E-commerce: View from a Customer Support

“The most powerful display of customer satisfaction is positive word of mouth.” — Steven Lowell

E-commerce is the largest market in the world that caters to all types of customers. Amazon, is the largest that values a trillion dollar following apple. They have a selling platform called Amazon Marketplace where individuals, small enterprises and small entrepreneurs can start selling different products. One of the top platform were these products were sourced is from AliExpress - where you can find wholesalers of different products. 

This is where customer support agent and/or virtual assistant came into picture. We processed your order through AliExpress, and wholesalers will ship it directly to you (customers). Once order is placed, we will wait for the shipping information from the supplier and we will update the customer directly through the selling platform like Amazon. Shipping will take 7-20 business days and longer for Canada orders.

Customers didn’t know that their order is coming directly  and shipped from China. This is why there were a lot of angry customers and support will do everything to save the sale due to late arrival of the order. Especially those who pays for expedite shipping or express shipping. Other factors that made the customer angry is product that they received didn’t meet their expectation or defective.

As a support representative, we listen but we don’t give in easily to customers demand. As much as we understand how f*ck up the situation is, we need to think about the welfare of the business we are serving. These owners even they had a large profit margins, there are lots of other expenses to consider like advertising cost, maintenance cost and other operating cost that sometimes they earn only a small portion of the mark up.

To maintain customer satisfaction even with the above mentioned circumstances, we provide some discounts, free items and voucher codes that they can share to their friends. 

Also, always answer their questions in a timely basis with a 24-hour turn around time.

We are saddened by how it works but it is how it is and at the end of the day, customer service job and virtual jobs put food on our plate. Business owners must be transparent on their shipping times to ensure customer satisfaction and lessen losses.