A high street store without shop assistants – that is what most retailers are presenting mobile shoppers with as they fail to provide any easy to access customer support for online consumers who are using the mobile channel.
So finds a study by LogMeIn, which has found that while mobile commerce boomed in the run up to Christmas, just 12% of retailers offered any sort of live chat support to shoppers – despite convincing research that it boosts sales.
Conversely, the research also found that this lack of support for mobile flies in the face of desktop policy. The study revealed retailers are almost twice as likely to offer live chat support to desktop shoppers than to mobile shoppers, with 20% of online stores giving shoppers the option to chat with an assistant.
Almost every retailer, nearly 97%, responds to enquiries on Twitter, while 94% use Facebook to provide support. Email is offered by 93% of online retailers in the UK, while nine out of ten (90%) publish a customer service phone number on their website.
The study backed this up, finding that 17% of people prefer to contact companies via live chat, while 23% favour the good old-fashioned telephone and 53% opt for email. Social media is the first choice for less than seven per cent of people, but is now the most widely available channel for customer service, overtaking the telephone.
“A high street store without shop assistants is almost unimaginable, yet that’s the experience many retailers are offering shoppers online,” said Ross Haskell, Director of Products, BoldChat at LogMeIn, Inc. “If shoppers need help, most have to pick up the phone or wait for a response by email or on social media. By incorporating live chat into the online customer journey, retailers can give shoppers the chance to ask for assistance, without any interruptions, when and how they want it.”
