Online ordering experience with an e-commerce retailer in India

E-Commerce retail has created a buzz in Indian markets with many players trying to grab the wallet share. It goes without saying that all this buzz will naturally die down (already started?) and only few players who can really differentiate will exist in few years.

Being a professional in CX/CRM arena, I believe customer experience will act as a key differentiator for players in this space. And one of the recent experience with a big name has just showed the trend of downfall if that is how they want to work with their customers.

We, I and my wife, were browsing sites for a good gift for a kid. After spending good amount of time, we managed to select one pair of Spiderman walky-talky. As it goes, we specifically chose it because of the character which kid loves. We were all excited to touch and feel the walky-talky. As we opened the packet, there was a walky-talky but of a different character.

It was an instant let down, an outright negative experience for us. not to say, this was the first and last time we did a transaction with them. Here, assuming their inventory is still not real-time reflected, a simple call from them could have made a difference.

It is not always that we need to blame lack of technology integration, the customer experience is much more ingrained in the organization culture.

I hope other firms do take a cue.

A Multi-Channel journey experience with a telecom service provider - II

Continuing from the Part I, we avoided doing a name change and continued with updates only to contact and email. However, a time came when I moved out and subsequently asked other folks to update the email/contact.

They updated only the mail! Further, I applied for a new connection with the same provider at my new location in the city. So, in their system, my contact no. was listed under two connections and surprisingly, no intelligence has been built to consolidate connections on the basis of contact. 

Imagine my situation now, I am paying regularly for my new connection and I keep getting calls to pay my dues for the earlier connection. How good an experience is that? :-(

And even if I try to inform about my helplessness, they are constrained as the system does not allow them to do so (the enterprise seriously need to go and learn some basic of customer service). the reason. the calls I get is from departments such as revenue collection and customer retention department and no amount of CRM technology will help them until the enterprise is really determined to provide an integrated experience.

I hope by reading the blog, the solutions can be well inferred :)