When we did our POPAI webcast last year, one of our survey questions was "Where do you get better service, online or in-store?" and 100% of the participants said online. Surprisingly, the Deloitte 2007 Global Powers of Retailing Report had this to say:
“Information parity between consumers and retailers means that consumers will have more knowledge then sales associates, further reducing the value of and need for retail workers who actually try to sell the consumer.”
It's no wonder that we're not getting good service in-store. We wrote about it in The New Face of Retail and feel very strongly that empowered consumers only increase the need for empowered employees.
Customer satisfaction with e-commerce surpassed that of offline retail by 11.6 percent. That's according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index released jointly by the University of Michigan and ForeSee Results.E-commerce's overall score measured 80 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index's (ACSI) 100-point scale. Online retail scored 83, up 2.5 percent from last year's index. Offline retail scored 74.4 on the scale.
"Generally, the e-commerce sites are doing an excellent job keeping focused on what's most impactful with consumers," said ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed.
Many features raising e-commerce scores are typically referred to as Web 2.0 features. "The better product images, better product specifications, the ability to zoom into products, and so on. User reviews have become critical to the consumer purchasing experience, it adds another flavor that they are used to associating with a retail store," said Freed.
Web 2.0 features also give way to what the researchers call Consumer 2.0. "One of the things that online has really done is put the consumer in charge," said Freed. "Something we like to call Consumer 2.0. Consumer 2.0 says the consumer is in control, the transparency across retailers and products is there, and e-commerce is stepping up to the challenge."
Link: E-Tailers Beat Offline Stores in Customer Satisfaction.
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