Online Customer Service Basics

Order tracking
Many of the inquiries that you'll receive from customers will be about the status of their orders. Automating the order-tracking process can free up time

Many shopping cart programs offer integrated order tracking, which can dramatically reduce the amount of email you receive from customers who are looking for their merchandise.

Once you ship an order, you will mark it as shipped and enter the appropriate tracking information into your shopping cart application. Most shopping carts will even generate an automated email message to provide the customer with the appropriate tracking information. If your cart supports notifications, you can set your cart to notify the customer automatically when the status of their order changes -- from pending to shipped, or from shipped to deliver -- which will reduce the amount of work that you have to do.

Just because your customer receives the order does not mean that your work is done. Invariably, some percentage of merchandise will be damaged in shipping, or a customer may need to exchange a product or have some other concern. Implementing a support-ticket process can further streamline the support process.