The retail sector has been through a massive transition phase lately, especially with the advent of the e-commerce market. And while you may think that the sector had hit the right balance between physical brick-and-mortar and eCommerce, the pandemic disrupted it completely and swayed it towards one. With the help of outsourcing company you can easily manage the e-commerce and retail services.
But what impact did the Coronavirus pandemic have on the retail sector?
As per a report published on UNCTAD, the new normal during the pandemic lockdown forced businesses to go digital, resulting in more transactions online. This boost pumped the global market share for eCommerce from 14% to 17% between 2019 and 2020. And this growth has transferred to the BPO industry too. The spike in the customer base and total reach has transfigured to the need for stronger and more focused outsourcing services.
Luckily, the retail BPO services in the USA have seen a revamping up to an extent where flexibility and customizability have become the norm. And while the impact of the pandemic is subsiding slowly, the effect remains to boost the need to work with an eCommerce call center and other BPO service providers.
Keeping this as an apt build-up, let’s discuss in-depth the different aspects of eCommerce call center outsourcing that you should know.
Does the eCommerce Industry Face Any Challenge?
Considering that eCommerce is a relatively newer wing of the retail industry, it faces multiple challenges. Unfortunately, these challenges continue to hinder the way the industry performs, though the growth level has been northwards at a constant.
Let’s get further and take a look at a few of the challenges that the eCommerce industry faces.
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Slow Search
Given the popularity of the eCommerce industry, customers prefer searching for products on eCommerce platforms instead of the Google search engine. While this may be a good news for the industry, the platforms haven’t yet optimized the way the search engines are.
Search engines work on keywords, so even if a close match search term matches any products, the results are noteworthy. However, on the other hand, eCommerce platforms work on tags, categories, etc. For this, the buyers often don’t get hold of the products that they are looking for.
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Brand Interference
This is another challenge that eCommerce platforms face. If you don’t know what brand interference means, here is a quick example to help you understand better.
When a potential buyer searches for Fastrack watches, the search result includes items from other brands, even though the search term specifically mentions the keyword. This results in a lower purchase rate and lower conversion.
The reason behind this is that many new sellers market their fake products by optimizing or listing them with original products. This hampers the goodwill and reliability of the eCommerce platform by a considerable margin.
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Low Conversion Rate
The popularity of eCommerce platforms has brought about mixed results in the retail sector. Though an eCommerce call center can minimize this challenge, the problem still exists. Some aspects that still face challenges are cart abandonment, product irrelevance, inconsistent return or exchange policy, price discrepancy among different sellers of the same product., etc.
How Can Retail BPO Services in USA Help Deal with these Challenges?
When it comes to coping with the increasing competition and working out a solution for the challenges that the retail industry faces, eCommerce call centers, BPO service providers are the best bets. However, not all eCommerce and retail BPO services in the USA can offer a multichannel, and it is on you to choose and pick the one that offers all the necessary offerings.
An eCommerce call center or BPO that has a reputation in the market as being among the top-tier service provider with a client-centric approach can help you streamline customer handling. This allows you to handle the other quality and core business operations in a much better way.
But how does a USA BPO center help the eCommerce industry? Let’s find out!
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Customer and Complaint Handling
For any eCommerce platform, be it new or established, handling customers is of utmost importance. Given the scale of most eCommerce businesses, handling the after sales customer support and complaint handling takes a huge chunk of the operation and efforts.
In such cases, getting help from retail BPO services can help you with complaint handling and customer support in various ways, including
- After-sale support
- Customer service
- Complaint handling
- Return and refund
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Multichannel Marketing and Lead Generation
We put both marketing and lead generation as one because both have a common goal, that is, reach more people and get more customers. Most prominent retail BPO services in the US can tailor their services into a multichannel network and offer you a customized strategy to fit your business needs.
A multichannel marketing and lead generation strategy can be implemented in various ways. For example, running a survey or outbound call center operation is just one part of the entire picture. Other strategies and implementations that can help your business get the most out of the potential market are email marketing, social media campaigns, paid search engine optimization, etc.
All of these can together build a huge network of prospect leads and market reputation. And with the entire marketing and lead generation campaign outsourced, you can invest all your resources in improving the product and service quality to ensure maximum customer retention for the long term.
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Cross-selling and Up-sell
Cross-selling and up-selling are not the most relevant in the eCommerce industry, and it is still relevant for businesses that have a specific-driven product catalog. These processes need skilled and trained agents who can convince customers to opt for a better product. Than they have already purchased from the same business.
Though it is not the most effective in eCommerce and belongs more to the banking and insurance industry, it can still be worth trying out for big retail corporations.
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Pre-sale Support
Pre-sale support is very important for eCommerce businesses that deal specifically with technical products. Often, before buying any product that is slightly more inclined towards being a little technical, customers prefer calling the help desk to know more about the product or its usage.
This is where you need to set up an answering service as a technical help desk or pre-sale support. It can help you increase your conversion rate from potential leads to actual customers.
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Omnichannel Lead Generation
The quality of leads you get depends on the channels you generate them from. Setting up an omnichannel lead generation campaign on multiple platforms. Platforms like social media, emails, and telemarketing can help generate conversion-ready leads while bulking up the numbers too. To put it in perspective, generating more leads will ensure higher sales figures, even if the conversion rate is slow.
Let’s Wrap Up
The retail and eCommerce industry has been on a roll with an enviable market situation and a continuous growth prospect. However, all of the success and growth does not come for free; businesses have to work hard for that and play smart when making informed decisions.
Setting up or outsourcing to an eCommerce call center is not enough; there is a strong need for businesses to work on implementing a strategic approach. Even something as simple as customer handling could be done efficiently if you knew how.
Through this article, we imply to tell you about most things surrounding the retail industry at the present moment. And while the growth of the eCommerce industry has been encouraging, there are challenges that aren’t solved completely yet. But fret not; implementing the right strategy can help eliminate the challenges too!
