Featured articles

The Gems of Learning with TJ Balo

Explore how TJ Balo finds joy in leading and teaching at Andrea Iyamah, promoting continuous learning in global customer relations.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TJ’s Top Advice: 

  • As a leader, foster openness and creativity by encouraging team members to regularly share their ideas.
  • Tell your customers when you update a product. Including them in the conversation can build trust and bring about valuable feedback.
  • Treat your customers as your stakeholders. They are the driving force behind your brand and deserve to have their voices heard.
  • Leadership entails continuous learning from your team, customers, and the industry at large.

Everybody wants to skip to the answers, but for TJ Balo, there is more joy to be found in the learning. Since 2014, TJ has been the Head of Customer Relations and Marketing at Andrea Iyamah, a fashion line founded in 2011 by Nigerian designer Andrea Dumebi Iyamah. From Toronto, TJ leads a group of customer service reps from around the world, including New York and Nigeria, teaching them the ins and outs of customer service operations, logistics, and lingo.

Encouraging out-of-the-box ideas

Brainstorming is one of the most exciting parts of the job for TJ, who’s always finding ways to improve the customer experience. When his team gets together, there is no wrong answer. TJ encourages his staff to think outside the box. Whether it’s a bold social media marketing play or a never-before-done collection, he wants to hear it all.

“I always want them to bring new concepts and ideas to the table. I think that for success, it's not about the implementation. It's about what you’re thinking,” he says. 

The vulnerability to share out-of-the-box ideas allows his team to create a playground where creativity is the only goal. It’s where every idea has a chance to shine when the time is right, whether it’s in a month or in the next year. All TJ asks is for every person to be fearless and confident: “Let your presence be known. The minute I can identify you, that's when I know that you're doing something right and I'm doing something right.”

The TIBARA Kaftan Dress in Lime from Andrea Iyamah

Including customers in the conversation

Online businesses, especially fashion brands, are no strangers to the challenge of meeting customer expectations. Sometimes colors don’t appear the same way on a screen as they do in person. Other times, sizes may run a smidge too loose or snug. Regardless of the issue, “it’s about consistent communication first,” TJ says. 

How can you show up for the customer and show them they matter? For TJ’s team, customer satisfaction is their guiding light. They always remember to throw in an incentive for customers, whether it’s a refund, discount, or replacement.  

‎TJ pays the same heed to internal feedback. His team’s opinion takes precedence before a product is released. They answer questions like, “What’s missing?” “Does it translate well to different body types?” People naturally gravitate towards good products, and TJ wants to hit that mark as closely as possible the first time around.

When mishaps occur, broadcasting the solution to their customer base is imperative. “I think that that's one step a lot of fashion and retail brands miss. They take the feedback in, and they come out with a new or better product, but the customer doesn't know because they don't communicate that message to them to say, ‘We took this in from you, we have this new version out, come and try it again,” he says. 

Treating customers as stakeholders

Peruse Andrea Iyamah’s Pinterest and their inspirations draw from a cornucopia of African cultures, stories, and experiences. Traditional details can be found in every piece, from a modern sleeveless dress in the recognizable silhouette of a Kaftan to jumpsuits adorned with sculptural pleats similar to those found on a Gele. The room to innovate is boundless, especially with their Treasures.

The AZO Mini Dress in Tangerine from Andrea Iyamah

Treasures, the term of endearment for their customers, are the backbone of Andrea Iyamah. Without the support and feedback of their Treasures, the brand would not have crossed international borders, dressing icons like Michelle Obama, Gabrielle Union, Ciara, and Kate Hudson.

‎“We treat our customers as our stakeholders. We believe they’re the driving force of the brand and its vision, hence our goal to make them feel valued and appreciated,” TJ emphasizes.

On Instagram, they spotlight their Treasures’ voices with Instagram carousels of rave reviews on Twitter. One Treasure confidently states, “Andrea Iyamah never misses… I swear.”

“You have to take in every single detail. That is where the brand meets the stakeholder. That's where they both come together. I never give credit to just either or. They both come together to create and to curate this amazing masterpiece.” —TJ Balo on handling custom orders

Continuous learning is vital to leadership

For a business that’s been operating for over a decade, you could say Andrea Iyamah has accomplished everything. But for TJ, the learning never stops. “Research and ensuring that you're actually taking in that research is the genesis of staying on the cutting edge.” 

He recognizes that they aren’t the first to do it in their industry, that there are countless other companies making great strides. Nonetheless, he wants to be the best to do it. “As we grow, as a business, as a brand, as a company, even just as a team generally, I want to be a reflection of what I would like from my team. You can never know it all. Continuous learning is also leadership.”

{{lead-magnet-1}}

5 min read.
Customer experience insights 2023

Ecommerce Customer Experience in 2023: Insights & What’s Next in 2024

Find out how thousands of ecommerce brands delivered customer experience in 2023, then explore the CX trends of 2024.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR: 

  • Shipping status, refunds, and damaged orders were the top customer concerns of 2023
  • The average first response time was 7.6 hours, a resolution time of 18.6 hours, and a CSAT score of 4.5/5
  • On average, 15% of interactions were resolved with automation
  • Experts predict that 2024 will focus on strategic planning, optimized AI use, more real-time communication, and amplifying the voice of CX within companies

This year, we witnessed customer service teams from 16,140 brands support over 77 million shoppers and millions of tickets with Gorgias. 

As we turn to a new chapter, we want to spotlight how six of the top-performing industries delivered customer service in 2023. 

From food to fashion, we’ll see how quickly agents answered questions, then discover what customers were asking, and learn from experts about what customer experience trends to expect in the new year.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

Support teams resolved tickets in 2.5 business days

Step into the ecommerce world, where you’ll find a vibrant population of merchants, each with their own niche and groups of loyal customers. Together, they generated $1.45 billion in revenue in 2023. 

Of course, this would not have been possible without the grit of customer service teams and their dedication to customer satisfaction. 

Support teams across 20 industries answered customer inquiries within one business day and solved them in two and a half, resulting in very satisfied shoppers. Impressively, 15% of interactions were fully automated and resolved on average.

Here are the average industry support stats:

  • First response time: 7.6 hours
  • Resolution time: 18.6 hours
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Average support performance across 20 industries in 2023
 

From food to fashion: a cross-industry glance at support statistics

The most popular ecommerce industries — Apparel and Fashion, Health, Wellness, and Fitness, Cosmetics, Food and Beverage, Consumer Goods, and Luxury Goods and Jewelry — were the top performers. 

Using exclusive Gorgias data, we’ll look at how support teams from these industries handled tickets. Then, we’ll gain expert insight into the ecommerce experience in 2023, and how experts predict it will change in the coming year.

Apparel and Fashion strutted with a 4.5/5 CSAT score

Our first stop is the bustling market of Apparel and Fashion. We’re all familiar with how tricky online clothes shopping can be. Most likely due to issues with sizing and style, support teams mainly dealt with inquiries about:

  • Shipping status
  • Returns
  • Refunds

Yet, despite receiving the highest number of customer tickets among the six industries, Apparel and Fashion brands kept customers happy. They responded within one business day and resolved issues within two, with 15% of interactions being resolved with automation.

Here are their stats compared to the overall industry average:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Apparel & Fashion response and resolution times
According to Loop, over 50% of their merchants now charge for certain returns, including fees for exchanges and returns for store credit. This change aligns with consumer preferences, as their report shows 70% of shoppers are willing to pay for premium, convenient experiences, a trend already embraced by half of these customers.

Cancellations and returns were Health, Wellness, and Fitness’ biggest hurdles

The next stop on our tour is the thriving Health, Wellness, and Fitness industry.

Unfortunately, brands in this sector had a challenging year keeping up with unpleasant tickets about:

  • Shipping status
  • Subscription cancellations
  • Refunds

Perhaps support teams could have automated more than 15% of interactions to handle these repetitive tickets better. But despite their slower-than-average first response time, customers were still pleased with the support experience:

  • First response time: 9 hours (+1.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 18.3 hours (-0.3 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Health, Wellness & Fitness response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Amanda Kwasniewicz, the VP of Customer Experience at women’s wellness brand Love Wellness, highlights that personalized customer service has been a key trend of 2023. She’s observed that customers now expect to receive personal recommendations during their shopping journeys.

Cosmetics enhanced support with 18% automation

Now, take a peek at the fast-growing Cosmetics industry, and you’ll see how eager customers were to check out the hype around both small businesses and celebrity brands.

Given the boom of influencer marketing for these highly personal products, customers often inquired about:

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged orders

To solve these tickets, support teams automated 18% of interactions and attained faster times than average:

  • First response time: 7 hours (-0.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 15.8 hours (-2.8 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5
Cosmetics response and resolution times

Food and Beverage served it fresh with a 5-hour first response time

Getting hungry? This year, the growing appetite for Food and Beverage in the ecommerce world was unmistakable. Beef jerky or freshly squeezed fruit juice, customers savored their snacks. But it also didn’t stop them from being tough critics. 

The main issues raised to Food and Beverage support teams revolved around: 

  • Shipping status
  • Feedback
  • Damaged products

Luckily, they cut down their first response time by automating 15% of interactions — nearly three hours faster than average:

  • First response time: 5 hours (-2.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.2 hours (-1.4 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.5/5

Expert insights: Zoe Kahn, former Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps and now Owner of Inevitable Agency, saw inventory issues as a major challenge of 2023. The complexity of inventory logistics is difficult for consumers to understand, leading to higher outreach from customers wondering when items would be back in stock. "Quieting those concerns is really difficult," Zoe notes. However, after witnessing inventory issues over the last few years, Zoe realized that "it's inevitable that inventory problems will happen because of how challenging the logistics of selling a product are."

Food & Beverage response and resolution times

Consumer Goods has CSAT down pat with a 4.6/5

There’s a lot to explore in the all-encompassing Consumer Goods industry. You’ll find brands that sell everything from sustainable water bottles and furniture to everything else in between, like dog toys and mystery subscription boxes.

While Consumer Goods brands only automated 14% of interactions, their resolution time was two hours faster than the industry average, resulting in the happiest customers among the six industries:

  • First response time: 8 hours (+0.4 hours)
  • Resolution time: 16.4 hours (-2.2 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.6/5 (+0.6)
Consumer Goods response and resolution times

The top tickets Consumer Goods brands received were about:

  • Shipping status
  • Damaged orders
  • Customer feedback

Expert Insights: Ren Fuller-Wasserman, the Director of Experience at TUSHY, notes that the impact of the macroeconomic climate was among the top challenges faced in 2023. “As there's talk of recession and inflation, people are really looking for products that provide added value,” she says.

Our partner Okendo, a growth marketing platform that has worked with well-known brands like SKIMS and Rhode, notes that tech stack consolidation has been the top priority in 2023. They saw that merchants who used a multifaceted product with app integrations resulted in a 15x return on investment

Luxury Goods and Jewelry polished interactions with 28% automation

Our final stop is at the small gem of an industry, Luxury Goods and Jewelry. Making sure their pricey wares arrived to customers safely was the top priority. That’s why the top questions support teams received were in regard to:

  • Shipping status
  • Discount requests
  • Damaged orders

Out of all the industries, Luxury Goods and Jewelry brands automated the most interactions at 28%, which certainly helped to shorten response and resolution times:

  • First response time: 6 hours (-1.6 hours)
  • Resolution time: 17.1 hours (-1.5 hours)
  • CSAT score: 4.4/5 (-0.1)
Luxury Goods & Jewelry response and resolution times

Expert Insights: Caela Castillo, Director of CX at Jaxxon, advises preparing early for BFCM but being flexible to change. She notes, “Sometimes you need a different perspective,” acknowledging that agents are valuable resources to gain customer insights, especially when it comes to planning new customer service strategies.

How to prepare for ecommerce in 2024 (according to experts)

It’s been a fruitful year of expediting the traditionally slow support process. However, with greater strides made in AI technology, ecommerce has only scratched the surface of providing accelerated service. 

We interviewed ecommerce experts who saw the rise and fall of trends in 2023 and are ready to use their learnings to make the new year better. 

Here are the top four actions ecommerce companies should take in 2024. 

1) Identify business goals to adapt to new tech

We’re constantly fed an endless stream of new technology, which can be a distraction to business goals. That’s why the CTO of ecommerce agency Novatize, Pierre-Olivier Brassard, highly recommends planning a robust strategy first. Clear business goals will help teams pick the best tools — not the other way around.

2) Maximize the use of AI to streamline support

Customer service management platform TalentPop saw AI as the top CX trend of 2023. They foresee late adopters using AI next year, while early adopters will focus on optimization. To get ahead of the game, TalentPop recommends that support teams research all AI options since CX will only become more saturated with AI tools.

Brandon Amoroso, Founder & President at Electriq and Co-founder at SCALIS observed similar trends. In 2023, many CX teams implemented more self-service options for customers. Going into 2024, Brandon notes that a “continual integration of AI into the entire customer experience” is likely.

3) Offer real-time communication options

As social shopping gains traction, marketing platform Yotpo predicts customers are going to look for more real-time communication with brands. In fact, HubSpot reports a 45% year-over-year surge in using social media DMs for customer service. Therefore, using tools that enable interactions through DMs or text, like Yotpo SMS, will be a crucial strategy in the upcoming year.

4) Amplify the voice of the customer

Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, advises CX leaders to ensure their contributions are recognized. Kwasniewicz notes that support teams often know the business better than any other department. "Beat the CX drum loudly. If you're not in the room, find a way in the room," she stresses.

8 min read.
Customer Service Email

You’re Doing It Wrong: Better Ways to Use Email as a Customer Service Channel

Explore actionable tips to make email your stepping stone to faster customer support.
By Christelle Agustin
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • Email is a common customer service channel but can be slow and challenging to manage.
  • To maximize email as a support channel, use it as a stepping stone to faster channels.
  • Email allows for longer, more detailed responses and is accessible on all devices.
  • To effectively use email, use contact forms instead of listing an email address, funnel customers to faster channels when possible, prioritize tickets by topic and urgency, use templates for consistency, enrich emails with customer and order information, and supplement emails with self-service resources.

As of June 2022, 64% of US customers prefer email when contacting brands, so it’s clear why email is a mainstay in customer support programs. Even still, the Internet’s snail mail can sometimes translate to a slow and negative experience. 

So, how do you maximize email as a customer service channel? You use it as a stepping stone to point customers to faster support channels.

Email is simply the medium; the resources are your answer. From including Help Center articles in your emails to replacing a raw mailto link with a user-friendly contact form, we’ll present plenty of ways to transform email into an efficient support channel.

The good and bad of email as a customer service channel

Like all channels, email has its benefits and weaknesses, but you can’t rely on it alone. Here’s what you can expect from email as a customer service channel.

The good 👍

Email is a commonly preferred channel for customers

It would be unwise to skip offering email support when more than half of customers prefer it over social media. Email support provides a vital bridge to connect with customers, especially if you’re a DTC business that can't engage with your shoppers in person.

Email allows for longer, more detailed responses to inquiries 

Email can illustrate solutions for customers with embedded links, images, and attachments — something instant channels like social media DMs and SMS would handle with more difficulty.

For example, look below at Dr. Squatch’s eyecatching promotional email. Their use of multiple high-quality images, call-to-action buttons, social links, and logos proves how email can accommodate the most elaborate messages.

Dr. Squatch
Milled

Email is accessible

If you have a digital footprint, email is almost always a requirement. You need it when creating a new account or when contacting people. It’s even accessible on all devices. Email’s prevalence means customers will expect online stores to offer email support at the very least.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

The bad 👎

Email tends to be a slower channel

The average first response time for email is 7 hours and 34 minutes. While most people tolerate how slow email is, it still doesn’t make for the best customer service experience. Urgent customer questions about product defects or bank account issues require rapid responses that other channels are better suited for.

Email inquiries can be challenging to categorize and prioritize

Email allows for more creative liberty than other messaging channels but also has downsides. Since customers are free to format their own subject lines and messages, the responsibility of sorting through your inbox is on your agents. 

The problem here isn’t just about maintaining a clean workspace but ensuring urgent messages like angry customer emails aren’t overlooked due to a messy inbox.

How to use email as part of your customer support program

Support teams often feel their inbox is an obstacle course rife with concerned customers and a flood of recurring questions. Luckily, there’s a solution: use a customer service helpdesk that can consolidate email and other support tickets to keep your inbox and support team at bay.

Here’s how to effectively use email as a support channel with a helpdesk like Gorgias.

Don’t list an email address — use contact forms instead

Why? To maintain organization 🗂️ and increase service quality ✨

Plainly leaving your email address on your contact page can be intimidating for customers. What should they put in the subject line? Will they actually get a reply back? Since this contact method has practically no guidelines, you’ll want to set parameters to make reaching out more approachable.

How? Do away with a raw email link and use a contact form. Contact forms provide structure to emails. Thanks to step-by-step guidance through drop-down menus and required fields, you can sort emails even before they reach you.

Topicals
Topicals’ Contact Us page only contains a contact form with fields for customer name, email, a drop-down menu for the contact reason and a field to attach files.

💡 Tip: We recommend that merchants don't direct customers to an email address for support. Instead, use a contact form to intake email support. Contact forms are superior because messages get structural data that helps customer service agents categorize and prioritize incoming tickets.

Funnel customers to faster channels when you can

Why? To increase customer satisfaction (CSAT) score 👍

Don’t forget that you can start an interaction via email and move to a different channel. This tactic isn't new — it's known as omnichannel communication. After all, 46% of customers expect a response time of 4 hours or less, and if switching support channels is the key to providing faster service, then go for it.

How? Let’s say a panicked customer wants to reverse duplicate charges on their credit card ASAP. This interaction could take multiple back and forths spanning several business days. Instead, you can reap the benefits of voice support, SMS or WhatsApp by directing them to your phone number.

“Being able to organize and divert tickets internally, having a good FAQ, making sure that you're actually solving the problems instead of putting band-aids on them, all goes into [reducing] resolution time.” —Zoe Kahn, Manager of CX & Retention at Chomps

Prioritize tickets by topic and urgency

Why? To maintain organization 🗂️ and increase customer retention 🤝

A common customer service mistake is treating tickets on a first-come-first-serve basis. This can lead to more unhappy customers because some tickets are less urgent than others. This is where prioritization can be effective.

How? First, categorize incoming tickets with Gorgias Rules and Tags. Do this by determining the conditions for which tickets should be tagged with an “Urgent” tag. For example, emails containing the word “cancel” will be tagged “Urgent.” Now your most high-value tickets will be solved and your loyal customers won’t need to worry.

Create a Rule on Gorgias that auto-tags tickets about order cancellations.
You can set up a Gorgias Rule to detect emails about order cancellations and automatically tag them as “Cancel Order.”
How to prioritize unsatisfied customers: Set up a Rule to identify and auto-tag customer complaints as Urgent so you can turn their day around with exceptional customer service.

Use templates to create a consistent standard of service

Why? To increase service quality ✨ and enforce brand voice 🗣️

Being an advocate for personalized customer service doesn’t mean automation needs to be off-limits. Automation can and should be your best friend. 

Automating customer service reduces response times and standardizes service quality. Automation can also capture data from customer interactions, letting support teams make data-driven improvements to their operations.

How? Use Macros (pre-written sample emails) to immediately answer questions about common topics, such as shipping information, return policies, and product-specific questions. Macros are a convenient way to compose professional messages, like customer apology emails, while allowing agents to add a personal touch.

📚 Related: The risks & rewards of customer service automation

Enrich emails with customer and order information

Why? To increase customer satisfaction 👍 and service quality ✨

The biggest challenge about sending emails as a business is striking a balance between valuable and bothersome. It’s not only about crafting attractive promotional emails but making even the most mundane “Your order has shipped!” emails pop with purpose.

How? Integrate your ecommerce platform of choice, whether it’s Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento (Adobe Commerce), with Gorgias. You can view customer information from your chosen platform in the Customer Sidebar and extract the data to automatically populate emails.

Macros and Shopify integration in Gorgias
Create a Macro for order status emails that includes a customer’s Shopify data like tracking number and URL.

Supplement emails with self-service resources

Why? To increase customer satisfaction score 👍 and reduce ticket volume 🔻

In ecommerce, a self-service resource is any resource that answers customer issues without talking to an agent. They include a Help Center (or knowledge base), FAQs, or automated chat widgets. 

How? Create a Help Center with linkable articles that can be inserted into customer support emails. This is especially useful for new customers who may want to ask several frequently asked questions. A Help Center effectively acts as technical support, while freeing up agents to deal with more unique tickets.

Glamnetic Help Center
The beauty brand, Glamnetic, created a Help Center full of articles that customer service reps can link to in their emails.
A successful customer support program should maximize self-service options to minimize manual effort.

Metrics to track your email performance

How well are you serving your customers through email? The answer lies in measuring how quickly you accomplish support tasks like opening and closing a ticket. But it's not only about speed. Tracking metrics is invaluable for troubleshooting gaps in your customer service operations.

Here are three metrics that can shed a light on how well your customer support team is using email.

Average first response time

Average first response time is the average time it takes for your customer service team to send the first response to a customer after receiving a request. 

🕒 Industry average: 18 hours (Timetoreply)

🟢 Time to aim for: Under 4 hours

🔻 What slows it down: Inadequate staffing, lack of automation, and poor prioritization

➕ How to improve it: Use automation like Rules, Tags, Macros, and more self-service options

Average resolution time

Average resolution time refers to the average amount of time it takes to resolve or address a specific issue or request, typically measured in hours or days.

🕒 Industry average: 18.1 hours (Gorgias

🟢 Time to aim for: Same day

🔻 What slows it down: Inefficient process, disorganized inbox, and complex issues

➕ How to improve it: Reroute tickets to faster channels like voice, and build self-service options like a Help Center

First contact resolution rate

First contact resolution rate or FCR rate measures the rate of resolving a customer inquiry within the first interaction. An excellent FCR rate indicates that your support team is well-trained to be able to solve issues efficiently.

🕒 Industry standard: 70% (Fullview)

🟢 Rate to aim for: 78% (Qualtrics)

🔻 What slows it down: Complex issues and lack of customer service skills training

➕ How to improve it: Add more self-service options, ensure agents are given complete information on product/service knowledge and resolution techniques

[Callout] How to calculate FCR: Total number of requests resolved with one interaction in a single time period / the total number of requests in the same time period

Once you’ve got the hang of the basics, you can refine your operation by tracking 25 more customer support metrics.

Manage email — and all your other channels — with Gorgias

Email is stronger when combined with other channels — no one knows this better than multitasking expert Gorgias. 

As a powerful helpdesk tool, Gorgias offers omnichannel support and powerful automation features like Macros and Rules that make managing email effortless. You can even supercharge Gorgias with integrations to ecommerce apps like Shopify, Yotpo, and Shipbob to keep you focused on delivering support without distractions. 

Ready to bring in a crowd of happy customers? Book a demo now.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

10 min read.
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks
Create powerful self-service resources
Capture support-generated revenue
Automate repetitive tasks

Further reading

How To Leverage Automation For More Personalized Customer Interactions

By Christelle Agustin
6 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

TL;DR:

  • Automation can be customized to fit the language, tone, and voice of your brand.
  • Combine automation with ecommerce app integrations to personalize messages at scale.
  • Use a customer helpdesk trained on AI to automate personalized customer service.
  • Disclose when automated messages are used to maintain customer trust.

While there’s a common concern that automation might alienate customers with responses that miss the mark, it turns out that 73% of customers have higher expectations for personalized experiences when advanced tech is involved.

Not only do customers expect automation and AI in customer service, but they also believe that brands should make the most out of them.

Luckily, helpdesk tools like Gorgias have found the right balance between automation, personalization, and human touch. The only thing left for CX agents to do is to use automation strategically.

Automation is not AI & other automation myths debunked

Automation and AI are distinct, just like live chat versus chatbots. AI, such as ChatGPT, evolves in real-time from interacting with and learning from input data, while automation follows set rules for routine tasks without understanding natural language.

Automation is highly customizable — it won’t spew out an inappropriate sentence unless you tell it to. If you’re still hesitant about automating your support, here are four automation myths debunked below.

Myth 1: Automation produces robotic language

The tone and style of your automated messages are entirely within your control, thanks to the customizable nature of automation. This flexibility ensures that your brand's unique voice shines through, allowing for a tailored approach that aligns with your ecommerce strategy.

If we’re talking about AI, we’ve also come a long way from generic chatbot responses. In fact, a 2019 Stanford University report found that AI computational power doubled every 3.4 months. The result? Humans are only correct 60% of the time when guessing if they’re talking to AI or a real person.

Myth 2: Automation can’t be personalized

In reality, automation is highly adaptable and can incorporate customer data, brand voice, and plenty of dynamic variables to create powerful communications for personalized customer service.

Learn more: How Manduka used personalized, on-site campaigns and earned $70k

Myth 3: Automation can replace human agents

While automation enhances efficiency, it works best in tandem with human insight rather than as a complete replacement for human agents. Customer service thrives when there is a route back to human support.

Myth 4: Customers prefer human agents

Yes, customers appreciate the ease of connecting to a fellow human, but they also value speed — something automation excels at compared to humans.

Learn more: How Luksusbaby boosted 66% first response time with 45% automation

The balancing act of using automation effectively without sacrificing personalization

A customer-centric helpdesk trained on AI is the most effective way to have rapid and authentic customer interactions. A tool like Gorgias enables you to scale your customer service operations by connecting your ecommerce store. Gorgias learns customer conversations and data and automates simple processes like responding to repetitive tickets and refunding orders.

{{lead-magnet-1}}

How to use automation the right way to support your customers

To effectively implement customer service automation, always remember to add a human touch to make customers feel comfortable. More importantly, not all customer interactions are suitable for automated responses so automate strategically.

Here are five ways to implement personalized automation with Gorgias, from automating responses to using website chat and creating a help center.

1) Create auto-responses to answer FAQs

Skip the mental work of reading a frequently asked question and thinking of a response. Auto-responses will do both for you in the background while you complete other high-priority tasks.

How to implement:

  • Set up a rule to auto-respond to where is my order? (WISMO) tickets

Note: Manually follow up on complaints or technical issues. Using auto-responses on these sensitive issues may escalate them and cause more customer frustration.

Overview of Gorgias Autoresponders
There are autoresponders for auto-tagging VIP customers, auto-sending tracking emails, article recommendations, and more in Gorgias.
         

2) Route customers to live chat agents or help center articles

AI is excellent at answering simple inquiries, but sometimes customers will ask questions that need a human’s problem-solving skills. Include a route to a live agent to address this. Allowing AI and agents to work in tandem is an effective way to improve customer satisfaction.

How to implement: 

  • Enable live chat support alongside automated, offline chat 
  • Include disclaimers and instructions in your automated responses about how customers can speak to a live agent
  • Include an option to talk to an agent in your interactive voice response (IVR) system

Note: Don’t trick customers into thinking they’re speaking to an agent when they’re speaking to AI. Customers are more likely to trust you when you set clear expectations from the start.

Shinesty uses Gorgias Chat
Shinesty provides live chat alongside automated Quick Responses.
         

3) Use enriched customer data to deliver personalized messages

Make personalization a part of the customer journey to create friendly experiences on a large scale. Without tailored communications, you’ll likely frustrate 76% of your customers due to irrelevant recommendations and marketing campaigns.

How to implement:

  • Include customers’ names in emails, SMS, chat, social media direct messages, and other notifications with a Shopify integration
  • Mention past purchases when providing customers with new recommendations
  • Adjust language in automated emails and email marketing based on customer demographic
Gorgias Chat supports 15 languages.
Gorgias Chat supports 15 languages, including English, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Italian, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Czech, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, and Finnish.
         

4) Prioritize VIP customers with automated rules

According to a survey of 3,000 consumers, 56% would repurchase from a retailer that provides personalization. For this reason, create an automated action, also known as a rule, that labels tickets from VIP customers. Prioritizing VIP needs will allow your team to strengthen loyalty and drive repeat purchases.

How to implement: 

  • Identify VIP customers by setting a minimum purchase total or total # of orders
  • Create a rule that identifies tickets from VIP customers based on their customer profile
Gorgias integrates with Yotpo
Quickly find out if your customer is a VIP customer with integrations to Yotpo, Shopify, Big Commerce, and WooCommerce.
         

5) Build a help center to provide article recommendations

The responsiveness of AI depends on the knowledge you feed it. To accelerate automation’s efficiency, provide it with resources from your knowledge base or help center. In 2020, organizations reported a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat, and email inquiries after implementing a chatbot or virtual customer assistant. 

How to implement:

  • Compile a list of customers’ most frequently asked questions using an AI tool or help center statistics
  • Create articles answering each question and upload them into a help center
BrüMate’s Help Center is made with Gorgias
BrüMate’s Help Center is organized into categories so users can easily find answers.
         

Read more: 9 types of customer self-service

Balance automation and the human touch with Gorgias Automate

Setting up automation without the right tools can detract from personalization efforts. Gorgias Automate remedies this by equipping CX teams with features like Autoresponders, self-service Order Management,  Quick Responses in Chat, and Article Recommendations. Elevate customer experiences and grow your customer relationships by booking a demo with Gorgias today.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

No items found.
Why Is Customer Service Important

Why Customer Service Is Important (According To A VP of CX)

By Amanda Kwasniewicz
15 min read.
0 min read . By Amanda Kwasniewicz

I firmly believe everyone should experience working in customer support because, let’s face it, working in support isn't always recognized for the challenging job it is. 

The importance of customer service for brand success has been proven time and again. Yet, customer support continues to get regarded as a necessary cost the business has to bite. It's often under-resourced and under-performs as a result, reinforcing the perception that support brings little value.

I’m on a mission to change that. 

I'm Amanda Kwasniewicz, VP of Customer Experience at Love Wellness, and my journey has taught me that we customer support professionals have to be loud and proud about the importance of our work, since we're repairing a pretty damaged reputation.

In this article, I will share practical tips and firsthand experiences to help you showcase the significant impact of customer support on your bottom line, and make the case for more budget and respect in the organization.

Why is customer service important

A great customer experience is crucial to any business. And at the heart of that experience is good customer service.

Right now, every small business owner is experiencing the frustrations of rising customer acquisition costs. The solution? Leverage the relationships with customers you already have by focusing on repeat purchases and customer lifetime value (LTV). This strategy is much more profitable: Keeping customers costs much less than attracting new ones, and returning customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time shoppers (according to Gorgias data).

Repeat customers generate 300% more revenue

Your customer service agents are your brand’s frontline representation. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, great reps have the capacity to enable sales and keep customers coming back. And undertrained or ill-equipped reps have the capacity to drive new customers away and dissolve relationships with current customers. 

Simply put, customer service is important because it has a huge impact on your revenue. Let’s break that truth down into some specifics.

{{lead-magnet-1}} 

7 ways customer service impacts your bottom line

From generating more referrals to increasing your average order value, there are several benefits to offering a great customer service experience. 

1. Excellent service increases conversion rates

The truth is, new customers are often hesitant to trust a company that they’ve never done business with before. 

Studies have found that 18% will abandon their cart if they don’t trust the website with their credit card information. And, even if a customer trusts your business enough to make a purchase, still roughly 70% of all online shopping carts are left abandoned

Reduce cart abandonment

Why? Some of the top reasons are

  • A complicated checkout process
  • Questions about product pricing
  • Problems with payment 

These are all customer problems that live chat support agents can address proactively, which will increase trust and decrease abandoned carts. Adding live chat to your website can boost conversions by 12%.

Tip: Provide pre-sales support

Picture a shopping experience where uncertainty is met with immediate guidance, and questions are answered before they even arise—this is the essence of Love Wellness' commitment to elevating pre-sales support.

On our product description pages, we prominently feature 

  • Links to our general FAQ page
  • A striking red button on the bottom right corner for customers to reach out and connect with our support team via email. 
  • A FAQ block on the product page with answers related to the product being viewed.

Screenshot of Love Wellness’ FAQ block on the Good Girl Probiotics page. The brand answers the top questions shoppers have about this product, such as what is a probiotic and what is a microbiome.
Good Girl Probiotics' FAQ page

In addition to what we do at Love Wellness, you can enable chat campaigns to proactively guide customers through the checkout process or answer common questions that are blockers to purchasing.  

Chat campaigns can trigger when certain conditions are met (like visiting/dwelling on a certain page or being a repeat shopper). You can hit these targeted shoppers with a message, like offering personalized product recommendations or providing a unique discount code. Now that’s an experience worth telling your friends about.

Proactive chat campaigns to upsell

Remember: Customer service involves more than just resolving customer issues post-purchase. Support reps also act as sales agents, answering pre-sales inquiries and offering discounts to encourage orders.

Where CX impacts the customer journey

Already using Gorgias? Learn how our platform integrated with referral platforms like Smile.io and LoyaltyLion to combine the forces of your word-of-mouth marketing and customer experience.

2. Personalized customer service drives repeat business

According to a report from Salesforce, 97% of marketers report an improvement in business results due to personalization. Customer service is no exception: including customers' names, avoiding asking for the same information multiple times, and providing customer-specific recommendations all help build customer loyalty.

Your customer support platform should make personalization easy by showing a customer’s order and conversation history with your brand, so reps have the full context when speaking to customers:

Customer profiles

And, with a helpdesk like Gorgias, you can build templated Macros, which automatically pull customer data into your messages (names, order numbers, shipping addresses, etc). 

Personalized support

Tip: Offer premium support at key stages of the buyer’s journey 

One way we offer personalized customer support at Love Wellness is our “Shop with a wellness specialist” program. Shoppers can take a short quiz, get matched with an expert, and text that specialist directly to build a personalized wellness routine.

Screenshot of Love Wellness’s “Shop with a wellness expert pop-up.” The pop-up explains how the program works, which has three steps: Take the quiz, text with a specialist, and shop your recommendations.
Love Wellness' "Shop with a wellness expert" pop-up with the option to take a short quiz, chat with a specialist, or shop personalized recommendations.

Omnichannel customer service

3. Customer service data holds key information

Customer service can be a goldmine of key data that benefits the entire team, serving as a wellspring of insights that drive informed decisions and overall business success. 

How? Customer service acts as a direct line to your customers' thoughts and experiences. By consistently collecting and analyzing feedback, you gain an understanding of pain points, preferences, and trends that can influence product development, marketing strategies, and overall business direction.

Tip: Collect customer feedback often

One word: convenience.

Your customers should be able to share feedback without leaping through hoops. 

And, when you've got a vault of feedback, don't let it gather digital dust. Your team has so much data they can review between channels like email, SMS, chat, and social media—both compliments and complaints. You need to be willing to listen to every customer’s needs. 

We have a channel in Slack dedicated to customer feedback. Dropping in feedback is part of the team’s daily and weekly responsibilities, which helps them get really familiar with all of the content. It also allows our team to dissect them and collaborate on how we can improve. You could also schedule recurring feedback share sessions with the Product or Website teams, or even invite them directly into Gorgias (at no extra cost) and create a dedicated view for product feedback, website feedback, and so on.

image
Motivate your team by showcasing positive customer feedback in your Slack channel or workplace messaging platform.


4. A great customer service experience drives referrals

Happy customers are much more likely to recommend your brand to others than customers who have a poor customer service experience. 

94% of U.S. shoppers will recommend companies with service they rate as “very good.”

Along with increasing the likelihood of organic referrals, a great customer service experience can earn your more positive reviews.

Considering 95% of customers report reading online reviews before making a purchasing decision, showcasing just how important these reviews can be when it comes to attracting new business. We have a whole page dedicated to this on the Love Wellness website.

There’s also a filter option on every product page review widget so that shoppers can see the most common things people are saying about a product and filter down accordingly. 

Screenshot of one of Love Wellness’s product reviews page that shows the filters shoppers can use to sort reviews. Each buyer talks about what product they bought and why they love it.

Tip: Train everyone on how to have a customer-first mindset

Customer service is one of the main ways we build trust with customers, which is especially important in the personal care and women's health niche. Our aim is to provide a safe space for questions that customers might not even be comfortable asking a doctor.

At Love Wellness, we believe that every single team member plays a vital role in creating a haven of care and understanding. That’s why we created an immersive customer experience training program that involves each and every one of us, including the president of the company and even our office manager!

This program is about truly understanding Love Wellness' purpose, from top to bottom. Whether I'm involved in customer service management, product sourcing, managing our online presence, or crafting compelling copy, I've come to realize that a customer-first mindset is the key. 

Bonus reading: See Gorgias’ tips on customer service training to help improve the quality of support.

Tip: Create self-service resources

Your customer support team can create self-service resources like an FAQ page or Help Center to educate customers about your return policies, shipping practices, and the quality of your materials or ingredients. And by proactively during the pre-purchase process, you can provide first-time customers with the answers they need to make a purchase.

Here’s what ours looks like at Love Wellness, which answers key pre-sales questions about each product, plus frequently-asked questions about payment, shipping, and more.

GIF of Love Wellness’s FAQ page. The GIF shows the cursor clicking through various questions to highlight how each one has a dropdown answer. The cursor also clicks on various FAQ categories, such as “product, orders, and shipping.”

5. Satisfied customers have higher average order values

By addressing any questions or concerns that may be preventing a customer from making a purchase, proactive customer support can boost your AOV by encouraging customers to purchase additional products they might not have bought otherwise.

The proof is in the pudding: businesses that offer proactive live chat customer support generate a 10%-15% higher AOV than those that do not. 

At Love Wellness we have a proactive outreach program for delivery issues, with the goal of reaching out to the customer to triage before they reach out to us. Since starting this, of our ~250 tickets, 105 have received a CSAT and the score is a solid 5 across the board!

According to Gorgias data, repeat customers make up only 21% of the average brand’s customer base but generate 44% of that brand’s revenue thanks to these higher cart values:

Repeat customers generate more revenue

Tip: Find opportunities to sell more

Another effective way that customer support boosts AOV is by providing your sales team with upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

For example, at Love Wellness we make sure to explain to customers how they should use the product on the description page. In this section, we also call out additional products that pair well with what they’re looking at.

Screenshot of Love Wellness’ “How to use” content block on a product page. There is a red box and arrow pointing to highlight the section where Love Wellness tells shoppers what to pair the product with.
To upsell, Love Wellness plugs their other products in the How to Use section of product pages.

6. Good customer service increases customer loyalty

One well-known rule of business is that attracting new customers is always more expensive than marketing to your existing customer base. 

And fun fact: A staggering 95% of U.S. consumers use customer service quality as a factor when determining whether or not to do business with a company. 

My point? By prioritizing customer relationships and positive customer experiences, you can ensure that the customers you attract remain loyal to your brand and offer as much value as possible over the full course of their relationship with your business.

Tip: Fulfill your promises to customers

Promises made, promises kept. Make sure you have the means to follow through on your claims—and the backup available when mistakes happen

My two-fold advice:

  • Build trust: If you're advertising 2-day shipping, get the necessary resources and operational capacity to consistently meet this commitment. 
  • Tip: during a high volume period, especially over holidays, if there's even a chance that your shipping commitment isn't going to be met 100%, temporarily remove that option to keep expectations realistic.
  • Manage customer expectations: Claims like "better taste" are subjective. Highlight provable benefits, such as health advantages, to set realistic expectations.

When customers consistently receive what they expect, they are more likely to become repeat buyers and advocates for your brand.

7. Great customer service reduces marketing spend

Between social media, content, advertising, and SEO, marketing can get very expensive very quickly. For small businesses, these expenses cost thousands of dollars every month

I’ve already mentioned how exceptional customer service improves customer retention rate. By investing in your support team, your brand can generate positive word-of-mouth, reviews, and repeat customer service. 

This means you’ll draw more value from your existing customers rather than spending money trying to attract new ones, which is a much more cost-effective and sustainable path to growth.

Customer acquisition vs customer retention

Tip: Use tools that are well-integrated

In the past, we had a custom tech stack that operated in isolation, causing manual errors and a great deal of confusion. We were practically solving puzzles blindfolded when something went wrong.

After finally having enough, we dismantled our old tech stack and reconstructed it with components that had native integrations already in place. We've learned the hard way that a well-integrated tech stack is the backbone of efficient customer service.

There's no more frustrating tab-switching or tedious copy/pasting to handle tasks like creating discount codes, editing orders, and processing refunds — trust me, it’s saving us from a lot of hair-pulling moments.

One tool that has been a game-changer for us is Gorgias, thanks to its integrations with Shopify (ecommerce), Okendo (reviews), Yotpo (loyalty rewards and referrals), and Recharge (subscriptions). These integrations have streamlined our customer support process by helping agents make changes to those other tools (like refunding an order or updating subscription status) without changing tabs. It also helps our agents offer more personalized support (with less back-and-forth) by giving them the full customer context, right in the ticket view.

Customer profiles

Tip: Take an omnichannel approach to customer support

Every customer has a different communication preference. Omnichannel support makes it easy for them to reach you on various channels like text (SMS support), live chat support on your website, and social media support).

Offering omnichannel communication is important and can be effective, but only if it's tailored to the consideration of your customers and business needs.

For example, the bulk of our inbox is subscription management, so tackling those tickets via SMS is not effective for us. The messages are too long, and often include details customers need to hang onto to reference back to, so email is by far the better channel. 

Want more tips? Read our list of customer service best practices.

What happens when customer service isn’t prioritized

We've all been there — waiting endlessly on hold, being bounced around different departments, and feeling the frustration mount. It's not a feeling we relish. 

Take contacting your bank, for instance. The last thing that crosses your mind after that ordeal is calling them again anytime soon. Instead, it's more like, "Phew, glad that's over. Hope I won't have to do that again."

Now, transpose that to an ecommerce scenario. A lousy customer service experience can easily push a shopper to the point of churn, or even talk bad about your brand online or to their friends.

Above, we discussed the impact of great customer service on your bottom line. But the real thing to be aware of is just how damaging bad customer service is — enough to tank a great product, brand, and company. 

The costs of subpar service are staggering, ranging from $75 billion to a jaw-dropping $1.6 trillion annually. Plus, according to Retail Dive, a whopping 73% of customers won’t return to your brand after just a couple of poor customer service expenses. 

There’s a compounding snowball effect beyond losing customers as well: your customer service team gets burnt out and quits, you hire quickly (and not carefully) to replace those reps, and you’re left with an untrained and understaffed team. 

The cost of bad support

As a result, your company has poor customer service, so execs never get to see the impact that good experiences could have on your bottom line, leading to even fewer resources for customer success. The cycle continues from there.

Thankfully, good customer service can have the opposite effect.

Example: Excellent customer service helped Best Buy overcome bankruptcy

CB Insights shared a story about how, in 2012, Best Buy grappled with a $1.7 billion loss due to rising ecommerce and Amazon's Price Check app. The company turned this around by putting customer service at the forefront by 

  • Empowering sales staff with thorough training that focused on being friendly and knowledgeable
  • Introducing a bold price-matching guarantee to keep shoppers engaged
  • Reviving the employee discount program
  • Offering personalized in-home consultation with a technology advisor

This customer-centric approach revitalized the brand. If they hadn’t made these improvements, Best Buy might not be here today.

Transform customer support into your new growth engine with Gorgias

Looking back, I've realized that nailing customer support is all about staying ahead of the game and making smart moves — fast.

Remember, your customer support situation can impact your revenue in ways you might not imagine, and profitability is essential these days. The goal is to ensure your customer support strategy cultivates loyalty rather than driving customers away. That's where Gorgias comes in.

Designed exclusively for ecommerce, Gorgias equips online stores with powerful tools to enhance customer interactions, ultimately driving revenue growth, including:

I encourage you to book a short time with the team to learn all about it. Gorgias has been a game-changer for Love Wellness and I’m confident it can be for your brand too.

{{lead-magnet-2}}

There’s More to Chat Than You Think: Debunking 5 Chat Myths

By Christelle Agustin
6 min read.
0 min read . By Christelle Agustin

Customers who use chat support are 2.8 times more likely to convert than those who don’t. Despite its proven impact, misconceptions around chat’s limited scope — reducing it to only live interactions — persist, creating a missed opportunity for the online stores that could benefit from it the most. 

The reality is chat is a versatile tool that can adjust to company needs, whether it’s a self-service tool that runs on its own, a channel for providing live support, or both.

For ecommerce businesses on the fence about incorporating chat into their customer service operations, we're here to clear up five of the most common myths about chat’s functions, costs, and benefits. After that, we’ll lay out a five-step guide to efficiently set up chat so you can start delighting customers now. 

{{lead-magnet-1}}

What’s the difference between Live Chat and Chat?

Live chat is real-time communication that allows customers to interact with a customer service representative instantly. It's the digital equivalent of walking into a store and speaking directly with an employee.

On the other hand, chat is more than just live interactions; it includes automated responses that ensure customers receive support, even without agents. This hybrid approach allows businesses to deliver 24/7 customer support.

Chat solutions, like Gorgias Chat, blend live chat's on-demand nature with automation and AI. Chat allows businesses to provide support regardless of time zone and staff availability.

‎Five chat myths debunked

Confusion about what chat can do often discourages businesses from leveraging the powerful customer service tool. Below, we’ll be myth-busting five common misconceptions about chat to reveal its true potential.

Myth 1: Chat is expensive

Contrary to popular belief, chat can be a cost-effective solution to operate customer service. Brands can earn 10x more revenue by implementing chat and, in turn, operate a smaller support team. Support agents can be costly, so using chat to deflect tickets can be a quick way to optimize both time and budget.

Ron Shah quote

Myth 2: Chat is only for big companies

Chat's usefulness transcends business size and breaks down silos in customer service by allowing customers to get answers on their own time. As a customer service tool, any business engaging with customers can benefit greatly from it to tackle pre-sales questions and resolve issues efficiently.

Myth 3: Chat requires staff to operate

As previously mentioned, chat can handle both live and automated interactions, which means no agents are required to manage it. Online stores can set up chat on their websites, allowing it to run 24/7. Businesses can decide whether to enable live chat or keep it fully automated.

RipSkirt uses Chat to intake offline chat messages.
Chat can intake offline messages and operate 24/7 without agents.

Related: Customer service outsourcing: why, when, and how

Myth 4: Chat increases your tickets

Due to automation-based conversations in chat, ticket volume does not necessarily increase when customers use chat. A ticket is only created when a customer converses with a live agent. Unlike using social media as a support channel, chat empowers customers to self-serve and resolve issues on their own.

A customer gets their issue resolved by a chatbot.
Chat can resolve customer issues in seconds, preventing the need for customers to create more tickets.

Myth 5: Chat decreases customer satisfaction

Contrary to popular belief, chat has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. Based on Gorgias data, brands experienced a 1% increase in CSAT when using automation, including chat. The improved satisfaction can be attributed to the efficiency of automated answers and the absence of wait times.

Companies that used Gorgias Automate experienced a 1% increase in CSAT score
According to Gorgias data, customer satisfaction increases by 1% when customer service automation is used.

Myth 6: Email is just as good as chat

While email remains a staple, chat offers immediate engagement in the shopping flow that can create opportunities for upselling. For example, an on-site campaign toolkit like Gorgias Convert becomes a seamless extension of your sales and support strategy with the ability to recommend products within chat. 

Since chat simplifies the process of reaching out, it is also easier for companies to build trust with their customers. The fewer hurdles customers have to jump over to get an answer, the more readily they will trust your brand.

Chat is a more accessible support channel than email

Read more: You’re doing it wrong: better ways to use email as a customer service channel

The best Chat setup in 4 easy steps

Now that you know chat isn’t expensive and can give you a great return on investment, you can start making the most of it. Here’s the optimal way to set up chat in four, simple steps.

1. Customize your chatbot avatar

A study from the University of Göttingen found that customers value clarity on whether they're conversing with a bot or a human agent. Their satisfaction did not dwindle when issues went unresolved, knowing they were interacting with a chatbot.

You can add “Bot” to your chat name on Gorgias whenever automated messages are sent. Enabling this improves the customer experience by letting them know exactly who they are talking to.

In addition, customizing your chatbot avatar to your company logo instead of leaving it as the default robot avatar adds a personal touch. If live chat is enabled, uploading individual profile photos for your agents will help customers feel more comfortable since they’re able to associate a face with the agent they’re talking to.

2. Set up Quick Responses to answer frequently asked questions

Frequently asked questions can quickly dominate your inbox, but with Quick Responses, you can offer fully automated answers. This allows you to provide customer service on an international scale without worrying about increasing agent workload.

Gorgias Automate upgrades your customer experience with an entire automation toolkit that includes Quick Responses in Chat. You can display up to six Quick Responses at a time, providing customers with immediate answers to their questions.

RipSkirt uses Quick Responses to answer customers even when their support team is offline.

3. Set live chat hours

While many assume live chat needs to be available for extended hours, the truth is that live chat hours can be tailored to what suits your brand best, even if that's just one hour a day. The key is to clearly communicate when an agent will respond to customers outside of these hours. 

Customers prefer live chat because of the lack of wait times, so if you’re offering live chat, be sure your agents meet customer expectations by answering chat conversations in 30 seconds. Strengthening customer relationships is crucial to building trust and, therefore, increasing your ecommerce retention rate. On Gorgias, setting your business hours will directly update how Chat appears to customers.

Bokksu uses Gorgias Automate to provide Quick Responses, Order Management, and live chat
When support agents are online, a green icon will appear next to their avatars on Gorgias Chat.

4. Build a Help Center to provide Article Recommendations in Chat

A help center is a database of articles that range from frequently asked questions and guides to video tutorials and policies. On Gorgias, Chat can use your Help Center articles to enrich automated answers with detailed information. For instance, fashion and apparel stores can create a sizing guide article, which Chat can then reference, guiding customers directly to the information they need. 

Article Recommendations in Chat
Gorgias Chat provides article recommendations based on.the contents of your Help Center.

Accomplish the work of 3 agents with Gorgias Automate

Gorgias Automate enabled luxury luggage company July to handle the equivalent workload of three extra agents. With tools like Chat, July went from handling repetitive queries to focusing on more significant customer issues. This significant change enhanced their support efficiency and customer satisfaction. 

Want to become a success story? Discover how Gorgias Automate can streamline your support workflow and elevate customer experience. Book a demo today.

No items found.
Shopify Live Chat Support Mistakes

11 Shopify Live Chat Support Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

By Ashley Kimler
8 min read.
0 min read . By Ashley Kimler

Your customer service is the lifeblood of your business. And, live chat is a central communication channel for your online shoppers. Live chat can make or break your business. When leveraged properly, Shopify live chat can have a tremendous positive impact on sales. You just need to make sure you’re not turning prospects away. 

This article covers a few points.

  1. Why live chat is crucial for your online revenue
  2. Shopify live chat support mistakes you need to avoid at all costs
  3. Actionable advice to solve these common issues  

Now, learn why your growth depends on your live chat processes. 

Why is using live chat on your Shopify store important?

If you don’t yet have live chat or you haven’t experienced the potential of optimizing your communication processes on this channel, you may wonder what the big deal is. Yeah, your customers want to talk to you at all hours, but is it really that important? 

Let’s look at a few facts about live chat so you can think about it.   

  • 38% of online consumers are more likely to make a purchase if a retailer offers live chat support (Crazy Egg). 
  • Site visitors who engage with your live chat are worth 4.5X more than those who do not (ICMI). 
  • Live chat has the highest satisfaction level of any other customer support communication channel at 92% (Inc). 

Now, here’s what might happen if you leave your shoppers dissatisfied. 

  • It can take 12 satisfying customer experiences to make up for a single dissatisfying one (Invesp).
  • 95% of customers tell others about their poor experiences with a brand and 87% share positive experiences (Customer Thermometer). 

Are you convinced? If so, it’s time to make sure you get it right. Avoid these live chat mistakes and ensure that you’re getting the most out of one of the most powerful communication channels for online stores. 

Avoid these live chat mistakes on your Shopify store

Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty. Here are the mistakes you need to avoid when implementing live chat on your Shopify store. And, below each problem is a simple and actionable fix. 

1. No automation  

When you don’t implement automation, you’re forced to have multiple support agents online at all times or miss the point of live chat altogether. Your customers prefer this communication channel because they want the convenience of self-service. And, without some level of automation, customers might as well send an email because it will take just as long to receive a response. 

The quick fix: Learn your chat platform’s macros or automation processes

Source: Gorgias

Live chat platforms are designed to enhance the workload of your support team. So, naturally, the brand you work with will have a knowledge base with detailed instructions about platform use. Make sure your support agents learn how to implement macros or automations.

2. Too much automation

Before you get too excited and try to automate your entire live chat workflow, stop and think for a moment. It is possible to fully-automate your live chat communications. However, with automation, you can’t always get the answers right. Irrelevant responses to customer queries can trigger immediate dissatisfaction.

The quick fix: Refer to the Pareto principle

In marketing, sales, writing, and even customer service, the Pareto principle, better known as the 80/20 rule can come in handy. This principle states that 80% of the effects for many actions come from 20% of the effort. Spin this just a bit for an easy solution. 

Find out where most of your effort is being spent (maybe 20% of the customer support workload) and use live chat macros to answer the most common customer questions first. Then, the rest of your support agents’ work time to reply to the unique and personal queries (perhaps about 80% of the customer support workload).   

See Also: Love Your Melon Has Automated 25% of Shopify Support Tickets

3. Excessive wait times

While it may not always be possible, especially from the perspective of a brand, up to 79% of consumers want immediate responses and expect answers within 10 minutes. If you’re making your shoppers wait longer than this, you may be losing sales.

One of the biggest benefits of live chat for customer support is its speed .You need to find a solution to accelerate your responses.  

The quick fix: Enlist assistance from other departments

Much of the time, excessive wait times are due to the fact that customer support staff must reach out to external departments and wait for answers before replying to the customer. Try what Nomad did to decrease first-response time by 78% and implement an all-hands support strategy. 

Require each department to directly respond to a number of tickets every day. And, there’s no need to go overboard -- just a few tickets a day from sales, marketing, and/or product teams can have a dramatic positive impact on response and resolution times. 

4. Ineffective language use

Do your agents sound like robots? Are your chat communications overly-formal? If so, you run the risk of turning people away. Consumers appreciate AI, but if they can have better conversations with Siri or Alexa that they do your customer support team, your conversations could use some work. 

The quick fix: Parrot your customers 

Compile some data from your chat sessions and look for patterns. Do you see any recurring words or phrases in your customer communications? If so, add them to your macros and your agents’ vocabulary. When you speak the same language with shoppers, they’re more likely to trust you. 

5. Unskilled or untrained support agents

Customer service agents never get as much credit as they deserve. Without a small army of satisfaction soldiers, you will lose the eCommerce war. So, the work needs to be taken seriously. If you hire low-skilled agents who can’t answer your shoppers’ questions, you will end up with low-quality support operations. Eventually, this mistake can kill your business. 

The quick fix: hire and train well 

Unfortunately, for this problem, there isn’t a “quick” fix. However, if you put in significant energy in the beginning, you may be able to kick up your heels later. Onboard well. 

Fist of all, learn the core skills that your support agents need like active listening and product knowledge. Then, hire like you know what you’re doing. Make sure to ask the right interview questions. And, when onboarding, create stellar customer service training materials. The resources you invest when you bring on new agents will pay for themselves fast. 

6. Emoji overload

Once in a while, if you throw an emoji out there in a live chat conversation with a customer, it can be fun. Emojis can help adjust the mood and keep a message lighthearted. Forbes says that emojis can be worth 1,000 words. But, don’t go overboard. Too many smiley faces and penguins will come across annoying and unprofessional. 

The quick fix: Just stop 🛑 

If it seems like your agents may be on emoji overdrive, just ask them to stop. Remove the use of smileys and strong arms from your operations entirely. It’s better to have no emojis at all than to have too many. Now, if this hasn’t become a problem internally, then don’t worry about it. Skilled agents typically know what’s appropriate and what’s not. 

7. Extreme focus on quantity

In eCommerce and business in general, decision-makers spend end a lot of time looking at numbers. In customer service, you strive for the fastest first-response and resolution times. While this is best practice, don’t let quantity overshadow quality. Some teams become so focused on their numbers that they lose sight of their actual customer satisfaction. Don’t let this be your team. 

The quick fix: Audit your operations 

Instead of playing a numbers game and obsessing about the clock, focus on quality. Customer satisfaction should be the number one goal of every support team and every business, for that matter. Periodically, run an audit on your operations and make sure your satisfaction levels are balanced with your speed. 

8. No data collection

A few weeks ago, I called out to online store owners on Twitter to ask for their experience using live chat to increase sales. I wanted to level the playing field and reach beyond our internal data to find others who had the same experience. And, while each respondent knew that live chat had a positive impact on their Shopify sales, they couldn’t provide real numbers. Instead, they shared anecdotes and vague descriptions and stories. There are two key problems with no data collection for live chat. 

  1. When you have no performance data and statistics, you can’t determine the exact areas where you need to improve your processes.
  2. A lack of customer data leads to a decrease in customer satisfaction. 

90% of consumers value when an agent knows their account history and current activity within a company. 

The quick fix: Use a full-featured live chat plaform 

If your live chat platform is designed to collect data from your agents and your customers, you can get all of the information you need to collect helpful internal statistics.

Measure customer support success with relevant KPIs

Keep track of tickets created, replied, closed, messages, time to resolution. Sort your data by agent or event. Use real numbers from your internal processes to power your customer support strategy. 

With the right reporting system, you can inform your future decisions about hiring, automation, processes, and more. 

9. Missing optimal chat times

Do you know when your website traffic spends most of their time on your website? And, are you making certain that your agents are online during peak times? If not, you will naturally see low response and resolution times. Plus, the people who reach out when nobody is online may never return to your site. 

The quick fix: discover your peak times & make sure you’re staffed 

Use a tool like Google Analytics to generate hour of day and day of week reports. When you have determined the most active times for your website visitors, check to make sure you’re staffed during these times. And, if you see that there are active traffic times that you don’t have anyone available, make adjustments to your staff schedules. 

{{lead-magnet-1}}

10. Ignoring sales opportunities 

Customer support is an avenue for your team to keep shoppers happy. And, happy shoppers evolve into satisfied, long-term customers. But, you may be missing opportunities to upsell your website traffic on current promotions and increase sales even more.  

The quick fix: Share your current promotions with shoppers

When you’re running a promotion, contest, or sale, make sure your support agents are aware. At the beginning or end of every live chat conversation (you’ll have to test to see what works best for your audience), give customers a link to a page with the information or briefly tell them about the promotion. 

11. Disconnected processes

A major problem for many support agents that can kill satisfaction is processes that are disconnected. Your staff can be forced to open multiple tabs to keep a conversation going -- email, social media, live chat, web store. This can take up precious time and also give customers the feeling that your company doesn’t know who they are or what their status is. 

The quick fix: Make sure your live chat is integrated with Shopify and your other communication channels

Gorgias's live chat platform connects with your Shopify data so that you can streamline the resolution on orders, shipping, tracking, and return tickets. Furthermore, it integrates with your email, phone, and social media messaging platforms so that you have access to all customer data, no matter which channel they reach out on. 

Final thoughts

Now you know exactly what not to do and how to fix what you’re doing wrong with live chat on your Shopify store. Apply this advice today and watch your support team nurture more satisfaction with shoppers. If you need a Shopify full-featured live chat platform that provides the data you need to scale your customer support operations and the integrations that can streamline your operations, find out what we have to offer. 

{{lead-magnet-2}}

Gorgias 2021 Year in Review

Gorgias in 2021: 8,000 ecommerce brands turned support challenges into $1.1 billion

By Ryan Baum
7 min read.
0 min read . By Ryan Baum

As ecommerce grew this year, we continued to work toward a decentralized vision of commerce — a model where merchants take back their customer relationships from colossal marketplaces and connect one-to-one with the people who buy their products.

Our merchants had a record-breaking number of these personal interactions in 2021 and that’s worth celebrating. So we’ve collected all the firsts, upgrades and proudest moments to share with you.

Since January 2021 feels like 10 years ago (and also 10 minutes ago, somehow), let’s take a walk down memory lane.

  1. 8,000 brands with one thing in common
  2. 75 million chances to improve customer experience
  3. Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were
  4. Assembling the ecommerce A-Team
  5. Customer feedback drove our product roadmap
  6. Gorgias grew alongside our merchants
  7. Looking ahead to 2022

8,000 brands with one thing in common

This year, we helped 8,000 brands support over 290 million shoppers, bringing in customers like Bidabo, Biketart, Lillie's Q and Livinguard.

All together, our customers generated $1.1 billion from their customer support functions in 2021.

Those companies varied in size, from single entrepreneurs still proving their products to enterprise companies scaling beyond their wildest dreams. Differences aside, they united in prioritizing customer experience to grow their businesses.

image

Some industries came up again and again on our roster, including: 

And because Gorgias powered growth across 110 industries, our customers’ customers were purchasing everything from medical supplies to maritime essentials.

image

75 million chances to improve customer experience

Every minute of 2021, Gorgias customers closed out an average of 179 tickets. In more relatable terms, they helped more than 10,000 shoppers in the time it took to watch a new episode of Shark Tank.

At the peak of support volume — the five-day period from Thanksgiving and Black Friday through Cyber Monday (BFCM) — our merchants answered 2.5 million tickets. Their support teams drove $25.6 million in sales during that time.

With tools made for that moment, they were able to stay on top of the ticket pile and turn the holiday rush into a gold rush.

image

The impact didn’t stop there. On average, our merchants received a 4/5 satisfaction rating from their customers in 2021. The 75 million tickets they answered reinforced their brands, one loyal customer at a time.

After all, when your team has a million fires to extinguish, the only flames in customer support should be the emoji reactions to your five-star ratings.

And that’s exactly what you’ll be chasing as your performance metrics approach those from our top quartile of merchants. The top-performing teams clocked first-response times under two hours and resolution times under 8 hours, on average.

image

Our merchants met shoppers wherever they were

As ecommerce becomes more decentralized, so do the channels that provide your customer feedback.

Still, it’s no surprise that email remains the most popular support channel, used by 92% of our brands. Together, they answered 64 million emails in 2021 (85% of all tickets). 

This next stat may be more of a revelation: 78% of our brands have brought Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter interactions into their Gorgias workspace. They answered 3.7 million comments across those three channels, with almost two-thirds coming from Facebook.

image

These social channels were used even more than our live chat, phone, and SMS integrations. And Gorgias helped merchants meet their customers in all of the above, without ever leaving their dashboard.

Assembling the ecommerce A-Team

2021 also saw the launch of our long-awaited Gorgias App Store. This hub features 75 apps to extend the power of our helpdesk and centralize the information support agents rely on. 

image

62% of our merchants are using at least one of our partner apps, and we’re exploring new partnerships all the time to continue streamlining the customer support process. 

This allows us, and all of our partners, to stay focused on being the absolute best at what we do.

Some of our merchants’ favorite integrations include: 

  • Klaviyo: An email and SMS marketing automation platform
  • Recharge: For subscriptions and recurring payments
  • Attentive: A comprehensive text message marketing solution 
  • Postscript: SMS marketing for growing ecommerce stores
  • Yotpo: For customer reviews, loyalty, referrals, and more

image

So go ahead and close those 20 tabs out — you won’t need them where we’re headed.

Customer feedback drove our product roadmap

We released 91 features this year, 42 of which were led by your requests on our public roadmap

Our most requested features (that are all available today!) were: 

The quick adoption of our 2021 social media updates made it clear these channels were critical to our merchants’ success this year. We expect that to continue into 2022. (TikTok, anyone? Give it an upvote here!) 

And while voice support didn’t see the same volume of requests as the social channels, we knew it was essential for certain brands. To better serve these merchants, we built a native phone integration that’s easily set up for new and existing numbers.

Merchants responded by taking more than 4,000 calls from shoppers this year. As a result, resolution times were up to 34% faster than others who left phone service out of their strategies.

image

And while we want to give our merchants a variety of tools to provide help, sometimes it's best to empower shoppers to help themselves. 

Our new Help Center feature provides FAQ hubs on merchant websites, to work toward this goal. The first 100 Help Centers that went live attracted over 100,000 views, answering inquiries before they could turn into tickets.

Another contribution is perhaps our most exciting release: Our Automate product allows for customization of self-service flows and deflects even more tickets to boost team efficiency. 

Hundreds of merchants used the add-on in 2021 to automate their tickets, increasing efficiency across their support teams.

Our self-service portal alone deflected up to another 33% of tickets specific to shoppers (like order status). This freed up agent time to provide a more personal touch to important conversations. 

Gorgias grew alongside our merchants

We tripled the size of our team in 2021 to continue building the best possible helpdesk for the specific needs of ecommerce brands. There are now 185 employees who work in 16 countries around the globe and speak 18 different languages.

image

That means there’s more Gorgians building out integrations, furthering the product roadmap, and contributing to our merchants’ success.

And our customers have let us know how much these improvements impacted their businesses. We currently hold top marks among the helpdesk categories on G2, Capterra and the Shopify app store.

image

Looking ahead to 2022 

2021 was a year to remember for the Gorgias team and our customers, but 2022 is shaping up to be even better. It might even be the year people learn to pronounce our name. (470 people asked how during this year’s demos; think “gorgeous.”) 

Fingers crossed.

Either way, we have some key new features on the roadmap and several surprises up our sleeves. We’ll continue building and optimizing channels so you can meet your customers where they are (including a much-requested Whatsapp integration). We’re also going to renew our focus on automation tools to increase efficiency across your team. 

Make sure you subscribe to our newsletter, below, to beam all of our updates directly to your inbox.

As for the rest of the ecommerce industry, we have high hopes for 2022 (and plenty of predictions). We’re expecting continued shift of support tickets to social channels, a bigger emphasis on self-service options and a sharper focus on app integrations across the ecommerce ecosystem. 

Until then, thanks for a great year!

Reduce Customer Support Load

3 Ways to Reduce the Load On Your Customer Support Team

By Ross Beyeler
8 min read.
0 min read . By Ross Beyeler

By Ross Beyeler, Founder and CEO of Growth Spark


Often, a support team answers the same questions over and over…


Or issues returns repeatedly for reasons that could be addressed internally…


Maybe the sizing isn’t well represented, the fulfillment house has mixed up SKUs, or your product images aren’t clear or detailed enough.


If you can lighten the load for your customer support team, you can save significant time and costs, while at the same time improving the buying experience for your customers.


The goals here are to:


  • Reduce repeat inquiries
  • Shorten first response times
  • Speed up problem resolution time
  • Lower overall customer care costs


The key is to address your customers questions and issues before they ask your support team. Here's how you do that:


A Better FAQ Page


91% of shoppers would gladly try to answer their own questions first using an online knowledge base or FAQ page before reaching out to a customer service team, according to a survey by Coleman Parkes for Amdocs.


This means that your FAQ page is a huge opportunity to answer your customers’ most common questions and issues so they don’t need to reach out to customer support.


FAQ information typically falls into one of two distinct buckets: product-specific and buying process.


Product Specific: Common questions about individual products may be better off addressed on the product pages rather than in a broad FAQ page. You may need to provide clearer or more comprehensive product descriptions, or consider more or better photography to clear up common product questions.


Buying Process: Questions about shipping, returns, policies, and other operational topics are best addressed in a single easy-to-find page like an FAQ.


When is the last time you cross-checked the content of your FAQ page with the data from your customer support team?


There are many customer support tools like Gorgias that will make it easy for you to track the reasons behind why users submit a ticket.


Once you begin tracking the topic, or tag, of your questions, you can easily identify the questions that top the list, and permanently add the responses to the FAQ.


Bonus points: Prioritize the FAQ page based on the frequency of each customer service inquiry so that the most relevant answers are closer to the top.


Your next step is to set up a monthly meeting with your head of customer service to review the feedback coming in from your customers and ask yourself:


  • What are the most frequent topics of support inquiries?
  • What issues take up the majority of your support team’s time and resources?
  • What issues are emerging or could emerge do to seasonality or new initiatives within our company?


Remember, an FAQ page is:


  • Easy to find
  • If shoppers can’t find it quickly and easily, they won’t use it and all your work answering all of their questions will go to waste. If you have an answer on your FAQ page, yet people are still inquiring, they might be having trouble finding the page.


  • Searchable
  • Include a search bar so that shoppers can easily find the answers for their specific problem without having to read through everything else.


  • Easy to read
  • Use simple, conversational language. Technical slang gives most of us a headache, and leaves most people reaching for the closest live human to explain it in terms they understand.


For more on FAQ pages, check out this Shopify article.


Now that you have your FAQ page squared away, be sure to track visitors to the page and note any changes in volume, and look for changes in your support ticket volume around those related questions.


Remember: You should never answer a support ticket only by referencing your FAQ page. Always include the information they are asking for directly within your response. After that, let the customer know that there is an FAQ page for more information, to avoid future tickets.


See Where Your Customers Get Tripped Up


Have you watched actual customers explore your online store to see where they stumble?


Customer behavior tools like Hotjar make it easy to review how customers navigate your website. One way that customer behavior analysis tools can help you understand exactly how your customers are using your site is with heat maps.


image


A heat map is a visual representation of the most popular (hot) and unpopular (cold) elements of a website page. They can give you an at-a-glance understanding of how people interact with individual website pages. Elements that get the most views and interaction are shown in red, so you can immediately spot what your users are clicking on. Those that most people tend to ignore appear in blue.


Once you know which parts of your website are most (and least) useful to shoppers, you can tweak those elements to make the on-site experience easier to use.


Customer behavior data can inform on-site improvements, such as:


  • Identifying any “dead” pages so you can remove them
  • Recognizing “deep” content that requires too many clicks for customers to reach, and making it more visible or accessible
  • Ensuring that customers can easily see and access main links, buttons, and CTAs
  • Making sure that important elements are getting the attention they deserve
  • Checking whether any static elements are getting clicked too often, and adjusting them to clarify that they aren’t a linked object


It may require some A/B testing to ensure your changes deliver results.


Learn from Returns


According to a recent Shopify post, during the holiday season, Ecommerce returns surge to 30 percent (or as high as 50 percent for “expensive” products).


Return deliveries are estimated to exceed $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.


Many of those returns are probably associated with a customer support ticket - whether customers are asking questions about the product they received, or need help processing their return.


Anything you can do to reduce the number of returns - and the number of customer support requests associated with them - can mean a huge boost for your bottom line.


So, what causes returns?


Returns can often be traced back to a disconnect between customer expectations and the reality of the product once they receive it. It may be that:


  • It doesn’t fit the way they expected
  • It doesn’t look or feel like they thought it would
  • Delivery came later than they expected (or not at all)


All of these problems (and more) can be prevented in advance with improvements to your website content.




Sizing Issues

While fit can be a difficult factor to get right online, including detailed dimensions is a big step in the right direction. Some apparel merchants are taking sizing one step further with interactive fit guides, like the one above Nudie Jeans, which uses an app integration called Virtusize:.

image


Appearance Issues

Poor quality or not enough product images can make it difficult for customers to accurately understand what your product will look like when it arrives at their home.


You can easily reduce your return rate by making sure your product photography is clear and high-quality, and illustrates all of the primary parts of each product. More complicated or detailed products can also benefit from a video or 360-view.


Detailed product descriptions can also help address confusion about product appearance and feel. Sol de Janeiro does this with a multi-tab product content area that defaults to a brief product highlight, with additional tabs to provide more details.


image



Fulfillment Issues

Are orders not being fulfilled to the right customers?


Are deliveries taking longer than they should?


Analyzing your fulfillment data and using that information to make adjustments to your website content - such as average delivery times - can help eliminate a source of customer support calls.


image


For example, maybe you want to be able to deliver every order within two days, but your current fulfillment resources simply can’t make that happen consistently. Being up-front and clear about realistic delivery times (like The Black Dog does in their Shipping FAQ page, above) will help set customers’ expectations appropriately.


Bonus: To get setup on two day shipping, consider our partners at ShipBob.


Final Thoughts


Continue to study your on-site data using Google Analytics or Shopify’s native analytics and look for high exit % pages. These may be pages where prospects or customers are running into a dead end and being forced to turn to support.


You can also create a goal in Google Analytics that corresponds to contacting support, then reverse the user path to determine which pages lead to them submitting a ticket / hitting that “contact” or “support” button.


Chances are, there are a few areas of “low hanging fruit” that can make significant improvements to your customer support load once you find them and address the root concerns. And with those small fixes, you could see a big impact on your bottom line, and a better on-site experience for your customers.


Read more about customer support on our trusted partner’s site, Growth Spark:


Best Practices for Shopify E-Commerce Customer Service

No items found.
Aircall

Gorgias Builds Strong Relationships With Aircall

By Sonia Moatti
1 min read.
0 min read . By Sonia Moatti

Aircall is a cloud-based call center software made for support teams. With Aircall, support agents can track everything from A-Z, on any device, with zero hardware to manage. The right tool to increase agent efficiency and customer satisfaction!

Aircall Makes the Gorgias Helpdesk Complete

After listening to early customer feedback, we quickly realized we needed to find a phone integration that empowered users to manage voice calls as easily as emails or chats.

Traditional helpdesk integrations simply log calls as tickets. We wanted to go one step further and associate the phone call with the right customer. This way, agents can see the full conversation history between the brand and the customer.

By building Aircall’s cloud-based phone into the Gorgias platform, agents can also quickly edit orders while on the phone based on the case history they see. After a call has ended, all notes will be added to the correct customer’s profile along with a link to the full call recording.

Screen-Shot-2018-05-29-at-2.22.45-PM

Why Aircall was the Right Choice

Looking back, the partnership has been mutually beneficial and seamlessly implemented.

Aircall has a well-documented API that our dev team could easily use. We were able to build a working and robust phone integration with Aircall in just a few hours. Four days later, after QA testing, the new solutions were fully functional and ready to use.

Since Gorgias and Aircall both seek to provide the best customer experience possible, cross-company visibility has become a valuable source of new leads and sales. Furthermore, we conduct regular catch-up meetings and share a Slack channel to make sure both teams work hand-in-hand to create the best integration and the best results. The partnership with Aircall is super valuable for both our customers and our respective companies and we strongly recommend each others.

If you're already a Gorgias customer, head to your account and go to Integrations to connect Aircall. If not, you can create an account here and get started in a few minutes.

Gorgias for Magento 2

Announcing Gorgias’ Magento 2 Extension Launch

By Romain Lapeyre
2 min read.
0 min read . By Romain Lapeyre

You spoke and we listened. We’re excited to tell you that, we are ready to launch out of beta. Now, you can connect your Magento 2 store with your Gorgias account. Access your Gorgias and Magento data from one dashboard. 

The simplistic interface will enable you to display customers, orders, shipments, and credit memo data from your Magento eCommerce store next to your Gorgias support tickets. Learn more about the features you can take advantage of. 

Magento 2 support ticket system interface


Magento 2 users can leverage the benefits of Gorgias

Magento users now have access to the fundamental and performance-boosting advantages of the Gorgias help desk platform. 

  • Display Magento customer profiles next to your support tickets. 
  • View orders, shipments, and credit memos for each customer. 
  • Centralize all customer communications like email, live chat, and social messaging and comments in one place.  
  • Connect to Magento store and other third-party extensions to empower your support agents to reply to tickets quickly and within context. 
  • Leverage key automation features like phrase prediction or intent detection to create productive and revenue-generating conversations. 
  • Save up to 50% of your time spent managing support requests across all support communication channels. 
  • Insert Magento 2 variables like the last order’s tracking URL, into macros.
Insert Magento variables in each answer
  • Use Magento 2 data as a filter for rules. For example, to add conditions on the price of the last order of a customer.
Use Magento data to create filters and rules in your help desk

Soon, we will add actions like ‘refund’ or ‘cancel order’ to the dashboard as well.

Note: The Gorgias Extension is Compatible with Magento 2.3

Our extension was created for compatibility with the updated Magento 2 platform. So, Magento 2.2 users may need to upgrade to version 2.3 to properly access all of Gorgias’ help desk features.

How to Install the Extension to Your Magento 2 Store

By integrating with Magento 2, we are excited to serve a new rank of online sellers. We hope to recreate the satisfaction we’ve given our existing users. Here’s what you can do now. 

  1. Check out the Gorgias extension in the Magento Marketplace
  2. Learn how to connect your Magento 2 store to your Gorgias account
  3. Tell us how you like the new integration and what we can do to improve. 

Cheers!

Building delightful customer interactions starts in your inbox

Registered! Get excited, some awesome content is on the way! 📨
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
A hand holds an envelope that has a webpage coming out of it next to stars and other webpages