Tag - small business

5 tips for a successful Instagram eCommerce marketing strategy

May 30, 2022

Customer Engagement, E-Commerce, Instagram

“Engage, Enlighten, Encourage and especially…just be yourself! Social media is a community effort, everyone is an asset.”
Susan Cooper

Instagram has reached a milestone of 1 billion monthly active users.

500 million of these people are active Instagram followers and log onto the network every day.

As a result, the social media platform is at the forefront of social media marketing…

Instagram was purchased by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. Since then, It has evolved into a large communication, marketing, and advertising platform.

It has now turned out to be a useful platform for eCommerce merchants, with a lot of promotion and conversion possibilities.

tips to create a successful instagram ecommerce marketing strategy — Image by Prodeep Ahmeed from Pixabay

Why be on Instagram?

In 2022, Instagram eCommerce is surely the way to go.

Your brand will be able to reach a larger audience if you use an excellent Instagram marketing plan.
Instagram e-commerce can help you produce quality leads.
It can help you to effectively develop a community of committed followers with whom you can share your products and solicit comments.

How will it be done?

All you have to do is use a sophisticated Instagram marketing approach to significantly increase sales for your online store.

While it’s possible to sell directly on Instagram and create eCommerce purchases.

It’s vital to make your followers feel unique and focus on building an engaged community. This is possible with lots of user-generated content.

By developing an aesthetic and exciting feed for your target audience, the social platform’s strength lies in generating more prospects for you at the top of the funnel.

Let’s look at 5 ways to leverage Instagram for eCommerce marketing.

1. Posting your products’ behind the scenes

Users feel emotionally attached as a follower when they get a behind-the-scenes look.

When you publish unique films and photographs from live events, your target audience feels closer to your brand.

Also read : How to engage your customers in 2022

2. Publish user-generated material

Do you want to build a brand that is friendly, down-to-earth, and human?

Then repost your customer’s posts, flaunting your wares.

Positive sentiment is generated by user-generated content, which provides people with a sample of how your products will look when they wear them.

According to an Iconosquare survey, 65% of customers would be gratified if a business liked their post. You’ll make them happy and feel valued by highlighting them.

Using a platform like Instafeed, you can even pull hashtags relating to your product and show them on their product page.

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A post shared by Bombay Shaving Company (@bombayshavingcompany)

3. Hold a contest and give away unique coupons

Who doesn’t enjoy receiving gifts? Contests and giveaways are some of the most effective ways to grab prospects’ interest and propel them down your sales funnel.

Contests and freebies on social media can help your company gain traction.

41% of Instagram users follow brands just for the benefits and prizes.

Simply told, Instagram is an excellent way for your business to show appreciation for its customers and increase conversions.

Visually announce your offers with eye-catching images and clear text overlays.

Also read: How to use direct messages to drive customer engagement

mamaearth instagram ecommerce marketing strategy — https://www.instagram.com/p/CbH3TF8gjfa/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

4. Collaborate with influencers

Influencer marketing is another great way to win the confidence of your target audience.

Instagram influencers have already put in the effort to establish a rapport with their followers and earn their trust.

When influencers endorse things, their followers are more likely to purchase them.

People will buy your products if they recommend them.

Sponsored posts are also an option to quickly reach a larger audience.

You may also combine influencer marketing with advertising, as Instagram now permits sponsored video ads, where posts can be run as ads/commercials.

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A post shared by boAt (@boat.nirvana)

5. Run advertisements

If you don’t want to go through the whole process of developing a community and earning trust, and you are eager to scale the process rapidly.

You should experiment with advertisements.

either retarget folks with whom you’ve previously established a relationship
or reach out to a cold audience.

For the best results, combine Instagram story advertisements and in-feed ads.

Also, use more video material in your commercials because as per studies 31% of individuals who view video ads end up purchasing something.

Closing Thoughts!

Your Instagram eCommerce strategy should be fluid at all times.

Keeping things flexible and trying new ideas is the best approach to enhance your eCommerce sales.

If you haven’t taken use of the amazing opportunity that Instagram is offering for eCommerce at present, you’re missing out and giving your competitors an advantage.

To make sales on Instagram, you don’t need a large budget.

Instagram’s shopping features are constantly changing, so make sure you’re up to date on the latest news and tools to maximize your success.

Mezchip is now an official Instamojo App Partner

April 18, 2022

Priyanka Prasad

Instamojo

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Instamojo’s ecosystem is changing as it continues to support a growing number of India’s major eCommerce sites, brands, and merchants.They’ve expanded their program to include partners who can meet merchant demand. As such we are very thrilled to announce that Mezchip is the first omnichannel customer service platform for Instamojo merchants.

How Instamojo and Mezchip will help Indian merchants?

The Instamojo App Store assists Indian merchants in finding apps and solutions they require to start and grow their businesses. This Partnership program is just for Partner apps that have demonstrated a level of product quality, performance, and support that can be depended on for Instamojo Merchant’s unique and frequently complicated requirements.

Merchants require dependable and cost-effective solutions. When thousands of consumers are wondering where their purchase is following a sale or if they should order a half-size higher, a customer assistance platform that can keep up is required.

As a result, Mezchip is the only customer service platform to pass the test. We assist retailers and e-commerce store owners in lowering costs and increasing earnings.

Save your time

gray double bell clock — Photo by Moose Photos on Pexels.com

Did you know that 70% of customer care tickets are devoted to assisting customers with purchase updates, edits, changes, or cancellations? That’s tremendously time-consuming and an expensive affair. You can make your team’s lives easier by connecting your store with your existing support channels and saving up to 30% of your time.

Right Customer Support tool can help increase sales conversions

man wearing pink polo shirt with text overlay — Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Pexels.com

As more customers want queries resolved before they buy, we help merchants monetize and track every interaction with their customers. Categorize conversations as leads or support and resolve on the go to convert more leads to sales.

5 best WordPress helpdesk plugins for customer support

April 18, 2022

Mezchip

customer support, WooCommerce

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WordPress helpdesk plugins allow you to provide centralized and rapid assistance, resulting in more user interaction and conversions.

Getting more conversions means you’ll be able to go around with a smug expression like Simon Cowell, which is always a good thing.

In today’s post, we’ll show you our top picks in WordPress helpdesk plugins in the market, so you can add a fully working support system and get more customers. Even with the most excellent WordPress helpdesk plugins, outstanding assistance comes down to one thing: availability.

Without further ado, let’s get to work. You will find the below-listed plugins reasonably priced and simple to set up. With any of these, you should be able to establish your support system in less than 5 minutes.

KB Support WordPress Helpdesk Plugin

If you are looking for a WordPress help desk and knowledge base support tool plugin with an easy-to-use interface, Your go-to option is KB Support.

With this great tool, you may design and fully configure as many ticket submission forms as you need. And the most significant thing is… You may use the ticket management system by email using the Email Support extension. Your customers may submit a ticket with a problem and handle it without having to create an account on your website. The same is true for the agents keeping your customers pleased and stress-free.

AH Tickets Helpdesk Plugin & Support

This WordPress helpdesk plugin is known for its ease of use and responsiveness.

The attractive design, an incredible list of features, and an excellent buyer rating give this plugin a definite edge over the others. The core architecture of AH Tickets is the Bootstrap framework. It is future-proof and responsive.

You can link AH Tickets to Mailchimp to expand your mailing list and let your visitors log in with their preferred social network account. It is rated as, one of the best WordPress helpdesk plugins available.

Mezchip

If you have customer queries coming in from various channels like social media, email, phone etc, Mezchip is the helpdesk to go for. Mezchip is an omnichannel helpdesk platform where Customers contact you through their preferred channel of communication, including phone, email, Whatsapp, and social media. Mezchip enables you to gather and respond to inquiries from a single interface. Mezchip’s deep WooCommerce shop integration feature collects background information about your customer so you can have a customized dialogue and take action without switching between channels and WooCommerce stores.

Customer inquiries can quickly become overwhelming! You may use Mezchip to prioritize and arrange requests across channels, resulting in a seamless experience for your agents. Mezchip connects your WooCommerce store to your existing support channels to enable you to provide the best customer experience possible for your company.

WSDesk – Helpdesk for ELEX WordPress

You can quickly create a comprehensive customer support system for WordPress with WSDesk. To get started, install and run the setup wizard. Because you own your support platform, you can add all of your agents at no extra cost. The same is valid for tickets. There is no limit to the number of submissions your clients can make with WSDesk.

You can also add agents, statuses (unresolved, pending, solved), and tags to your tickets to keep them organized. Furthermore, unlike other alternatives, WSDesk saves all of your data on your site, giving you complete control over your customer and support data.

WSDesk additionally has built-in tools to help you with support. Configure email notifications, automatic ticket closure following inactivity, department assignment, etc. Make prefabricated replies available to your agents. Examine your team’s performance utilizing the agent ratings and ticket reports. You may also use IMAP or Google OAuth to create tickets automatically from unread emails.

TotalDesk WordPress Helpdesk Plugin

Perhaps you’d prefer to reduce the number of hours you spend providing customer service. Maybe you’d like a more passive method of assisting your guests. You’d want to reduce the number of customer support emails and one-on-one phone conversations.

With this plugin you can construct a knowledge base. You can even connect to a self-service customer helpdesk, ticket system, and live chat.

TotalDesk includes incredible features like drag-and-drop post reordering, live search and FAQs. It has numerous notification choices, ticket reports, custom widgets, multi-lingual support, and much more.

Conclusion:

WordPress helpdesk plugins allow you to improve user experience, increase conversions, and save time. Whether you opt for a paid or free helpdesk plugin, make sure you respond to support issues on time. These plugins allow your customers to contact you and receive help whenever they are stuck on your site.

5 habits of a customer service oriented company

February 8, 2022

Mezchip

customer support

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Customer service should not be a department. It should be the entire company.
Tony Hsieh

Regardless of whether it talks directly to customers or not, every department in an organization provides customer care in some way.

If something goes wrong with a customer’s order, customer support staff goes straight to the processing department to fix the problem so that the consumer is satisfied.

It would significantly take a longer time to resolve queries if the processing department was not as motivated as the customer care team.

Disgruntled and angry customers aren’t favorable for an organization’s growth.

It takes time to build a company’s reputation in customer service.

To make it a reality, you need the right people, tools, and processes.

Investing in an affordable omnichannel tool like mezchip right from your early days that enables a customer service-oriented culture, pays off.

According to Forbes, customer-centric businesses are 60% more lucrative as compared to non-customer-centric businesses

As the bar continues to rise, more businesses are attempting to define what it means to be a customer service-oriented organization. Obvious questions to be sought to be answered are:

Is your company actually focused on providing excellent customer service?
How can you improve your customer service experience?
What does it mean to run an organisation that prioritises customer service?

Simply said, customer service-oriented organizations:

prioritise their customers
recognise and consider the influence of every action they take on their customers,
design teams and processes to deliver unique experiences for their customers

In other words, customers’ wants and desired experiences are accommodated by customer-oriented enterprises. Customers are cherished, listened to, and respected when they work with them.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

In this post, we will take a look at what it means to be a customer service-oriented company and offer five tips for turning your business into one.

There are six phases in developing a customer service-oriented business.

Develop a customer-centric service culture within the company

The first step in establishing a customer-focused business is to prioritize customers.

Create a set of values across support and product teams that will motivate you to always put customers first.

By continually keeping the consumer in mind, you’ll be able to spot problems early on and enhance the product and customer experience.

Photo by kikashi on freeimages

Many companies miss the mark here. They make judgments focused on what will benefit their company rather than what would benefit the customer.

Of course, there are occasions when this is the proper thing to do, but customer-focused businesses recognize the trade-offs and strive to make decisions that benefit their customers.

They recognize that putting the customer first benefits the company as well.

Value Points:

Create a set of customer service values and promote them throughout the organization.
Invite other departments to shadow the support team or perform all-hands support.
Customer satisfaction should be measured and shared with the entire organization regularly.

Look after your staff

Taking care of your clients begins with treating your personnel well. That’s right:

Satisfied Staff Lead To Satisfied Customers.

Allowing your staff to do their best work will keep them motivated to create a customer-centric culture.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The interview and onboarding procedure are the foundations of a positive employment experience. It’s just as important to onboard a new employee as it is to onboard a new consumer.

Create a plan for their first four weeks, then revise and enhance it as you discover what works and what doesn’t.

Next, work to eliminate points of friction and annoyance in the employee experience. Giving your employees freedom to act will enable them to deliver creative solutions in critical situations.

Value Points:

Create a transparent and safe working atmosphere in which your staff are motivated to collaborate and produce their best job.
Request input from employees regularly, and use the information to improve the employee experience.
When it comes to onboarding new employees, be thorough and deliberate. Make a plan to demonstrate to each new hire that you care about their happiness.
Create an internal knowledge base or an agent help bot to provide new employees with the materials they need.
Give employees freedom to act and ability to enjoy their work

Offer help on all customer-favored channels

Omni-channel support empowers your customers to connect with you using their favored channel.

While for some that could be mail, and for others that may be social media DMS or Whatsapp.

Ask your customers what their ideal experience is with regards to drawing in with your organization.

At that point, work to oblige them and live up to those assumptions.

Use an omnichannel customer support tool like mezchip to connect and engage with your customers in their preferred mode of communication channel.

Whether or not you choose to go omnichannel, you can unquestionably guarantee you’re focusing on the right channels that are best for your customers.

Value Points

Ask your customers how they like to contact you for help.
Make it simple to contact your support group. Eliminate any grinding or obstacles with regard to contacting your group.
Use an omnichannel support tool like mezchip to make better and faster communications

Photo by: clipart max

Be open with your customers

Transparency fosters trust, which in turn fosters customer loyalty.

Whenever possible, use a transparent communication style.

If you manage a software company and are experiencing a service outage, interact with your customers in real-time. Let your customers know if your developers accidentally introduced an issue with a product update.

Instead of leaving customers in the dark about service and feature demands, keep them informed.

Notify the customer as soon as possible if you are going to miss a deadline.

Transparency and proactively addressing faults will aid in the improvement of internal processes and the establishment of customer trust.

Photo by:subpng.com

Value Points:

Provide easy access to information.
Make an environment where it’s acceptable to be open and honest.
Recognize and correct your errors.

Invest in technology to improve customer service

Technology can make jobs easier and, ultimately, improve customer service. This is true whether you’re a technology company or not. Today, every business relies on technology.

Technology can improve the customer experience, regardless of whether you’re a technology company or not. In the 21st century, all businesses rely on technology to help them do their jobs.

Investing in technology can help businesses offer better customer service. This is true regardless of whether your company is in the technology industry.

Photo by: www.consultancy.eu

Value Points:

Implement the right helpdesk tool like mezchip, to get a 360-degree perspective on your customers, their buy history, earlier discussions, shipment history, and updates.
Collaborate with team members of sales and support to provide up-to-date customer support and experience.
Enable your customers to help themselves through help docs, faqs, and other self-improvement assets.

Conclusion

A customer-centric culture is driven when employees, support staff, and processing staff all work in collaboration as well as independently.

Businesses that focus on customer service have a great support staff. Customer service excellence is ingrained in the company’s DNA. Customer centricity is injected into every aspect of a customer service-focused business, from engineering to marketing to design.

While there is no one size fits all solution to develop a customer-centric culture for all businesses. Any business that consistently attempts to develop by adhering to these five cultural habits, will notice a significant difference in its employees and customer experience.

How Can Small Businesses Provide Great Customer Service

February 3, 2022

Mezchip

customer support

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A great idea, seed capital, and some human resource on the job is not sufficient to get a new business going.

Right from the initial stage, great customer service helps in building a solid base for further growth and development of a business.

“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.”
— Walt Disney

There is a thin line of difference between a good company and a great company. Customers feel more valued and regarded when associated with a great company.

Irrespective of the size and scale of the company, customer service occupies the topmost position in the list of company objectives.

“You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be too easily duplicated. But a strong customer service culture cannot be copied.” — Jerry Fritz

Understanding Customer Service

It is the support provided by a business to its customers prior to and post-purchase of products or services.

It also includes keeping a track of the usage and experience of the customers during an entire customer’s buying cycle.

Customer retention is a primary objective. And an improved image of the brand comes as an added bonus.

These days customer service is not just limited to the traditional telephone support model rather it has now evolved to providing support and engaging customers across channels like:

Email
Live Chat
Text messaging
Social media, and
Self-service support, where customers can get answers on their own, irrespective of the time of the day.

So How Can Small Businesses Provide Great Customer Service?

Customers can build their perceptions within seconds about a business. Particularly, when it comes to small businesses, creating the first impression is important.

Using the magic words, “Please” and “Thank You” goes a long way in earning customer trust, loyalty and appreciation.

A “can-do attitude” helps businesses become more dependable and worthy of customer trust.

It builds certainty with customers and reinstates their decision to buy products of the brand.

Phrases such as “I don’t know,” “I can’t,” and “You have to…” reflect complacency and a laid-back approach signaling a negative attitude.

Such phrases are unhelpful and act as triggers for already frustrated customers.

Adding a personal touch by giving calls to the customers goes a long way in staying connected with the customers.

Although in today’s fast-paced era, short personalized emails can be helpful instead of overloaded and lengthy emails.

Following up and maintaining contact with clients helps customers realize their value and highlight the importance of customer experience for the business.

Impact of a Great Customer Service

Running a small business invites competition from bigger & better market players. Small businesses have a smaller bunch of customers to manage which in turn gives the chance to impress and retain the customers for longer periods.

Lasting impressions are embedded in customers. These impressions get transferred to their acquaintances via word of mouth leading to new customer acquisitions.

Great Customer Service has the following 5 advantages for small businesses:

1. Escalating trend of sales.

Managing an existing set of customers might land a business in a laid-back position, thus, finding new customers has to be a priority.

Customer service helps in increasing sales since not only the existing customers but also the prospective ones have questions to ask.

As per recent reports, 52% of customers are willing to abandon online purchases if they don’t find the information they’re seeking.

2. Retaining customers.

As per an oft-quoted statistic, acquiring customers costs 6–7 times more than retaining your existing ones.

Keeping in mind the time availability and resources with a small business, satisfying customers becomes more critical in running and operating a small business.

As per a report by the U.S. Small Business Administration, 68% of customers tend to leave since they were upset with the treatment they’ve received.

Hence, swift and considerate service for the customers goes a long way in earning their loyalty.

3. Discovering opportunities for cross-selling and upselling

With the advent of advanced systems such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and platforms like Mezchip, everyone in the company are aware of the customers.

Support agents have access to order histories, open opportunities, and shipping status.
Salespeople are aware when a customer requires assistance

4. Improvising the products and services being offered

The support team serves as an important link to the external business environment as they establish a connection on a real-time basis.

The inputs derived from their interaction with the customers serve as important leads for improving the quality of service delivery and products being offered.

5. Make better business decisions.

Customer service tools have multiple uses.

Apart from providing service to the customers, they contribute to the virtual improvement of various business aspects.

That includes customer satisfaction scores and performance of the agents which further aids in taking better and improved decisions for the business.

For a majority of people, good customer service is an expectation, customers need their queries to be answered and issues resolved but that’s not sufficient to stand out from others in the competition.

So how do you stand out?

The answer lies in transforming good customer service into a Great one!! Small businesses do not require a big budget or a big team to do that, just some brainstorming, the right tools, and an empathetic thoughtful attitude towards their customers.

Looking for ways to manage your customer support better and stand out from others? Book a demo at mezchip to let us help you better!!

Why are my customers dropping out?

February 3, 2022

Priyanka Prasad

customer support

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In an entire consumer buying cycle, there are various stages, where you will witness your customers dropping out before making a purchase.

You have a great concept, your products are great, and your consumers are visiting your store, but a chunk of customers drop out before they make a purchase.

What is wrong?

What is it that is not encouraging them to commit to making that purchasing decision?

At what stage did they change their mind and why?

Let’s enter a consumer’s mind and understand what really happens.

5 stages of a consumer’s buying cycle:

working macbook computer keyboard — Photo by Negative Space on Pexels.com

The need:

The first stage is when the consumer realizes that he needs a product

The research:

The second stage is when the consumer will typically look for where and how to get the best available product in the market according to his need.

Usually, this would take him to do a google search, a quora search, or a search on social media channels.

He might also do a comparative analysis on similar available products.

If you have a good SEO and your website ranking is high, there are high chances that your potential customers have visited your website.

Similarly on social media, if you have good visibility and great engagement, you have a strong likelihood for a potential customer to visit your website.

Removing risks:

At this stage, your potential customer is already on your website and is mostly analyzing your products to alleviate potential risks.

A consumer might evaluate your brand and products by looking at your website, product details, reviews, blogs, and customer support. This is the stage when your customer is deciding on whether or not to purchase the product from your website.

Taking a decision:

Once zeroed in on your store and the product, the consumer decides to buy the product.

Receiving results:

Once having obtained good results, the consumer is satisfied and re-enters this cycle again

Potential customers can drop at any stage of the cycle but most business owners struggle with the 3rd stage(removing risks).

This is when the customer has finally visited your website, evaluates your brand, and is about to make a purchase but drops out.

This can happen due to various reasons. A mandatory requirement to sign up, filling up multiple forms, lack of personalization, asking too much work of customers, etc.,

The endeavor should be to remove as many risks to help a customer take a decision instantly.

4 reasons for customers dropping out and how to reduce them

Also read : How to engage your customers in 2022

crop businessman giving contract to woman to sign — Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

The mandatory requirement of signing up:

Once a consumer has decided to purchase from your website, a mandatory requirement of joining your website or signing up breaks a customer purchase flow.

Not to mention, the various information you might ask for them to share, even before they have made their first purchase.

Not every first-time customer wants to sign-up as a member.

According to a recent report by Baymard, 24% of customers reported creating an account as a primary reason for cart abandonment.

To maintain the customer’s purchase flow, it is imperative that creating an account doesn’t become an impediment.

This can be mitigated by allowing customers to complete the order via a guest log-in.

Gaining your first customer to complete the cycle will enable you to get the customer to re-enter the cycle and provide future options to become a member.

Filling forms with multiple data sets:

When a customer is signing up, logging in, or trying out your specific feature, giving a form with multiple data sets, only acts as an additional obstacle in the buying journey.

The more data sets you have in your form, the less interested the customer gets in your product and brand.

Remember, the customer has already traveled stages 1&2 and now has very little time and patience.

He is eager to purchase with minimal hurdles.

Keep your forms simple with limited data sets like name and email or a phone number.

Giving too many options:

Customers often feel overwhelmed when given too many options.

When you present a customer with limited options according to their taste and preference, it is much easier to decide as compared to having a barrage of options with different qualities and specifications to choose from.

Sorting and filtering have their limitations and do not come of much help in reducing drop-outs.

A recent consumer report discovered that 54% of consumers experience so much frustration that they abandon e-commerce sites if they can’t choose.

42% of consumers admitted to abandoning a planned purchase altogether because there was too much choice.

As such, having a chat assistant at this stage can be a viable solution that can lead the customers by asking them their choices with follow-up questions to limit the displayed options based on the information provided and customer persona.

Mezchip is one such platform where you can integrate live chat with your store and help your customers in real-time to limit their choices and consequently reduce drop-outs.

Customers working hard to understand the benefits you offer:

You have successfully gained the attention of your customer in the second stage with sale coupons and offers. The customer adds an item to the cart, but cannot find the coupon code.

The customer goes back to the main page, looks for a coupon code but gets distracted by a few other products.

Sometimes if he doesn’t see a code, he may decide not to purchase because he can’t find the coupon code.

Having customers do the hard work to get the benefits you offer will have customers dropping out.

As such, you must ensure the benefits you offer are available to the customers right when they need them.

Enabling pop-ups with coupon codes with an appealing discount right at the cart stage can work wonders.

To summarize, in order to understand the rate of drop-outs in your consumer’s buying cycle:

First Uncover the stage at which drop-outs are happening the most,
Next, identify the reasons for these drop-outs.
Once you are aware of the reasons for these drop-outs, work towards implementing strategies and tools to decrease your drop-out rates and increase conversions.