Providing excellent customer service for dropshipping is crucial for your store’s success. It might seem like a hassle; however, investing in it will pay off massively in your favor in the future. Despite that, not many dropshipping stores focus on providing good customer service, and they pay dearly for it. This post is meant to highlight the importance of providing good customer service and to explain how you can actually pull it off!
What Is A Dropshipping Store?
Let’s start with the basics, shall we? A dropshipping store is a fulfillment method that has become famous in recent years because of the ease in setting it up. As a dropshipping store, you don’t have to keep any products in stock; instead, you simply place your customers’ orders to a third-party supplier – responsible for shipping the order to them.
While it may seem like a get-rich-quick scheme, we can assure you that it is far from that. It is a business much like any other business and requires an all-hands-on-deck attitude if you want it to succeed, and by no means is it easy. It has its own drawbacks, hassles and requires daily management. There are various important aspects that must be catered to, but we’re going to be focusing on a crucial aspect that’s generally neglected; customer service.
Customer Service for Dropshipping Stores– Yay or Nay?
A big yay! As a dropshipping store, you might be too focused on marketing and other expenses as opposed to investing in your customer service. We’re here to tell you that your customer service department is as important – if not more – as other departments of your dropshipping store. How come? That’s because this is a direct connection between your business and your customers. Good dropshipping stores focus on customer service and are always trying to come up with ways to improve it. For instance, you could have various customer service quotes printed and displayed in your workplace. They will serve as a constant reminder on how they should be dealing with the customers.
A happy customer is the biggest advocate you can get for your dropshipping store.
How do you ensure that you’re creating as many happy customers as possible? Good customer service! Still not convinced?
Check out the following compelling reasons why you should be investing time and resources in providing good customer service for dropshipping;
1. Customer retention Vs. Customer Acquisition
Did you know that, according to Bain an increase in customer retention of 5% equals an increase in profit of 25%? How come? That’s because your repeat customers are bound to spend more with your brand. How much more? To be exact, 67% more! Customer retention is more cost-effective than new customer acquisition and yields greater profits because a repeat customer will spend more at your dropshipping store.
2. Customer Service Represents Your Mission, Values, & Brand Image
Customer service is your direct line to your customers where you can convey your brand’s mission, values, and image effectively. That’s why it is such a crucial part of your dropshipping store and why it should be focused on and built properly.
3. A Happy Customer Equals Brand Ambassador
According to HubSpot, 77% of customers share positive brand experiences with others. In a nutshell, the happier your customers are, the higher the probability of sharing their experience with their social circle. This means that by ensuring service excellence, you’re creating brand ambassadors for your dropshipping stores, thus helping you to bump up your sales.
4. You Will Have Brand Loyal Customers
If you have a list of customer service quotes that your customer service dropshipping team lives by, you’re providing your customers with a positive experience. How does that help your dropshipping store? A customer who had a positive experience is highly unlikely to shop anywhere else. They will continue to make purchases from your dropshipping store rather than your competition.
5. Customers Are Willing To Pay More For Improved Customer Service
Did you know that more than 50% of customers end up increasing their purchase with a brand once they undergo a positive customer service experience? A study in 2019 suggests that 28% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer service experience.
6. Customer Lifetime Value Goes Up!
The customer lifetime value is a significant metric for your dropshipping store. It is the quantification of the total revenue that you can expect to make from a single customer. When this number goes up, it implies that your customers are spending more frequently or in higher amounts. By offering good customer service for dropshipping, you can improve the customer lifetime value. Any customer with a good experience with your customer service is more likely to place an order with you again and again. There’s also the possibility of getting shared in their social circle. As a result, you can easily upsell and cross-sell without much of a hassle.
7. Explore Marketing Opportunities
This is where proactive customer service comes into play. Proactive customer service is all about showing the customers that you will go the extra mile for them even after they have made the purchase. You can offer your customers solutions to their problems or let them know about deals or discounts that can help them save money! It results in creating a mutually-beneficial relationship. Based on customers’ purchases, you can even suggest new products that you are dropshipping!
8. Competitive Edge Over Your Rivals!
It is all about making your dropshipping store stand out from the competition at the end of the day, right? Great customer service can help you achieve that without breaking a sweat. According to Microsoft, 60% of customers stop doing business with a brand after a single poor service experience. Good customer service can help you grow your clientele while keeping them all happy.
How Can You Provide Amazing Customer Service To Your Customers?
Now that you know how vital good customer service is for your dropshipping store, the question is, how do you provide it to your customers? Check out the following tips that can help you set up your customer service mottos as well while ensuring service excellence!
Take Ownership & Responsibility For Your Brand
If your customer service has been engaged, it’s fair to assume that the customer is frustrated. The chances are that they ordered something and it has been delayed, or the product doesn’t match the product description. Either way, you don’t want your customer service team blaming somebody else, even though it might be the supplier’s fault. It will only escalate the situation. Your customer service team needs to actively listen to the customer, take responsibility, and solve the customer’s problem.
Always Be Respectful
Yes, they will be irritated and possibly furious. However, you must always treat them with respect. Your customer service team should empathize with them and learn how to treat customers with respect and humility. Even the most frustrated customers tend to mellow down once you talk to them respectfully and try to help them while empathizing with them. Never underestimate the power of calmness and kind words!
Address Them Using Their Names
It is always a good practice to address your customers using their names. This little tweak helps them feel more empowered and special. It can work wonders for your customers’ satisfaction.
Apologize & Mean It
Words play a crucial role when it comes to customer service. Simply saying that you’re sorry might just not cut it. We strongly recommend that you apologize to an unhappy customer in a manner that conveys that you’re understanding their problem while being honest. To sum it all up, a customer doesn’t want a half-hearted sorry. They want a genuine apology and are more interested in knowing what you’re going to do about a particular scene rather than learning why it happened. Remember, an apology should always be followed by a solution!
Give Customers Means To Connect With You
Your customers expect to be answered when they reach out to you. Of course, you might not be available 24/7. That’s where good customer service software comes into play (p.s. it can also help you cater to more than one customer at a time if you’re using live chat). You can set it up to automatically respond to queries generated during non-work hours and create tickets for them. This way, your customer service team can efficiently sift through them and resolve them in a timely manner when they do come into work. Bonus tip? Provide your customers more than one way of connecting with your customer support. For instance, they should reach out to them via social media channels and through your dropshipping store website. It’s also advisable to mention the working hours so as to set the expectations.
Create & Maintain An Incredible FAQ Page
Keeping in mind that your customer service team isn’t going to be readily available 24/7, it makes sense for you to create a detailed FAQ page for your dropshipping store. We strongly recommend that you format and sort it in a manner that makes it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. For instance, you can have a complete section on returns while dedicating another section for refunds. This also helps you by reducing the load on your customer service team. It is important to continue updating this page as well. Good customer service software can also help you by providing you with the analytics of what problems most of the customers are facing, and you can use that to create a FAQ section.
It’s All About The Customers
You should always strive to make things as easy as is possible for your customers. This means that your policy should be clear and must be clearly mentioned whether it’s a refund or a return. Furthermore, you should always listen to your customers and try to find out everything you can regarding the issue they’re facing. Great customer service boils down to being able to actively listen to your customer and solve their problem!
Embody The Best Customer Service – Invite Loyal Customers To A VIP Sale
You want to make your customers feel like they are a part of a closely-knit community that’s exclusive. How do you do that? One way is to give your previous customers VIP status, thus making them feel extra special. Remember, excellent customer service is about demonstrating how much you value your customers! Once a customer has purchased at your dropshipping store, bump up their status to VIP. Moving forward, arrange special events for your VIPs periodically. It can be in the form of an exclusive sale that gets marketed to your VIP customers only, or it could be generating unique discount codes for your VIP customers only.
Customer Service Should Be Playful & Fun
Netflix and Amazon have got it all figured out, right? Netflix relies on a conversational tone when responding on social media, and Amazon’s customer support employees will, sometimes, pretend to be Avengers for their customers. Instead of asking your customers to send you a direct message (DM), go the extra mile by directly messaging them for further details and do so in a fun and playful manner to keep things light. Only a few brands do this, but it can help you go a long way!
Conclusion
As a dropshipper you already know that having a good product that attracts your customers’ attention is very important. Now you learnt that keeping your customers happy after their purchase is just as important.
In this article we have given you a variety of suggestions on how to handle your clients and how to keep them happy, but let’s think for a moment what makes an eCommerce client happy.
In order to understand the ecommerce customers psychology we can look at the Amazon example, on the reason why that company is so successful:
- Top Customer Service;
- Good quality products;
- Fast shipping;
So how can we, having a dropshipping store, provide these services? We already covered the first point on having good customer service thoroughly in this article, so in our conclusion we will focus on the last two points.
What we need is to find a supplier that can provide high-quality products and fast shipping. Now, most dropshippers use Chinese suppliers to fulfill their orders, most of whom are simple AliExpress resellers.
Using AliExpress is a real life gamble, and it can bring you a series of problems however, as quite often these resellers:
- Use slow shipping methods that can take even over 30 days to reach your customers;
- Have low quality products which they sell to you at B2C prices;
- Do not provide after-sale assistance;
If you want to avoid all of the above problems you need to find a serious supplier that can source your dropshipping products at B2B prices and ship them fast to your customers.
The answer to this is simple: Yakkyofy.
Thanks to its image recognition technology, Yakkyofy can provide you with real-time quotations for over 12 million products on the Chinese market. You will be able to choose the product supplier that you prefer, considering the price and the variants available.
We will source your items directly from Chinese factories, therefore we can often quote your products at lower prices than AliExpress.
We ship in over 100 countries worldwide and thanks to our fastest shipping service, Special Line, we ship parcels in just a handful of days in many of them.
From the Yakkyofy dashboard you will be able to automate your entire fulfillment process, from the sourcing of your products up to the delivery to you customers.
Moreover, if you incur in any issues with our products or our system, we have a dedicated customer care team that will help you resolve your issues at the best of their possibilities.
All of these services for free. So what are you waiting for?
AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY:
Saaqib Ahmad Malik is an experienced content writer with over a decade of experience under his belt. He’s worked as the lead content writer for Wonderful Engineering and enjoys writing about various topics, such as customer support, e-commerce, digital marketing, etc.. Currently, he’s working with Vertex on two projects, namely, helpcenterapp.com and senderium.com. Apart from content writing, he is running his own IT company as well.
