E-commerce Help Desk: What Is It and Do You Need One?

What is an E-commerce Help Desk?

In today’s age of digitization, the needs and demands of customers are always changing. They demand quick responses to all their queries, and failure to do so can result in losing a sale or, worse, losing a loyal customer. As many as 82% of customers have claimed that they want their problems to be solved in a single conversation. 

However, delivering quality customer service can become challenging as you scale your business. One reason for this is the emergence of many communication channels between you and your customers. So how do you tackle this situation? Well, the answer is the e-commerce helpdesk.

An e-commerce help desk can be defined as a platform that helps your business in many ways. Such include,

• Enabling customers to get in touch with you quickly
• Providing FAQs that highlight some of the most commonly asked questions
• Enabling a space where customers can process returns or track their orders seamlessly.
• And collecting valuable feedback from your customers, both in qualitative and quantitative form. 

When implemented correctly, an e-commerce help desk can turn out to be a profit center for your business. 

How an E-commerce Help Desk Works?

To understand how an e-commerce helpdesk software works, consider it as a one-stop destination that unites all your customer service. This is beneficial, especially for large businesses with multiple channels or high order volumes. It contains all the necessary information about your customers, such as their contact details, queries, and order numbers, all in one place. Thus, even in the face of any query, you can pull out all the relevant information and respond to the same quickly and efficiently.

In today’s age of digitization, various features are integrated into the e-commerce help desk to make it more effective. Such include live Chat, self-service, and product FAQs, among others.

Does your E-commerce Business Need a Help Desk?

Now that you know what an e-commerce help desk is and how it operates, it brings us to the question, does your business actually need a help desk? Let’s find out.

Make multichannel support easier

In today’s age of increased competition, almost every business has harnessed the power of multichannel to boost its sales and revenue. However, keeping track of all the orders placed on the official website and various channels, such as social media, can sometimes get overwhelming. To tackle this challenge, a centralized system that will handle your customers’ doubts and queries is required. This is where an e-commerce helpdesk comes into play. It streamlines the whole customer service process and makes it easier for your team to navigate through the same. 

Save time on replies

Missed queries and slow response times are many reasons you can potentially lose your loyal customer base. In today’s age, customers want all their queries to be resolved quickly and efficiently. To provide them with the same, you must set up the software to efficiently manage high volumes of customer queries. An e-commerce help desk is a perfect example of the same. It can offer immediate and accurate solutions to your customers, thus keeping them happy and satisfied.

Identify who helped which customer

Yet another benefit of an e-commerce help desk is that it requires everyone to create a separate account of their own while using the platform. This means that you can now gain full transparency over who wrote exactly what and when. Thus, even in scenarios where the reply might not have been professional enough or might not have highlighted the right details, you can deal with such situations effectively.

Keep support records organized

Data points on support can easily get mismanaged or lost, especially when you are dealing with large volumes of orders across multiple channels. While maintaining a spreadsheet can offer short-term solutions, it is not always effective in the long run. All these will ultimately prevent you from providing the best customer service for your audience base. To prevent this, you must implement an e-commerce helpdesk software. It will store all the relevant information and records in one place systematically. In this way, you can find exactly what you need with just a few clicks. 

Make important decisions using accurate data

Lastly, there are quite a few such help desks that provide important features such as reporting tools. With the help of the same, you can gather important information on areas such as your average response time, the busiest times and days, or even statistics on customer satisfaction. Based on all this data, you can then make the right decision that will enable you to improve the overall customer service experience. 

Different Types of E-commerce Help Desks

Here is a detailed guide to the different types of e-commerce help desks that exist. 

Cloud-Based Solution

A cloud-based help desk solution typically refers to one a service provider hosts externally. Any agent across the world can access it at any time. A few examples of the same include Salesforce and ServiceNow, among others. 

One of the many advantages of a cloud-based solution is that it offers enough flexibility to all the agents, thus increasing the opportunity for remote work. Furthermore, it also enables multichannel integrations such as social media, web, and email, among others. 

Software As A Service (SaaS)

Contrary to traditional customer support solutions, a SaaS-based solution can easily be delivered on the Internet. This means that it does not require any form of hardware configuration, as it is permanently backed up on the cloud. A few examples include Freshdesk and Help Scout, among others. 

Implementing a SaaS-based solution requires almost zero to minimal effort to set up the whole system. Furthermore, they are also very easy to use, which means you do not need to spend extra resources on training your team to navigate the same. 

Open Source Solutions

Finally, an open-source help desk collaborates with a ticket management system. It is primarily built on open-source technology and is known to offer the best customer support for many businesses. A few examples of the same include Rocket.Chat and OSTicket, among others. 

Open-source solutions are easily accessible and scalable, apart from being flexible. Furthermore, it is also quite cheap compared to other closed-source e-commerce help desks. 

Benefits of E-commerce Help Desk Software

Here are the many ways by which you can benefit from implementing an e-commerce help desk into your business.

1. Manage all communications in one place

With the emergence of multiple channels such as email, social media, and phone, communication has now become much easier than ever before. However, the more channels you incorporate into your business, the greater the risk of delayed responses or missed customer inquiries. The best way to effectively prevent these from happening is by implementing an e-commerce help desk. It will enable you to streamline all the customer queries and interactions into one single platform and stay on top of your customers’ requests at all times.

2. Reduce ticket volume with a knowledge base

Often, you will be faced with multiple repetitive questions. It is not always feasible to answer each of them, considering the huge volume of queries you usually have to deal with daily. An e-commerce help desk helps with this by setting up a comprehensive knowledge base highlighting FAQs and solution articles to tackle those queries. In this manner, they no longer have to reach the support team since your customers can find out the required solutions themselves only. Thus, it offers quicker resolutions and a significant reduction in ticket volume.

3. Encourage more sales

Starting from pre-purchase questions to return requests, every interaction can make or break your business. Streamlining each of these processes and keeping track of the same with an e-commerce help desk solution is therefore necessary. It will enable you to prioritize the most pressing queries and share product recommendations. All these will, in turn, keep your audience base happy and satisfied and drive more sales to your business. 

4. Automate repetitive tasks

You may save a significant amount of time and increase the effectiveness of your customer support operations by automating repetitive tasks. Instead of replying to each client inquiry individually, you may build up an automatic response system that delivers rapid solutions to frequently requested questions. This can drastically reduce your team’s effort while ensuring clients receive prompt and consistent responses.

5. Monitor customer service performance

Yet another benefit of the e-commerce helpdesk is that it helps to keep track of customer service performance. This includes critical metrics such as first response time, ticket meeting response, and first contact resolution. What’s more? You can also gather insightful data by sending out feedback forms after every customer service interaction. With the help of all these gathered data, you can make better decisions that ultimately improve the customer service experience. 

8 Key E-commerce Help Desk Features

Given the plethora of online options, it can be hard to select the best e-commerce help desk solution for your brand. Well, it all boils down to the features and whether or not they are in sync with your business demands. 

On that note, below are some of the notable e-commerce help desk features you should look out for while finding the right solution for your business.

1. Integrations

One of the key features of the e-commerce help desk is that it allows seamless integration with other platforms, such as social media and other e-commerce platforms. This means you can transfer all the customers’ data hassle-free from these platforms. It will ultimately enable a better customer service experience, as you can formulate marketing campaigns specifically targeted at your audience base.

2. Speed and agility

The response time or page loading time can significantly impact the productivity of your business. Therefore, you need to opt for such an e-commerce helpdesk that will offer both speed and agility and work well with your business needs. Additionally, after implementing your preferred e-commerce solution, you can conduct speed tests through various online tools to help understand the loading speed. 

3. Prioritization

The best e-commerce help desk will help you to categorize the channels or even queries, based on urgency and importance, among other factors. This, in turn, will enable you to comply better with the Service Level Agreements of your chosen platforms. 

The right e-commerce help desk will not only help you to sort out all the queries but also enable you to respond to the most pressing ones. All these will ultimately help you to boost the seller metrics. 

4. Message templates and automation

Responding to repetitive or similar queries can be time-consuming and undoubtedly frustrating. This is where an e-commerce help desk comes into play. It will automate this entire process by generating pre-set emails or templates. Thus, you no longer need to design a new text or response since you can choose any pre-set templates and significantly lower the response time.

5. Personalization

There are varied e-commerce help desk platforms that allow you to personalize each response you send to your customers. It does so with the help of information such as your customers’ contact details, fulfillment progress, or order details. 

6. Live Chat

Live Chat is another fantastic feature many e-commerce help desk platforms offer. It enables you to provide real-time chat support to your customers quickly and efficiently. What’s more? It can also be personalized based on the solution that you choose and can also be automated. 

7. Collaboration: Team tagging, motes, and internal team conversations within queries

Another feature of the e-commerce help desk is that it enables you to add professionals as and when needed into a chat to give their valuable input. Furthermore, your team members can leave pointers within the chat by keeping them hidden from the customers. In this manner, even if one of your team members leaves a conversation in the middle, the other individual can immediately pick up the relevant information and generate the desired response. 

8. Demos and free trials

Lastly, implementing an e-commerce help desk can be costly for many businesses. To get the maximum benefits out of your investment, most e-commerce platforms provide free trials or demos to their users. In this way, you will know exactly how it works or whether or not it aligns with your business needs before you invest your valuable resources in it. 

Selecting the Right E-commerce Help Desk for Your Business

Below are a few relevant considerations when selecting the right e-commerce help desk for your business. 

Cost considerations

One of the most important factors that come into play when implementing an e-commerce help desk is the cost. One of the most common misconceptions people tend to have is that expensive means better. However, this is quite far from the truth. You need to look for a solution that provides all the features required for your business. It might not always be the most expensive option. However, the cheapest option will also not always bear the best results. 

The key is to chalk out a budget plan that will analyze your business and the importance of support in your business and exercise caution when and wherever required. You can also run free trials before selecting the e-commerce solution to determine exactly how it operates.  

Features and functionality

Some of the basic features of an e-commerce help desk required for providing the best customer service include omni-channel communication, knowledge base, ticket registration, and shared inbox, among others. Therefore, when deciding on the right e-commerce help desk for your business, ensure it contains all the above features and functionalities. 

Integrations and customization options

Another important factor to consider is that your e-commerce help desk should allow seamless integration with other tools you might use for your business. Such might include ERP, CRM, or any other analytical tools. This helps you to streamline your entire workflow without leaving any gap for error or data silos.

User experience & usability

The software you select for your business must be easy to navigate and user-friendly. It must be accompanied by a simple yet creative interface to enhance the user experience. In this manner, your team members will be able to adapt to this change much more efficiently, ultimately leading to an improved customer service experience. 

Training requirements for staff & customers

Whichever e-commerce software vendor you choose for your business must provide you with the required training resources and a dedicated support team. In this way, you will receive the necessary assistance to implement as well as use the e-commerce help desk efficiently. 

Security & privacy considerations

Reputation is extremely important, especially when it comes to security or privacy considerations. If sensitive customer data is not managed properly, it can be vulnerable to theft, especially when dealing with large volumes of data. Therefore, ensure that your e-commerce help desk has a good reputation or is at least trustworthy enough to prevent these situations from arising. 

Conclusion

Wrapping it all up, an e-commerce help desk can undoubtedly revolutionize your business’s customer service experience. But to avail the maximum benefits of the same, you must incorporate the right solution into your business. Maximum the free trials or demos offered by most e-commerce help desk platforms. Discovering the right fit for your needs can only be accomplished through trial and error. 

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