Dropshipping Customer Support: Best Practices in 2024

Providing excellent dropshipping customer support is a decisive factor in thriving in this industry. 

In such a competitive environment, customers look for businesses that offer high-quality products and outstanding customer experience. 

In the dropshipping industry, companies that are perceived as highly reliable and have a base of loyal customers who recommend them to others, are one step ahead of the competition. Check out the article to learn more about it.

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Dropshipping is a Growing Market

Source: Freepik

The dropshipping market is a promising one for investments in 2024.  According to a Statista report, it’s estimated that dropshipping e-commerce value will reach more than 300 billion US dollars globally by the end of this year, and grow by 476.1 billion US dollars until 2026. 

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1264272/dropshipping-market-size/

Asia Pacific region currently has the biggest dropshipping market share, They are expected to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.7% by 2031.

North America is expected to grow a CAGR of 33.3% during the same period. Due to that, the Straits Research report pointed out that several dropshipping businesses have expanded their market in the United States and Canada and this is expected to continue. 

Source:  https://straitsresearch.com/report/dropshipping-market#:~:text=Market%20Overview,store%20without%20keeping%20any%20stock. 

To take advantage of this favorable scenario, it’s fundamental to know how to implement your company resources. This includes investing in dropshipping customer support effective practices. 

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The Importance of Dropshipping Customer Support 

There are several benefits to improving dropshipping customer support, and most of them are linked to building a profitable and long-lasting company. Knowing how to assist your customers is fundamental in industries of every type. 

✅ Build Credibility and Authority

Providing five-star dropshipping customer service helps to develop your company’s credibility.

When customers receive the support they need and deal with agents willing to offer the best solution to their issues, they tend to develop a trusting relationship with the company.

With that, they are more likely to recommend your company to others, increasing your reputation in this sector. Word-of-mouth remains one of the most powerful ways of promoting a company. 

✅ Enhance Customer Experience

What differentiates your company from others? In the dropshipping market, it’s common to find businesses that offer the same products and services. Therefore, you need to find ways to stand out. 

Exceptional customer experience is one of them, and customer support is directly connected to that. 

✅ Create More Business Opportunities

Exceptional customer support creates more business opportunities since current customers become more prompted to keep hiring your services.

Besides, as it improves your reputation, more people become interested in buying your products and services. 

✅ Increase Customer Retention Rate

Efficient customer support means satisfied customers, which, as a consequence,  improves the retention rate.

If they have a good experience with your services and you met all their needs when customer support was required, the chances of abandoning your services are considerably smaller.  

✅ Grow Your Revenue

Revenue growth is a consequence of several actions. It works like a domino effect, multiple elements contribute to promoting brand awareness, increasing conversion rates, engaging with customers, and improving sales.

Dropshipping customer support is certainly one of these key elements. 

How to Offer the Best Dropshipping Customer Support?

Now that you understand more about the advantages of implementing good dropshipping customer support.

We have good news for you: it’s possible to enhance with minimal changes, and without increasing maintenance costs exponentially. 

🔸 Provide Multiple Contact Channels

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When you need to talk to a company, you expect to find the contact information quickly and be able to use your preferred communication channel, don’t you? That’s the same with your clients.

Therefore, get to know your target audience, understand their habits, and identify their preferred communication channels. Then, implement them for customer support. Offering multiple options allows your customers to choose the one they prefer, enhancing their experience.

Live Chat

Live chat, such as the one provided by JivoChat, is a type of software that you can install on your website to enable people to send messages to your company.

Thus, a widget in the format of a pop-up box is placed on the corner of your website pages. So, visitors can just click on it, type their questions, and send them right away. 

The main difference from a chatbot is they will talk with live agents in real-time, instead of receiving automated messages.

This helps to nurture engagement, and the communication process becomes more organic. Besides, many people prefer to talk with live agents than bots and feel appreciated by the company.

The JivoChat software allows you to personalize the live chat, create proactive chat invitations triggered by the website visitor actions, and monitor their interactions.

You also count on data analytics reports and multiple integration options.

Email

There are more than 4 billion email users worldwide. It remains one of the main forms of communication online, and can’t be ignored.

Therefore, create an email address for your company’s customer support and each agent. Ensure all of them are checked every day.

Check out the 16 Best Dropshipping Email Marketing Tools For Shopify.

Telephone

Certainly, your company should offer customer support via telephone too. Despite data showing that millennials and Genz prefer other communication channels, some customers prefer to be assisted via calls.

Also, people may perceive your company as more trustworthy when you provide assistance through telephone calls.

💡 Tip: Get inspiration from the 8 Order Confirmation Email Examples & Templates For Ecommerce.

Social Media Platforms

Social Media Channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, function not only as a marketing tool but also as means of contact with your customers. They can get updated with your latest news, products, and services and send direct messages too. 

🔸 Maintain a Short Response Time

Despite the communication channels you choose to make available, one thing is imperative: work with your team to keep a short response time.

In the digital era, we live in, people look for immediate responses, they don’t want to waste time. 

If you take too long to answer customer support queries, this can affect your brand image, client relationship, and retention rate, and make your customers look for your competitor’s services.

For example, your chances to qualify for a lead are 21 times higher if you contact them in the first 30 minutes and the probability falls as the minutes go by. 

Source: https://www.leadresponsemanagement.org/lrm_study/

It’s essential to organize your dropshipping customer support team to keep track of all the communication channels and create strategies to avoid taking too long to send answers.

CRM tools can help you centralize the messages in one place, making it easier to keep track of all of them, build customer profiles, and have access to their previous interactions.

🔸 Keep Your Website Always Updated

Your dropshipping company website is the main source of information about your business. Make sure it’s always updated with the services and products accurately described.

Also, it’s important to have an “About us” page where you present your company mission, goals, and values. 

You can also create a blog section to publish company news and articles with topics related to the dropshipping industry, which are pertinent to your target audience.

For example, Game Of Bricks is a dropshipping store that sells LEGO light kits. Their blog is filled with exciting LEGO content.

They share detailed information, including features, how-to guides, sneak peeks, news, and updates about upcoming LEGO sets.

They also use high-quality photos. So, if you have a product or service that requires some learning, this blogging approach is perfect for you!

This is an efficient marketing strategy to grow website visits and conquer organic visibility through search engines, like Google.

Monitor your website to ensure all pages are functioning properly, and to detect and correct errors such as broken links, and unavailable pages. 

🔸 Create a FAQ Page

A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page is useful for both sides. On the one hand, it helps customers to easily solve their doubts, without contacting your company.

On the other hand, your team doesn’t need to spend their time answering the same doubts multiple times. This way they can focus on the most important tasks. 

To develop a FAQ page, the first thing you need to do is identify what are the main issues your customers have.

Then, along with your team, define the best way to solve each one of them, and write the answers. Proofread everything to make sure the answers are clear based on your target audience.

For example, I personally use ChatGPT for ideas about my FAQ sections, like what questions to include, how to make a good structure, etc.

🔸 Set Clear Policies 

To avoid any problem with dropshipping customer support, you should set policies about your services, including shipping, return and refund, fees, and data privacy.

Transparency in communication is a pillar of building good relationships with your customers.

You can write a comprehensive guide and publish it on your website. To help customers understand the policies and emphasize them. Another tip is to create additional content such as explicative videos.

This way customers will know what to expect. And, your customer support team can use this material to instruct them.

For example, I find the Everlast return page very user-friendly. It clearly says they accept returns within 30 days of purchase as long as the items are unused and still in their original packaging.

🔸 Follow-Up on Key Performance Indicators

Set up key performance indicators (KPIs) for dropshipping customer support, and explain their importance to your team. They should be on board with you to work towards meeting the company goals and keeping the KPIs on the desired levels. 

Some KPIs for customer support are: 

• Average response time
• First call resolution
• Average resolution time
• Customer churn
• Customer satisfaction
• Customer retention
• Abandon rate
• Support costs vs revenue
• Total of solved tickets by channel

Once you have set up the KPIs, you need to define how to measure them. CRM, Live Chat software, and Data Analytics tools for email and websites can help you with that.

So, produce periodical reports to keep your team informed and look for ways to improve continuously with them. 

💡 Tip: Check out the Top 25 Ecommerce KPIs to Track For Your Dropshipping Store.

🔸 Collect Feedback and Reviews

Collecting feedback and reviews is an efficient way to analyze customer satisfaction and get insights about how to improve customer experience.

You can create surveys, send them through email, and ask for reviews right after a live chat conversation or a call. 

You can also collect indirect feedback by analyzing customer behavior.

It’s great to use customer reviews for marketing too. For example, look at how Startup Institute does it. They make the reviews look like “love letters.” 👇

Tools like Google Analytics enable you to identify the time spent on each page of your website, the source of traffic, the main entrance and exit page, and the most clicked products. Another feedback source is the opinions left on your Google Business page. 

In the service and product pages leave a section for customer review, where clients can rate and write comments.

Another way to collect feedback is your social media pages, all the interactions, such as comments in posts, likes and direct messages are a source to evaluate customer satisfaction. 

🔸 Nurture a Trusting and Loyal Relationship With Your Customers

Enjoy dropshipping customer support to straighten the relationship with your customers, and emphasize their importance to your company. It’s an opportunity to engage with them and guarantee future sales.

Show your team the importance of developing and implementing communication skills such as active listening, showing empathy, writing personalized messages, paying attention to the customers, and being proactive.

This way you will be able to deliver over-the-top customer support. 

For example, you can give discount codes to your loyal customers

Wrapping Up

As you can see dropshipping customer support is one of the pillars for building a successful business in this area. In a competitive market, it’s indispensable to know how to take advantage of what each sector of your company has to offer to help your business grow and keep growing. 

After all, the big challenge is being able to manage a dropshipping company that can keep itself on the top continuously. Opening a company is just the beginning. Knowing how to make it profitable for years to come is crucial, and you cannot ignore customer support if you want to achieve that. 

Keep in mind that customer support excellence is teamwork.  Good leadership, effective communication, and a company culture that shows how each employee makes a difference help to lift your customer support team spirit and encourage them to give their best when assisting customers. 

Meta description: Do you know how to provide high-quality dropshipping customer support? It can help your company thrive. Check out the article to know more.