The Times’ Bits blog gives the story some further analysis and points out a specific instance of questionable behavior:
Recently, a retailer on Amazon.com, VIP Deals, offered a rebate to people who bought its Kindle Fire case. It sent each customer a letter offering to refund the full price of the product in exchange for a review. The letter did not specifically ask for a favorable review, but it broadly hinted for a five-star notice. On the site, 310 out of 335 reviews of the case were five stars, and nearly all the rest were four stars.
Our customer service analysts have actually encountered this behavior by third-party marketplace sellers during our evaluation process.
So, can a STELLAService rating be bought?
No way.
Our rating process is rigorous. So much so, that more than 50% of the companies we evaluate are rated NOT APPROVED. STELLAService objectively evaluates customer service on hundreds of metrics including phone, email and chat support, shipping policies, returns, refund processing and various website features and tools. We engage each business over multiple time periods and across multiple geographical locations to generate measurements of service performance that have high reliability and construct validity. In short, our ratings process is independent and comprehensive.
Our trained customer service analysts stress-test each store through random sampling, which removes any potential biases in our data and allows us to obtain the information that most accurately represents each company’s policies, practices and performance.
Only those online stores that make the customer experience a top priority across key customer service metrics and policies are awarded a top rating and the STELLAService seal.
Imagine you’re outside the stadium, team-color clad, fist around tickets to an NFL playoff game that sends the victor to the Super Bowl. Now, imagine the gate attendant standing between you and primo seats saying, “These tickets don’t work.”
That’s pretty much the scenario that Sarah Lacy of PandoDaily encountered over the weekend. We’re big fans of the gridiron here at STELLAService, so we can imagine Sarah’s pre-game frustration. But, we’re also big fans of customer service and are glad the situation led Sarah to evangelizing the importance of customer care.
Here’s how Sarah described the scene at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park:
My friend called Stubhub customer service– something I probably wouldn’t have done because I’ve lived on Earth long enough to know that calling customer service typically only makes you more pissed off. Not this time. The first thing the representative said when he picked up the phone: “Give me your number now, in case we get cut off.”
Within 15 minutes, a representative from StubHub came to meet us in line with replacement tickets that were only two rows behind the ones that wouldn’t scan. We got in immediately. They were not only smart enough to buy up last minute replacement tickets in case there was a problem– they knew to park a van right behind this awful customer service window. I felt guilty skipping out of the line, while all the other people– including a lot of life-long fans– who didn’t use StubHub had to miss more of the game.
The fact that StubHub offered better customer service than the 49ers did to season ticket holders is stunning. And it was another example of that golden rule of business: Even a horrible customer service failure can be turned into a massive customer service win if you respond the right way. We all know this: Why don’t more companies get it?
We wonder the same thing, Sarah. And, that’s why we are stress testing more than 300 different elements of the online customer experience-the most robust evaluation methodology ever assembled for the category-to find the best customer service performance of online businesses.
Go Giants.
We think a lot about how customer service not only improves the lives of customers, but also the overall health of a business.
Seeking Alpha looked today at customer service from an investor’s perspective. It’s one thing to choose a place to shop, it’s another to select an investment. Of course, the article explains that customer care is paramount in both scenarios.
The truth is that retail, no matter what medium it takes, is all about one thing: customer service. If you are selling the same product as someone else, you must compete either on price, service, or value. Retail concepts extend far beyond the traditional retail industry, spreading into other areas such as healthcare, food, and defense. We think that the discussion of the retail space has been dominated by a physical vs. Internet debate for far too long. Retailers, no matter how they operate, still live or die by customer service.
The article highlights STELLAService Excellent company Nordstrom, calling out a particularly unique customer service effort. The retailer altered an Armani tuxedo in just a day, for free, for a man trying to make it to his daughter’s wedding. Here’s the kicker – Nordstrom doesn’t even sell Armani tuxedos.
No retailer, physical or Internet can escape the fact that they must not forget that the customer always comes first. Retailers who forget that do so at their own peril.
We were among the nearly 25,000 attendees from 85 countries at the big National Retail Federation convention this week. It seems the Wall Street Journal made the rounds too and we’re delighted with what they have to report.
In the Journal’s coverage of the annual meeting of retailers and technology vendors, there was a recurring theme – customer service.
“More and more, technology and customer service are becoming the same thing,” Kip Tindell, Container Store Chief Executive and an NRF board member, said in an interview.
We couldn’t agree more.
While attracting new customers is key, mastering how to keep existing customers may be more crucial.
“Customers want to know you care about them,” said consultancy DunnhumbyUSA Chief Executive Stuart Aitken, adding it takes 12 to 20 new customers to make up for the loss of one loyal customer. “Communicating relevant messages in the right channel is important.”
Bingo.
The article explains that smart retailers are putting such a priority on customer service that they’re beginning to tie compensation to customer satisfaction.
According to a KPMG survey of 150 retail executives last year, 36% said customer service affected compensation at the corporate level; 73% said customer service affected compensation at the field-management level and 77% said customer service affected compensation at the store-management level. and for the first time in several years, retailers said they are increasing marketing and advertising spending and increasing IT headcount.
“Retailers’ strategy is shifting from cost containment to growth acceleration,” said Mark Larson, a KPMG partner. “They are laser-focused on customers.”
This is what we’re all about at STELLAService – giving consumers an objective view into which companies are laser-focused on customers. We’re excited to hear that retailers see that theme as a valuable part of their 2012 initiatives.
To celebrate the New Year, we thought we’d share some of our favorite new TV commercials, which of course poke fun at embarrassingly bad customer service. You think companies are starting to get a clue that great customer service is no longer just a “nice to have”…?
These commercials were all posted to YouTube within the last few weeks — enjoy!
And an update recommended by our friends at GetHuman.com, a recently released DIRECTV commercial:
After all the anticipation and waiting, you’ve finally opened your holiday gift and…of course, it’s not the right [size/color/fit/brand/model/age-group/etc]. Like many of us, you’re now faced with the ultimate question: what to do about returns, exchanges or refunds.
Since we at STELLAService knew you’d ask, we went ahead and road-tested the top 25 largest online retailers to see which ones have the most customer-friendly returns and refund processes (we tested the same 25 retailers that we evaluated in the 2011 Cyber Monday Customer Service Study).
As part of this assessment, we ordered and returned (via USPS standard ground) several products from each retailer to various parts of the country over the last few weeks (understanding it may be even tougher during the days and weeks after Christmas). Your return and refund experience, as well as the policies you’re up against, will vary depending on where and when the gifter ordered your present.
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Several top retailers extended their normal return windows to account for the large number of people who will need to initiate returns or refunds over the next few weeks. If retailers can extend their policies during the holidays, can’t they just leave them extended during the rest of the year?
It’s also worth noting the varying refund processing times. While retailers often blame banks for slow refunds, our data suggests that the companies’ return processing cycle (i.e. the time to process a return and initiate a refund after the returned product reaches their warehouse) has a lot to do with how quick the retailers are in getting you your money back. As usual, some companies go out of their way to make life easier and better for their customers, and some don’t.
Are you wondering how the top online retailers rank after taking into account all of the major customer service metrics during the holidays? So are we…stay tuned!
As a result of evaluating the service of thousands of online retailers – some of them with “unfriendly” return policies – we were unfortunately left with hundreds of random products at the end of 2011.
As opposed to auctioning off these products on eBay or otherwise disposing of them, we decided to turn the negative situation into a positive one by giving away the items to those in need. Check it out!
Happy holidays from all of us at STELLAService!
When it comes to the holidays, surprises should be left to the gifts, not the delivery speed of products you order online. That’s why we tested the top 25 Internet Retailers for standard delivery speed. These are the same 25 retailers that we studied in the 2011 Cyber Monday Customer Service Study.
We ordered several products from each of the top retailers via standard shipping to various parts of the country over the last few weeks to test how long it took for the items to arrive.
Who was the fastest, and who was the slowest?
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Some key highlights from the study include:
Does the speed of delivery depend on what part of the country you’re in?
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Turns out that the average delivery speed for standard shipping is slightly faster for those of you on the east coast (another east coast bias?).
Wishing everyone a no-surprises, hassle-free, speedy standard shipping holiday!
Note: this is the third in a three part series looking at the customer service performance of the top 25 online retailers during the 2011 Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend. View Part 1 (Phone Support) and Part 2 (Email Support) for a complete view on how the largest online retailers cared for customers during the big shopping holiday.
Many online shoppers now prefer to engage with companies via live chat. It’s (supposedly) quick, easy and convenient. According to a 1,000 person consumer survey by the E-Tailing Group and Bold Software, one in five online shoppers select live chat as their preferred method of communication with a retailer. With 20% of shoppers preferring to use live chat, you’d think that most – if not all – of the largest online retailers offer this as a communication channel for shoppers.
We were curious to see which of the 25 largest online retailers offer this service channel, and here’s what we found:
First, it’s amazing how many of these retailers (44%) don’t offer the “preferred method” of customer support to 20% of online shoppers. Second, if you visit some of the retailers’ sites who are noted above as having live chat and don’t see a link for chat, the site is probably waiting for you to take some kind of action to trigger the live chat functionality. This kind of “dynamic” live chat functionality does not help the one-in-five online shoppers who prefer live chat, since they may not take the necessary actions on the website to generate the live chat window and thus will not be able to initiate a live chat when they want.
In addition, for the sites offering live chat we stress-tested how long it took for online shoppers to: (1) receive a notification that a live agent was present and ready to assist; and (2) receive an answer to the question we asked each live chat agent.
We found that the mass merchants performed the best in this study, and below are the top three performers and their results:
With so may products and varying shipping, returns and other policies, it is appropriate that some of these very large online retailers are delivering such a highly responsive and helpful live chat service.
Do you think it should be standard for all of the top online merchants to offer live chat?
Did you leverage live chat with any of the top 25 retailers this weekend? If so, what was your experience like?
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Methodology: Black Friday through Cyber Monday data was collected by initiating a live chat with each retailer five (5) times each day over a four day period, from Friday November 25th to Monday November 28th. Live chat sessions were initiated at random during the following time-blocks to generate measurements of service performance that have high reliability and construct validity: 8:00 -11:30am EST; 11:30 – 2:00pm EST; 2:00 – 5:00pm EST; 5:00 – 8:00pm EST; 8:00 – 11:00pm EST. Given the dynamic nature of live chat (i.e. it only becomes available when certain actions are taken by the user), we followed a consistent process by visiting the same number of pages, and staying on each website for the same amount of time, for each of the 25 retailers.
Note: this is the second in a three part series looking at the customer service performance of the top 25 online retailers during the 2011 Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend. View Part 1 (Phone Support) and Part 3 (Live Chat Support) for a complete view on how the largest online retailers cared for customers during the big shopping holiday.
According to Forrester, 55% of online shoppers use email when attempting to solve a customer service problem. Most consumers expect relatively quick responses to email inquiries. In fact, if you’re shopping online and have a question, what’s the point of sending an email if the company doesn’t get back to you for days? The product, special deal or issue in question may no longer be relevant by the time you get a reply.
To give shoppers a better idea of which stores plan to keep you in the loop and which stores are likely to dismiss your message into the email abyss as you do your online holiday shopping, STELLAService is providing an unprecedented look at the email response rates of the largest online retailers.
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While it might seem obvious that retailers would (or should) reply to all emails sent to them by shoppers with questions, it’s far from reality!
These numbers are most likely eye-opening for many people, but they probably resonate when you think back to prior experiences. Did you email any of the large online retailers over the weekend? If so, did they get back to you within a day?
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Methodology: Baseline data was collected by emailing each retailer each day (336 total emails) over a 14 day period, from November 1st through November 14th, asking general customer service questions in each email (product questions, shipping or returns information, etc). Black Friday through Sunday data was collected by emailing each retailer four (4) times each day over a three day period, from Friday November 25th to Sunday November 27th. Emails were placed at random during the following time-blocks to generate measurements of service performance that have high reliability and construct validity: 8:00 -11:30am EST; 11:30 – 2:00pm EST; 2:00 – 5:00pm EST; 5:00 – 8:00pm EST; 8:00 – 11:00pm EST.
