Consumers are fed up with e-commerce sites

When you e-mail a company with a question, especially one that deals with a potential purchase, you expect a reply. But you won’t always get one. The Talisma Corporation, a Bellevue, Wash., firm that sells customer interactive management software, conducted a mystery shopper exercise from May to June of this year. They sent e-mails to the top 100 U.S. online retailers asking what credit/debit card they accepted and what they charged for shipping.

One third of those e-mails went unanswered. Even when the company responded, the information was not always correct. Talisma says 49 percent of the e-mail responses contained inaccurate information.

Talisma CEO Dan Vetras said he was “somewhat, but not completely shocked” by the results. Many e-tailers are working on razor-thin margins, he says, and they do not have the staff to handle the influx of e-mail they get.

That’s a big mistake. Vetras believes these companies “could generate significantly more sales and build a much more loyal customer base,” if they provided quality service.

“We’re not talking about rocket science here,” he says. “By not providing service you lose customers.”

A company that gets it
Crutchfield Electronics is known for its online customer service. Unlike other sites that hide their customer service telephone number, Crutchfield encourages Web shoppers to call and talk to a knowledgeable sales advisor; names and pictures of advisors are displayed throughout the site.

For years, the company has earned high marks from Consumer Reports. Once again this year, the magazine’s readers rated Crutchfield their favorite place to shop for electronics.

Crutchfield does more than monitor customer problems. It uses software (developed by Tealeaf) to figure out exactly what happened – from the customer’s perspective – when something goes wrong.

“It allows us to view the exact user session, what they clicked on, what they filled in, how they interacted with the site,” says Steven Weiskircher, Crutchfield’s vice president of information technology. “We can literally see what process they went through on our site to get that less than ideal outcome.”

Based on this feedback, Crutchfield can solve little annoyances before they become significant problems. Providing top-notch customer service does cost more, but as Crutchfield has shown, the payback is enormous.

My two cents
For years, e-commerce has been a growing factor in the marketplace. Many of us want to do business online. But we are unwilling to accept second-rate service.

Web sites can no longer be an afterthought, something a business does half-heartedly in order to have a presence on the Internet.  We will no longer accept a poor online experience. We will not use sites that are difficult to navigate. We will not spend our money with retailers who have shabby customer service.

We now have choices. If your company does not want our business, we will shop somewhere else.

More information

• Survey reveals top 100 U.S. online retailers’ customer service shortfalls
• Survey reveals continued consumer intolerance with e-commerce failures

Don't miss this on MSNBC.com Pass it on: Sons of infertile men may be next The eight biggest Olympic marketing debacles Reality show judges range from wise to wacko Cosmic Log: Is this your jetpack? Forget your inhibitions: World's sexiest islands

MORE FROM CONSUMERMAN

ConsumerMan Section Front

Chinese drywall a big threat FTC nabs Moneygram Death in the digital age Free samples? Just say no ConsumerMan mailbag: Car rip-offs and more ConsumerMan Section Front   Add ConsumerMan headlines to your news reader: