What makes a business successful? Some would say it’s quality of product and service, while others will pivot our attention toward great customer service. However, given the complex nature of today’s businesses and the environment in which they serve demand attention not just to any one area but to the whole repertoire of options that can enhance your business. The competing landscape of business and the quest to capture more market share have propelled businesses to imbue new practices to enhance their outlook and operations. Some of these would look trivial but can have a crucial impact on your business performance.
The blog focuses on one aspect of business that otherwise might not look like a significant part of your webstore but can make a difference where it matters – the importance of including your business contact channels on your webstore.
What are business contact channels?
Well, while the name “contact channels” pretty much implies the meaning itself it can help to understand it more. The contact channels of any business are the touchpoints where you can contact and interact with the business. They can include your social media platforms, email, phone number, chat support windows, or link to the instant messaging app chat window of the business. Here customer can make inquiries about your products or services and provides feedback & complaints. These can be found on different parts of the website: on some, you’ll find them on the webpage footer, while in some they’re dynamics moving along as the visitor scrolls up and down. Depending on the type of contact channel, some website even has a separate page that lists their contact channels. The choice of a particular layout depends on the management of the website.
Why are contact channels important?
This is an interesting question that drives us to contemplate about how they can be useful for our business. When someone pays a visit to your website there are many factors involved that decide what opinion they will form of your business. Surely, since there isn't any one-on-one interaction involved, at least initially, the appearance of your website and its elements play a major part in establishing the trust and credibility of your business in the eyes of potential customers. In this aspect, contact channels can play a major role by providing a means to interact directly with the business. Some of the ways in which the contact channels can help elevate your ecommerce business:
Help in establishing the credibility of business: Ecommerce shopping always has a trust barrier, especially when the customer isn’t very familiar with the webstore. Incorporating various contact channels on your webstore demonstrates the credibility of your business by showing its presence on different online platforms and providing social proof. It also provides visitors an opportunity to see the opinions of other people about the business by reading their reviews and interacting directly with them. When people witness others interacting with the business in a positive way, it helps the business establish trust easily.
Overcoming objections: Every business face customer objection that presents friction toward sales. Of course, when customers are spending money, they want to ensure they’re buying the right products with a guarantee they’ll serve them in a way that’s worth it. Therefore, the aim of every business must be to clear customers' doubts about their products and services. Contact channels allow customers to ask about their concern and inquire about products to gain more understanding which helps them with making buying decisions. This helps the business in overcoming objections to their sales and improve their sales.
Feedback & complaints: For anything business to improve itself feedback is necessary. Unless we reflect on our inputs and the output they generate we’re unlikely to set the course right, let alone realize we’re heading the wrong way. In the business world, one of the most important sources of feedback comes from people who use your products and services – customers. The availability of contact channels allows the customer to promptly provide feedback and register their complaints which helps the business make improvements to their operations and eliminate any negative aspect of it. Plus, with feedback and complaints heard customers feel respected which increases their trust and inclination towards business.
What kind of social channels should I include on my webstore?
The choice of what kind of social channels one must display on their webstore is a subjective matter but to some extent an objective as well. First before displaying any of its social platform links on its webstore a business must, of course, ensure they have a presence on that particular platform. This brings up the question of which platform should one establish their presence on.
While some platforms are common to all niches of business and establishing business pages and contact channels on those can benefit all there are some dedicated platforms that interest more to a specific audience. In such cases, it’ll be relevant for businesses to establish profiles on such platforms and provide links to those platforms on their webstore. Doing so will help them establish a solid base for establishing the credibility of their business among relevant audiences and help their business grow faster. This demonstrates the importance for a need to carefully planning the public relations strategy of a business and leveraging the right social platforms that put the true image of a business to the people that matter most to it.
Conclusion
Managing business is a complex business in itself involving many aspects to be managed and planned carefully. Among the many aspects of a business that must be managed, one is its approaches and openness to customers. The more this is visible for any business, the easier it’ll be to establish its credibility amongst its customers by providing them with means to interact with it and increase their understanding of it.
While it’s true that integrating your social channels with your ecommerce store can help you foster it, it’s not the only kind of integration that you might require. If you’re looking to integrate your other business solution with your ecommerce platform then x2xecommerce as an expert in providing ecommerce and integration solutions can integrate your webstore with your other prominent business solution and help you to realize a unified business management system. An example of the solution by x2xecommerce includes the x2xeommcerce RMH-Woo Integration Solution. Reach out to the x2x team for any query or a free demo,