Safe online shopping sites have their toll-free customer service line or email address readily available. Online shopping has become extremely popular in the last few years, customers are always in the look-out for the best prices online, which is why they visit coupon websites like Raise.

Phone Support vs. Customer Service
I think it’s crucial to clarify at this point that I believe offering outstanding customer support is absolutely essential for eCommerce success. To many, I imagine this may appear like I’m “gutting” the service department in favor of efficiency, which is definitely not a sustainable long-term business strategy.

But I don’t think customer support can be defined with something as narrow as offering phone support. To me, great customer service means offering a quality product and solving problems quickly for the customers you’ve chosen to do business with.

While I decided not to offer broad in-bound phone support, I was focusing on other areas to make sure I was offering quality support. Things like sending out free replacements for defective items, upgrading packages to express shipment and quickly replying to emails. I was intentionally choosing not to do business with a small segment of my customers (those who needed to call in), but was making sure to offer top-notch support in all other areas of the business.

Know What Percentage of Sales Come From the Phones
This is absolutely crucial to understand for your business. If only 5% of your revenue comes from the phones, eliminating your toll-free number is probably a no-brainer. But if you’re generating 70% of sales via phone orders, you’ll need to be very careful with the changes you make.

You can, of course, track this manually. But what I prefer to do is to set up two Google Analytics profiles – one that includes ALL of my sales data and one that filters out sales data that originates from our location in Bozeman, Mont.