Most Net Retailers All Sale, No Service
My recent order for out-of-print books from BarnesandNoble.com gradually assumed (perhaps appropriately) Kafkaesque qualities.
Multiple e-mails with conflicting messages about the books’ availability were followed by weeks of silence. When I complained, the site canceled my order. Luckily, I found one of the obscure titles on another Web site that shipped it promptly. A few weeks later, BarnesandNoble.com located a copy of the same book and e-mailed me that it had shipped the title and charged my credit card.
If you’re an e-shopper, you may have guessed the reliable alternative to the BarnesandNoble.com fiasco: Amazon.com. Analysts often credit the Web retail king’s success to superb marketing. The real reason seems more prosaic: It’s the fulfillment, stupid. Amazon keeps in touch with customers and manages transactions smoothly.
“We all keep coming back to Amazon.com as the example of how to do things right,” said Jeffrey Tarter, editor of Soft-Letter, an industry newsletter. “But there don’t seem to be many other examples.”
High-profile e-commerce screw-ups easily come to mind:
* Buy.com, one of the biggest retail sites, has developed a reputation for hyping products that later prove to be on back order for weeks and for reneging on super-low advertised prices.
* E-Trade, a top stock market site, has suffered system outages that have left fuming customers unable to cancel orders because the customer support line was busy.
* EBay, the leading auction site, has enraged users with its periodic outages, including a disastrous, nearly 24-hour system collapse June 10-11. That has given such rivals as Yahoo and Amazon.com an opening to build up their own auction sites.
If industry leaders can’t provide decent service, what does that say about the rest of the Web? According to Jupiter Communications, a New York Internet analysis firm, Web shoppers are increasingly fed up with shameless hawking of unavailable merchandise, expensive handling charges and sluggish site performance, among other problems.
That frustration derives partly from surging Web traffic that leaves merchants scrambling. And, in fairness, providing high-quality customer service is the hardest and most expensive part of any retail business.
But Web merchants have concentrated on capturing new customers rather than on satisfying them once they log on. About 66% of Web shopping carts--the virtual repository for online products before a consumer formalizes a purchase--are abandoned before purchases are completed, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. And the number of abandoned carts is rising steadily. Almost nobody abandons a fully laden cart in mid-shop at the local Safeway.
Communicating with the customer is fundamental to retailing, and on the Internet people expect instantaneous responses. Yet e-commerce communication is shockingly poor.
FAQs (frequently asked questions lists--a ubiquitous feature of merchant sites), the first line of defense, seem to provide volumes of data without giving a straight answer to your burning question.
Most sites offer question and answer by e-mail--if you’re in no hurry. The Industry Standard, a publication that covers the Internet industry, tested the top 10 e-commerce sites and found an average wait of more than a day and a half. The winner (at 34 minutes) was, you guessed it, Amazon.com.
And good luck finding a phone number. A number of financial services companies that adopted systems allowing them to keep in contact with a customer by phone during a Web transaction have scaled them back dramatically.
“It became absurdly expensive,” said Forrester’s Seema Williams. “Even for stuff they can figure out on their own with five more clicks, many consumers prefer to have someone just talk them through it.”
One new solution is text-based chat--ostensibly combining the immediacy of technology with the touch of a real person in a communications medium that Web users are comfortable with. I tested five sites that offer chat support--MGM.com, FragranceCounter.com, Carfinance.com, 1800DayTrade.com and IGoGolf.com; only MGM gave fast and understandable answers to simple questions. Chat was repeatedly unavailable during advertised hours on the other sites. When I did get through, the average response time for “real-time” chat was nine minutes per question. (“I’ll be with you momentarily. . . .”)
Maybe the fascination with technology has short-circuited common sense. Why not just make responsible claims that create reasonable expectations, grow a site only when it can actually handle more traffic and customize services around users’ needs?
In the brick-and-mortar world, many people prefer community-based businesses over chains because they offer personalized service. I patronize a particular cafe, despite its mediocre coffee, because the guy behind the counter remembers me and starts making my latte the moment I walk in the door.
Many e-commerce sites know your name and what you have bought before, and push similar products. Not a bad idea, but such customization is all sell and no service. You rarely see a site that learns your sensibilities as a consumer or holds your virtual hand--say, proactively dispelling your doubts by linking to independent reviews of the products or services being sold.
Can great service become common in a business climate set up to capture consumers by selling at razor-thin margins--or even at a loss--than trying to earn their loyalty?
I doubt it. Nordstrom service comes at Nordstrom prices. But bad service can kill fledgling Web brands, and it may not be a slow, agonizing death.
In a recent Forrester study, more than half the consumers who had a bad online buying experience said that they abandoned the offending merchant, and fully half abandoned e-commerce altogether.
“One thing I can tell you about [Internet retailing] is that customer loyalty is nonexistent,” said Seymour Merrin, an industry consultant based in Santa Fe, N.M. “Anyone who wants loyalty should buy a dog and feed it.”
On the Web, we’re all hungry dogs.
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Times staff writer Charles Piller can be reached at charles.piller@latimes.com.
