DTC #101: Fast customer service to spin the flywheel

It is hard to get the first order. Harder to get the flywheel spinning. Fast customer service makes all the difference. It assures buyers. Users become buyers, buyers become repeat buyers.

👋 Hola! Welcome to Out of Singapore. I am Shan. Happy new year 🎆. Wish you the best of prosperity and health this year and onwards.

I write about building businesses from scratch, aka, zero to one. I focus on growth marketing to drive online sales. Curious thing about growth marketing is that it has no bounds. It could mean increasing inventory production speed, or changing the fulfilment process or implementing new payment methods or creating a new web page design (aka landing pages). Traditional marketeers don’t like me, and I don’t like them either. 🤐😁

Growth marketing is strategy and execution at speed ⚡

Now, before we jump to the topic of the day, let’s do a quick poll. If the option isn’t listed, please reply to the email or comment. I would love to hear what you have to say.

Two years back I was gung ho about building a B2B platform. I started one without much training or learning, took risks on 3 fronts - market, money and people - all three were either new or I didn’t have it. The result was that it came crashing down in Dec 2022, when money ran out, people gave up and market didn’t bother. In 2023, I had a clear goal - establish my edge and market presence - money will follow later on.

The point of the story is that when you are starting a business, have something that others will find hard to beat you at. It could be your family wealth, deep manufacturing network, product knowledge and just strong understanding of a market. Your new business doesn’t have to be “unique”. It should be something you are good at.

Okay, with this, let’s move to the topic for the day - “Fast customer service”.

This will be today’s structure -

1. Customer touch points for a brand

2. Use speed to build trust

3. How to communicate as a new brand

4. Tricks to respond promptly

#1 Touch points for a consumer

Customers message or email to assure themselves that someone is sitting behind, guaranteeing their purchase. They do not want to be scammed by a new brand or website. Hence it is critical to respond anywhere a customer posts a question.

That’s the life of a brand - customers checking if you are real 🤣

These are the three most important touch points

1. Social Media - They see your social media post or ads. They would ask question by commenting on the post.

2. Website chat - They come to the website and send you message via the chat widget. Or they send you an email by the contact us form.

3. Order Fulfilment - This starts from the time of order confirmation to final receipt of delivery.

#2 Use speed to build customer trust

Before I explain, look at these customer reviews. Wowing the customer with speed!

Reviews for Xandro on Shopee and Lazada stores

Here is how you show speed in customer service

1. Reply within minutes, if not seconds, to customer questions on WhatsApp or social media. This is massive - customers will ask questions, challenge facts and dig more information about products and brand. Answer each one of these questions patiently, every time within minutes.

2. Ship out orders on the same day. Notify the customer of the shipment, including tracking details.

3. Deliver within 2 days. If you can do same day or 1 day delivery, even better. Any later makes you insignificant. Later than 5 days is a crime.

#3 How to communicate as a brand?

I follow the rule of three.

1. Be straightforward - Get to the point right away. No flowery language needed. Short, crisp and clear answers. Don’t reply like ChatGPT (look at the example picture below).

2. Be genuine - Tell them if you don’t know. Tell them if you need time to work on the situation. Tell them if your product is not right for them. It is a crime to not respond while trying to the best way to respond.

3. Over communicate - Give the customer extra information (straightforward, crisp not lengthy) at each step of interaction. If a customer asks information about a product, share brief info along with external resources that the customer read. You can add YouTube videos by experts as well. If a customer complains about delivery issue, give updates at least once or twice each day on the status.

See below a very bad example of a customer response. Please don’t do this, I beg you 🥺

#4 Tricks to speed up customer service

Let’s jump right into the tricks.

1. Install WhatsApp widget on your website. This ensures that the conversation stays on customers phone, and they get notification each time you send an update.

2. Turn on desktop notification from Facebook and Tiktok. I never thought I will do this until now. Each time a comment comes in, you need to be notified. Without this, you will miss out answering questions promptly. This builds up engagement as well.

3. Update FAQ every time a new question comes up. Customers ask the same questions over and over again. It is important to put up such questions on the product pages and landing pages. Each time a new question comes on social media, update the FAQs. Notice questions being asked on livestreams, social media, emails and WhatsApp chats.

4. Set up automated bot to answer common questions - This is tricky and needs a software. We are still setting up our bots (I am the culprit for the delay🙈). This can handle quick questions like - where are you guys from, are you certified, show us your certifications, order tracking, product information and more.

5. Acknowledge quickly, buy time to respond tough question - Tell the customer that you have received their question and you will get back soon. Or even better, tell them how soon you will get back - “Thanks for you question. We need to talk to product team to share scientific information. Please allow us a 6 hours (or a day)”.

6. Make it easy to find information - Via FAQ, about us page, trust icons and clean website UI. This is a detailed topic for a post on DTC UI.

Remember, it is critical to respond quickly. We have lost so many consumers because we replied later. So keep an eye out on those customer messages.

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Thank you so much for reading this edition. Tt is a pleasure to have wonderful readers like you. 🥰

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I have not check on you guys for a while. Tell me how are you?

Here is a cute GIF of Jisoo. I am worried Tenor will tag me as a Jisoo stalker soon. 🤐

Hope you have a great week ahead. Cheers!