Retail TouchPoints: Mystery Shopper Study Shows E-tailers Sacrifice Service For Cost Containment, Efficiencies
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the Retail TouchPoints website.
Although online sales continued to outpace brick-and-mortar sales in 2009, online retailers still felt the pinch of the recent recession during the most recent holiday season. In response, a number of online retailers chose cost containment over improvements in customer service in Q4 2009, according to the e-tailing group's 12th Annual Mystery Shopping Study.
Merchants have made trade-offs on communication effectiveness and information accessibility to cut costs, the study reports. Year-over-year it took merchants longer to respond to email communication (20.69 minutes in Q4 ‘09 vs. 20.15 in Q4 '08). Email responses were less likely to offer a personalized salutation (75 percent vs. 82 percent) and fewer gave correct answers (72 percent vs. 77 percent).
Additionally, call center performance was less effective in Q4 2009, with longer wait times for customer calls and some return policies have become more restrictive.
At a time when consumers are demanding more and better information on a timely basis, loyalty and brand perception will likely take a hit if retailers continue down the path of cutting costs at the expense of customer service. "I think consumers will get frustrated when they don't get the answers they need," says Lauren Freedman, founder and president of the e-tailing group. The problem is not automation per se, but the fact that the retailers are not providing timely responses and providing correct answers to consumers' questions, she explains.
Merchants did make some positive progress during Q4 2009, by improving the speed of deliveries and investing in technologies that are providing better information during the checkout experience.
For consumers who chose to purchase their gifts at the last minute in '09, they were able to receive their packages quicker (4.05 days in '09 vs. 4.76 in '08). Merchants also made it easier for consumers to check out and reorder. In 2009, 89 percent offered pre-populated customer information in the shopping cart, 50 percent offered single cart checkout from multiple merchants under one umbrella brand, and 10 percent offered the ability to reorder from order history.
More and more retailers are using some form of social media and/or customer feedback mechanism to interact with customers. In 2009, 22 percent of merchants surveyed offered post-order targeted email to review/rate a purchase and 26 percent provide post-order targeted email surveys.
The top performers were
chosen as other sites were eliminated for not possessing "must have" criteria
in the following order of importance.
- Keyword search
- Four or fewer days to receive package
- Adequately and correctly answer email question within 24 hours; providing a specific (rather than automated) answer
- On-site home page accessibility of toll-free phone number 2.0 or higher on a scale of 3.0
- CSR product knowledge when calling toll-free number 2.0 or higher on a scale of 3.0
- Five or fewer clicks to checkout
- Email shipping confirmation sent
- Email order confirmation sent with order number and customer service information included
- Real-time inventory in shopping cart or on product page
Discussion Questions: Where do e-commerce sites need to continue to invest to improve the shopping experience? On the other hand, in what areas can they look to cut expenses?