Common Sense eCommerce

Have you heard that when calling certain companies?  Does it seem like you hear it every time you call? Such is the case with Monster Commerce.  I have called them many times over the past few years and each and every time I hear the message (aka excuse) “We are experiencing longer than normal hold times”.

Today I called. It said that message as usual and my call was answered in less than 2 minutes.  So Monster Commerce, do you really mean it? I guess not. I think they just have the message there to cover themselves when there are long hold times.

Later I had to call GoDaddy.Com for a related reason.  There was no announcement to the effect of ‘longer than usual hold times’ and it took over 10 minutes to get the call answered.  That by the way was not a toll free number. GoDaddy, since you are making the customer pay for the call don’t you think you should warn them of longer than usual hold times or give them an estimate of how long they’ll be on hold?

F minus on Business practices for both!

Where I live, there are two grocery chains - Fred Meyer and Quality Food Centers (QFC). Actually there are several more, but what ties these two together is that they are both owned by the parent company Kroger. That wasn’t always the case; QFC was purchased by Kroger in the late 1990’s.But it’s interesting to note that the two stores have two different card programs. QFC uses the standard grocery card program where they have two sets of prices on many things: a regular price and a member price (member being a person with a card).

Fred Meyer, on the other hand, uses a rebate program. There is a card, but it doesn’t immediately save you anything on the groceries. The prices are the same whether you have card or not. The rebate program is quarterly and the more you spend the more points you earn that quarter. At the end of the quarter, you get mailed dollar value coupons (coupons good for purchase on anything) along with % off coupons (coupons geared toward a department such as apparel). How much dollar value you get depends on how much you spent. It’s scalable!

Interestingly, Fred Meyer’s normal price on standard item such as a certain brand of paper towel and a certain brand of aluminum foil is less than QFC. Where do you think I shop?

The rebate style incentive gets customers to return, the first kind that QFC uses doesn’t. QFC must rely on other things to get customers to return.

What does this have to do with eCommerce? Well I have always felt customer loyalty is not created by showing a lower price and/or bragging about your low prices (WalMart already does that ad nausem). You know; have something like list price stricken out and having another (much lower) price alongside it marked “our price”. I think customers will appreciate a fair price even more if there is an incentive there. After all, what’s in it for me is one of the questions retailers must ask on behalf of their customers.

Tags: Customer Rebates, Customer Incentives, Customer Loyalty, Customer Relations

Effective May 1, Amazon will no longer be showing customer information in their “SOLD SHIP NOW” email notices. This is to protect customer privacy and affects Amazon Marketplace Sellers and Amazon Webstores.

I’ve also noticed that they now mask the email address of the customer in the web based seller panel. If you want to contact the customer via the web panel, you have to go through their web based messaging system. Is Amazon removing access to the customers completely?

Granted, Amazon merchants don’t have the right to send customers unsolicited email. But as an Amazon seller, I do like to use my own templates and email service to notify the customer of the order status.

At Amazon in fact there are at least 3 opportunities to get in touch with the customer. 1 - To acknowledge the order was placed and thank them for the order (plant URL in signature). 2 - To notify the customer the order was shipped and give the tracking number (plant URL in signature again). 3 - Follow-up with the customer about 3 weeks after order to thank them again and ask for feedback (plant URL in signature again). A little soft marketing; now I wonder if I’ll still be able to do that?

The question that I can’t seem to get answered is if there will be any change to the Download Orders file. That is a CSV file that Amazon sellers can download and get their orders into Excel for easier processing. At the present time, the customer email addresses are in there. We’ll see if it’s there on May 1!

Tags: Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Webstore, Amazon Selling, Amazon Customers

I am continually amazed at how bad some eBay listings look. I’m not talking about graphics, photos, or general appearances. I am referring to the horrible wording I see in some listings. A couple of examples (sic):

Do to numerous non-paying bidders: If you have excessive negative feedback or under 10 feedback you must email prior to bidding on the auction. I will cancel any bid that does not meet required guidelines.

Or how about this one?

I no longer ship to Canada. If you are in CANADA, do NOT bid on my items.

Funny thing is, these examples are from two different power sellers. If you want people to buy from you and get return business from them, you cannot use offensive language like this. These sellers obviously have chips on their shoulder and there are probably good reasons behind the policies they have in place. But there is always a better way to word policies such as these.

The first example is problematic for a lot of reasons. Most notably is that it fails to define what ‘excessive negative feedback’ means. The word excessive is subjective and might leave someone wondering if 2 negatives is excessive.

The second example is bizarre considering the seller’s listings can ship to North and South America. But not Canada? Some sort of explanation might be in order here.

I would not want to buy from either of these sellers, would you? In either case, offensive sellers like these certainly make the job easier for good sellers! For every seller that says NO to something, there is a seller that makes money by saying YES.

Tags: Bad eBay Sellers, Offensive eBay Sellers, Bad eBay Listings, Offensive eBay Listings

I was in a store today and saw a rather odd sign posted everywhere:

“Due to recent events, we are no longer able to accept Travelers Checks.”

I thought, recent events — what recent events?  I asked the cashier what recent events caused this?  The cashier had no idea or was not about to say.

What were they thinking?  Why not just post “We no longer accept Travelers Checks” and leave it at that?  Customers will not really need a reason and even if they did, “due to recent events” is not a reason.

That started me thinking about stuff we often see on web pages.  How often do you get the sense that it’s just fluff or extra words to fill in space?

I like to change out web site text as often as possible and I like to have other people read and critique it.  Often silly statements like that sign end up in my writing and it may take another set of eyes to catch it. 

But don’t give your customers superfluous messages. Spend the energy telling what they need to know and how your business can benefit them.   This store might have said “we can no longer accept Traveler’s Checks but we do accept Visa, MasterCard……”.
 

I would have thought no, not generally.  But today in the Wal-Mart I thought twice about that question.  I bought some groceries, and took the line that seemed to be reasonably short: 2 people in front of me.

Little did I know it would eat up about 20 minutes.  The woman who was being served, was a complex transaction. I’ve seen home loans approved in less time!  It was a combination of not understanding the rebate coupons, the discount coupon dates among other things.

A lot of the problem was with the customer, but there were also things the cashier did to prolong the transaction, such as having several conversations with the toddler in the cart and taking the long road to explaining that a coupon is expired.  Similarly, he engaged the lady in front me in lengthy friendly conversation when it was her turn. 

Now this clerk was just one of those ‘people’ persons who loved to engage people in conversation. Probably makes him a naturally good sales person.  But does that make a cashier?  One of the responsibilities of a cashier is to keep the line moving and in this case, the clerk seemed to just focus solely on the customer in front of him.  Instead he may have done better by balancing the need to converse with the line needing to move a bit faster.  

I’ll be looking to avoid standing in his line next time!

Tags: Customer Service, Slow Customer Service, Customer Complaint

Have you ever been to website and bought something; then noticed how difficult the buying process was?  Then contrast that to a website that does a superb job of completing the transaction with as little interference as possible.  I like to sit up and take notice of both extremes and ask where our websites fit into this spectrum.

I like to think they’re near the second, but it’s nice to go through the shopping cart process once in awhile to test and ‘play the customer’.  Amazon and GoDaddy are both examples of confusing places to conduct transactions.  I think it has to do mostly with the barrage of upselling going on at those sites.

I have nothing against upselling and in fact, it should be part of every business strategy.  Whether it has any place in the shopping carts of commodity purchases like Amazon or GoDaddy transactions is somewhat debatable. But I’m pretty sure they could both do a better job of upselling without hitting you over the head with everything they have to offer that’s related.

I also am an Amazon MarketPlace seller, so I see both sides of the coin there.  I often get complaints from customers who say they didn’t mean to buy that item or that they’re confused about which vendor they bought it from (when items are aggregated from different MarketPlace sellers, strange things happen).

Bottom line, make sure your transaction process is painless for the customer.  They might remember how painless it was and want to return!  If it’s painful, they’ll probably remember that too.
Tags: Online Transcation Process, Shopping Cart Process, Online Upselling, eCommerce Transactions

We have several websites that sell physical products via drop shipping arrangements as well as an eBay business. Every once in awhile, we’ll get a note from the customer in the order notes instructing us that “No Signature is Required”, “Delivery Signature not Needed”, or something to that affect.

The other day we got this kind of note on a $300 item.  We went ahead and sent it ‘Signature Required’.  At some point, it is up to the business to make this choice, not the customer.   If the item is lost, stolen, misdelivered, etc. who bears the risk? In some cases, the shipping company will, but usually the risk bearer is the business, not the customer.

If the delivery driver leaves the item on the porch without a signature and it disappears, is the customer going to be willing to eat that loss?  On an expensive item, probably not.  We have no idea what kind of neighborhood or safety conditions exist where we’re sending it.  For example, we don’t know if it’s an enclosed front porch away from the street or a doorway right next to the sidewalk.

On lower cost items, like something that’s worth $20, we might be willing to shoulder the risk, but on more expensive items the signature thing is our choice, not theirs. We use $100 as a cut off.  This doesn’t always make for a happy customer, but we have to balance the risk in our business.

It seems that there are companies that just don’t do Customer Service - unless they’re forced to by competition.  Take a look at your local public utility company.  If they’re like ours, they’re hardly the models of exemplary Customer Service.  After all, where else can you get your water or electricity?  They know you can’t go anywhere else and they treat their customers accordingly.

But what happens when competition is introduced?  Think about what has happened with the local or regional phone companies.  In our case, that’s Qwest. Just a few short years ago, you could have included Qwest in that ‘public utility’ category with no competition and treating their customers accordingly.

In recent years however, competition has been introduced.  You can now get wireless phone service from a wide variety of carriers.  You can get a Voice Over IP (VOIP) phone solution from a broad range of choices.  In many areas, you can even get phone service from your cable company (via VOIP)!

Presumably adapting to that changing market, Qwest stepped up to a higher level of customer service.  In fact, they might now be considered a model of large corporate customer service.  Is this ’stepping up’ genuine or bogus?  It’s debatable whether that even matters.  What matters is the customer won and competition probably drove that company to step up to a higher level of customer service.

Tags: Customer Service, Customer Relations, Customer Relationship Management