Good to Great: Who Are the Best Supporters for E-Commerce Projects?

Exceptional service quality can only be achieved with high-class professionals on board. Each industry has its own peculiarities and demands towards support agents. So does e-commerce — a blooming industry with a high need for top-quality customer service. Let’s try to sketch a portrait of a perfect support consultant for an e-commerce business. Who are they, and can you recognize them at first glance?

At SupportYourApp, we always put customer centricity as one of our main values. In simple words, that means having a positive, open attitude and being eager to help when communicating with customers or interacting with teammates. During the interviews with potential support consultants, our HR Specialists do their best to determine whether a candidate fits these requirements. To do that, they need to assess numerous factors such as a candidate’s behavior, ability to present themselves, communication style, questions asked during the conversation, etc. These factors can become defining, even if a candidate lacks professional experience. 

Number of issues and requests may be huge when it comes to e-commerce customer support. Refunds, exchanges, discounts, shipping, emergencies and mistakes of all kind. And let’s not forget holiday seasons or Black Fridays, when the number of tickets grows immensely. The perfect consultant is expected to navigate through it, resolve issues quickly and effectively, and stay polite and calm even with angry customers. 

Now, let’s highlight some main skills and qualities we expect to see in supporters who work with e-commerce projects.

Interpersonal Communication Helps to Establish Contact With Customers 

Customer support is all about getting along with people and understanding their needs. A customer should know their opinion and issues are actually taken into account and will be resolved. They may contact support while being upset, nervous, or in a hurry, and a great consultant should understand their emotions and assist in the best way possible. 

Patience Is a Way to Balance Out Communication

Sooner or later, the situation when a support representative cannot help the way a customer wants them to, will come up. For example, a customer wants to return purchased goods, which is against a company’s policy. This is where a consultant needs to apply two qualities — persistence, to deliver the information clearly even if the customer doesn’t want to hear it, and strong ethics, to remain 100% polite every second of the conversation. In industries such as building materials ecommerce, maintaining professionalism and patience is crucial, as many customers may require detailed assistance in understanding product specifications or return policies.

Multitasking Is Needed to Fulfil Requests Efficiently and Quickly

Customer support representatives should be ready to perform under pressure. They not only need to get along with the users, but also indeed resolve their issues at the same time. A consultant should be ready to define customers’ real requests, which are not always the ones that are pronounced at first. Then, those requests should be resolved as quickly as possible. In e-commerce support, time is often an issue, especially in peak seasons, when the number of tickets grows.

Autonomy Is a Must for Processes to Run Smoothly

In the beginning of their journey, all of our consultants are provided with assistance from supervisors. But a perfect consultant we want to describe possess the ability to resolve tasks on their own, without constant supervision. That includes a profound knowledge of the product and company’s policies to resolve requests effectively and correctly, as well as proactivity and responsibility. If a request can’t be resolved by a consultant, it should be escalated to a senior specialist, but only when it is actually necessary. 

SupportYourApp Experience

If a candidate for a consultant’s position lacks professional experience or some hard skills, they can be trained. A person who has the necessary qualities to become a good agent is worth a shot. Here’s a pro-tip from our HR Specialists on how to exclude candidates who are not likely to become great supporters. If during the interview a candidate doesn’t even look at the interviewer, replies with 1–2 words, or even says “I don’t know”, showing no desire to try to find an answer, we may want to go with someone else. For customer service, this is a combustible mixture of poor communication and analytical skills.

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