5 Great Tips for Recovering Abandoned Carts with Phone Calls
Bring a personal touch back to online shopping and convert sales.
At first calling a customer may sound intimidating but take a look at it as an opportunity to create a customer for life, and you may very well be excited! By calling your customer you’ll be able to do more than just make a sale, you can learn first hand about what your customers want, have an opportunity to upsell other products or services and gain insights that are invaluable for your business growth. And, abandoned cart customers are one of the key ways to get this information because they are so close to checking out…what’s stopping them?
Here’s some tips to get you started on the road to making great calls
Be prepared
Have a plan in place before your first phone call is critical. If you don’t know where to start, consider these key questions: Do you know what the most common questions or FAQs are for your customers? Do you know or have your return policy handy? Shipping policy? Do you know if they are first time buyer or frequent customer? What incentives will you offer to close a sale? Are these answers readily accessible in digital or print form when you are ready to make your call?
Stay loose, stay positive!
Have an outline for your call, keep it short and stay positive. A call outline can be as simple as, introduce yourself, ask how you can help, listen, offer solution, etc. Make sure to keep what you want to say short and concise. Keep the call positive if you’re confronted with frustrated customer on your call. And lastly, speak with a smile and your customers will definitely notice!
Pro Tip: Run through your call a few times with a co-worker or friend to get comfortable and do not read from a script, it will sound canned and your customer will notice.
Call within 15 minutes
Don’t wait too long! By calling a customer within the moment you’ll catch them while they’re still excited by your product and in response, engaged with your call. Wait too long and excitement will have faded or they may have found a better deal. Timing is everything and to help, there are a few apps in the Shopify Apps store that can notify you when a cart has been abandoned.
Listen to your customer
If you are too busy with the sell you may miss what your customers’ are saying. Active listening could be the critical difference in making or losing a sale, and a customer for life. If your customer is engaged enough to take your call, that means they are ready to be convinced and more than likely will tell you exactly what they want. This is truly where the magic of a call happens.
Add an upsell or incentive
When you’ve re-engaged your customer and they are ready to pull the trigger, consider adding an incentive when necessary or an upsell when appropriate, to tip the call and seal the deal. Convert your abandoned cart to a draft order with Parachute, and you’ll be able to add promotional products, change pricing, change shipping, or add upsells and even collect credit card information on the spot to close the sale.
Bonus Tip!
Take strategic notes
By taking the opportunity to listen and engage with your customers first hand, you’ll walk away with valuable insights for your business from each and every call. Consider collecting the information in a way that you can run a report and review each month or quarter. Do you need to adjust your shipping price? Should there be more shipping options? Is price too high? Is check out too complicated? With good data, you can adjust your offering to meet your customer’s expectations without guess work. And, when you meet customer’s expectations you can be sure that your business will grow!
Looking for more ideas? Here’s how one Shopify merchant used phone calls to convert abandoned carts: https://www.shopify.com/blog/nadeef-bidet-abandoned-carts