Covid-19 drives higher customer service expectations among online shoppers

KUALA LUMPUR - The Covid-19 pandemic has to a certain extend changed global consumer patterns and expectations on e-commerce platforms, where customers are in complete control of when, where and how they want to engage with a particular brand.

Statistics revealed that 47 per cent of consumers globally have higher customer service expectations from their favourite brands than they had in the last two years.

"Expecting great experiences every time, everywhere has become the new benchmark for customer service globally.

"Fast forward a few years and they will take this many notches higher,” Preethi Bridgement, Director of Solution Engineering (Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa) for Freshworks, a leading software company empowering businesses to delight their customers and employees.

Preethi told Bernama in an interview recently that global consumers expect a personalised experience when they deal with a business as it increases the number of repeat customers, revenue, and customer lifetime value (CLV).

"Personalisation is key to great customer experiences,” said the enterprise customer experience manager with 14 years experience helping the public and private sector clients in Australia, New Zealand, South-East Asia, India and Japan.

Preethi citing findings from Freshworks survey on how the pandemic has impacted consumer behavior and expectations shared that 75 per cent of customers now expect more flexible return policies (including post pandemic), where else 73 per cent said that they have signed up for a new digital product or service to adapt.

"And 55 per cent said that they have disassociated themselves from a brand because of bad customer service,” she added.

She said moving forward, global businesses should prioritise customer support and experience as it is tied directly back to their revenue and cost savings.

"Put customers at the heart of problem and through their solutions, we always deliver cost reduction because we make things faster and cheaper, we reduce the reliance on human labour and deliver innovation that drives revenue for an organisation,” she added.

Meanwhile, Regional Director of Payments and Customer Operations at Zalora, Kannan Rajaratnam, concurred with Preethi, saying that it is important to increase agent response time and enhance personalisation to e-commerce consumers as they remain constantly online on multiple devices today.

He also commended Freshworks for helping Zalora, Southeast Asia’s leading fashion and lifestyle retailer, for increasing agent response time and enhance personalisation to its 50 million monthly online shoppers.

"With the help of Freshworks solutions, we have seen a significant reduction in abandoned carts, and we find 75 per cent of our customers become repeat shoppers.

"Prioritising chat support on instant messaging and social media helped increase loyalty with our ‘digital native’ customers,” he added. - BERNAMA