Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business. You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy.

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Christmas shoppers fear e-retailers can't deliver

The 'Eptica Christmas 2011 Retail Experience Study' found that, with 27% expecting pre-Christmas deliveries to be late, shoppers' mistrust of online retailers' ability to deliver items on time is being made worse by unclear information and unhelpful answers to delivery questions on retailers' websites.

The online survey asked 1,000 UK consumers about their shopping habits, and also visited 40 leading retail websites in the fashion, consumer electronics, food and drink and CD/DVD/book sectors during November 2011 to ask for information about Christmas delivery dates. The website research uncovered a wide gap between best and worst performing sectors, with fashion retailers being the most likely to display delivery dates and food and drink websites being the least helpful with delivery information.

The majority (85%) of the retail web sites examined failed to provide straightforward details of final ordering dates to guarantee pre-Christmas delivery, with the majority leaving it to shoppers to work out the dates for themselves based on standard delivery times, or forcing consumers to call or email already overloaded contact centres.

The UK is the largest ecommerce market in Europe, with more Britons than ever before (93%) expected to shop online at Christmas 2011 and 58% expecting to do half or more of their festive buying over the internet. In fact, UK consumers are expected to spend more than £13.5 billion during the Christmas 2011 shopping period, but they are also expected to be much smarter than before about their spending, seeking out bargains and buying at the last minute to help stretch their budgets.

"Given the economic situation this promises to be a very competitive Christmas for UK retailers as customers shop around for the best deals," said Dee Roche, global marketing director for Eptica. "Our study shows that retailers need to do much more to reassure customers that their purchases and gifts will arrive before Christmas day."

This inability of retailers to provide accurate customer service answers echoes the findings of the '2011 Eptica UK Multichannel Customer Service Study', published in June 2011, which uncovered major online customer service issues amongst 100 top UK companies, with websites being able to provide answers to only 50% of enquiries, on average. And when it came to email, the problem was even worse with fewer than half of the companies (48%) correctly answering questions sent by email, 47% not acknowledging receipt of an email, and 27% simply not responding at all.

"Providing quick, understandable answers to customer questions online will be fundamental to retail success this Christmas," concluded Roche. "Retailers need to be clear, transparent and consistent with their information, otherwise they risk losing vital sales as nervous customers shop elsewhere."

Have you seen The Customer Experience Factbook?

In this 180+ page report, you'll find all the information and support you need to build a profitable, effective CX Improvement Program that spans every part of your business.

You'll be able to implement and manage meaningful and profitable change, and grow your bottom line despite a slowing economy. Grab this goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, technologies, research, suppliers and partners, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid CX strategy.

While most marketers could list maybe a dozen key points for improving their brand's Customer Experience (CX), the researchers and writers at The Marketing Factbook have identified FORTY main 'CX Keys' which will help you drive your customers to new levels of delight, loyalty, advocacy and profitability.

The areas in which customers have direct contact with your organization are perhaps the most obvious places in which CX improvements can be made, and this report addresses all 24 of these 'Direct CX Keys', applicable to offline and online businesses alike.

At the same time there are many other areas that indirectly affect CX (such as the supply chain, policies and processes) in which every business can make simple but far-reaching improvements. This report guides you through the problems and solutions for all 16 of these 'Indirect CX Keys', many of which are often forgotten or under-played even in the best CX strategies.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)