Shoppers this year may have trouble with online service
Associated Press
This holiday season's online shopping numbers are being hyped as bigger than
ever, but in the stampede of consumers to cyberspace, online merchants can't
seem to keep up with customer service.
Internet consulting companies are predicting that online retailing will reach
$2.3 billion worldwide this holiday season. That's more than double last
year's $1.1 billion.
But if there's a problem with their order, customers may be out of luck.
Jupiter Communications, an Internet consulting firm based in New York,
conducted a study of 125 major online merchants and found that 42 percent of
them either didn't post an e-mail address, didn't respond to e-mail when they
had one, or took longer than five days when they did respond.
In general, Web sites have been unprepared to respond to users' questions
coming in via e-mail or Web forms, Jupiter said. There are simply too many
questions or problems to address for sites that offer complex products - such
as airline tickets - and many companies have never had a traditional call-in
center.
''There's been so much focus on building a site that customer service quite
honestly been a bit of an afterthought,'' said Fiona Swerdlow, the Jupiter
analyst who wrote the study. Unanswered e-mail and hard-to-find toll-free
numbers were the most common problems commerce sites had, Swerdlow said.
Tony Fross, an account director with THINK New Ideas in New York, a computer
consulting firm, tried to order from Cosmetics Counter, but his computer kept
locking up. Several e-mails to the company were never returned, he said.
''That's very distressing,'' said Eli Katz, the chief operating officer of
Fragrance Counter, which owns Cosmetics Counter. ''We take a lot of pride in
our customer service. But glitches happen, and that's certainly not how we
want to operate our business.''
Monique Elwell, a former Internet stock analyst turned entrepreneur, said she
had a horrible experience last year when ordering from Onsale.com, a Web-based
auction site and retailer that offers consumer electronics.
''Onsale.com ruined my Christmas,'' she said. Elwell said she ordered a CD
player for her brother that was broken when he received it. It took four
months before she was able to get them to credit her account.
''It doesn't sound like she had a wonderful experience last Christmas,'' said
Stefanie Elkins, a spokeswoman for Onsale.com ''But we have been working to
make this a state-of-the-art customer service experience.''
Elkins said more than three-quarters of Onsale.com's customers return, and
that has remained consistent even as the company's customer base has grown
more 20 percent every quarter since April 1997, when the company went public.
''We understand here that if we don't keep our customers happy, they're not
going to come back,'' Elkins said.
But in general, ''Web sites are very, very slow in responding to customer
inquiries via e-mail,'' said Ken Cassar, another Jupiter analyst. ''Honestly,
I don't understand why. Perhaps they think requests are less urgent if they
are sent via e-mail.'' |
