Call Center Marketing Strategies for Vape Shops [Does Your Vape Shop Need a Contact Center?]

Like any other business, an online vape shop requires call center marketing strategies that adjust to its goals and market. A contact center is one of the only direct modes of communication with the client, and because of that, it plays a vital role in your marketing strategy.

Whether your vape shop needs a contact center of its own and when to hire an outsourced call center will depend on budget and strategic goals.

Up ahead, we’ll discuss what can be accomplished with a call center and how you can do it. The types of goals you can set with an outsourced call center and which ones are better left for an in-house team.

Table Of Contents

1. What is the role of a call center for an online vape shop
2. How to improve ecommerce customer service experience for vape shop customers
3. Best ecommerce and customer service practices for vapor store owners
4. Is ecommerce call center outsourcing the right move?
5. Disadvantages of ecommerce call center outsourcing
6. Conclusion
7. References

What Is the Role of a Call Center for an Online Vape Shop

You've likely heard the term 'call center' before. Especially if you're opening up a brand new eCommerce business, but definitely if you've ever encountered any issues with a home appliance.

You're probably thinking that a call center's responsibility is limited to answering calls from distraught customers in desperate need of help.

However, that only begins to describe a call center representative's responsibilities because the reason for having direct communication with customers goes way beyond just solving spur-of-the-moment issues for them.

Sure, resolving customer issues that could result in disgruntled users is an essential part of it. But it's not the only piece in the puzzle.

Customer service representatives have excellent, or at least should have excellent people skills. This involves patience, sales panache, and master problem-solving skills.

The main responsibilities of a team member of customer service for eCommerce business include:

1. Answering politely and responding to inquiries on time
2. Generating interest in other products and services
3. Making the customer feel like they’re getting a personalized attention
4. Documenting customer interactions and feedback
5. Managing and updating a customer database

As you can see, customer service professionals for eCommerce businesses do more than answer questions and solve problems. A call center representative is what the name sounds like, a representative of the company brand image.

Through customer service professionals, eCommerce vape shops like yours have the opportunity to interact directly with customers. They take the customer’s perception of the company into their own hands and become proprietors of an invaluable opportunity to make that perception even better.

This interaction could also involve opportunities for up-selling a customer on other products and services. Not to mention improving the current customer service processes in the future.

How to Improve ECommerce Customer Service Experience for Vape Shop Customers

As long as your customer service team follows the main rules detailed in the above section, your customer’s overall eCommerce experience should be accounted for.

The evolution in call center technology and software has made it increasingly easier to provide satisfactory customer service. Some innovative tools you will want to check out and potentially use are ACDs (Automatic Call Distributor), IVRs (Interactive Voice Response), and CRMs ( Customer Relationship Management Systems).

You don't have to solely rely on your call center representatives' performance when you have automatized call systems that can direct customer calls to the right people effectively and efficiently.

Another piece of sound advice is constructing a marketing strategy that allows other communication avenues to exist between you and the customer. If the only form of communication between your online vape shop is with client-initiated interactions, then it's likely you are risking building a weak relationship with your customer.

Best eCommerce and Customer Service Practices for Vapor Store Owners

As with any form of client-business communication, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to get ahead in your efforts.

1. Ask for Feedback

Although it’s not going to be positive every time, hearing your client’s feedback on your customer service quality is just as important as making a sale. It might be that negative feedback is the most constructive and one that will help you build better relationships with your customers.

Asking for feedback at the end of a call is an excellent way to do it, but some customers could be annoyed by staying on the call after getting all the information needed. It would be best to ask the customer at the beginning of the call if they would like to review the call at the end. This way, there are no surprises, and the customer won’t have to feel pressured into reviewing the call.

2. Offer Options

Not all customers will prefer the same type of communication. Some people are shy or busier and would rather communicate through an online chat than hop on a call. In other cases, people may even prefer to check out the FAQ section on your company website. In other cases, your customer might not even own a landline phone and prefer to communicate via online calls.

Make sure you offer the various client alternatives to communicate with your vape shop. Options may include Skype and similar services, toll-free numbers, FAQ sections, and automatized chatbots.

A weak FAQ landing page is a bad sign and could turn out to be a deal-breaker for some clients. So make sure your FAQ site is kept up to date and is easy to navigate.

3. Be Clear and Straightforward

Customer service agents should be diligently trained on shipping & return policies, warranties, guarantees, and other information that could affect the customer’s experience. All the information provided to a client on a direct call should be clear and straightforward to avoid misunderstandings and unhappy customers.

It also helps to provide the customer with as much information as possible on the product and policies before a purchase is made. This will ensure the customer’s expectations are in line with what you’re offering.

4. Invest In Website Design & Functionality

Having a genuinely responsive website design will take your customer’s shopping experience to the next level and is possibly the turning point between a closed sale and an abandoned cart.

A properly built website can also be a reason for better customer service. Ensuring your website functionality and intuitiveness may significantly reduce negative calls and feedback, making the job way easier for your representatives.

5. Follow Up On Clients

A good follow-up call or email after contact with the customer may result in an upsell. After a successful call center contact with the client, part of your strategy should include a follow-up call or email to review the service and potentially decide to make another purchase.

6. Be Available and Accessible

Being available doesn’t just mean having a number to call. You want to make sure that you are giving the customer enough options to communicate with you and that your customer service team is available as frequently as possible. This is where a third-party call center comes in handy, as it’s more likely that you can provide a 24/7 service by subcontracting your customer service team.

7. Show That You Listen

Customers want to feel that you are listening to them. So when they make a feasible request, make sure that you show them your vape shop listens to them by sending them information on how their problem is being solved.

You can address this by hiring the right call center representatives. People that show empathetic behaviors and people skills are probably the best choices.

Is ECommerce Call Center Outsourcing the Right Move? 

Some companies choose to hire an in-house customer service team, while others may find it more fitting to go with an outsourcing option. These are some of the main advantages of eCommerce call center outsourcing:

1. Outsourcing call center services allow you to concentrate on your core business.
2. Your customers will connect with experienced operators that use all the right tools.
3. Outsourced operations are easy to scale and grow.
4. ECommerce call center outsourcing is more cost-efficient.
5. Hiring a third-party call center gives your vape shop a professional image.

Disadvantages of ECommerce Call Center Outsourcing

The disadvantages of an outsourced operation will ultimately result in the advantages of running your customer service operation.

Some of these include securing new sales opportunities, generating knowledge of the market you may later use to your advantage, personalization, increasing customer loyalty, and performing various actions like solving a problem and upselling the customer in a single conversation.

Naturally, the advantages of leading a customer service operation will result in potential disadvantages for an outsourced option:

1. Security Hazards

Hired call centers have security policies to ensure your data safety with encryptions and specialized software solutions. But allowing a different company to have access to your overall chain means your company does not have complete control over what happens. Choosing a reliable call center should minimize the security risk but won’t eliminate it.

2. Operator Product Knowledge

Not having direct contact with your client means that the call center representative does not fully understand your product. It’s only natural that call center employees will be less familiar with your product than someone who works in your vape shop. Speaking with a customer service agent that ‘know their stuff’ plays a huge role in customer satisfaction.

3. Less Overall Control

Outsourced call centers follow their own sets of rules and procedures. Sub-contracting a call center means that you will have to adapt to those procedures rather than adjusting your customer service to your company processes.

This is the case unless you are a big enough customer for the call center, which requires them to adapt to your requirements rather than the other way around.

4. Outsourced Call Centers Have Different Languages & Culture

Due to cost efficiency, most call centers hire employees overseas. This means that your customer service agents will be foreign, likely have an accent, and will most likely have different cultural backgrounds.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the risk of having poor customer interactions with overseas agents is higher than hiring an in-house team.

5. Missing the Opportunity to Gain Market Knowledge First-Hand

By subcontracting your customer service with a third-party call center, all the knowledge you could gain from a first-hand customer interaction is lost. Some call centers offer marketing solutions and gather the information for you, but these are just a handful of companies, and it doesn’t turn out to be the same as it would if it was your team gathering the information and learning from it.

Conclusion

The role of a call center seldom changes from industry to industry. A call center's primary goal is to maintain a healthy relationship between the company and the client by aiding the caller calmly and efficiently.

A successful call center strategy's hidden goals can be summarized as gathering first-hand information on the market that could potentially benefit the company in the future. Some of these goals are possible with an outsourced call center solution, but others are easier to achieve if the customer service team is kept in-house.

References

[1] Cheney, M., Gowin, M., & Wann, T. F. (2015). Marketing Practices of Vapor Store Owners. American Journal of Public Health, 105(6), e16–e21. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2015.302610