If you own or operate an online business, you’ll need 24/7 customer service. In 2024 alone, 20% of all global sales were made online – a great example of how much digital platforms have become embedded in the local economy. Compared with just a few decades ago, consumers today expect to be able to reach your business at any time, anywhere, in order to make a purchase. What’s more, they expect 24/7 access to customer service. So whether you’re a startup or an established organisation, if you’ve not yet fully got that in place for your own business, here are five reasons why it’s worth making it a priority.
Round-the-Clock Shopping Needs Round-the-Clock Service
Let’s start with the biggest one. Put simply, your customers will be online shopping at any time of day, and so your business needs to be able to keep up. They might be doing so at 4pm or 2am or anything in between, and expect to be able to complete their transaction. If they encounter a problem and you’ve got 24/7 customer service to help them, then that helps to mitigate the risk of losing sales. From simple queries about a product description, to more in-depth issues with payment gateways, it always helps to have a team on hand.
What’s more, being available round the clock makes it easier to capture anticipated and unexpected shopping spikes, such as during national holidays or major events.
Serve Customers in Different Time Zones
One of the great advantages of having an online business is that it enables you to serve customers all around the globe, which significantly increases your overall revenue potential. Plus, due to various factors like localisation and shipping, you may well find that your international customers may well need more service help than your domestic ones, so it’s really important to ensure that there’s a customer service system in place to meet those needs or you could end up losing a significant chunk of your business.
An international presence enables you to build on that even further, so that you can benefit from the sales spikes associated with international holidays, festivals and celebrations as well, further boosting your revenue.
Minimise the Higher Bounce Rates Online
It’s a well-known phenomenon that people often have shorter attention spans online than when they shop in person, and that’s especially true when it comes to e-commerce sites. More recent research says that they’ll give your site around a minute before clicking away. This effect is particularly noticeable in Generation Z, which generally includes anyone born in the late 90s to early 2000s. One study estimates their attention span to be around 8 seconds.
If they encounter a problem or confusion, they’re more likely to bounce immediately, and if they do, then you lose the sale. Solid customer service is an effective tool against that, especially a team that’s able to resolve questions and address concerns quickly and efficiently.
Build and Maintain Trust in Your Business
With the rise of online shopping has come a correlated increase in average consumer savviness. Today, people are often more suspicious of online retailers, especially if they’re online-only, because they’re aware that it can be particularly easy to defraud someone through the internet. That means you have to work extra hard to show them that your business can be trusted, and being easily contactable is the most effective way to do that.
Crucially, it signals that you’ve got nothing to hide, as opposed to businesses that bury their address and contact information, or don’t even provide any at all, which is often a big red flag to customers. As a bonus, it can also help to demonstrate that you value your customers’ feedback and input, which can further help build trust and customer loyalty.
Improve Your Service Over the Long Term
As well as helping you to assist customers immediately, 24/7 customer service can also provide valuable data for you to proactively improve your service over weeks, months and years too. For example, patterns in common queries may help you to identify issues like unclear wording on your website, or technical features that are not working as they’re supposed to. It can also help to surface trends in customer behaviour over different times or days, which may enable you to plan better offers, promotions or updates.
There’s also that trust aspect we mentioned above as well. If customers report an issue and they can see that it’s being promptly acted upon following their feedback, that can go a long way to cementing their trust in your business, which can keep them coming back to buy again.
Ready to Turbocharge Your Customer Support?
At Consumer Links, we know exactly how important customer service is for your business, and we’re here to help you get the most out of yours. We provide a comprehensive range of BPO solutions, including 24/7 call answering and retail outsourcing services – all designed to help you reduce costs, scale faster, and improve the customer experience, all while maximising the efficiency of your operations.
Our teams and delivery centres can act as a natural extension of your brand, giving you the expertise and flexibility you need to take your business to the next level. Why not get in touch with our team today?
