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.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
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
{{lead-magnet-1}}
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.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
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.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
Newsletter Signup
The best in CX and ecommerce, right to your inbox
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.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
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.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
Further reading
.avif)
How To Use Pre-Sales Support To Unblock Sales
The buyer’s journey is full of questions: When will this arrive? Is this ethically made? Will I be able to return it if I don’t love it?
Pre-sales support grows your business by proactively answering these questions to help customers make more confident buying decisions. According to a study by Harvard Business Review, businesses with solid pre-sales strategies convert 40-50% of new customers.
Whether you’re aware or not, most shoppers need a lot of information before they trust you with their credit card number: information about sizing, shipping costs, production materials, and so on. And if they can’t find an answer, they might venture to Amazon or another store that provides this information upfront.
Below, learn how to structure a more effective pre-sales strategy that bolsters customer satisfaction and supports a healthy sales cycle.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
What is pre-sales support?
Pre-sales support is the process of providing shoppers with the answers they need to feel confident in making a purchase.
Especially as the shopping experience moves online, customers have new questions (e.g. “Is expedited shipping available?”) and more suspicion (e.g. “Does this product really show the accurate color of the product?”). The ability to answer pre-sales questions is an important factor in your online store’s conversion rate.
Example of pre-sales questions that impact customer sales
A lack of pre-sales questions is a major pain point for shoppers, resulting in lost sales. While your store’s complete list of pre-sales questions will depend on your unique product and industry, use the list below as a starting point that covers most ecommerce fundamentals. Below are some common questions that your support team should be prepared to answer.
Product details
- What size should I get?
- How does this product work?
- Who is this product for?
When trying to identify the best product for their needs, customers typically ask questions about size, color, durability, warranty, user-friendliness, safety, and so on. Another common question is how the product compares to its competitors.
For example, tech accessory brand Native Union’s product pages include quite a lot of information to proactively answer pre-sales questions about this product. On top of a detailed description, the page includes tech specs, compatibility, a section on “Why we designed this,” and products that work well with this one:
 |
Your agents must answer these questions and point out how each product feature will add value to the customer’s life. If necessary, the agent can recommend other available products that might be a better fit for the customer’s budget or other requirements.
Inventory details
- When will you get this item back in stock?
- Does this include refills?
- Does this come in any other colors?
On top of questions about specific products, customers may have pre-sales questions about inventory levels and product availability. Think of this as the equivalent of asking the clerk whether they have any additional sizes in the back.
For example, ABLE responds to inventory-related questions on its Instagram posts:
 |
Shipping questions
- How long do items process before they ship?
- Do you ship to my location?
- How much does shipping cost?
- How long will shipping take?
Shipping-related concerns are common among pre-sales shoppers. Including a robust shipping FAQ page and self-service order tracking once orders ship can go a long way toward quelling those concerns.
For example, Vancouver-based dress shop Park & Fifth has a detailed FAQ page that lists out answers to many shipping questions. To help brides understand how long they need to order a wedding dress from their white collection, they even specify how long those dresses take to ship.
 |
Technical support
- Will this item fit in my space?
- How will I know how to install it once it arrives?
- Will this be compatible with my other devices?
Technical questions often require detailed measurement guides or a human touch so that shoppers can ensure they make the right choice.
For example, car accessory brand GOBI shares installation guides and product specs within every product page. Since the brand creates roof racks for many different car models, customers need to ensure they’re purchasing the right one.
 |
Sourcing, ethical concerns, and brand values
- Do you use fairtrade and sustainably sourced materials?
- Are your operations eco-friendly?
- Are your sheets OEKO-TEX certified?
More and more customers prefer getting their goods and services from socially responsible companies. Pointing out that your company adheres to ethical practices can convince shoppers with those concerns to make a purchase.
For example, fashion brand ALOHAS makes its sustainability practices well known across its website.
 |
Pricing frustration or confusion
- Can I get a discount?
- Do you have any upcoming sales?
Most customers are looking for a bargain, so it’s not unusual to hear questions like the above. If a customer complains about prices or missing sales, you can offer a coupon to help get the customer to make a purchase. If giving a coupon is not feasible, inform the customer about upcoming sales.
If your brand doesn’t do sales, let shoppers know why your products are worth the price by explaining your unique selling points (USPs). You can also sway undecided prospects by offering free returns if the product falls short of their expectations.
For example, jewelry brand Jaxxon’s chat widget includes a button labeled, “Do you have any current promotions?” This way, customers can quickly find any promotions without having to leave your website or wait for an agent’s response (both of which would delay, or even derail, the purchase):
 |
Doubts about product efficacy
- Will this help my hair grow back?
- Are these vitamins really effective?
When a potential customer doubts a product’s efficacy, telling them the product works is not enough to clear their doubts.
On your website, make sure to list the product’s ingredients or qualities and explain why each one can deliver the results the prospect seeks. Case studies, positive reviews, and science-backed research that showcases the product’s effectiveness also go a long way in the battle for customer trust.
For example, vitamin brand Ritual shares information about the research team who formulated its vitamins and where it sources its ingredients on its website.
 |
{{lead-magnet-2}}
7 ways boost revenue with pre-sales support
Pre-sales support helps to stop shoppers from leaving your page to research products on other sites, and provides crucial objection handling that can make or break sales. In fact, Harvard Business Review found that optimized pre-sales processes converted 80 to 90% of repeat customers.
Your support team must also act as sales reps in order to answer any questions, handle objections, or provide the assistance shoppers need to make a purchase.
1) Make your website informative and easy-to-navigate
Shoppers won’t make purchases if they get confused on your website, or if it doesn't provide the information prospects need to confidently place an order. Your website’s browsing experience is your first line of defense against pre-sales questions that could block a sale.
 |
There’s no limit to the ways you could optimize your website, but here are some of the best opportunities:
- Provide delivery estimates early in the checkout process
- Use banners to notify customers about temporary announcements (like delivery delays or new promotions)
- Make your shipping and return policy easily clickable from any page
- Create detailed product descriptions that provide information about the products production, compatibility, use cases, sizing, and more
- Create detailed sizing guides or a sizing questionnaire
- Use product quizzes to help customers find the right product for their needs
- Provide multiple product photos (or even videos and 360-degree images) on each product page
You can also do market research to figure out what kinds of websites are easiest to navigate or for tips and tricks you can adopt to improve your website’s functionality.
You can also look at your website traffic and perform data analysis to figure out what’s working and where you could use some optimization. For example, if you have incredible shipping and return policies that barely get any traffic, you may want to make links to those pages more prominent.
📚 Recommended reading: Our guide to ecommerce conversion optimization with A/B testing.
2) Provide proactive self-service resources
On top of information dispersed across your site, you can also centralize answers to pre-sales questions in a self-service resource (like an FAQ page or Help Center knowledge base).
If customers with questions are directed straight to your email, that’s a problem. You want to create a path to these answers (and the purchases that follow) that doesn't require leaving your website or shopping app — especially before an order is placed when leaving your site means abandoning a cart.
A detailed, organized resource will quickly become your shoppers’ first stop for all questions and issues before reaching out to support.
Once you build an FAQ page or Help Center, link it prominently on your website (like Jaxxon, who put a link in their website’s top navigation).
 |
Once customers land on this resource, make navigation as easy as possible so customers can quickly answer their questions. A search bar is your best friend here. Your next best? Clear categorization, titles, and headers so customers can find exactly what they’re looking for.
For example, furniture brand Branch offers an FAQ page and Help Center organized to answer common pre-sales questions from shoppers:
 |
📚Recommended reading: Why Proactive Customer Service Is Your New Growth Strategy
3) Provide self-service answers to the most common questions in your chat widget
If your customers can’t find help on your website or help center, they’ll likely open up your live chat widget to ask a question. Fortunately, you have one more line of defense: Pre-loaded FAQs in your live chat.
To save both your support team and your shoppers time, you can use a feature like Gorgias’ Quick Response Flows. These add interactive buttons to your chat widget that customers can click for an instant answer.
Take a look at ALOHAS’ Quick Response Flows to get the idea:
 |
Quick Response Flows are a great match for pre-sales questions because your customers don’t have to leave your website (or wait for an agent’s follow-up response) to get the information they’re looking for.
Plus, Quick Response Flows don’t mimic or replace human agents — if customers aren’t satisfied with an answer, they don’t have to fight with a frustrating chatbot or open up an email to contact your team. They can easily click “I need more help” to be connected with a customer support agent or salesperson.
How did Jaxxon Increased Revenue by 46% with Quick Response Flows? With Gorgias, Jaxxon is able to automate responses to common pre-sales questions and give customers instant answers around the clock, leading to happier customers, 46% more revenue, and time saved for the team to handle higher-impact conversations.
Read the case study.
4) Automatically answer common pre-sales questions your support team gets asked
If customers end up asking a question to your support team, you still have an opportunity to provide an answer with the help of automation. We recommend using a helpdesk that leverages omnichannel communication to receive and send messages via email, live chat, SMS, or any other channel.
With help from Gorgias, you can automatically detect common customer questions and fire an instant response based on a pre-written Macro template.
 |
Gorgias’ Intent Detection capabilities can understand when customers are looking for specific information, so you can provide a helpful response without waiting for an agent.
Setting up automated responses provides instant, helpful responses while improving project management for agents (they won’t have to answer as many questions) and create better workflows for them.
Save your time for better things
Unlock your customer support with Automate in Gorgias. Leverage tools designed to resolve common customer inquiries so you can focus on conversations that no robot can answer.
5) Use chat campaigns to reach out to live shoppers in real time
Chat campaigns are automated outreach to customers via your site’s chat widget — kind of like an in-store sales team member approaching a shopper to see if they need help and know about the latest products and promotions.
Chat campaigns can offer updates, news like product launches or recent collabs, or ask shoppers if they have any questions they need answered.
For example, if you use Gorgias, you can set up a prompt for users who have been on the site for a while:
 |
While the above example is a welcome message for all website visitors, you can get much more specific. For example, you can create chat campaigns for:
- Premium product pages to offer high-touch support
- Shipping pages to remind customers about your free shipping eligibility
- Checkout pages to offer a discount to get shoppers over the finish line
📚 Recommended reading: Learn more about chat campaigns, including examples to move shoppers down the sales funnel.
6) Create custom pre-sales views within your helpdesk
To help support agents filter out pre-sales conversations, set up rules to help tag and prioritize pre-sales tickets within your helpdesk.
In Gorgias, you can set up views and create tags and rules within those views so that agents can filter for only pre-sales questions. If you do this, be sure to clearly define to agents what qualifies as a pre-sales question. It’s anything that a shopper needs answered in order to justify a purchase.
7) Monitor social media for pre-sales questions (and answer them publicly)
Help potential customers learn more about your products without ever leaving the social app they’re using.
Because social media comments and direct messages come in across apps and usually in large quantities, this task should never fall on your marketing team. Instead, set support agents up with the information they need to answer customer questions on social media. These questions can often remove the barrier a shopper needs to make a purchase.
For example, fine jewelry brand Fewer Finer often answers questions via Instagram Stories to help sell different pieces in its vintage and signature collections.
 |
How to measure pre-sales support
Most brands don’t think customer support teams offer much in the way of lead generation or sales. This couldn’t be farther from the truth: Pre-sales customer support teams can be a huge facilitator of sales — it’s just a matter of proving so.
Here are three ways to measure revenue that comes in through support.
1) Use a revenue generated by support dashboard
Create or monitor a dashboard that shows all revenue that your support team generates. If you use Gorgias, you can see this in the Revenue Statistics part of your account. Gorgias attributes revenue to a conversation with an agent within the last 5 days before a sale.
 |
2. Track traffic coming into your help center
The traffic you get to your help center can also be another great indicator of pre-sales questions answered, an indicator of revenue generated by support.
If a shopper visits your help center before making a purchase — especially an article containing pre-sales questions — it’s most likely because they’re interested in your brand, have questions, and are actively interested in learning more.
Keep an eye on traffic here to prove your impact as well as understand how you could better organize and link your knowledge base to improve discoverability.
3. Track the automation rate of pre-sales Quick Response Flows
If you automate responses in chat for common questions (called Quick Response Flows if you use Gorgias), you can measure their traffic.
For example, if you see that 200% more people click the response for “Do you have new products,” that’s a good sign your pre-sales support is funneling traffic to product pages. If you see a spike in purchases following that, count that as a win. If you use Gorgias, you can find these stats in the Revenue Statistics Dashboard.
 |
Post-sales support
Post-sales support is an effective tool for supporting existing customers, encouraging exchanges over returns, and creating repeat business.
The difference between pre-sales and post-sales support
Pre-sales support means answering the questions customers ask before making a purchase plus leading customers through the sales process and closing deals. Support agents turn into sales representatives to guide a customer from being a prospect to becoming a satisfied shopper.
Customer support team members handle post-sales support as well — and this activity impacts your brand’s bottom line as well. By creating a good impression and meeting customer needs through quality post-sales, customers are more likely to become return shoppers, boosting customer retention and lifetime value.
Proactive post-sales strategies
After a customer places an order, keep them at ease but eager to keep shopping by sending:
- Detailed order confirmations: Share order confirmation emails that include a link to a customer’s order portal where they can find status updates like shipping times or return information. This helps to reduce WISMO (where is my order) requests.
- A thank you note: Appreciating a customer goes a long way in showing that you value their patronage.
- Review request: Asking for feedback shows clients that their opinions matter to your company, and can help you make necessary improvements to the post-sales process.
- Product suggestions: Product suggestions are a great way to keep customers engaged while awaiting their orders. Sending them product suggestions that match their searches also increases the chances of the customer making more purchases.
- Shipping updates: Send shoppers shipment updates until their order arrives. The updates can contain personalized alerts about ongoing discount offers, upcoming promotions, and more, to bring customers back to your store.
- Marketing communications: Send out email newsletters or nurture campaigns to re-engage shoppers and encourage repeat purchases.
- Offer fast customer support wherever your customers are: According to a study by AMA, you can use live chat to improve post-sales customer support by 39%. Lowering your average response time can also help meet customer expectations.
- Take an omnichannel approach: Customers expect to get support on their preferred channel, whether that's SMS or Facebook Messenger. Make that a reality for them by employing omnichannel customer service.
Strengthen your pre-sales activities with Gorgias
Gorgias can support your support agents and your customers as they embark on a pre-sales journey. While most customer support teams and tools focus on troubleshooting issues, Gorgias focuses on generating more qualified leads and improving conversion rates for online stores.
Book your demo to try out the most revenue-generating helpdesk in ecommerce.
13 Live Chat Support Metrics to Measure and Improve Your Chat Strategy
If you’re using a live chat for your ecommerce business — to support customers, drive sales, or both — you already know it’s a powerful tool.
That tool is made even mightier with analytics and reporting. Stores that don’t track support metrics for live can only take educated guesses to answer questions like:
- When should we staff live chat? How many agents do we need at any given time?
- How does live chat support performance compare against other channels?
- How does live chat compare to other pop-ups in terms of conversion rates?
Below, we’ll cover key live chat metrics that go beyond your response and resolution times. You’ll also get finer insights about how your chat strategy boosts your bottom line.
Don’t have live chat yet? Check out our list of the best live chat software (or, the best chat apps for Shopify or BigCommerce).
What do online shoppers expect from live chat?
Before you look into analytics and reporting for your live chat operations, it’s good to get a baseline of how customers expect live chat to fit into the customer experience.
Here are some statistics that highlight what your shoppers expect from your live chat support operations.
- 42% of customers want a response within 60 minutes on social media (Convince & Convert).
- Customers expect a response within 45 seconds for live chat (Com100).
- 53% of customers are willing to wait only three minutes to talk to an agent on the phone (BizFluent).
People want to get things done as quickly as possible. Ultimately, it’s best to start where you are and work on improving internally. But, when you know how you stack up to the competition, it can help.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
Next, take a look at the key performance indicators (KPIs) you should follow.
📚 Read more:
- 25 Customer Support Metrics To Measure Your Team’s Impact & How to Calculate
- 22 Live Chat Statistics You Need To Know in 2022
The Live Chat Support Metrics You Need to Follow
To get a complete understanding of where you stand and where your customer support team can improve live chat efforts, here are the metrics you should follow (in no particular order).
1) Contact rate
Your contact rate is the percentage of active customers that reach out to you via your chat strategy on any given day, month, year, or other period of time.
Contact rate is tricky: If customers are messaging you with pre-sales questions, that’s a good thing. They’re deep in the consideration phase and need information about sizing, returns, or shipping to make a purchase.
But if people are messaging you with post-sales questions (like “Where is my order?” or WISMO) then you have a problem. A high number of these chats indicates some part of your customer support information is unclear or confusing.
Remember that avoidable customer support interactions — not counting pre-sales interactions, which are more like a sales consult — are actually 4x more likely to drive customer disloyalty than customer loyalty. A low rate indicates that customers are able to find everything they need without your help.
How to measure contact rate
The formula for determining your contact rate is to divide the number of customers who reach out via live chat in a time period, such as month, by the total number of customers. Then multiply by 100.
For example, if you had 500 customers in December, and 153 of them reached out for help via live chat, your contact rate would be 30.6%.
If you use a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can see contact rate broken down by channel, agent, and more right within the platform.
Tips to improve contact rate
Analyzing why customers contact you via live chat will help you reduce your contact rate.
For example, most customer inquiries tend to be about shipping and tracking. If you’re getting many questions about your shipping policies, that indicates you haven’t made this information clear and easy to find on your website.
Another solution is to add self-service options to your chat widget for frequently asked questions, such as shipping info, parcel tracking, and order cancellation. You can add these as buttons or as automated chatbot replies.
📚 Read more:
- Customer Service Messaging: Tips and Templates for SMS + Conversational Channels
- Playbook: How Berkey Filters Drove Customer Adoption of a New SMS Support Channel
2) First-response time
Your first-response time (FRT) is also called your average wait time — essentially how long it takes to reply to a new chat from a customer. Specifically, it’s the response to the very first chat message from a customer.
Customers have high expectations when using a chat widget. According to Klipfolio, users expect a response via chat within 90 seconds, compared to 24 hours for email. That’s fast! But that’s why customers prefer chat when it’s available.
Your first interaction with a customer is a crucial time to secure their trust and loyalty with a fast response. Faster responses mean a higher customer satisfaction (CSAT) score, which we’ll discuss further in depth later on.
Your first-response time should become shorter over time. When you see a decrease in first-response time without a spike in website traffic, it is a cause for concern and should be looked into.
How to measure FRT
Your first-response time can be calculated by determining how long it took to respond to every first chat message within a time period, then dividing by the number of messages.
For example, if it took 74,000 seconds to respond to 800 tickets in September, the first-time response rate was 92.5 seconds, on average.
Thankfully, a helpdesk such as Gorgias can provide this number to you.
Tips to improve first-response time
Improving your first-response time requires you to have support agents available if your live chat is set to active.
Make sure to set your business hours in your chat widget. This way, after-hours customer inquiries will be converted to an emailed ticket. Appearing offline also sets customer expectations, letting them know a response won’t come until the next day.
Keep an eye on those metrics to determine if there are particular days, hours, or seasons when incoming chats rise and more support employees need to be on hand.
3) Average response time
While the first-response time is all about that initial chat message, your average response time is how long it takes to respond to any and all incoming chat messages.
That first-response time benchmark of 90 seconds still applies here — you don’t want your customer to get a quick first response and then grow frustrated as responses take longer.
How to measure average response time
To calculate this, add up the total time your team has taken to respond to requests during a specific time period, then divide by the number of responses sent during that same time period.
For example, if your team spent 72,800 seconds responding to 800 messages, that’s an average chat response time of 91 seconds.
Again, Gorgias’ metrics can provide this number for you.
Tips to improve average response time
This is another opportunity for self-service options and chatbots to shine.
Gorgias’ Automation Add-on allows you to add self-service order management options and quick response flows to your chat widget, giving customers instant answers to their questions or options for tracking or canceling orders.
4) Resolution Time
The resolution time is how long it takes for a customer’s issue to be resolved after they first reach out via chat. This is also called the average resolution time (ART) or average handle time.
This includes the entire chat duration, starting when they send that first message, and ending when they’re satisfied their concern is addressed.
Use this metric to determine how long it typically takes to solve your customers’ problems. Like first-responses, they want a resolution as quickly as possible.
Similar to first-response time, customers expect a quicker resolution when they start a chat session then when they reach out via email.
How to measure resolution time
The average resolution time is calculated by dividing the total duration of all chat conversations in a given time period, divided by the number of customers.
You can also see this number in your Gorgias help desk metrics.
Historical view of average resolution time
Tips to improve resolution time
You can use automation to speed response and therefore resolution times.
Study your incoming messages to determine frequently asked questions and create templated responses (or Macros, in Gorgias) and then create automated Rules to respond to tickets.
In Gorgias, these templated responses can be sent quickly and efficiently, and can even pull in personalized customer information like names, order numbers, and tracking info.
5) First-contact resolution rate
Also called the first-contact resolution (FCR) rate looks at how many incoming chat sessions are resolved with a single reply. These are also called one-touch tickets.
Solving issues with a single reply is the best-case scenario with incoming chat requests. As we mentioned earlier, high-effort customer support interactions drive disloyalty, so keeping these interactions short and sweet will increase customer satisfaction.
How to measure first contact resolution
The FCR rate is calculated by finding the total number of chats resolved with a single reply, and dividing it by the total number of incoming chats that were eligible to be resolved with a single reply.
Tips to improve first contact resolution
In addition to automation and self-service options we’ve already discussed, this is a KPI where it’s worth digging into your chat history.
If a chat session took more than one response to be resolved, ask yourself:
- Is there a way you can speed up the process for next time?
- Is there a new automation you can add?
- Could you practice forward-resolution by proactively answering common follow-up questions in the first response?
Complex issues will inevitably take several responses to solve, but aim to streamline as many common chat requests as possible.
{{lead-magnet-2}}
6) Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score
While a little more complicated to calculate, your customer satisfaction (CSAT) score is the ultimate measure of the impact your customer service is having.
The customer satisfaction score measures how a customer feels about your store’s customer support. Was it quick? Was it low-effort? Was your customer service team helpful? It’s estimated that businesses lose $75 million every year due to poor customer service, so keeping customers satisfied is no longer optional.
By contrast, happy customers lead to conversions and repeat business. Gorgias analyzed over 10,000 businesses and found that raising CSAT score by just one point — from 4 to 4.9 — lifts overall revenue by 4%.
According to Retently, the average CSAT score for ecommerce businesses is 75. Customer satisfaction rate can also be expressed as a number from 1 to 5, 5 being the best.
How to measure CSAT
To get your CSAT score, you need to survey customers who have interacted with you via chat. This can be done with a survey tool, or with Gorgias.
Ask customers who used your chat: “On a scale from 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your experience today?” Then, add up how many gave a rating of 4/5 or 5/5 and divide that by the total number of responses. Multiply by 100 to get your CSAT score.
Using Gorgias, customers are asked to rate their experience, showing you a CSAT store in your dashboard out of five. We recommend our customers, all of whom are ecommerce merchants, aim for a CSAT score of 4.8.
Tips to improve CSAT score
Using Gorgias, you can review all chat ratings as all customers are given a post-chat survey. You can use this to examine common themes for any interactions scored below 4 stars. What issues keep coming up? Do particular products result in lower scores than others?
You can also follow-up with customers who gave a low score to further investigate what went wrong with these detractors.
Issues that can impact your CSAT score — and that you can work on improving — include:
- Long wait times for responses
- Multiple messages needing to be sent
- Long resolution times
📚 Read more:
- 9 Ways To Improve Your CSAT Score and Response Rate
- Evaluating Your Customer Service Program: Why, Challenges, and KPIs That Matter
7) Customer effort score
This is a complement to your CSAT as well as NPS (net promoter scores). The customer effort score measures how much effort a customer felt like they had to put in to resolve their issue.
This score should be as low as possible. Ideally, you want customers to find your customer service to be effortless, breezy, and efficient. High effort interactions will in turn hurt your CSAT and your revenue.
According to The Effortless Experience, 96% of customers who had a high-effort customer service experience feel disloyal to the company after.
How to measure customer effort score
Similar to your CSAT score, customer effort can be measured with a survey that asks customers to rate how easy their experience was on a scale of 1 to 5.
Find the percentage that said “very easy” and then subtract the percentage that said “very hard.” This will give you a score of between -100 and 100.
Tips to improve customer effort score
The more messages a customer has to send via your live chat, the more effort it will take on their part to resolve the issue.
Using automation, increasing response times, and aiming for one-ticket resolutions will improve your customer effort score.
📚 Read more: Customer Delight Is A Losing Strategy in Ecommerce: Here’s What’s Better
8) Conversion rate
Is your customer service chat tool actually leading to more sales, also known as conversions? Are you successfully turning chat requests into sales?
Chat is a great way to contribute to your conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategy since you talk with customers while they’re still on your store (and hopefully contemplating a purchase).
Pre-sale information given via chat, like finding the right size or inquiring about your return policy, have a high chance of leading to a sale.
How to measure conversion rate
The conversion rate is calculated by total sales after a customer support interaction divided by total number of tickets.
The Gorgias dashboard shows you how many tickets led to sales within five days, which reveals your conversion ratio. Apply a channel filter for live chat to show how many of these were the result of a live chat session,
As well, Gorgias shows you the hard numbers of your total sales numbers that came from a support interaction.
Tips to improve conversion rate
The best way to improve conversion rate from chat is to reach out to more customer shopping in real-time with chat campaigns. These automated pop-up conversations can be used to ask whether website visitors need help, know how to qualify for free shipping, or offer a discount.
Research shows that people who use live chat are 3X more likely to complete their purchase before leaving a website.
9)Total sales
How much money is being generated via live chat support? This is simply your total sales made from customers who used your live chat.
How to measure total sales
While you could calculate this manually, in Gorgias statistics you can filter your sales by channel, segmenting only those sales made after a customer used live chat.
Tips to improve total sales
Like your CSAT score, your total sales are a reflection of your overall ability to quickly meet customers’ needs via chat.
Compare individual sales with either very high or very low totals and look for patterns. Do more responses lead to a higher or lower total? Does answering FAQs have an impact? These are important questions that become much easier to answer when you can see the total sales over a given period, agent, channel, request type, and so on.
📚 Read more: Customer Service ROI: How To Measure and Improve Value
10) Automation rate
This is a measure of how many customers are getting help via chat using automated options like self-service order management and quick response flows.
These can be created in the Gorgias chat widget by adding buttons for customers to get information like tracking, or answers to FAQs, without a live agent needing to respond.
For example, luxury jeweler Jaxxon’s chat widget contains the following self-service options for a proactive customer service approach.
By using automated responses, Jaxxon reduced live chat volume by 17% while lifting on-site conversion rate by 6%.
How to measure automation rate
Gorgias Statistics lets you see how many customers use the automated options you have set up in the chat service.
Tips to improve automation rate
Set your chat widget up for success by reviewing incoming tickets to determine which common inquiries can be satisfied with either self-service order management or quick answer flows.
11) Template usage
Templated responses in live chat save your support agents time and, of course, give quicker responses to customers.
At Gorgias, these pre-written responses are called Macros. They are similar to custom fields and they can help automate some of your communication within your live chat support operations.
Preparing Marcos for use in live chat will improve your average response time, resolution time, and lead to more one-touch tickets.
How to measure template usage
In Gorgias Statistics, you can see how often Macros are used in responses to customers.
Tips to improve template usage
Monitoring which types of responses take the most amount of time for agents to resolve will help you create new templates for them to use. On the flip side, seeing a template is used very frequently could point to shortcomings elsewhere.
For example, if you notice that the shipping macro seems to be over-used, you can link out to shipping details and/or update your shipping policy page to make the information easier for customers to find. Then, you may not need to reply to as many tickets in the future.
12) Chat campaign responses
Your chat widget can do so much more than track orders. With Gorgias’ live chat, you can set up campaigns that deliver customized messages for different scenarios.
For example you can set up chat automated chat messages that:
- Offer a product-specific offers or discounts
- Give a link to a style quiz
- Spark conversation around specific products
- Offer a personal, virtual stylist
- Prevent cart abandonment
For example, here’s a chat campaign from Jaxxon to recommend “VIP level support.”
It’s great to try new things with your chat widget but you should always be mindful to measure and evaluate their results.
How to measure chat campaign responses
The best way to track responses to your campaigns is to set up an auto-tag in the Gorgias help desk to see how many people respond when prompted with a campaign message.
Here’s how Jaxxon could set up auto-tagging for the above campaign:
Tips to improve campaign responses
All chat campaigns should be tracked with performance metrics to determine if they were successful, how they can be improved on next time, and if you need to do further A/B testing.
In the Gorgias dashboard, you can:
- Track overall revenue generated by a campaign
- Measure increase in sales for products targeted with a chat campaign
- Track the usage of promo codes
You can also include a UTM link to track clicks.
13) Missed chats
The whole point of live chat is to provide immediate customer service in real-time. Missing a chat has a deep impact on that customers’ satisfaction so you need to keep a keen eye on missed messages in the chat queue and use them to inform your customer service strategy.
How to measure missed chats
Simply review your incoming chats on a regular basis, even daily, to see if any incoming chat sessions didn’t receive a response. Keep track of this number and see if you can get it to the ideal number: zero.
Tips to improve missed messages
As we discussed before, it’s vital to set your business hours in your live chat. For after-hours, include a contact form so that even if you’re not online at the time, a ticket is created.
If you notice you’re missing a lot of chat messages at a particular time of day, or day of the week, that’s an indication to rethink your live chat agent staffing schedule.
You should also pay attention to each individual agent and if they’re missing tickets. That could mean there’s a need for additional training to improve agent performance.
Never stop optimizing
What’s up with your ecommerce live chat support operations? If you don’t know, you can never optimize your processes.
A live chat will only drive sales if it’s being used in a way that best supports both your business and your customers. Keeping a close eye on all the above data will allow you to finetune your live chat performance.
Remember, satisfied customers are loyal customers, and loyal customers are ones that will come back again and again.
Gorgias puts this important data at your fingertips. Our customers can see everything they need to nurture outstanding customer support strategies. Sign up for your free trial today and experience the difference.
.avif)
Positive Scripting in Customer Service: How To Do It Right
Quick summary:
- Positive scripting means using polite, pre-written responses to make customers feel acknowledged and taken care of
- Benefits: less frustrated customers, better customer satisfaction, and faster first response times
- Negatives: can make customer service teams sound overly friendly or robotic and may lead to slower resolution times when agents rely solely on scripts
A great customer experience relies on much more than positivity and kindness — your customers expect personalization at scale, self-service options, and concrete benefits like free shipping. That said, using the right words is an important factor in customer conversations.
Positive scripting is one practice that can help your customer service representative steer customer interactions toward desired outcomes (like upselling shoppers and bringing first-time customers back for a second purchase).
However, over-relying script templates in customer support is a shortcut to unhelpful customer care interactions. Read on to learn how to make the most of positive scripting while also avoiding its pitfalls.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
What is positive scripting? (AKA positive phraseology)
Positive scripting is the practice of creating canned responses for customer service interactions that use positive language to limit customer frustration and promote desired outcomes.
With positive scripting, brands can provide support reps with resources such as scripts and templates that they can use to help ensure positive customer interactions. These scripts and templates can also be used as training resources to provide reps with examples of constructive interactions and positive language.
Goals of positive scripting
There are several goals that brands can accomplish with positive customer service scripts, including:
- Promoting constructive customer service experiences that contribute to customer satisfaction
- Alleviating customer frustration and de-escalating angry customers
- Maintaining a consistent, positive brand voice
- Speeding up response times to customer queries
Where can positive scripting be used?
Positive scripting can be used across numerous contact centers and customer support channels.
 |
Like any customer support practice, positive scripting should be tweaked for each channel.
Call centers
Providing support via a phone call requires reps to be quick on their feet, and this is where the practice of positive scripting first originated.
Providing call center scripts to your call center agents can go a long way toward helping agents stay positive and on-brand when there isn't much time for them to formulate a response.
SMS support
Agents have a little more time to think about their SMS responses, but not much. Customers contacting your support team via SMS still expect swift responses, and positive scripting can help ensure that your SMS responses are swift, positive, and on-brand.
Live chat support
Like SMS, live chat conversations tend to be fast-moving — and this is one of the primary reasons why many consumers list live chat as their preferred customer support channel.
With positive scripting and live chat tools like Gorgias live chat, you can provide fast, convenient, and helpful support via this advantageous channel.
📚 Recommended reading: Find out how Gorgias customer Ohh Deer used Gorgias chat to generate $12,500 in revenue — per quarter.
Email support
Support reps can typically put a little more time and thought into their email responses.
Nevertheless, email templates with positive scripting can still help keep these responses positive and consistent while also enabling reps to respond to email queries more efficiently.
Social media support
Providing support via social media is a great way to meet your customers where they're most comfortable — and positive scripting helps keep these responses positive and on-brand.
This is especially important when responding to comments and posts that other potential customers are likely to see.
Scripts and templates
Scripts, templates, and automated responses should all be built using positive scripting.
If you use a helpdesk, chances are you can build a library of templates in the tool for agents to use during customer conversations.
For example, you can use Gorgias Macros to build positive templates and autoresponses. Unlike most templates, Gorgias Macros pull customer information from ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, as well as other ecommerce tools (like Klaviyo and ShipBob) to automatically personalize the response.
 |
Even better? Thanks to automated Rules, Gorgias can automatically send these personalized templates to customers for basic interactions — like WISMO (where is my order), questions about shipping and return policies, and so on.
This way, your customer service team time saves time while still fostering a great, personalized customer experience.
Customer support training programs
You can use positive scripting to guide customer service training by using customer support scripts with positive language as examples of beneficial customer interactions.
This helps new team members get a feel for expectations regarding your company's voice and tone, which they can reflect in their individual customer interactions.
Benefits of effective positive scripting
When used correctly, positive scripting can improve the quality of a brand's customer support services in several key ways, including:
 |
Enhance customer experiences to encourage repeat business
Did you know that 54% of customers say they would stop purchasing from a brand after just a single bad experience? If you want to promote customer loyalty and repeat business, it's vital to provide positive experiences throughout every step of the customer journey.
Likewise, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers, according to our data from over 10,000 ecommerce brands. Repeat customers place repeat orders, place larger orders, refer friends to your store, leave product reviews, and more.
 |
While many different elements go into crafting positive customer experiences, facilitating friendly and welcoming customer interactions with positive scripting is one important step.
Avoid or de-escalate angry customers
Using positive words and language may not solve a customer's problem, but it can help ease their frustrations. Positive scripting is an effective way to de-escalate angry customers — and a great way to prevent customers from ever becoming angry in the first place.
Become more consistent with customer communication and policies
Your customer service agents don’t just need to be positive, they need to follow the same policies and procedures, especially for common customer interactions. Using scripting to guide
Of course, you can also specify which policies agents can bend, and when. For example, if repeat customers ask for an extension on refund eligibility, it’s probably in your best interest to permit the return rather than frustrate a repeat customer.
📚Recommended reading: Our guide to creating a customer service policy that actually provides value.
Maintain a positive brand voice
Positive scripting helps you maintain a consistent brand voice, but, just as importantly, it also helps you maintain a positive brand voice. By using positive scripting to guide your brand's messaging, you can carefully (and intentionally) design your language to encourage customer satisfaction and beneficial outcomes.
Examples of positive scripting
A majority of customer interactions can become more pleasant and productive with positive scripting. Here are some scenarios that would benefit from positive scripting:
- Greeting: "Good [morning/afternoon/evening], thank you for choosing [Company Name]. How can I help you today?"
- Apologizing: "I'm sorry to hear about the inconvenience you've faced. Let me look into this for you."
- Offering assistance: "I'd be delighted to assist you with that" or "I'm here to make this right for you."
- Expressing appreciation: "Thank you for bringing this to our attention" or "We appreciate your business and your feedback."
- Providing assurance: "Rest assured, we'll resolve this for you" or "We'll do everything we can to make this a positive experience."
- Suggesting solutions: "Let me find that information for you" or "May I suggest an alternative solution?"
- Ending interactions: "Is there anything else I can assist you with today?" or "I hope you have a wonderful day."
The pitfalls of positive scripting
The biggest potential drawback of positive scripting is one that we've already touched on; customers who contact your call center or other customer support channel want to feel as though they are talking to a real human and not a robot regurgitating a script.
It's also vital to remember that customers are ultimately much more interested in resolving their problems quickly than in the language that your reps use. Many times, a simple message with the information they're looking for (such as a tracking number) will suffice with no flair or positivity required.
 |
To prevent positive scripting from harming your customer interactions rather than improving them, here are a few other key mistakes and pitfalls to avoid:
- Not giving support team members the freedom to deviate from their script or inject their own flair
- Scripting entire customer interactions instead of just using scripts to save time on the most common, process-heavy elements
- Focusing too much on positive language and too little on actually solving customer issues as quickly as possible
- Writing scripts that sound too robotic or overly-friendly
- Using vague empathy statements rather than training your agents to be genuine and sincere
These are all serious mistakes to avoid if you want to make the most of positive scripting. When used appropriately, though, the benefits of this practice far outweigh its cons.
How to use positive scripting for customer service: 7 best practices
Positive scripting is a powerful tool for ecommerce brands to leverage, but it's important to use it correctly. Here are the seven best practices that you should employ to make the most of positive scripting (and avoid its pitfalls).
1) Use scripts as a starting point, not for the entire interaction
The scripts you give your support reps should be used for the most common, predictable part of customer interactions rather than mapping out the entire conversation.
For example, your agents might use a script to greet customers and share information about your shipping policy (in response to a question about shipping). But, the agent should be flexible enough to include unique information or handle follow-up questions that may not be so predictable.
“I like to think of Macros as guidelines. When you open up a Macro, it's not 100% the right thing to say, because you have to match the customer’s tone and specific query. And it's up to the agent to understand that and adjust along the way — but Gorgias gives you the tools to do that.”
— Leeor Cohen, Founder and CEO at CreateCX
If you require your agents to follow a script from start to finish, you risk sounding robotic and not providing agents with the flexibility they need to keep customers happy.
2) Prepare positive responses for common situations
Customers who cannot track their order, received the wrong item, or want to make a return are just a few examples of common situations where customers are sure to welcome a little friendliness and empathy — along with helpful information and clear next steps.
Using positive scripting to create responses to these common situations helps your brand handle these issues consistently and ensure that they are handled with care and positivity.
All you have to do is identify the questions that your support team receives most frequently and then load positive, brand-consistent responses into your helpdesk:
 |
While each brand varies, some of the most common situations include:
- WISMO, or “where is my order?”
- Questions about refund and returns policies
- Questions about product availability
- Product-related questions (sizing, compatibility, ingredients, etc.)
3) Encourage customer support to enhance scripts with their own unique flair
Customer service reps should be free to deviate from scripts when needed or inject them with their unique flair. Encouraging your reps to use scripts as a guide rather than a word-for-word requirement ensures that your brand doesn't script away its human touch.
We love this example of an agent bending a policy and sparking up a delightful conversation:
 |
4) Use scripts for training representatives
Along with using customer service scripts to guide customer interactions in the moment, you can also use them as resources for training your representatives. Once again, not everything that your agents say will be scripted, so ensuring they understand the principles behind positive scripting is just as important as providing the scripts themselves.
Using scripts to showcase what positive customer interactions look like will allow your agents to leverage positive language even when they aren't using a script. For example, you can use scripts to demonstrate mock customer service interactions and then dive into the specifics of why the scripted responses you've created work well for those situations.
📚 Recommended reading: Our Director of Support’s guide to customer service training.
5) Avoid sounding like a robot
Several of the tips we've already covered are geared toward preventing support agents from sounding wooden or robotic, and this is an essential consideration when using positive scripting.
By using scripts to initiate an interaction rather than scripting the entire conversation, giving agents the freedom to add their own flair to the scripts, and adding personality to the scripts you create, you can avoid this common pitfall of positive scripting.
It's also vital for your reps to demonstrate genuine empathy throughout customer interactions to avoid sounding uncaring and robotic. This can't be easily scripted, making it important to ensure that your reps know how to adopt an empathetic tone and approach.
📚 Recommended reading: The ultimate guide to offering personalized customer service at scale.
6) Nail the greeting
Your agent's initial greeting to a customer sets the tone for the rest of the interaction. It's also one of the easiest parts of customer interactions to script since the initial greeting will largely remain the same regardless of the customer's specific issue or sentiment.
Stating the company name and the agent's name, asking the customer's name, telling them good morning/good afternoon, and assuring them that you are happy to assist them are all great elements to consider including in your greeting script.
7) Test, iterate, and refine to perfect your customer service interactions
Like almost every aspect of ecommerce, positive scripting in customer service is something you can continually improve with proper testing. CSAT surveys are one excellent way to gather customer feedback following a customer support interaction. You can use the feedback you gather from these surveys to fine-tune your customer support scripts.
For instance, if many customers complain that your reps sound unempathetic or robotic, you may want to revisit the language of your scripts or encourage your agents to inject more of their own personalities. Throughout testing and refining your scripts, keep in mind that script building should be a collaborative experiment, with customer service teams working alongside reps and using data from past customer service interactions to guide the process.
Offer positive, fast, and helpful customer service with Gorgias
Positive scripting is one effective way to improve the quality of your brand's customer support and encourage more positive customer experiences. However, it's also just one small element of high-quality, revenue-generating customer support.
If you would like to offer the type of fast, positive, and helpful customer service that will set your brand apart from the competition, it's important to use the right customer support tools.
With Gorgias' industry-leading customer support platform, you'll be able to leverage a range of advanced customer support tools and capabilities — all designed to boost customer satisfaction by improving both the speed and helpfulness of your support services.
To get started offering positive, fast, and helpful customer support via the best ecommerce customer support platform on the market, be sure to sign up for Gorgias today!
{{lead-magnet-2}}
[Webinar Recap]: How Jaxxon Prepares for Peak Season to Optimize CX and Maximize Revenue
Maximizing peak season sales isn’t only about driving customers to your website. If website visitors people encounter a slow, unhelpful, or lackluster customer experience, they’ll click away before buying — flushing away all your marketing efforts and dollars.
In a recent webinar, Caela Castillo, Director of Customer Experience at luxury men’s jewelry brand Jaxxon, shared Jaxxon’s strategies for optimizing customer experience to maximize revenue during peak season.
We’ll start with some of the most concrete strategies Jaxxon leverages, and wrap up with some bigger-picture insights on how Caela manages the team.
You can also hear Caela share these tips herself by watching the webinar here.
How Jaxxon manages ticket spikes during peak season
Last year, Jaxxon had what Caela describes as a very successful but challenging peak season, when customer support tickets skyrocketed to three times normal levels. As a result, Jaxxon has stepped up its approach to optimizing customer support for efficiency and self-service during the 2022 peak season.
Here are the tactics and tools Jaxxons used to manage ticket spikes this year:
Provide self-service answers to FAQ in live chat
Jaxxon uses Gorgias Quick Response Flows to answer frequently asked questions during peak season. Caela and her team customize the questions and answers so that customers can get an instant response to common queries.
 |
“We really noticed that adding automated self-service with Gorgias took part of the load off us. A lot of customers’ questions are answered by self-service, so then they’re happy and we don’t have to do anything further with those tickets,” Caela says.
Automating these responses has two-fold benefits:
- Customers get instant answers to questions — no wait time required
- Agents actually have time for conversations that need a human touch
“If the customer has additional questions, then our agents have the time to have an authentic conversation with them, and give them a really great experience.”
Regularly review tickets to monitor performance and spot emerging issues
Caela regularly reviews recent customer conversations to monitor individual agent performance and identify areas for improvement or lessons learned. Using Gorgias tags — automatically applied to customer tickets for categorization and filtering — Caela can also get a sense for the most common customer questions and issues.
“If we're noticing a trend with a certain issue, then we want to solve it right away rather than figure it out weeks from now when it’s a bigger issue,” Caela explains. “So we don't want to only review tickets once a month. We want to do it in real time.”
The real opportunity for peak seasons is turning first-time customers into repeat shoppers
Jaxxon realizes that any peak season is a starting line, not a finish line. Providing an awesome first customer experience doesn’t just net a sale. It nurtures longterm relationships and turns happy customers into loyal brand advocates.
“We want to make sure that first shopping experience is really great — everything from the customer support to the shipping to the box it arrives in — so they want to come back and buy again. We listen to our customer reviews and we really want to help people have a great experience.”
Jaxxon invests in ongoing training and support to ensure its customer service agents have the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to do their job confidently and effectively.
“Sometimes customers are a little hesitant about buying something as expensive as solid gold online. And our agents can explain to them the difference between our products, or suggest an upgrade, or say, hey, would you like this bracelet to go with the Cuban link chain you bought last time?” says Caela.
“For our agents to be able to upsell and cross-sell like that is super important for us — and it works.”
Quick Response Flows help Jaxxon open the door to some of these conversions. Providing quick, helpful answers about product restocks, sizing, shipping and more, lays a positive foundation that human agents can easily build on.
How Jaxxon sustains the team during peak seasons
One of the biggest challenges during any peak season is thinking ahead so that your team — not just your customers — succeed.
Plan ahead when it comes to coverage
First off, make sure you have enough customer service agents in place to cope with soaring demand. Jaxxon has increased its customer support team for this year’s peak season.
Caela uses a zoning plan to stagger agents’ shifts across different time zones and locations, so there is always enough coverage for Jaxxon’s 24/7 customer support. She adapts this as peak season unfolds to meet shifting demand.
“Having open communication is essential. We always say there are no stupid questions. We’re here to help each other. Even though we work remotely, we're still able to communicate really well and work as a team.
Once the team is in place, get them ready. “Training your team is really important, and making sure they have the resources and support they need,” Caela says.
📚 Related reading: How to stand out during Black Friday with 18 marketing strategies
Maintain staff morale during crunch time
“Keeping morale high is so important for peak season, because it’s a busy time in life, not just at work,” Caela says. This is a unique situation in ecommerce — did anyone else have a turkey in the oven while answering support tickets during BFCM?
“Everyone gets stressed; sometimes people get sick. It's hard to sustain motivation sometimes. So we want to make sure everyone's really taken care of and set up for success. And we try to make it fun for the team.”
A culture of mutual support among the Jaxxon customer service team is reinforced by team-based incentives to win gift cards, jewelry and more when certain targets are met.
“A positive attitude goes a long way to keeping people motivated. You get so much farther if you're kind and positive. And I’m very big on looking at difficult situations as learning experiences. And if someone is struggling, other team members will help them so we all rise together.”
📚 Related reading: How Jaxxon offers motivates agents with rotating customer support incentives.
Lean on tools and systems to manage high demand
Having the right systems in place to manage customer support more efficiently is important at any time of year. But it has the biggest impact during peak periods when demand balloons.
“You have to prepare for the worst, in terms of very high demand. Things just get crazier as peak season progresses! So make sure to have your self-service and automation set up and ready to go,” says Caela. “After last year’s challenges, we've made sure to have stronger systems in place this year.”
Jaxxon now uses Gorgias to manage all customer conversations. This helps the team work more efficiently in several ways:
- Seeing all customer conversations across different channels in one place, to avoid tab-shuffling and duplicated responses
- Filtering and sorting tickets, for easier prioritization
- Deflecting some questions to automated self-service, to free up customer service agents’ time for more complex customer conversations
- Bringing together all of a customer’s information, to enable more personalized service
Implementing self-service chat has cut Jaxxon’s live chat volume by 17%, yet increased conversions by 6%. Meanwhile, revenue generated by chat has shot up by an impressive 46%. The overall impact has been positive for customer experience and Jaxxon’s bottom line.
Read more about how Jaxxon uses Gorgias to speed up response times without sacrificing the quality of customer service.
Customer experience is vital to maximize peak season sales
By assembling a larger, well-trained customer service team and putting the right tools in place, Jaxxon is poised to continue delivering high-quality customer service this peak season — even when ticket volumes triple. Caela and her team are excited to dive into the peak season. With Gorgias by their side, they are ready to ride out whatever challenges come their way.
To hear the full story of Caela’s tips, lessons learned, and Jaxxon’s preparations for peak seasons, watch the webinar replay.
Growing At Gorgias: Interview with Yohan Loyer (Strategic Partner Manager EMEA)
Yohan Loyer started his job at Gorgias as the first Customer Success Manager for Europe. His current position is EMEA Partner Manager, with the goal of growing Gorgias’ presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The role boils down to building meaningful relationships and being a reliable, trustworthy partner for our agency partners.
In this interview, Yohan tells his story and we learn more about his internal career development and the environment Gorgias provided to nurture it accordingly.
1) What is your role at Gorgias right now and how do you find it?
My role is to help our ecommerce agency partners:
- Understand the value of Gorgias
- Keep Gorgias top of mind when recommending customer service solutions to their customers
- Identify customers that are a good fit for Gorgias
As a social person who likes to interact with other people and has hands-on experience working with Gorgias customers, this role is a great fit for me. There really is no chance to be bored in Partnerships!
2) What did you do before Gorgias? What is your educational and professional background?
I did my undergraduate degree in international business in New York, where I got a scholarship to play for my university’s soccer team. Then, I did my master's in Business Consulting and Information Systems Management in France.
Right after university, I worked as an IT consultant and then moved to Salesforce as part of the EMEA customer success team in Dublin. I worked as a Customer Success Manager (CSM) for 3.5 years, when my main focus was helping the company’s customers get the most out of the Salesforce platform and resources.
Apart from that, I have always been passionate about new technologies and how they impact the world, so continuing to work in tech and ecommerce at Gorgias is not a coincidence.
3) How did you find out about Gorgias and what made you apply to work here?
I was looking for a role in a fast-growing company in the ecommerce space with an innovative product, strong company culture, and competitive package. I did some research online and found out about Gorgias on an ecommerce blog, if I remember correctly.
Gorgias had everything I was looking for. They were also hiring for their first Customer Success Manager in Europe at that time, so it was perfect timing for me to apply!
4) What are the roles you had at Gorgias and how did they change over time?
I was initially recruited as the first Customer Success Manager (CSM) in Europe. We already had one Onboarding Manager in Europe when I joined (Emna Charfi, who is now the manager of our Customer Success team).
She was already working as a CSM with some customers (on top of her main role as Onboarding Manager). Even after I joined as the first full-time CSM in Europe, she continued as the CSM for some of our largest customers while I onboarded.
After a few months, I took over as the Customer Success Manager for our largest European customers for about 1.5 years, before transitioning to the Partnerships team last July.
I worked closely with Louis Lavedan from the Partnership team when I was a CSM, so I got to see what Partnerships was like. When he moved to San Fransico, taking over his role as Partner Manager for EMEA seemed like a logical next step.
5) What training and resources did Gorgias provide to help you in your new roles?
The Gorgias team has always been super helpful and available with me and new team members in general.
Learning directly from colleagues has definitely been one of the highlights of my onboarding and overall experience with Gorgias. Whether it is answering questions on Slack, sharing screens, recording Loom videos, or jumping on a quick call, there is always a Gorgian ready to help!
6) How did your manager (or others at Gorgias) help you upskill and grow yourself?
The two managers I worked with both have hands-on experience with Gorgias customers and partners, and a genuine desire to be helpful and see their team members grow. They are always reliable and helpful when needed, which builds trust and promotes a culture of feedback and transparency.
Gorgias as a company is obsessed with scaling and automating processes, and my managers have definitely lived up to those values and helped me become more efficient and see the big picture when working on projects.
At Gorgias, we are also lucky to have a best-in-class product and grow at a very rapid rate, which comes with a lot of super interesting challenges and opportunities. The company has a really unique positioning with an obsession for customer satisfaction, which all contribute to a great environment to work in.
7) How can you connect your experience with Gorgias's core values?
My experience at Gorgias so far has been very much aligned with our core values, especially “Customer first”, and “Maximize your impact”.
We live and breathe for customers, automate time-consuming tasks, share best practices with the rest of the team, and try out new tools and processes — all with the end goal of providing a better product and experience to merchants who use Gorgias.
Our managers highlight Gorgians who are living up to our core values weekly on our Slack channels, so we get to see first-hand all the great things our team does in accordance with our values.
8) What is your favorite thing about working at Gorgias?
As someone who worked closely with customers for all of my career, I think that my favorite thing at Gorgias is our huge focus on customer experience and satisfaction. Making our customers happy and successful, independent of their size, is our target and biggest investment as a company.
Whether it is reviewing our processes to make sure they benefit our customers, going the extra mile when helping our customers out, finding workarounds, prioritizing product features, or letting our customers get on a call with our highly available success and support teams, we are always doing things with our customers’ interest in mind.
9) If there is one thing you would like to change about the company, what would it be?
I guess it would maybe be the name of the company (haha). Simply because it’s hard to pronounce. Also, people don’t read or hear “Gorgias” for the first time and instantly know what we do.
10) What's next for you at Gorgias (and how is Gorgias helping you get there)?
As I started my new role as EMEA Partner Manager recently, my focus is becoming a great Partner Manager, first and foremost.
We have a pretty good presence and network in Europe, but it’s still in the early stages compared to the US. I am learning and getting a lot of help from our US team who built a very strong market presence and brand in the US, and I am super excited to help develop the Gorgias brand and customer base in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa!
Interested in joining Yohan and the rest of Gorgias team? Check out our jobs page to learn more about our benefits, interview process, and open roles.
A User-Friendly Guide to Ecommerce Tech Stacks
Today, a wide range of software solutions exist to help ecommerce business owners better manage every aspect of their online store. However, creating the ideal technology stack for an ecommerce store is often easier said than done. To help you put together a tech stack that’s best suited for your unique business needs, we’ll review some of the top ecommerce tools on the market today, grouped by category.
First, we’ll walk through what you need to know about building a powerful, easy to use ecommerce tech stack — without breaking the bank.
What is an ecommerce tech stack?
An ecommerce tech stack is the collection of digital tools, software applications, and platforms that an online store owner uses to run their business. These tools work together to optimize day-to-day tasks — across sales, marketing, customer service, order fulfillment and returns, payment processing, and other key areas — and reveal customer insights that can fuel growth.
If you’re curious about an ecommerce brands’ tech stack, try searching on builtwith.com, which scans the back-end of any website to see what technology it uses.
{{lead-magnet-1}}
Factors to consider as you build your ecommerce technology stack
Today, ecommerce store owners have a broad range of solutions to choose from when it comes time to build their ecommerce tech stack. However, an abundance of options can also make selecting the best solutions a challenge. Here are the most important factors to consider:
Cost
An ecommerce tech stack can consist of anywhere from 3-5 core tools to more than 20, depending on the size of your operations and how you approach the process. It’s vital to set a budget and keep it in mind as you weigh different solutions and plan tiers. If possible, balance it against the return on investment (ROI) for the particular tool or feature set (more on that later).
Compatibility
Ideally, you’ll create a digital ecosystem of tools that integrate seamlessly and transfer data quickly and reliably. The ecommerce tools you consider should allow you to combine the features of multiple solutions, either through direct integrations or third-party integration tools.
Ease of use
While all ecommerce solutions come with some degree of a learning curve, it's a good idea to prioritize user-friendly tools that are easy to install, set up, and use. Look for a knowledge base with tutorials and FAQs; expert-led training options can also help.
Customer support
Make sure the support solution aligns with your business hours and the channels you prefer, like email, phone, or live chat. Choosing a solution that’s backed by excellent customer support means you’ll have a reliable source of assistance if or when issues arise.
Determining the order of tool additions
Building the right tech stack, complete with all the tools and features your store could possibly need, doesn’t happen overnight. It’s best to focus on testing and approving the tools you truly need for your day-to-day operations. That way, you know that any other software or hardware you’re considering should integrate nicely with your must-have tools.
For starters, an online store hosting platform will be the cornerstone of your ecommerce tech stack. From there, it’s up to you to decide which tools you add next.
We’ve seen that many ecommerce store owners choose to prioritize their sales and marketing tools — after all, many of the other solutions on our list won't offer much value if your online storefront isn't attracting customers or ready to manage payments. Big picture solutions or add-ons, like the top tier of a user analytics tool or premium page themes, can come later on.
Ensuring compatibility between tools
When it comes to building the best possible ecommerce tech stack, integrations are key. Choosing apps that sync with one another allows information to flow seamlessly between them, cutting down on manual labor and user error and letting you get the most out of your stack.
Most software platforms have an integrations or apps page where they list their official integrations. For instance, the Gorgias Apps page has a categorized, searchable database of the 80+ apps that integrate with its platform. For apps that don’t directly integrate, a tool like Zapier lets you easily set up workflows between them and doesn’t require much tech expertise to use.
An email marketing platform that connects with your order fulfillment platform, for example, can enable you to send automated order tracking updates to your customers personalized with their name. A customer service solution that integrates with your social media marketing solution, meanwhile, can allow you to turn your social media channels into customer service channels.
A connected ecosystem provides far more value and functionality in the long run. By looking for compatibility between tools ahead of time, you can build an ecommerce tech stack that’s much more than the sum of its parts.
Balancing your tech stack budget against potential ROI
Fortunately, the money you invest into building tech stack doesn’t disappear into thin air — it will offer real value and unlock revenue opportunities. As you consider the cost of different tools, it’s a good idea to weigh it against the potential ROI of each tool.
At a high level, you can determine the potential ROI of each tool by weighing the expenses for a given time period — such as monthly subscription costs, licensing fees, additional users, and training or setup fees — against the potential gains. It can be tough to put the positive value of using a new tool into figures, however, consider gains like increased sales or reduced labor costs to start.
We recommend creating an optimistic estimate (lowest cost and highest return) and pessimistic estimate (highest cost and lowest return) to get closer to an accurate number. For example, if your optimistic estimate suggests that an email marketing tool will increase your store's cash flow by 10%, then you could factor this estimated ROI into how much of your budget is allotted for this tool.
Ecommerce store hosting platforms
The first solution that you will need to choose before you can get your ecommerce store up and running is a hosting platform. Hosting platforms allow you to build a custom ecommerce website — regardless of your coding experience — using simple drag-and-drop commands.
Plug-n-play hosting platforms also offer services such as website hosting, website security, and payment processing on your behalf. If you would like to get started building your own ecommerce store using an ecommerce store hosting platform, here are the top platforms to consider:
Shopify
Arguably the most recognizable ecommerce store hosting platform, Shopify has certainly earned its reputation as a go-to choice for e-commerce sites. With Shopify, business owners are able to create attractive online stores in a matter of minutes by choosing from a broad variety of starting templates, then adding additional design elements and features from Shopify's ever-expanding library.
Business owners can also integrate thousands of additional features into their online store by making use of the Shopify App Store — a store that sells thousands of third-party apps designed to integrate with Shopify websites.
Pros
- Mobile-ready
- Choose from thousands of third-party app integrations on the Shopify App Store
Unique features
- Integrated payment processing
- 24/7 live customer support
Check out Shopify’s integration with Gorgias.
BigCommerce
Like Shopify, BigCommerce is a web development solution that allows ecommerce business owners to create their own online stores within a no-code environment before offering a full suite of web hosting services that includes site security and payment processing.
With that said, there are a few features that set BigCommerce and Shopify apart. For one, BigCommerce offers a long list of built-in sales features that don't require any additional installation, ensuring that you are ready to start moving products the moment your store goes live. Another nice feature of BigCommerce is that BigCommerce does not charge any transaction fees regardless of the plan that you choose.
Pros
- The ability to add an unlimited number of product variants
- Designed for scalability
Unique features
- Wide range of built-in sales features
- No transaction fees on any plan
Check out BigCommerce’s integration with Gorgias.
Magento
Magento differs from Shopify and BigCommerce in the fact that it is an open-source platform that is free to download and use. In order to build a website using Magento, though, you are going to need a certain degree of coding experience. The tradeoff for this steeper learning curve is that Magento allows you to build sites that are much more customized than what you could build using Shopify or BigCommerce. Magento also offers hosting services and a broad range of third-party integrations that can be purchased as add-ons.
Pros
- Unlimited customization options providing you know how to code
- Comprehensive answers to just about any question can be found on the Magento Forum
Unique features
- Detailed analytics and reporting
- Enhanced product browsing (i.e. the ability for customers to zoom in on product images, the ability to display stock availability, and the ability to display multiple pricing tiers)
Check out Magento’s integration with Gorgias.
Ecommerce marketing tools
According to data from The Drum, the total amount of money spent on digital ads increased 41% in the first half of 2021. If you want to keep up with econnerce industry competition that is increasingly spending more on advertising, it is essential to develop the right marketing strategy for your online store — and a big part of creating an effective marketing strategy is choosing the right ecommerce marketing tools.
From providing insights about your visitors, to helping you conduct keyword research, to helping you manage your email and PPC campaigns, there are a lot of capabilities that come with developing the right ecommerce marketing tool tech stack.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a SaaS solution that automates the process of creating and managing email and SMS campaigns. With Klaviyo, you start out with pre-built campaign workflows that you can customize into your own email or SMS campaigns. From there, Klaviyo allows you to create automated triggers and segmented lists for your campaigns that will completely automate the process of sending the right messages to the right customers at the right times.
Pros
- An incredibly wide range of pre-built email workflows to choose from
- A convenient analytics dashboard that displays key campaign data
Unique features
- Multiple automation triggers such as cart abandonment, price drop, back-in-stock, and more
- A large library of integrations to pull data from other ecommerce tools and platforms into Klaviyo
Check out Klaviyo’s integrations here.
Postscript
Postscript is a tool that integrates with Shopify stores in order to provide store owners with the ability to create and manage SMS marketing campaigns from one centralized dashboard.
Given that SMS messages have a 98% open rate according to data from TechJury, SMS can be a powerful medium to manage, and Postscript provides all of the tools you need to develop and oversee effective SMS marketing campaigns: detailed reporting, tools for growing and managing your SMS subscriber list, and beyond.
Pros
- Create up to 65 different automation triggers
- Segment your subscribers using 40 segmentation filters, including historical Shopify data, SMS activity, data from app integrations, area codes, and more
Unique features
- Create multiple "text-to-join" keywords
- Create QR codes that can be used to opt-in to your subscriber list
Check out Postscript’s integrations here.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free analytics service offered by Google that is designed to provide real-time insights regarding how users find and use your website. With Google Analytics, you can see where your traffic is coming from, the pages that they visit, how much time they spend on each page, detailed demographics of your website visitors, and beyond. This detailed customer data helps you optimize your online store and marketing campaigns alike.
Google Analytics can also connect with any ecommerce platform and offers an incredibly wide range of other integrations as well.
Pros
- Excellent data visualization features
- Create custom data reports
Unique features
- Perform keyword research using Google Analytics's Search Console
- Segment your website visitors and leads for more personalized and targeted campaigns
Learn how to set up and integrate with Google Analytics here.
Canva
Canve is a simple, powerful design platform where anyone can design marketing assets for their website, social media, and more. While most designers prefer more powerful design tools, Canva’s extensive template library and simple drag-and-drop editing features make it the perfect choice for small business owners and single-person marketing teams.
Pros
- Easy to use, regardless of technical or design skills
- Great free model
Unique features
- A large template library with pre-sized images for Instagram stories, Facebook banners, and so much more
- Great collaboration features to help facilitate brainstorming and feedback
Ecommerce social media management
With billions of engaged users all over the globe, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are ripe with marketing opportunities. In addition to solutions for marketing to your social media audience, ecommerce social media management tools can also provide benefits such as automating the process of managing your social profiles and enabling you to turn your social media profiles into customer service channels.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media management tool that offers features like social listening tools for gleaning key insights from your social media audiences, automation tools for automatically scheduling and publishing posts, a centralized inbox for responding to comments and direct messages across multiple platforms, and rich analytics for gauging the results of your social media efforts. If you're looking for a single solution to empower your store's social media strategy, Sprout Social is a wonderful option to consider.
Pros
- Offers a variety of powerful tools and features in a single solution
- Intuitive and easy to use
Unique features
- Social listening tools automatically track and extract key insights from social conversations about your brand
- Publishing and scheduling tools enable you to schedule posts for automatic publishing across all major social media platforms
Check out Sprout Social’s integrations here.
Gorgias
Gorgias's comprehensive customer service platform offers powerful social media management features such as the ability to respond to direct messages, comments, and mentions across platforms from a single dashboard, track sales generated by individual support agents via social media app, and create macros that streamline your day-to-day social media interactions.
Pros
- Powerful, user-friendly social media features and integrations built specifically for online stores
- Offers a broad range of customer support tools to make Instagram, Facebook, and more part of a stellar customer experience
Unique features
- A centralized, user-friendly dashboard for managing social interactions across platforms
- Customizable rules and macros powered by customer sentiment detection
Check out all of Gorgias’s integrations here.
Recart
With over 146 million active users in the United States alone, Facebook Messenger is one of the most popular messaging platforms in existence. With Recart, ecommerce store owners are able to take advantage of this app's popularity by creating automated Facebook Messenger marketing campaigns. Recart also offers tools for helping you grow your Facebook Messenger subscriber list, as well as SMS marketing and list-building features.
Pros
- Makes it incredibly easy to build opt-in popups and automated marketing flows
- Offers a range of useful Facebook Messenger marketing campaign templates
Unique features
- Enables you to create cart abandonment reminders, welcome series, sales promotions, and a range of other automated Facebook Messenger campaigns
- Provides customizable, fast-loading opt-in popups for growing your subscriber lists
Check out Recart's integrations here.
Ecommerce customer relationship management (CRM) tools
Creating an optimized customer experience is a vital goal for all types of retailers, and ecommerce stores are certainly no exception. With ecommerce CRM tools, you can ensure that you are managing your all-important customer relationships in a way that is well-organized and largely automated, freeing you up to focus on other important tasks.
Attentive
Attentive is an SMS and email marketing solution designed to help store owners scale their subscriber lists and engage with those lists in a more personalized manner via enhanced segmentation and targeting. If you would like an all-in-one solution to SMS and email marketing, Attentive can offer everything you need to start building your subscriber lists and generating impactful campaigns.
Pros
- Makes it easy to ensure compliance with SMS and email marketing regulations
- Strategic guidance and resources designed to help store owners optimize their SMS and email campaigns
Unique features
- A design editor that allows you to easily create various sign-up units for your website, social media platforms, emails, and product packaging/in-person marketing initiatives
- Build custom integrations using Attentive's Public APIs and developer resources
Check out Attentive’s integrations here.
Ecommerce sales tools
Ecommerce technologies designed to help you optimize your store's conversion rate and grow its sales can be highly beneficial. Ecommerce sales tools are able to provide a number of capabilities, such as helping you create the ideal sales funnel for your site, helping your sales staff perform customer outreach, and providing you with a wealth of customer data that you can leverage to boost your website's sales.
Certainly
With Certainly, ecommerce store owners can create AI assistants that will guide their site's visitors to recommended products, walk customers through the checkout process, present customers with upsell opportunities, assist with returns, and more. These AI assistants also gather loads of valuable data during their conversations with customers that you can use to optimize the customer experience on your site.
Pros
- Create AI-assistant-guided sales funnels for your site
- Access much more detailed customer data that is acquired via customer conversations with your AI assistants
Unique features
- Certainly Webhook Builder allows you to completely customize your AI assistants
- A wide range of pre-made templates to speed up your time to market
Check out Certainly’s integrations here.
EasyCall
Even in today's digital age, contacting customers by phone remains a lucrative sales strategy. With EasyCall, sales teams are able to manage every aspect of phone-based customer outreach from a single centralized dashboard. EasyCall also makes it easy for customers to get in touch with you by making it simple for you to create a business phone number and web-based call center.
Pros
- EasyCall can easily integrate with almost any CRM tool
- An intuitive call center tool allows for effortless collaboration between your sales and customer support teams
Unique features
- Create a web-based call center without the need to purchase any hardware
- Make international calls without paying international calling fees
Check out EasyCall’s integrations here.
Ecommerce automation tools
Automating time-consuming tasks such as managing email marketing campaigns or building new features into your website can free you and your team up to focus on other responsibilities. If you would like to leverage the power of automation on your website, here are two great automation e-commerce solutions to consider.
Alloy
Alloy is a no-code automation solution for ecommerce stores that allows you to create triggers and automated flows with ease. Alloy is designed to integrate with a wide range of ecommerce tools and platforms so your system is ready to go when a specific event occurs within your store or one of the apps that you rely on, like a sale, customer message, page view, and more.
Pros
- Plenty of customizable triggers, conditions, and executable actions to select from
- Capable of integrating with over 100 different ecommerce tools and platforms
Unique features
- Offers a variety of pre-built workflows in addition to the ability to create your own, customized workflows
- Centralizes data from multiple applications and customer touchpoints
Check out Alloy's integration with Gorgias.
Omnisend
Omnisend is a tool that allows ecommerce store owners to create automated SMS and email marketing campaigns. In addition to templates to help get you started, Omnisdend also offers precision targeting and list segmentation tools, customizable triggers for launching automated campaigns, and in-depth reporting on the results that your SMS and email campaigns generate.
Pros
- Easy to set up and use
- Affordable pricing plans with a completely free plan that offers up to 500 emails per month
Unique features
- A broad range of customizable email and SMS templates to choose from
- Automated list segmenting automatically divides your subscriber lists into targeted list segments
Check out Omnisend's integration with Gorgias.
Mesa
Mesa offers a wide range of automation solutions, including automating customer returns, order tracking, creating customer support tickets, and beyond. With Mesa's large library of pre-built automation workflows and its no-code workflow editor, you can build and customize just about any automation you can imagine — regardless of your coding experience.
Pros
- Makes it easy to build customized automations using only drag-and-drop commands
- A well-regarded support team for helping you make the most of Mesa's many features
Unique features
- A no-code workflow editor that allows you to customize Mesa's pre-built automations or create your own automation from scratch
- A vast selection of pre-built automation workflows
Check out Mesa’s integration page here.
Ecommerce shopping cart tools
Once you successfully direct a customer to the checkout page of your online shop, the battle is still far from over. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is right at 70% according to data from Baymard Institute. Thankfully, utilizing the right ecommerce shopping cart tools can help you optimize your customers' checkout experience and keep your cart abandonment rate as low as possible.
Shopaccino
One-part shopping cart tool, one-part plug-n-play ecommerce platform, Shopaccino allows you to turn any website into an ecommerce store by providing features such as payment processing, campaign tracking, inventory management, and more. If you are looking for an all-in-one solution for creating and managing your online shop but would rather use your existing website, then Shopaccino is a great option to consider.
Pros
- Provides the ability to turn any existing website into a fully functional ecommerce store
- Provides APIs for connecting any ERP, accounting system, or other software solution
Unique features
- A large selection of free responsive themes to help you get started building your online store
- Automatically or manually generate coupon discount codes
Check out Shopaccino’s integrations here.
Ecwid
Ecwid is a tool that makes it easy to add products and a checkout page to any website or social media profile. Like Shopaccino, Ecwid can be used to turn your existing website into a fully operational online store. Ecwid also makes it easy to sell across multiple sales channels and platforms, including in-person, on your website, or on your social media profiles.
Pros
- Easily add products and a checkout page to any existing website or social media profile
- Completely free to use
Unique features
- In addition to turning any website or social media profile into a point-of-sale, Ecwid also allows you to easily process and manage in-person sales and accept credit/debit card payments on the go or at your brick-and-mortar location
- Provides automated marketing features such as automated abandoned cart emails and automated PPC advertising
Check out Ecwid’s integrations here.
Ecommerce web development tools
For brand-new stores, most of the tools listed in other sections will be enough to . However, as you grow, you may need additional web development frameworks to help you customize your store, improve efficiencies, and offer the customer experience your shoppers deserve.
Front-end web development
Front-end web development programming languages help you develop, design, and deploy your ecommerce website. They help make your website more interactive, eye-catching, and user-friendly. The main front-end programming languages are:
- Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Stylizes and formats HTML documents
- Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): The standard markup language for web pages
- JavaScript (JS): Adds more dynamic, interactive elements to your web pages
Back-end web development
If front-end web development is the aesthetics of the house, back-end web development is the plumbing, electricity, and everything else that operates behind the scenes to power the house’s — or your website’s — functionality.
Back-end development is usually custom-built, and requires a few elements:
- Operating system: Windows, Linux, or macOS
- Web server: Apache, Nginx, Microsoft-IIS
- Databases: MySQL, MongoDB, DynamoDB by Amazon, Firebase database by Google, PostgreSQL
- Storage: Amazon Web Services (AQS) S3, Firebase Storage by Google
- Scripting language: Ruby on Rails, Java, Python, Scala, PHP, Spring, Groovy on Grails
If you’re interested in learning more about technical stacks for ecommerce, consider reading more about some of the most popular:
And if this section on web development went over your head, don’t be alarmed. Most stores get away with simple no-code tools until they mature enough to hire outsourced or in-house developers to support.
Ecommerce payment processing software
The ability to securely and conveniently accept payments from customers is a vital capability for any online store. Thankfully, these payment processing solutions make it easy for you to provide your customers with multiple payment processing options: Think of them like payment gateways that connect your store to flows of funds.
Shopify POS
Shopify POS is a point-of-sale solution designed specifically for Shopify stores. It boasts a variety of advantages for Shopify users, including the ability to sync inventory, payments, and orders across multiple Shopify stores, create discounts and loyalty programs, and offer customers flexible shopping options like local pickup, local delivery, and ship-to-customer.
Pros
- Easy and powerful integration with the Shopify platform
- Provides useful inventory management tools in addition to payment processing
Unique features
- Allows you to process payments online, in store, or on your social media channels
- Lets you create detailed customer profiles for use in loyalty and rewards programs
Check out Shopify POS's integrations here.
PayPal
Once integrated into your online store, PayPal allows you to accept both credit/debit card payments as well as payments that are made using the customer's own PayPal account. PayPal also offers convenient point-of-sale devices that enable you to accept credit, debit, and PayPal payments at your brick-and-mortar location.
Pros
- Robust security ensures that your customers' sensitive financial data doesn't fall into the wrong hands
- PayPal speeds up the checkout process for customers with an existing PayPal account, making it much easier for your customers to complete their purchase and thus reducing your cart abandonment rate
Unique features
- PayPal Checkout allows customers to complete their checkout without having to fill in information such as credit card numbers and shipping addresses
- PayPal Marketing Solutions provides insights into how your customers are shopping
Learn how to integrate with PayPal here.
Square
Like PayPal, Square offers both ecommerce and in-person payment processing solutions. While Square is best known for its point-of-sale devices that make in-person payment processing secure and convenient, Square can also be integrated with your online store to allow you to easily accept credit/debit card payments.
Pros
- Slightly lower fees than PayPal and other payment processing solutions
- Exceptional point-of-sale devices for in-person sales, including a free card reader
Unique features
- 24/7 live chat support
- Square offers a feature that allows customers to book appointments with your company through its website
Check out Square’s integrations here.
Recharge
Recharge is a subscription billing platform for Shopify stores that allows store owners to sell subscription-based products and services. If you are selling subscription-based goods such as replenishable goods or subscription boxes, Recharge can help you manage the complex billing in a way that is easy and largely automated.
Pros
- Detailed analytics and reporting
- ReCharge is the only Shopify Plus partner designed specifically for subscriptions
Unique features
- A gifting function that allows customers to gift a subscription to another person
- Upsell workflows to help increase your average order value
Check out Recharge’s Tech Partners list of best-in-class integrations here. Or, see the full integrations directory.
Ecommerce customer service software
Excellent customer service is a key pillar of ecommerce success. With these ecommerce customer service software solutions, you can integrate live chat customer support into your website, create automated chatbots for handling common questions and customer support issues, and automate other time-consuming elements of customer support.
Gorgias
Gorgias is an all-in-one customer service solution built specifically for merchants in the ecommerce industry.
The tool provides live chat customer support capabilities and self-service options such as a dedicated help center and knowledge base. This platform also offers a wide range of automations and macros for automating much of your customer service responsibilities. If you are looking for a comprehensive solution to ecommerce customer service that will save your customer support team time and resources and give your customers the help they need, Gorgias is an excellent solution.
Pros
- Gorgias centralizes all of your multichannel support tickets in one place, allowing your customer support team to edit orders, modify subscriptions, and refund payments without leaving the helpdesk
- Can connect with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento stores to bring your products and shopper history right into the helpdesk
Unique features
- Live chat customer support with the ability to automatically message customers first during key events
- Macros and rules that allow you to automate customer service tasks such as providing shipment updates or creating customer support tickets
Check out all Gorgias integrations here.
Stella Connect
Stella Connect is a tool designed to help business owners manage remote customer support teams. With Stella Connect, you can manage your entire customer support team from one centralized dashboard, or integrate with Gorgias for an even more robust solution for remote teams. You can also schedule one-on-one meetings with customer support agents, provide agents with real-time customer feedback and more, making Stella Connect an excellent choice for business owners who rely on remote workers as their customer support staff.
Pros
- Centralizes and streamlines all aspects of remote customer support team management
- Provides detailed customer data that you can use to improve your customer support performance
Unique features
- Create and implement automated customer support workflows
- Create rewards and incentive programs for customer support agents
Check out Stella Connect’s integrations here.
Still not satisfied? Check out our list of the best:
Ecommerce chat tools
Installing chat tools on your website is one of the best ways to boost order value while making customer support more convenient for your customers. In fact, nearly 80% of businesses say offering live chat features has positively impacted sales, revenue, and customer loyalty.
Chat solutions for ecommerce stores can come in two different forms: live chat and automated chatbots. Implementing a live chat solution lets customers connect with a live support agent via a chat widget on your website. Chatbots, meanwhile, are AI-powered chat tools that auto-reply to common customer questions and issues according to rules you create and macros and resources you build ahead of time.
In both cases, ecommerce chat tools can be a powerful way to make your support channels more accessible to customers while reducing the workload of your support team. Here are the tools that can help you do it.
Gorgias
Gorgias offers a fast-loading and easy-to-install live chat widget that lets customers easily connect with a support agent any time they visit your website. In addition to live chat widgets built into your ecommerce store, Gorgias also gives you the power of live chat support via Facebook Messenger and SMS. For common questions and issues, Gorgias offers rules and macros that can be used to create automated responses, allowing you to quickly address the questions your brand receives most and turn them into sales opportunities.
Pros
- Gorgias's fast-loading live chat widget won't slow down your website
- Your live chat support agents can manage conversations across multiple platforms from a single dashboard
Unique features
- Provides support agents easy access to key details, like shopper history and inventory levels, during any live chat conversation
- Allows you to automatically trigger live chat campaigns based on a variety of events and customer actions
- Includes customer sentiment tools to automatically sort chat-based requests by priority and keep tickets organized
Learn more about the Gorgias live chat tool here.
Ada
Ada is a solution that provides AI-powered chatbots for customer experience, sales, and support purposes. In addition to automated customer support chatbots that are able to address common questions and issues, Ada offers chatbots that will proactively engage customers when they visit your store. These proactive outbound messaging chatbots can be used to automatically deliver timely content to customers that is personalized based on their actions and interests.
Pros
- No-code automation and one-click integrations make Ada easy to set up and use
- Chatbots deliver personalized responses based on customer data that feel like an interaction with an actual human agent
Unique features
- Intent and sentiment detections for delivering relevant, personalized responses
- Capable of automatically routing customer inquiries to your sales or customer support team
Check out Ada's integration with Gorgias.
Still not satisfied? Check out our lists of the best:
- Best live chat apps for Shopify
- Best live chat apps for BigCommerce
- Best live chat apps for Magento 2 Stores
- Best live chat apps for overall ecommerce
- Best live chat apps (industry agnostic)
Ecommerce returns and shipping tools
Managing returns and shipping is a hassle that most online store owners would rather do without. Fortunately, there are high-quality tools available that allow you to automate many of the responsibilities associated with handling shipping and returns. By providing customers with self-service return options, automatically sending out shipping updates, and more, the following two tools can go a long way toward streamlining the logistics side of your business.
ReturnLogic
ReturnLogic is designed to automate the entire returns process by enabling you to create automated return workflows, automatically updating your inventory, and making it easy for you and your customers alike to track the status of returns. ReturnLogic also provides complete visibility to your customer support team, making it easy for them to access a customer's purchase history and issue refunds and returns.
Pros
- Creates a completely transparent returns process that is easier for both your customers and support agents to navigate
- Provides analytics on your returns that you can use to lower your return rate
Unique features
- Barcode scanner functionality that allows you to update the status of a returned item with a simple scan
- 3PL and ERP integrations that allow you to seamlessly connect ReturnLogic with your existing inventory management systems or logistics provider
Check out ReturnLogic’s integrations here.
Wonderment
Wonderment is an order-tracking platform that seeks to reduce customer support tickets regarding order status by providing customers with automated shipping updates. With Wonderment, you can automate shipping notifications via email or SMS, send internal notifications regarding delayed or lost orders, and create custom, fully-branded shipping alerts.
Pros
- Seamless and customizable shipping update automation options
- Helps stores be more proactive about resolving issues that could otherwise lead to customer support tickets
Unique features
- View the status of all of your shipments from one dashboard
- Integrates with Klaviyo, making it easy to send customized and automated shipping update emails
Check out Wonderment’s integrations here.
Loop Returns
Encouraging exchanges for returned products rather than refunds is a great way to reduce the often substantial impact that product returns have on a store's bottom line. With Loop Returns, online store owners can create a customized product return portal where customers can return their purchases and manage exchanges without needing to contact the support team, among other helpful features.
Pros
- Customizable product return portals allow customers to manage returns themselves and reduce your support team's workload
- Meaningful metrics provide insight into your returns and refunds and identify supply chain, positioning, and other issues
Unique features
- Enables customers to automatically apply the value of their return to any order using the "Shop Now" feature
- Allows you to apply variable bonus credits to customers who choose to exchange their returned product
Check out the Loop Returns integration with Gorgias.
ShipBob
More of a logistics service provider than an application, ShipBob is a service that allows ecommerce store owners to ship their products in bulk to ShipBob warehouses across the country. Once you've delivered your products, ShipBob then takes over all inventory management and order fulfillment responsibilities on behalf of your online store — picking, packing, and shipping products to customers as they're ordered.
Pros
- ShipBob completely eliminates the burden of order fulfillment, including managing product returns
- Strategically located warehouses allow you to offer faster shipping to locations across the country
Unique features
- Includes built-in reports and analytics that provide a window into product performance
- Offers a comprehensive help center that will help you master the platform and resolve any issues that you might experience
Check out ShipBob's integration with Gorgias.
AfterShip
Providing customers with the ability to easily track their shipments is one of the most important parts of creating an optimized post-purchase experience. With AfterShip, you can create customized order tracking pages that allow customers to follow the location and status of their orders on your website. AfterShip's user-facing dashboard also enables you and your staff to easily monitor purchases and returns.
Pros
- Simplifies the tracking of purchases and returns for both your staff and your customers
- Plenty of customization options make it easy to create tracking pages that are on-brand and optimized for your store theme
Unique features
- Provides a range of automated post-purchase workflow templates, such as shipping notifications
- Provides detailed analytics around your shipping performance and post-purchase experience
Check out AfterShip's integration with Gorgias.
Add Gorgias to your ecommerce tech stack to give your customers the top-notch service that keeps them coming back
From boosting your sales to streamlining the customer support process, creating a tech stack for your ecommerce store that is complete with the best ecommerce solutions can offer a wide range of advantages. At Gorgias, we are committed to helping our clients improve the quality of their customer support while at the same time making their entire customer support process more efficient with our industry-leading ecommerce customer support solutions.
See for yourself how Gorgias can help you provide your customers with the service they deserve — try out Gorgias today!
{{lead-magnet-2}}
Building delightful customer interactions starts in your inbox
