Speaker 1 0:00

Music. Welcome to the aim podcast, where we bring you actionable insights on AI and how to best apply it in your business, across marketing, sales, customer service and more, hosted by helpflow.com this is your guide to staying ahead in the world of AI for business. And just to blow your mind a little bit, our hosts are literally AIS talking to each other. Enjoy the show.

Speaker 2 0:29

Hey everyone, and welcome back to the deep dive. Today we're going deep on E commerce, KPIs and how to use them when you're managing a remote team.

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Speaker 3 0:39

Yeah, you know, it's something that's become more and more important, absolutely,

Speaker 2 0:43

especially as more and more e commerce businesses are going fully remote or hybrid, right? And

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Speaker 3 0:49

for anyone listening, you're probably here, because as your E commerce brand grows, yeah, you need to know which numbers you should be paying attention to exactly.

Speaker 2 0:56

So we're breaking down the must know metrics into three areas, we've got sales and customer behavior, customer support, performance and remote team productivity. I forget about that. You can't we've got a lot of great insights from our research to share with you today, plus some really practical tips on how to use these KPIs to make better decisions in your business. That's

Speaker 3 1:18

the goal, right? Not just collecting the data, but actually using it to improve 100%

Speaker 2 1:23

All right, let's start with the core of any e commerce business, sales and customer behavior, the heartbeat it is what makes these KPIs so important. Well, they're

Speaker 3 1:32

really giving you a direct look at how your business is performing. We'll focus on two in particular, conversion rate and cart abandonment

Speaker 2 1:39

rate. Okay, I've definitely heard of those two, but let's break them down. Sounds good. So conversion

Speaker 3 1:43

rate is the percentage of your website visitors who actually make a purchase. A lot of people think two or 3% conversion rate is good.

Speaker 2 1:51

Yeah, I think that's the average. I've heard it might be, but

Speaker 3 1:54

the best stores out there are hitting 5% or even higher, 5% Yeah,

Speaker 2 1:59

wow. That's impressive. What are they doing that's so different? Well,

Speaker 3 2:04

that's where it gets really interesting. It's a mix of things. You know, they're AB testing their landing pages, right, making sure they're really optimized exactly, and they're writing really great product descriptions that don't just list out features, but actually tell a story and pull the customer in.

Speaker 2 2:18

That makes sense. It's like copywriting, but for your product pages,

Speaker 3 2:22

it is, and another thing they're great at is using social proof,

Speaker 2 2:25

things like reviews and testimonials,

Speaker 3 2:28

exactly. All of that builds trust and makes people want to buy. Okay, so it's

Speaker 2 2:31

like you're turning your whole website into this conversion machine. You got it. But even if your website is amazing, you're still gonna have some people who fill up their cart and then just disappear. Card abandonment the worst. Why is that such a pain point for E commerce businesses?

Speaker 3 2:47

Well, think of it like someone going to a store, filling their basket and then just leaving everything at

Speaker 2 2:51

the checkout. Ouch. Yeah, I can see why that would be bad. It is.

Speaker 3 2:55

You're so close to making the sale, and then it just falls apart. And if you have more than a 70% abandonment rate, you know, something's wrong, 70%

Speaker 2 3:02

that's a lot. I've definitely abandoned a cart or two myself. Usually when I see those surprise shipping costs at the end,

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Speaker 3 3:09

that'll do it. Unexpected costs are one of the biggest reasons people abandon their carts. That and a checkout process that's just too complicated, you know, too many steps, having to create an account just to buy one thing, yeah, for sure, it has to be simple Exactly. Make it easy and transparent, and people are much more likely to complete the purchase.

Speaker 2 3:29

Okay, so transparency and a great user experience are key for minimizing cart abandonment. But what about the overall customer experience? How does customer support fit into all of this,

Speaker 3 3:42

yeah, customer support can make or break the whole experience, absolutely,

Speaker 2 3:45

especially for E commerce, you know, because there's not that face to face interaction like in a physical store, right? You

Speaker 3 3:51

really need that human touch. What are some of the KPIs that show us if our customer support is really doing its job?

Speaker 2 3:58

There are a few that stand out for sure, first response time or frt, is a big one.

Speaker 3 4:02

Okay? Frt, so it's all about how quickly you get back to people exactly.

Speaker 2 4:06

Speed is everything these days, customers expect answers fast, for

Speaker 3 4:10

sure. Are there benchmarks for what a good first response time is like? Is email different from live chat? Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 4:16

For email, under 30 minutes is a good target, but for live chat, it's got to be much faster, like under two minutes. Wow,

Speaker 3 4:22

two minutes. That's putting the instant and instant messaging right.

Speaker 2 4:25

You really need a well staffed team to handle that kind of volume, and well trained

Speaker 3 4:29

too. Oh yeah, absolutely. You need people who can answer questions accurately and efficiently.

Speaker 2 4:34

So speed is key. But how do we know if customers are actually happy with the support they're getting?

Speaker 3 4:39

That's where the customer satisfaction score, or CSA, comes in. CSA,

Speaker 2 4:44

okay, so that's giving you a sense of the overall customer experience. It is.

Speaker 3 4:47

You're basically asking customers, how satisfied were you with our support, and a score above 80% is usually considered pretty good.

Speaker 2 4:55

80% okay, so that's the target. But even with fast responses. Happy customers, sometimes issues are gonna take a bit longer to resolve. Yeah,

Speaker 3 5:03

definitely, some things just need more time.

Speaker 2 5:06

What's the KPI we should be tracking for those more complex issues? That would

Speaker 3 5:10

be resolution time. It's the total time it takes to completely resolve a customer's issue.

Speaker 2 5:15

So if resolution time starts going up and we're also getting more and more support tickets, that's probably a sign that something bigger is wrong, exactly. It could mean there's a problem with the product itself, or with some internal process. It's like a warning sign. It is like canary in a coal mine. KPIs aren't just numbers. They can tell us a whole story about what's going on, exactly. Okay, so we've talked about sales and customer support, but now let's talk about remote teams. So many e commerce businesses are going remote or hybrid these days. Yeah, it's definitely a trend. It is. But managing a remote team comes with its own set of challenges when it comes to measuring performance. What KPIs can we use to see how our remote team is really doing? Well, first you need

Speaker 3 5:57

to make sure you have visibility into their productivity and well being one basic KPI is tasks completed versus tasks assigned? Okay, so are they getting their work done or not? Basically, it's a simple but effective way to see how efficient your team is, both individually and as a whole.

Speaker 2 6:13

Makes sense. But beyond just tasks, there's also making sure everyone's schedule is aligned with the business, especially for things like customer support where timing is crucial.

Speaker 3 6:22

Oh yeah, that's super important. That's where adherence store schedules comes in. So making sure

Speaker 2 6:26

your customer support team is available during peak hours exactly

Speaker 3 6:29

if they're not online when customers need help, you're gonna miss out on sales and end up with frustrated customers, for sure.

Speaker 2 6:35

But what about things like communication and collaboration and team engagement, those things are harder to measure.

Speaker 3 6:43

You're right. They're not as quantifiable, but that doesn't mean they're not important. So

Speaker 2 6:47

how do we monitor those things? Well, regular team meetings are a good start. Even just virtual coffee breaks can help, yeah, just to keep everyone connected exactly,

Speaker 3 6:55

and tools like Slack and Trello can help you see how well the team is communicating and collaborating. It's

Speaker 2 7:01

all about creating that team spirit, even when everyone's working remotely. Absolutely Okay. So we've talked about a lot of different KPIs, but how do we actually track and manage all of this data without going crazy? That's

Speaker 3 7:15

a great question, and the good news is it doesn't have to be complicated. Most e commerce platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce have built in analytics dashboards. That's

Speaker 2 7:25

a good starting point, but I imagine it gets more powerful when you start integrating that data into the tools your team is already using. You got it.

Speaker 3 7:34

It's all about making that data accessible and actionable. So let's say your team uses slack for communication and Asana for managing tasks. Pretty common. Setup, right? Pretty common. Yeah. So instead of having all your data just sitting in some dashboard, you can set up alerts that go right into Slack or Asana.

Speaker 2 7:52

So like if our conversion rate suddenly drops, or if we start seeing a ton of abandoned carts, exactly,

Speaker 3 7:56

your team gets notified right away, instead of finding out days later. I

Speaker 2 8:00

love that. It's like having a little data fairy whispering in your ear. Hey, something's up over here. Uh huh, yeah. And

Speaker 3 8:06

that means you can react faster and fix problems before they get out of control.

Speaker 2 8:09

Thing, proactive is so important. Okay, so let's talk best practices for KPI monitoring. Where should we even start?

Speaker 3 8:16

Well, the first thing is automate as much of the data collection as possible

Speaker 2 8:20

so we're not stuck pulling reports all day long. Exactly. Tools like

Speaker 3 8:24

Google Analytics can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. And there's also hot char for website behavior. Oh,

Speaker 2 8:30

yeah. Hot char is great for seeing how people are actually using your website.

Speaker 3 8:33

Yeah. And even some CRMs have chat bots that collect data for you. It's

Speaker 2 8:38

like having a whole team of data analysts working behind the scenes pretty

Speaker 3 8:42

much so that frees you up to focus on actually analyzing the data and figuring out what it all means. Okay, so

Speaker 2 8:47

we've got all this data now, how do we make sense of it all? Any favorite tools for visualizing things? Oh, yeah,

Speaker 3 3:53

for sure, for collaboration and communication? There's Slack and Trello and monday.com Those are all really popular, yeah,

Speaker 2 9:01

we use those too. What about for actually creating dashboards and reports?

Speaker 3 9:05

There are some great business intelligence tools out there, like Tableau or Looker or Power BI,

Speaker 2 9:11

okay, yeah, I've heard of those. They can make some really impressive visualizations. They

Speaker 3 9:16

can and that can help you spot trends and patterns that you might not see just by looking at numbers in a spreadsheet, right?

Speaker 2 9:22

But even with all the fancy tools, it still comes down to us actually looking at the data and making decisions based on what we see. Absolutely regular performance reviews are key. So like a weekly check in on the KPIs, exactly, just a quick pulse

Speaker 3 9:34

check to see if anything's off. And then once a month you can do a deeper dive into the data.

Speaker 2 9:39

So we're staying on top of things in the short term, but also looking at the bigger picture long term. You got it, okay, but what about those red flags? What are some signs that something's not right and we need to take action? Well,

Speaker 3 9:52

let's say your customer satisfaction scores start dropping. That could mean your support team needs more training or. There's something wrong with your

Speaker 2 10:00

support process. CS site is so important,

Speaker 3 10:03

it is. It's a direct reflection of how happy your customers are, and

Speaker 2 10:06

unhappy customers don't stick around for long. Nope.

Speaker 3 10:09

And on the sales side, keep an eye on that cart abandonment rate. If it starts going up. That usually means something's wrong with your checkout process,

Speaker 2 10:19

like those hidden fees that pop up at the last minute exactly, or maybe

Speaker 3 10:22

the checkout process is just too long and complicated. Even small things can make a big difference.

Speaker 2 10:27

It's all about making it as easy as possible for people to buy Exactly.

Speaker 3 10:32

And when it comes to remote teams, low task completion rates can be a red flag.

Speaker 2 10:36

So maybe people are overloaded or the instructions aren't clear. Yeah,

Speaker 3 10:41

it could be a lot of things. It's important to dig in and figure out what's going on.

Speaker 2 10:44

It sounds like being proactive is really the key. Here it is.

Speaker 3 10:48

We want to anticipate problems, not just react to them after they've already happened. And

Speaker 2 10:52

there are even tools that can help us predict these things, right? Yep,

Speaker 10:55

there's AI powered software like guide layer AI that can analyze your data and tell you what's likely to happen in the future. Wow,

Speaker 11:03

that's amazing. It's like having a crystal ball for your business, kind

Speaker 11:07

of But even with all the best tools in the world, it still comes down to communication and collaboration.

Speaker 11:14

Yeah, the human element is still so important. It is having

Speaker 3 11:17

regular conversations with your team, whether it's in meetings or just casual check ins, is crucial.

Speaker 2 11:23

It's about creating that culture of open communication and making sure everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas Exactly.

Speaker 3 11:29

When you combine that with a data driven approach, you're setting your team up for success.

Speaker 2 11:34

I love that. Well, we've covered a lot of ground. Today, we talked about those essential KPIs for sales, customer support and remote team productivity, yep, and

Speaker 3 11:44

we even got into some practical strategies for tracking and using those KPIs to actually grow your business. This

Speaker 2 11:51

has been a fantastic Deep Dive. I've really enjoyed it. So as we wrap things up, we want to leave you with this. Think about your own team and your own business. Which of these KPIs. Are you already tracking and

Speaker 3 12:02

what can you do to become even more data driven and proactive? That's something

Speaker 2 12:06

for everyone to think about. Thanks for joining us on the deck. Dev, we'll see you next

Speaker 1 12:10

time. Thanks for listening to the aim podcast. If you found today's episode impactful, be sure to check out helpflow.com where we help businesses maximize AI across marketing, sales, customer service and more. Visit, help flow.com. Today you.

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