This is the message a lot of businesses communicate, without even knowing it. Now more than ever, as features lists become less important, customer service is everything.

As a customer buying online, you have to trust the website, product and company you’re buying from. As an e-commerce owner, when you’re doing business online, you can’t fail and you have to meet customer expectations or they’ll just go elsewhere. This “meeting customer expectations” thing goes from the moment the customer arrives on your website to the after sale customer service: every aspect is important. Companies have worked really hard to build a safe and interesting enough environment so that customers would buy online instead of offline and trust me, nobody wants to screw that. Then, customers became used to live chat customer service, digitally delivered products, fast email answers, etc. This is all good because as customers, we like quality products, delivered fast and on time with an awesome customer service. The Web was able to deliver that. In fact, it had to, otherwise people would have continued buying offline. E-commerce businesses won such a big war.

Social media has also helped to bring that brand-customer relationship to another level. More than ever, customers are close to the brands and products they love and can “interact” with them. It’s all about building trust.

Now, whenever I go to the restaurant or go shopping “offline”, I expect all of the above. I expect to be able to talk to someone when I need it, I expect to be able to ask all the questions I want when I want to, I don’t want to talk to someone who simply try to sell me stuff: I want to talk to someone who’s trying to help me, I expect the buying process to be smooth, I expect awesome customer service, I expect a positive experience all the way. I simply expect this offline because I can get it all online. If I can chat live with a customer service rep online, why would I wait 25 minutes in store for an available rep?

There is just so much offline businesses could learn from e-commerce. Offline businesses will always be around, but some will have to re-think the way they work in order to stay in business. That’s just how strong the Web is.