Maximize BFCM Revenue Through Your Customer Experience (2022)

According to Adobe Analytics forecasts, an estimated $209.7 billion is up for grabs during the 2022 holiday season (November 1 to December 31). But most online stores will fall short of their revenue potential during this year’s Black Friday ecommerce rush.

Merchants spend heavily on Black Friday marketing strategies to lure customers in: They run Black Friday deals, influencer campaigns, Instagram ads, and other expensive customer acquisition plays. But dollars spent on attracting people to your site go to waste if you can’t provide a shopping experience that converts browsers into buyers.

Gorgias believes your best bet for driving online sales during BFCM is to optimize your website and customer support experience for conversion and retention. This means clarifying policies, answering customer questions more efficiently, and smoothing out your checkout flow.

Source: Gorgias

10,000+ online retailers use Gorgias to upgrade their Black Friday customer experience. The Gorgias team pulled their data and best practices to create an in-depth Black Friday-Cyber Monday ecommerce strategy. If you have time, go through that linked guide in order. Otherwise, jump around and focus on the areas you feel will significantly impact your business.

Here are their top five tips to get you started:

Gorgias’ top 5 tips for BFCM ecommerce revenue

If you’re finding this article a week before Black Friday-Cyber Monday or are otherwise strapped for time, you need to prioritize the 20% of actions that drive 80% of the results.

Here are the top five things Gorgias Director of Support, Bri Christiano, would do today to drive revenue through your customer experience during the holiday shopping season:

• Turn on self-service chat menus (through Automation Add-on, if you’re on Gorgias): This is the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your ticket volume for BFCM. Up to 20% of your tickets will be deflected immediately, freeing your agents up for higher-value conversations.
• Make sure you’ll be able to handle the ticket volume (and hire an outsourcing agency if not): Drowning under your ticket backlog is a quick way to ensure your team burns out. Plus, you’ll lose easy sales if you’re too swamped to find and answer urgent pre-sales questions (or upselling and cross-selling opportunities).
• Update your FAQ page or help center to answer all common questions and cover BFCM-specific policies: If your customers can find answers on these pages, they’ll buy faster, convert more often, and leave your support team to handle more complex questions. Use Gorgias’ native help center to upgrade your FAQ page and offer even more self-service features.
• Set up Macro templates and automation Rules for all your most common pre-sales questions: For the questions that aren’t quickly answered by an FAQ page or for customers who can’t be bothered to read them, make sure your agents are prepped with Macros that reflect current policies. Automate the Macros with Rules where you can move a larger volume of potential customers to the checkout button as quickly as possible.
• Turn on proactive live chat campaigns to convert more customers during the big weekend: Live chat campaigns let you reach out to specific customers based on browsing behavior to offer support, information, or even a discount. This is how you turn casual browsers into customers. Vital support programs don’t wait around, hoping customers make the first move. 

Note: These steps assume you’re on a helpdesk already. If you’re not, the holiday season will be much less festive for your team. Get Gorgias free for the rest of the year if you sign up before BFCM, and we’ll be here to help you get set up before the big day.

Read the ultimate Gorgias guide to Black Friday–Cyber Monday revenue

Check out the complete guide to generate more revenue through support for this Black Friday–Cyber Monday ecommerce season.

This article will teach you how to prioritize high-value customers with a helpdesk, proactively (and automatically) reach out to them for quicker revenue gains, and retain them to increase their lifetime value.