{"id":12809,"date":"2020-11-24T08:56:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-24T07:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.teleforwarding.com\/?p=12809"},"modified":"2021-03-25T15:51:14","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T14:51:14","slug":"local-presence-ecommerce-dropshipping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tf-usa.com\/blog\/local-presence-ecommerce-dropshipping\/","title":{"rendered":"Local Presence for E-commerce Retailers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Business phone numbers in the time of dropshipping<\/h2>\n

Think about all the time we spend these days sending threads upon threads of emails, taking calls, and attending Zoom-meetings. Days spent working from home tend to seem longer than those you spent in the office, don\u2019t they? It\u2019s become normal to find yourself led astray by the myriad tempting offers we find online while casually browsing and before you know it, you might have made a purchase, yet again, prompted by Facebook or Instagram ads leading you to an online store front. After just a sliver of guilt for a leisure spend during work hours, you feel the excitement of getting your new thing, be it an article of clothing or new set of pens.<\/p>\n

No worries, it happens to all of us.<\/p>\n

Online retail visits and sales projections<\/h2>\n

In fact, online sales have been breaking records as the number of online retail consumers<\/a>, globally, in the first six months of the global COVID-19 pandemic rose from 16.7 billion visits per day to 22 billion visits per day, between January and June 2020, respectively. Additionally, it is estimated that there are over 2 billion online retail customers<\/a> \u2013 that\u2019s a quarter of the world\u2019s estimated population!<\/p>\n

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The difference between physical goods stores and dropshippers<\/h2>\n

So it\u2019s been a week since you\u2019ve made your purchase. You\u2019ve already e-mailed the seller asking for a status update and they have kindly instructed you to be patient, we\u2019re working on it. \u201cHow long can it possibly take?\u201d, you think, \u201cthe address says they\u2019re just down the road\u201d, right?<\/p>\n

One of the biggest changes we\u2019re seeing in modern e-commerce is the rise of companies who use dropshipping as opposed to selling their own physical goods. Whereas the latter requires the store owner to buy and hold stock of the products they are selling, the former makes it possible for the store owner to have an e-commerce store front where orders are sent directly to wholesale suppliers who send the goods directly to the customer. This means that stores who use a dropshipping model are able to offer goods at much lower prices than traditional brick-and-mortar-turned-e-commerce stores and more often than you think, your \u201clocal deal\u201d actually comes from a few continents away.<\/p>\n

Who are these retailers?<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0Well, generally, the wholesale suppliers who actually send the product to the customer are based in China (usually from large scale e-commerce platforms like aliexpress or taobao). But often the face of the companies that consumers think they are buying from seem to be local sellers; leaving consumers stumped as to why their packages take so long (4, 5, even 6 weeks) to arrive.<\/p>\n

These seemingly local stores then tend to rely on chatbots to deal with their customer service, but in some countries, such as Germany and The Netherlands, it is required by law to have a phone number connected to your website.<\/p>\n

The customer service dilemma<\/h2>\n

Dropshipping retailers are by definition entrepreneurs, sometimes attracted to the main benefit of not needing a large investment or space to start a dropshipping company. However, what dropshipping companies don\u2019t realise they are missing is the essential contact between the customer and the company, whether that be for sales or support.<\/p>\n

In order to help the increase of customer satisfaction and sales, it remains a key factor for dropshipping retailers to maintain a local presence that is accessible via phone. Luckily, a physical phone or landline system doesn\u2019t have to be the solution here.<\/p>\n

Business phone numbers for dropshippers<\/h2>\n

Dropshipping retailers can now choose from a wide range of customer service phone numbers:<\/p>\n

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  1. Uifn numbers<\/a> which expand a company\u2019s global presence and allows customers to call companies for free from 45 countries<\/li>\n
  2. Toll free numbers<\/a> which home in a company\u2019s global presence to a national level and are available to call for free in 100+ countries<\/li>\n
  3. Virtual phone numbers<\/a> which hone in a company\u2019s national presence to a local level and allow consumers to call companies with local area codes, at local rates<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Modern telcos like TeleForwarding offer VoIP numbers which allow companies to route their business numbers through any destination number \u2013 mobile or landline \u2013 of their choice. Our additional features offer even more flexibility to give you the best use of your business phone number:<\/p>\n