Poor online customer service from a click-and-mortar retailer will drive as much as 70% of U.S.-based online shoppers to spend less money at that merchant’s offline store, according to a new study from Jupiter Media Metrix. Yet only 18% of click-and-mortar retailers are capable of accessing a customer’s consolidated account activity across all sales and service channels, say Jupiter analysts.
While few click-and-mortar retailers can currently track customers’
transactions across all channels, 67% of online shoppers say they expect store staff to be able to view their account activity online. “Multichannel retailers have been treating their online and offline businesses as separate entities, but that’s not what consumers want,” says David Daniels, Jupiter analyst. “Click-and-mortar retailers need to build their customer service infrastructure for the long term, and changes in the market indicate that bringing those operations in-house is the only way to retain relationships across multiple channels.”
In other findings, the survey determined that 83% of online buyers would like to be able to return online purchases at stores. Additionally, 59% would like to order a product online and pick it up in an offline store. Yet only 18% of multichannel retailers offer in-store pick-up of items ordered online. That makes non-integrated product inventories a leading reason for customers' dissatisfaction with online service, according to Jupiter.
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