track to an organized ecommerce store that converts more shoppers into buyers.
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