We are opening a new column in the blog - customer support research. We will check what is happening in the real business with customer service and share discoveries with you. The facts are impartial and poke their noses in those abandoned corners, where sometimes you do not want to look at all. In general, it's time to tear the covers!

In the pilot issue, we decided to find out how things are going with support in e-commerce, and conducted research among online stores and B2B services - from logistics to marketing. For verification, we identified the closest direction for us - support in the mail and social networks. From the study, you will learn how long to wait for answers, which channel is better to contact and whether it is worth contacting e-commerce in general. We admit, even the results surprised us.

As investigated

We took the top 100 stores in 2015 from the Ruward rating and 317 services from Data Insight E-Commerce Ecosystem . Found e-mails of companies, groups on Facebook and Vkontakte, and under the guise of Anatoly's client addressed simple questions.

Shopping Hello! Tell me, how long does the pickup point work? Help place an order! I just need to arrange delivery today somehow.

Services Good day! Tell me, what are your tariffs and what is the procedure for concluding a contract, how long will it take?

They wrote only during working hours from 10 to 17 on weekdays, in order not to give up support for work at the end of the day and not to disturb the purity of the experiment.
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As a result, we received three metrics:

• The number of channels in which the company responded
• Response rate
• Quality

Based on these metrics, we have compiled an overall rating of stores and services. But the conclusions that stand behind the tsiferki in the rating are much more interesting. We will tell about our discoveries in order.

Where should i write?

post office
Anatoly did not wait for a response by mail from half of online stores and services. The indicator coincided with an accuracy of 1%, as in a pharmacy.

The likelihood that you will be answered by e-mail - 50 to 50.

Why the mail address is given by the companies on the site is a mystery E-commerce either does not know how, or does not want to work with e-mails, therefore it is better to call right away.

Social network
Online stores take into account that their audience lives on Vkontakte and respond there three times more often than services.

Services do not consider social networks as a support channel - about 20% of services responded to personal messages to the group. This is due to the fact that their clients - companies do not discuss the terms of cooperation and work issues in social networks. To communicate with providers, the business will most likely prefer more reliable and proven channels over the years - mail and telephone.

How much to wait?

On average, companies respond to written requests by mail and Vkontakte within 1-2 hours. Facebook is the slowest channel, in a third of cases you will be answered only the next day.

Are the answers worth the wait?

The biggest disappointment is the quality of the answers. Having checked more than 500 messages from companies, I came across 10 really good pieces, which I boldly wrote into the sample. Above others I wanted to cry first with laughter, and then with tears, when it became clear that this was the norm for the majority. The result - only 6% of online stores and 14% of services deserved a rating above 3 points and at the same time answered within an hour.


Companies do not know how to communicate with customers in writing. I identified 3 main problems in the content of the answers.

1. Shipment

Real support in social networks almost no one provides. Companies bounce customers into other channels - telephone and mail. Considering that the mail is answered one time, the client has to make a lot of effort and knock on all the doors to get an answer to a simple question.

The percentage of companies that advised Anatolia to mail or call back.

The external activity of Vkontakte stores turned out to be fiction - a third could not answer the question immediately.


On Facebook, there were 3 times less such discrepancies. Companies respond more slowly, but fully.

2. Deafness and indifference

The companies answered to get rid of: skipped questions, ignored claims, did not offer a solution, demanded additional data, without explaining why. Sometimes there was a feeling that they were not responding to you, but to some imaginary client.

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3. Culture of correspondence

Politeness, literacy, customer care - in some companies it is all banned, perhaps even deprived of a premium if you suddenly say hello in a letter or place punctuation marks. Otherwise, these pearls can not be explained.

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And how to answer

I will show for what answers we put the highest score. Here, everything is as it should - feel the difference.

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Good answers services pleased more. B2B companies realize that a lost customer will be expensive and pay attention to the quality of support. Mortal buyers are not lucky, “there are many of you, and I am alone” - unfortunately, this is the only way to characterize the style of communication between online stores and customers. And this is online, for a minute, an advanced field. Comparing the evaluation of stores and services, we found that stores in the mail respond one and a half times worse.

Here we dug a little deeper to understand what lies behind the average rating of stores in the mail 1.8 points.

Helpdesk magic

Let's go back two steps. When we conceived the study, we wondered how many companies use helpdesk as a special system for support instead of the usual mail program and whether this affects the speed and quality of responses. The figures for services and shopping again matched.

One third of the companies have already moved from Outlook to helpdesk.

We were sure that support with helpdesk responds faster and were ready to write it into a competitive advantage, but to our disappointment it turned out that helpdesk does not affect speed.

Then we checked the ratings of companies with helpdesk and without - and came across a curious coincidence.


The helpdesk stores responded almost as well as the services, and those that do not use helpdesk are just one and a half times worse. It was the stores without helpdesk that pulled the overall evaluation of the stores in comparison with the services.

It would be tempting to conclude that helpdesk improves the quality of support responses, but it is more correct to look from another angle. Companies that rely on quality service, understand that the work with appeals need to be debugged - sort letters, assign those responsible, keep track of deadlines, remove statistics and analyze bottlenecks. To solve these problems, companies use helpdesk. Systematization of work is only the first step.

Organized the organization of support, scavenged garbage, put everything on the shelves, now you can think about beauty - learn how to write competently, communicate with the client in his language, work with the negative, create a positive impression, take care of the client. As a result, we see that the companies with helpdesk provide the best service, because they have already moved to this next step. And at what stage are you? :)

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More information about the results of the study, see the full version with detailed statistics, funny pictures and comments of industry experts, plus the Top 10 best services and companies.