Cross-border e-commerce is booming business. More and more companies cross borders and sell their products or services in several countries. Customer service accessibility is easy to arrange with digital channels. But almost 60% of customers and prospects grab the telephone when it comes to urgent or complicated questions. And they prefer to use local numbers instead of foreign numbers. So, when your e-commerce is crossing borders, don’t forget about those service numbers.
As a new player in a foreign market, it’s important to build trust. If a potential customer trusts your brand, they’re more likely to buy from you. Having a local service number on your website helps. According to this article from Accenture, almost 60% of customers and prospects prefer to use the telephone for urgent or complicated questions. And they do not want to call abroad but rather use a local or national number. This makes your brand feel more approachable and trustworthy.
Many still consider the telephone to be the easiest customer service channel (check out this report by Shep Hyken). And with today’s technology, it doesn’t matter where your contact centers are located. Calls to local or national numbers can be delivered anywhere in the world. With the right routing, calls end up with agents who speak the same language or have the appropriate skills. This helps build up more of a connection and adds to the feeling of trust.
There are a few things to keep an eye on when using local or national service numbers:
There’s one important thing you need to be aware of when acquiring numbers with your contact center platform supplier. Make sure you know if you can take these numbers with you if you ever want to switch platforms. This isn’t always the case and not a pleasant surprise if you find out afterwards. You can easily avoid this by getting your numbers from an independent supplier with worldwide coverage, like us for example. This way you have one supplier for all your global number questions, and these are not tied to your platform.
Service numbers are often the last item on the list with new cross-border activities. Sometimes the telephone number of the country of origin is initially communicated instead. But that sends a “don’t call me” signal because most people don’t want to call foreign numbers. If you’re taking this new market seriously, make sure you can be reached by telephone for personal those urgent and complicated questions in addition to your digital chat and social channels. This way you are truly omnichannel: effective, efficient, personal, and reliable.
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