Customer Support for Instagram Shops: 10 Tips to Deliver a Successful Service

It’s important to provide?good customer service?on your?Instagram store. When you offer good customer service, your customers are more likely to be happy after interacting with you, your products, and your services.

Customer support?is an integral building block for any e-commerce business—so integral, in fact, that?90% of consumers globally?say that quality customer service is directly tied to their sense of?brand loyalty. The good news, then, is that a solid customer service strategy can help you improve your customer experience and the overall?success of your online business, too.

In this article, we will provide you with?ten tips?you can use today to provide?better service on your Instagram?channel so you can start offering your shoppers better service today.

Instagram Customer Service and Traditional Channels

Over the years, companies have been doing?customer support via traditional channels?like email, web chat, or phone calls. The same customer might contact a company via different messaging channels like WhatsApp or Messenger if you are in a country where these chat apps are popular.

As a result, you’ll end up with?siloed conversations across channels. Foremost, it’s worth pointing out that channels do not contradict one another. Social networks not only complement customer support channels via phone, chats, etc. but are themselves?full-fledged support channels.

Disadvantages of Traditional Channels?

With?traditional support channels, conversation traceability is not possible, as these don’t give agents a general view of customers’ chat history. For instance, phone calls don’t leave a transcript that agents can refer to later. When it comes to web chat support, agents can’t trace customers once they abandon the website. Because of that,?customer identification?becomes a problem, causing support agents to ask for the same information when the same customer reaches out again.

Support over email tends to result in scattered conversations caused by simple mishaps — customers sending inquiries from different emails or an agent forgetting to CC another decision-maker. The result is?longer resolution times.

In addition, traditional support channels usually fail to manage?customers’ response time expectations?by not communicating the status of their case or the availability of the agents.

Long waits over the phone or emails that never seem to arrive frustrate customers. Dissatisfied customers are likely to give up and simply look for an alternative to one of your competitors.

You may also like:?Best Help Desk Software Solutions for a Better Customer Experience

Benefits of Instagram Customer Service

Instagram?is a highly popular social media channel among?Gen Z?and?Millenials. While it started as a platform to share visual content,?businesses also use Instagram?to engage with their customers. But what are the?benefits?of using?Instagram’s direct message as a support channel?

Firstly, Instagram DM gives support agents?access to conversation history?in a messaging inbox. Thanks to this, they are able to get insights into past or recurring issues, make informed decisions and give?better attention to customers. For the same reason, they don’t need to request the same information multiple times, which results in?faster resolution times.

What is an Instagram Shop, and Why Do They Need Customer Support?

Originally launched in 2019 for major retailers, Instagram Shop now offers many businesses the ability to sell items within the Instagram platform through videos, photos, Reels, Stories, and ads! With just a simple tap, customers can purchase a company’s products through Instagram’s in-app browser without being redirected to a new window, offering a seamless shopping experience.

Users can learn more about products right in the app and either purchase directly on Instagram (with Checkout) or click through to finish the transaction on the brand’s eCommerce site. Sharing products or promoting sales on Instagram is nothing new. According to Instagram,?87% of users?say influencers have inspired them to make a purchase, and 70% of avid shoppers turn to the platform to discover new products.

In the past, the only option for e-tail brands to directly drive sales traffic from a ‘gram was either through their bio link or via clickable Instagram Stories.

With new features added regularly, Instagram has become a preferred channel for discovering new products or services and shopping online. However, as customers browse your offers and dig into your brand, it’s important to be available at hand in case their experience takes a turn. What happens when the product they ordered off your Instagram profile hasn’t arrived? Or worse, it arrived damaged. Perhaps the size needs to be changed, or the customer wants your recommendation before tapping the pay button on their banking app. It’s moments like these that brands need to be ready for. And the best way to be there when a customer needs you most is to be available to chat on the app they’re already using.

10 Best Tips for Customer Support for Instagram shops

Instagram is a useful social network for brands because it allows them to share branded content such as posts, stories, and reels. Because it’s a visual platform, Instagram can be an ideal social media network to reach your target audience. It provides the opportunity to visually showcase your product or service so that customers can get a firsthand look at what’s on offer. Having said this, you need to be able to provide top-quality customer support on Instagram. Here are ten tips on how you can do so:

• 1. Develop a comprehensive support strategy – A solid customer service strategy on Instagram has a plan that will allow your agents to handle a wide variety of customer interactions. Without having a broad vision, easily understood guiding principles, and measuring KPIs, the level of your service isn’t likely to increase.?

• 2. Respond quickly to customer inquiries – A fast response makes your customers feel important, and also speed matters in Instagram customer service because your customers demand it! Finally, responding quickly to your customers will grow your business. A study of?more than 500,000 interactions?found that customers are willing to spend more with a business that responds quickly to their inquiry. Simply put, a fast response generates higher revenue.

• 3. Training employees is essential – the agents that work at your Instagram shop need to know how to handle pretty much any situation. In addition to this, if your agents have the right knowledge, they will be more empowered to provide better quality service.?

• 4. Keep up with changes – Today’s on-demand consumer is, without a doubt changing the way business is conducted. Customers expect instant gratification, quick results, and constant access. It can be overwhelming, as a business owner or an entrepreneur, to consider the implications of catering to the needs of a consumer that is so, well, needy. However, the constant access and communications between brands and their customers are creating stronger brand loyalty in the long run. Ultimately, the needs of today’s consumers are forcing change upon businesses’ outdated customer service policies and procedures.

• 5. Craft your knowledge base – Having a knowledge base is a great way to share valuable information with customers. Common types of data for your Instagram shop include directions on how to perform particular functions, answers to some FAQs, in-depth solutions, and many other things.?

• 6. Manage multiple channels – Multi-channel support provides different methods of communication for your customers to reach you. This can include (but is not limited to) email, phone, chat, social media, knowledge base, etc. You will notice that while some clients enjoy the rapid response from live chat software, others will prefer to find the answers themselves via a knowledge base. Basically, the idea is that every customer has different ways of interacting with brands, and you want to be able to answer all of them with the same level of professionalism and agility.?

• 7. Meet customer expectations -The fact of the matter is that if you want to build a loyal customer base, you will need to go the extra mile every time a customer engages with you. The reason for this is that loyalty is a by-product of high customer satisfaction.?
• Many companies seem to think that their customer expectations will be met with whatever it is that they offer, but that’s rarely ever the case. Instead, companies need to take the time to understand what their customers want and adjust their offerings accordingly.?

• 8. Provide helpful and friendly customer support – Regardless of how good your product may be, if your customer service is not helpful, unreliable, and difficult to deal with, the word will get around, and you will lose business because of it. This is one of the biggest reasons why you should invest in your Instagram shop’s customer service. If you have helpful and friendly customer support teams, this means that they understand that the customer’s time is valuable, they have a good attitude, and they are knowledgeable about the products you are selling.?

• 9. Follow up – Reaching out to follow up with your customers and asking them how they enjoyed the shopping experience on your Instagram shop is a great way to show people how much you care about them.?
• This genuine interest in them will bring them back because it’s rare to find a company that shows this level of interest. In addition to this, you can turn lost sales around. If a customer was unhappy—whether they told you or not—and you contacted them about their experience, they may reconsider buying from you. Never checking on them would prove to the customer that they were justified in their opinion of your brand not caring. Therefore, they will go where a brand delivers an authentic experience.

• 10. Educate customers – Customer education is enhancing your customers’ knowledge about your product or service to help them achieve value faster and better scale user growth. It gives customers a unique experience by informing them about the value, functionality, and characteristics of your product or service. You might know everything there is to know about your product or service, but your customers won’t! With the right information, customers will be able to make more informed purchases.
• If you want to level up your Instagram customer experience, customer education is the place to start. It adds value to your brand, helps you engage and understand your customer base better, leads to faster adoption, and ultimately showcases you as a trustworthy expert in your field. Customer education is multi-faceted and takes many forms, so whatever you sell, you can find the right formats for you.

How Can Pexly Make Your Customers Happy??

It’s difficult to create a standard set of business objectives for everyone because each company is unique. But some goals are universal, such as creating happy customers. Satisfied, loyal customers make all the difference in business, especially in a competitive industry.?

Pexly’s customer support in social networks allows you to improve retention and loyalty because you can see the profiles of people, and you can provide more personalized customer support. You can always return to them, pick up a customized offer, and cover the pool of people who communicate and buy only through social networks.

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Start Implementing These Tips Today to Improve Your Customer Service on Instagram?

One of the most dominant forces used by Instagram shops is providing customers with exactly what they need. It was all about finding a pain point and creating the right solution. That was enough to grow a business. People would forgive a subpar experience as long as the end result was what they wanted. Because no one else was selling that product or service, knowing how to keep your customers happy was less important.?

Today’s customers have more information — and power — at their disposal, and marketers must rise to meet their expectations for a better buying experience.

Today, customer satisfaction is a key indicator of success, along with customer engagement. While brand awareness is a longstanding marketing objective that implies one-way, business-to-consumer broadcasts, customer engagement indicates the rising importance of more personal relationships through two-way communication.

Contact us?today to learn more about how we can help you.

This article was co-authored by?Olga Rotanenko