Rise of the E-Commerce Industry Amid the Ongoing Times of Crisis

The widespread outbreak of the pandemic affected almost all sectors across the globe in a very short period of time. While some industries such as travel and tourism took a major hit, other industries like e-commerce saw increased sales, engagement and revenue. 

As social distancing and personal hygiene became the top priorities, people increasingly opted to shop online and now, it’s more than just a necessity. It’s the new normal. E-commerce businesses shifted to remote working models overnight while managing customer support and communications completely digital. 

Bain & Company, in a joint report with Flipkart, titled How India shops online (authored by Arpan Sheth and Shyam Unnikrishnan), said: 

“COVID-19 has caused an inflexion in ecommerce penetration globally driven by consumers’ need for safety and convenience and even in India, online is gaining salience. We expect India’s ecommerce growth story to be inclusive — one that empowers sellers and consumers both.”

So how are e-commerce businesses efficiently managing sales and customer support processes remotely during these unprecedented times? 

The answer to this question is quite simple. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. E-commerce enterprises are leveraging the advanced capabilities of a CRM to have intelligent, contextual interactions with their customers from any part of the world. For instance, one of India’s leading online grocery retailers leveraged Kapture to manage their bulk of incoming orders and tickets during the COVID-19 lockdown. 

Let’s take a look at some of the capabilities of CRM used by ecommerce firms to take their sales and customer support to the next level. 

1. Ticketing automation – E-commerce platforms encounter huge amounts of customer queries and requests. A SaaS-based CRM solution can automate their ticketing process by assigning a ticket to the right agent or the relevant team. Furthermore, support teams can resolve, escalate, or close the ticket as and when necessary within the cloud CRM itself. 
2. Contact center – customers reach out to ecommerce support centers through their preferred channels of communication. This could include calls, emails, live chat, or even social media. It’s essential for e-commerce firms to be omnipresent and respond to these regularly. An intelligent helpdesk such as Kapture CRM brings all customer communications to one place. Support agents can respond to incoming queries across multiple channels through a unified dashboard. 
3. Customer data management – Understanding customers and their needs better can help businesses serve them in a better way. A CRM helps support agents access the necessary information required to respond to customers and close tickets in a timely manner. Additionally, ecommerce companies use CRM to gain a 360 degree view of their customers. They can access all the relevant information such as customer interaction history, past purchases, payment preferences, etc on a single dashboard. 
4. Order management – E-commerce platforms can view and access all the orders on a unified dashboard as well as automate the order fulfillment process using a CRM solution. They can also streamline workflows by seamlessly integrating the CRM with payment, fulfillment, shipping, and enterprise systems. Segmenting and profiling customers is also made easy through a helpdesk. 
5. Reports and analytics – A powerful reporting engine in the CRM provides reports and metrics that help e-commerce platforms gain valuable insights into their sales and support processes. Not only does this help in tracking and monitoring productivity, but helps in making better data-driven decisions as well. Reports related to SLAs, the first response time (FTR), initial turnaround time among many other metrics can help businesses better strategize their support process. 

Kapture CRM is helping multiple customer-centric ecommerce businesses level up their support processes. Should you have any questions or are interested to know more about Kapture, book a personalized demo and have one of our experts walk you through the product.