Today’s customers don’t just care about product price or features. They mainly lookout for service quality, for its significant impact on an e-commerce brand’s competitiveness, reputation, and value. In the long term, it can make or break the brand’s image.
Service quality is a qualitative measure of how well a brand’s service matches customers’ expectations. It depends on five key dimensions. In this article, we do a deep dive into these dimensions. We also explore how e-commerce brands can improve these dimensions to improve service quality and enhance their image.
Working on the Key Dimensions
There are five dimensions on which a customer knowingly or unknowingly evaluates a brand’s service quality. These five dimensions are tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance. If you get each of these dimensions right, it means that you provide excellent service to customers – which will evoke positive sentiments in the minds of your customer.
Tangibility
Customers perceive service quality by comparing services with a brand’s tangibles. For your online business, tangibles like a brick-and-mortar store may not apply. However, customers will still look at other factors such as your website, customer service department, and communication materials to assess – and judge – your service quality.
A well-designed website, customized landing pages, email newsletters, and a warm support department are all great ways to show that you take customer comfort and satisfaction seriously. As a brand, pay more attention to these tangible aspects. They have the full potential to improve your service quality and uplift your brand’s image.
Reliability
Does your brand deliver the promised service dependably? For instance, if you promise 1-day shipping, do you ensure that customers do receive their orders within a day? Or if a support rep promised to call a customer back within an hour, they actually did call back?
Reliability and perceptions of service quality are closely related. Customers want to purchase from the companies that keep their promises and deliver the help they need when they need it. By keeping your promises, you will be able to develop a reputation as a reliable brand that cares about its customers.
Responsiveness
One of the best things about e-commerce is that it breaks down traditional geographical barriers to buying. It also allows customers to interact with a brand, regardless of geography and time zone. But this ease of interaction means that they expect brands to be responsive to their needs.
Does your support department answer customers’ queries quickly?
Do they address complaints and problems on priority?
Do they practice active listening and work actively to resolve problems?
If you succeed in keeping high-speed and effective responsiveness you will gain customer attention and engagement. Your responsiveness and ability to provide prompt service will directly impact customers’ perception of your brand’s service quality and image.
Empathy
Today’s customers don’t want to feel like numbers or transactions. They want to feel heard and appreciated. To satisfy these needs, you need to empathize with customers. Empathizing means showing customers that you care about them as individuals. It means providing them with individualized attention and personalized service to meet their specific needs and expectations. By showing empathy in every deal, you can earn customers’ trust, confidence, and loyalty and build meaningful relationships with them – all of which come together to push your brand’s image up.
CRM platforms and AI-based tools are now available to help you understand customers better and what they are looking for from your brand. Leverage these tools to get insights into their needs and improve your service quality.
Assurance
Your customers expect your brand to be an expert in the products or services you deliver.
Do your employees communicate this expertise?
Can they answer customers’ queries appropriately and accurately?
Do they transfer a query to the right department?
Are they prompt in their responses?
Can they offer a first-time resolution?
If you said yes to all these questions, you have already assured your customers of resolving an issue. And that goes a long way in making a positive impact on your service quality.
Assurance plays a part in earning customers’ trust and confidence. In e-commerce marketplaces, customers are bombarded with ads all day, so they don’t know whom they can trust. However, if you can set yourself apart from all the noise, you gain their trust and get them to choose your brand over the others. You can do this with a responsive and well-informed support department, a knowledge base of FAQs to guide them along their purchase journey, and a collection of well-designed communication materials that inform, guide, and assure them of your brand’s service quality.
The Final Impact of Service Quality
It’s important to measure service quality because it helps you determine whether the service matches customer expectations. Quality service that meets customer expectations results in higher customer satisfaction which directly drives home their loyalty. Besides, it helps in creating a cohort of satisfied customers who become your “brand promoters” and do the heavy lifting of spreading your brand value through word-of-mouth. Such positive publicity enables the brand to attract even more customers and eventually increase sales.
High service quality also influences your brand’s reputation and helps in retaining your existing customers.
Measuring service quality is a good way to understand where you stand vis-a-vis your competitors. It enables you in determining the actions you need to take in improving the quality of your service that can enhance customer experiences, build meaningful relationships with them, and keep them loyal to your brand.
Conclusion
Wrapping up, we can recommend, that if your goal is to boost your e-commerce brand’s reputation and image, start by analyzing your service quality on each of these dimensions. If you do it right, the results will definitely be worth it.
Ergode empowers e-commerce brands to deliver quality service with the help of cutting-edge innovations in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science. To know how we can help your brand enhance its service quality, contact us.
