The best BigCommerce customer service apps of 2021

Because of its extensive native functionality and flexibility, BigCommerce has staked its claim itself as one of the premier cloud-based platform offerings for eCommerce merchants. BigCommerce makes it easy to get up and running selling products online. But getting started is the easy part. Creating sustainable growth and fostering long-term relationships with customers is a challenging task for all eCommerce companies.

For eCommerce retailers, the secret to success in the long run is creating excellent customer experiences. It’s no secret that acquiring new customers is expensive, so enticing past purchasers to return is the name of the game. In order for these customers to return, however, they need to have an all-around positive perception of your brand and its products. This forms the bedrock of long-term customer relationships — and where having a solid approach to customer service is crucial.

A well-designed strategy for customer service can help create loyal customers, encourage brand advocacy, and even generate revenue. These days, it’s imperative that brands adopt tools and technologies that enable them to easily engage with customers to solve their problems — and do it at scale.

The BigCommerce app marketplace boasts an impressive offering of third-party tools to make your customer service experience as seamless and consistent as possible. From chatbots to full-scale help desk solutions, here are Codal’s favorite customer service apps available to BigCommerce merchants.

LiveChat

Chat widgets have become extremely popular with eCommerce merchants and for good reason. They essentially function as an always-on resource for customers, allowing them to ask questions about products as they browse your site. Chat widgets represent a valuable channel for establishing relationships with customers and LiveChat is one of the best chat tools available to BigCommerce merchants.

LiveChat places a simple chat widget in the bottom right corner of your eCommerce site. Customers can use the widget to chat with your customer service reps directly, or you can reach out to customers with chat invitations. Plus, you can easily access customer carts and order history in the chat window, and sending tracking information is as easy as a single click. LiveChat even lets you send product recommendations to customers directly with Product Cards, simple previews that link directly to items on your site.

FAQ by POWR

In order to provide a well-rounded customer service experience, you need to be able to anticipate questions, issues, and concerns that customers may have, and be prepared to respond accordingly. Having an easily accessible frequently asked question (FAQ) page makes it easy for customers to find answers to common questions — and reduces the workload of your support team by avoiding clogging up customer service channels with basic queries.

FAQ by POWR is a simple app that works with BigCommerce’s Storefront Page Builder to help you create an easy-to-use FAQ section of your eCommerce site. The accordion design helps customers quickly browse through common questions to find answers and is mobile responsive. FAQ by POWR is an easy and low-effort method of standing up an FAQ section that helps customers get answers faster, and reduces the number of service requests your customer support team has to deal with.

Gorgias

Gorgias is a full-scale help desk solution for customer support teams. This means it centralizes all customer service channels into a single hub. This enables your support team to communicate with customers easily, without having to constantly switch between channels. Used daily by over 21,000 support agents, Gorgias lets you manage customer requests from email, chat, phone, and social media all in one convenient hub. Gorgias has pretty impressive automation capabilities, which can detect customer intent and sentiment in requests and prioritize them accordingly. Gorgias helps relieve your support team of some of the heavy lifting, freeing them up to work on delivering superior customer experiences.

Re:amaze

Re:amaze is another premier live chat offering that BigCommerce merchants can take advantage of. It enables your team to process requests, draft orders, and handle returns, refunds, and cancellations-all within its singular chat platform. For support teams with limited resources and personnel, this tool is a godsend. Re:amaze integrates seamlessly with your BigCommerce customer data, making it easy for your support team to access all relevant information quickly and solve customer issues faster and with more insight. Re:amaze also lets you create automated workflows and templated responses, making your support employees’ lives a whole lot easier.

Callexa Feedback

In order to understand how successful your customer service efforts are, you’ll need to conduct surveys. Surveys help you assess your overall customer experience by getting the perspectives of your most important stakeholders: your customers. Unfortunately, many surveys aren’t very effective due to their length. Callexa aims to solve that problem by helping you launch engaging, one-question surveys that your customers will actually complete.

Callexa works by offering basic surveys built on the Net Promoter Score (NPS), a popular market research method that asks customers to rate how likely they are to recommend a brand based on their experience. Callexa offers customizable survey templates and compiles responses, packaging them in a dashboard with detailed reporting capabilities. Callexa surveys are optimized for email and compatible with most email clients.

SupportBee

For many customer service teams, email is the most popular — and congested — support channel. Depending on the size and scale of your team, it can get really complicated trying to juggle large amounts of customer emails while providing exceptional service to each. SupportBee strives to solve this problem by becoming your team’s one-stop-shop for handling customer support emails.

SupportBee’s interface looks and feels similar to an email client, but offers so much more functionality. It lets you assign and track tickets via email, as well as organize them using labels. Additionally, SupportBee’s robust reporting capabilities allow you to assess your team’s performance in responding to customer requests easily.

Take advantage of BigCommerce’s app marketplace

With BigCommerce’s extensive selection of available apps, your store has numerous options to improve its customer service and support operations. As a certified BigCommerce partner, Codal can help you identify the best third-party offerings for your business, enabling you to create a well-rounded customer experience.

Codal’s eCommerce designers and developers are masters of their craft and can help you select the best BigCommerce apps to help your business thrive. Interested in learning more about Codal’s BigCommerce solutions? Get in touch today.

Originally published at https://codal.com.