Written by Ecommerce News Netherlands

How can you optimise customer contact, and can a contact centre truly make the difference? The founder of ContactCare believes it can. We spoke to him about the world of customer service for online stores and the company's ambitions.

ContactCare is a company that can take over the customer service of an online store. The company has made e-commerce one of its specific pillars, although according to founder Jasper Meerding, it is a challenging market. Online stores tend to focus directly on costs. The margins in the industry are so thin that high-quality customer service is hardly feasible.

ContactCare focuses on online retail

But because in e-commerce, the impact of good customer service is clearly seen in conversion, this is a reason for Jasper to focus on online retail. “That transparency really excites me. Telephone services for telecom or energy companies can be very interesting in terms of volume, and I've tried it before, but I didn't really connect with it emotionally. I want someone who calls, emails, or messages to be helped well, kindly, and without language mistakes.”
There's an idea that a customer service employee might not know your organisation and product as well as you do. But isn't that also true for people who, if applicable to your product, represent you in sales, handle transactions, deliver, unpack, or explain its functionality? All these constraints may have an impact on conversion but do make the company scalable and efficient, which is why we outsource all these tasks.
Yet, there is a certain anxiety in customer service. The impact of a single phone call lasting a few seconds can be enormous in remote sales. So, you don't want this to be handled by cheap, overseas, rotating customer service employees. In this area, Jasper sees opportunities for online stores wanting to do better. However, within e-commerce, profit margins can be elusive at times, so if you do have them, customer service can certainly make a difference.

‘The secret lies in communication with the customer’

He sees opportunities for his company. The employees sit right at his office, close to Amersfoort station. Through long-term, regular contracts and especially robust software, he believes he can create a good synergy with e-commerce. Due to his background in hosting and web design, the techie in him, according to Jasper, is still present. This encourages intensive use of software within the organisation. He believes the secret lies in communication. Through software like Slack and clear evaluation options for the entrepreneur, he ensures that both his employees and the entrepreneur are optimally informed.
“Does the director always handle customer service? Does he always oversee every email? I hope not. With our software, an entrepreneur might have more insight into his own customer service than if he did it in-house because we document everything and make it instantly accessible,” says Jasper. At ContactCare, every phone call is recorded, every conversation can be reviewed, evaluated, and feedback can be given immediately. This way, customer service employees are well-integrated into a new organisation after just a month or two. Something Jasper believes is difficult to match if you have to find your own employee.
According to him, another advantage, especially as cut-off times increase, is that hired customer service can also work during busy or inconvenient times. “Many online stores want to accept orders until 11.00 pm, and the webshop remains open during King's Day or on weekends, for example. But is your customer service available then?”