What is e-commerce customer service?

E-commerce customer support is every effort to optimize customer experiences and build long-lasting relationships post-purchase, by providing good customer service to an online shopper across channels.

47%of US online shoppers say they will abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question. Customers who choose to buy a product from your e-commerce store might have several questions and challenges along the entire customer journey. It could be queries about stock availability, shipping fees, return policies, etc.

To complete the purchase, buyers contact your customer service team for assistance. After the purchase, customers may have inquiries about order status, product installation, or exchange processes. The experience provided during each of these buyer interactions with the customer support team is known ase-commerce customer service.

E-commerce help desk software E-commerce help desk software

What are the benefits of a help desk software for e-commerce?

统一multiple channels into a single view

Customers today expect brands to meet their needs on communication channels they use daily, including email, phone, and social media. As you add more support channels to your customer service strategy, you may run the risk of delayed responses or missing certain customer inquiries. An e-commercehelp desklets you streamline all queries into one interface and stay on top of customer requests.

Offer personalized and contextual help

Using multiple tools and platforms to communicate with online shoppers often results in a fragmented view of the customer and their needs. Customers get frustrated and unhappy to repeat their issues repeatedly to support agents while looking for assistance. A goodhelp desk softwareis deeply integrated with other common e-commerce platforms and gives your customer service team complete context of customer requests.

Reduce ticket volume by building comprehensive knowledge bases

Ecommerce customer support teams are usually dealing with a ton of repetitive questions. An e-commerce help desk is the right place to set up a rich知识库with FAQs, tutorials, and solution articles to deflect these common questions so they never have to reach your support team. Your customers can look for information and resolve issues on their own even before they get in touch with your service agents. It’s a win-win for both customers and support teams—quicker resolutions and fewer support tickets.

Measure customer satisfaction and team performance

When you process your customer inquiries through an e-commerce customer service software, there’s a ton of data available in the tool that help you make better decisions to improve thee-commerce customer experience. You can monitor critical support metrics like first response time, first contact resolution, tickets meeting response and resolution SLAs, or even track CSAT scores by triggering feedback forms after every customer service interaction. For instance, Freshdesk allows you to automatically collect customer feedback with customizable surveys and determine how satisfied the customer is with the service experience extended.

Essential features to look for in an e-commerce customer service software

1. Ticketing

A core functionality of ahelp desk ticketing systemis organizing, prioritizing, and tracking customer requests from major support channels as ‘tickets’ on a single screen.

2. Omnichannel support

Your help desk should be able to process customer conversations from your primary support channels like email or social media in one centralized location.

3. SLA management

Configuring business hours andSLA不同的目标types of customer requests within your help desk sets the expectations right between brands and customers.

4. Automation

Your team can be more productive when your help desk has automation capabilities like setting up workflows for recurrent scenarios or adding common responses in a click.

5. Collaboration

A good e-commerce support software should make it easy for you to loop in team members and solve customer issues together without any hassles.

6. Knowledge base

Create solution articles, convert tickets to articles, and list repeated queries asFAQswithin a knowledge base built from your help desk.

7. Customized support portal

Hosting a customizedcustomer support portal—also known as a help center—enables you to give a seamless self-service experience for online buyers.

8. Integrations

Offer contextual customer support by integrating your help desk with other common e-commerce business tools, including your CRM, order management system, and payment platform.

9. Help desk reports

Built-in help desk reporting and analytics features allow you to track and measure your support team performance in real-time or periodically.

7 Best e-commerce help desk tools

1. Freshdesk Support Desk

Freshdesk Support Deskis a feature-rich, multi-channel customer support software that e-commerce businesses can use to deliver personalized, instant, and consistent support across email, Twitter, Facebook, and support portal.

With Freshdesk Support Desk you can

Freshdesk Support Desk offers a forever free plan, and the paid plan begins at$15 USD/agent per monthwith paid add-ons for agent assist bots and field service module.

Perfect for: Brands relying on email support and keen on scaling their support operations.

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2. Freshchat

Freshchatis a live chat software that helps online businesses offer instant, effortless, and conversation support to their customers.

E-commerce live chat software E-commerce live chat software

With Freshchat, you can

Freshchathas a free plan, and the paid Growth plan begins at $15 USD/agent per month.

Perfect for: Companies that own digital storefronts and have a ton of customer engagement via their websites and messaging channels.

3. Freshdesk Omnichannel

If you’re looking for a comprehensive e-commerce customer service solution that brings together the best of help desk ticketing, live chat, and phone support in one package, thenFreshdesk Omnichannelhas got you covered.

Freshdesk omnichannel e-commerce customer service software Freshdesk omnichannel e-commerce customer service software

Key features of Freshdesk Omnichannel include

The paid plan of Freshdesk Omnichannel starts at $30 USD/agent per month with a 21-day free trial.

Perfect for: Larget support teams that have multiple customer communication channels.

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4. Sprout Social

Sprout Socialis your best bet if your online store relies heavily on social media customer service. Their customer engagement platform helps in monitoring brand mentions over social media and staying responsive as a brand.

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Sprout social helps in,

They offer a 30-day free trial, and their standard paid plan starts at $89/user for a month.

Perfect for: Brands that offer customer care primarily through social media.

5. Live Agent

Known for its good live chat support,Live Agenthas helpful e-commerce customer service tools for email, social media, and phone support, apart from live chat.

live agent live agent

Their UI is slightly complex and requires a steeper learning curve, but here are some useful features they offer -

Live agent has a free plan and their combo of ticketing and chat plan is priced at $29/agent per month.

Perfect for: Companies dependent on live chat as the primary support channel.

6. Gorgias

Gorgiasstarted as a Shopify customer service app and has since then built a reputation for being an e-commerce-friendly help desk in the market.

gorgias ecommerce helpdesk gorgias ecommerce helpdesk

Other features of Gorgias include,

Gorgias is slightly on the pricey end for small businesses as the basic paid plan begins at $60/month up to 300 tickets.

Perfect for: E-commerce brands built on the Shopify platform

7. Groove

Grooveis a customer service software designed to meet the needs of small businesses and startups. Their clean interface is easy to use and effectively organizes emails into a single screen.

groove inbox groove inbox

Key features of Groove are,

Groove offers a 14-day free trial and is priced at $19/agent per month.

Perfect for: Startups and smaller businesses looking to kickstart their customer support operations.

Why Freshdesk is the right help desk for your e-commerce business

Our award-winning help desk has exceptional ticketing and automation capabilities which are simple and easy to use for customer support teams of all sizes. Freshdesk has all the essential features listed in the above sections and also has some unique capabilities for e-commerce businesses.

Shopify integration for e-commerce customer service software Shopify integration for e-commerce customer service software
proactive support in e-commerce customer service software proactive support in e-commerce customer service software
Lower cart abandonment rates from your e-commerce help desk Lower cart abandonment rates from your e-commerce help desk
Collaboration in e-commerce customer support software Collaboration in e-commerce customer support software
CSAT forms on e-commerce customer service software CSAT forms on e-commerce customer service software

Why Freshdesk is the right help desk for your e-commerce business

Our award-winning help desk has exceptional ticketing and automation capabilities which are simple and easy to use for customer support teams of all sizes. Freshdesk has all the essential features listed in the above sections and also has some unique capabilities for e-commerce businesses.

Access customer information easily

Bring customer data from Shopify, WooCommerce, order management systems, payment portals, and other e-comm tools into Freshdesk for full context of customer requests.

Shopify integration for e-commerce customer service software Shopify integration for e-commerce customer service software
Offer contextual help to shoppers

Identify customer frustration by tracking rage clicks and engaging with customers contextually through the embedded web widget.

proactive support in e-commerce customer service software proactive support in e-commerce customer service software
Lower cart abandonment rates

Auto-trigger emails and proactively reach out to your online shoppers right from your help desk when you notice abandoned carts.

Lower cart abandonment rates from your e-commerce help desk Lower cart abandonment rates from your e-commerce help desk
轻松跨团队协作

Tag team members within support tickets and work together to resolve customer problems. Have shared ownership over tickets and stay in the loop with regular ticket updates.

Collaboration in e-commerce customer support software Collaboration in e-commerce customer support software
Collect customer feedback effortlessly

Find out if you meet customer expectations by automatically gathering feedback with customizable survey forms sent after every customer interaction.

CSAT forms on e-commerce customer service software CSAT forms on e-commerce customer service software

Connect seamlessly with your existing e-commerce tools

Integrations for an e-commerce customer service software Integrations for an e-commerce customer service software

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E-commerce help desk FAQs