Boston-based SmartBargains.com, an online liquidator of high-end consumer merchandise, hopes to reduce customers inquiries on order status by 10% once it implements APL Direct Logistics’ Proactive Parcel Management product later this year, Rich Secor, executive vice president, tells Internet Retailer. “Our philosophy is to give the customer all of the information they could possibly want, before they want it so they don't feel the need to contact our customer service department,” Secor says.
SmartBargains is part of a growing group of online retailers beneath the top tier who are discovering the benefits of automated order status reports to customers.
While large online marketers like Amazon, Lands’ End and 1-800-Flowers have had such notification systems for some time, the availability of such programs and their ease of implementation haven’t penetrated to the mid-size and smaller retailers, observers say. That’s partly because the retailers have been focused on the more basic issues of selling on the web and getting fulfillment right and partly because vendors who offer the service haven’t been promoting it strongly.
“Any time someone contacts our customer service department, it means we failed to provide an adequate customer self-service method,” Secor says. “Customer self-service is one of the huge advantages of e-commerce.”
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