Ecommerce User Experience Vol. 06: Customer Service

5th Edition

Part of Series: Ecommerce User Experience

This report offers techniques for presenting straightforward customer service information so that customers can help themselves. Shoppers expect to find relevant information at the right time and place. Additional shopping assistance techniques can also help customers self-serve. When customers can quickly find information, it’s better, and less expensive, than when they must contact the company for assistance. For customers that do need to contact your company, we provide best practices for the design of live help and chat bots.

This 259-page report contains 75 design recommendations based on our user research. Discussions and 210 screenshot illustrations supplement the findings.

Topics

• Finding customer service information
  • Naming and placement of customer service link
  • Linking between customer service pages
  • Organization of customer service information
  • Promoting customer service information
• Customer service policy
  • Policies that customers understand
  • Dealing with long pages
  • Details customers want
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
  • Layout and organization
  • Searchable databases
• Returns
  • Return policy strategies
• Contacting the company
  • How to feature contact information
  • Contact forms
• Live help and Chatbots
  • Promoting and implementing live chat
  • Live chat strategies
  • Chatbot design and management best practices
• Shopping assistance
  • Product guides
  • Contextual help

Research Method

The information in this report is based on five separate rounds of ecommerce studies for this and the previous four editions of this report. These studies included a mix of the following methodologies.

• One-on-one usability testing
• Diary-based longitudinal studies
• Eyetracking
• Expert Review

Representative users tested 350+ ecommerce websites. The studies took place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Denmark, India and China