November 29 2007
‘Tis the season for customer services to go into meltdown
Customer service departments deal with up to five-fold more emails in the 10 days before Christmas than during any other time of year
With current predictions for annual online spend in 2007 being in the region of £40billion, it is little wonder that numéro is predicting Christmas 2007 will be the year for disgruntled online shoppers who can't get a response from customer services.
Customers are leaving it later and later to buy due to the positive expectations set during the rest of the year, and are disappointed when goods aren't delivered in time for Christmas Day.
Eight million households currently spend an average of two hours per day shopping on the net and will spend in the region of £400 online over the Christmas period on presents, groceries and other festive necessities.
The peak of activity for retailers' customer contact centres is in the ten-day run up to Christmas Day when goods don't arrive in time. Frustrated, this leads to a deluge of customer queries and complaints at non-delivery of items.
"The customer emails the contact centre to request an update and where no update is forthcoming will continue to email until a resolution is given - increasing inbound complaints by as much as five-fold more than during any other month of the year," said Mark Chamberlain, director, numéro.
"The distribution channel has risen to the consumer challenge and various goods tracking offerings are now commonplace with freight agents however, the next step is for the same consumer to expect similar experiences in service - and this is where many retailers are falling short of the mark."
With over 14.5 million households on broadband in the UK, a further seven million on dial up and around 100,000 connections per week many people may be shopping online for the first time ever and it's important for the experience to be a positive one. Disappointed customers will not shop online with that retailer again or even shop online again at all.
"Online retailers must realise that the website is the front door of any company and in the majority of cases displays a 'Contact Us' button on the home page - its like the door being open for business, but there's nobody on the front desk," said Chamberlain.
We couldn’t agree more Mark.
