How do you truly affect the quality of customer experience? Is it in your products, your hosted contact center or simply in the way you treat each individual with which you do business? These questions were easier to answer when the only way you communicated with your customer was in person, at the point of purchase. In the age of eCommerce, the stakes and the rules have changed.

A Customer Think article recently examined the current market from this standpoint, providing a list of seven ways you can provide the exceptional customer experience for the eCommerce environment. The tips certainly focus on the contact center environment, whether it’s hosted or not. Let’s take a look at these tips and how they may help you run a tighter and more efficient ship.

Multichannel Support – we all know there are many different ways to interact with companies and those providers who don’t offer more than one channel tend to lose out to the competition. In fact, nine out of 10 customers expect to receive the multichannel experience that is consistent across the board.

Social Media – if you’re going to engage on social media, you have to listen to your customers on these platforms as they expect your attention.

Tracking – all customer interactions need to be tracked, period.

Focus on the Experience – did you know that 90 percent of customers will go to a company’s website before they call or email? If you’re not providing the right support there with the hosted contact center, you’re missing opportunity.

Online Chat – it’s a great thing to offer and 77 percent of customers believe that online chat positively influenced their attitude about a particular retailer.

The Timely Response – customers expect the immediate response. In fact, 84 percent are likely or very likely to do business with a company if the response is done via phone in less than a minute.

Wow the Customer – it really is all about the service. If you’re not wowing the customer, the competition is likely ready to do so.

The question that the hosted contact center needs to answer is whether they exist to wow the customer, demonstrating empathy for them, or are they there to simply sell the customer? If you’re only focused on the short-term sale and not the long-term relationship with the customer, sustainability will be much more difficult.