With its web site performing better than its stores in terms of sales, Tower Records attributes much of the difference to a web-based customer satisfaction survey tool that identifies ways it can improve service to online shoppers, senior vice president of direct-to-consumer operations Kevin Ertell tells Internet Retailer.
"Web sales are up, above projections, while store sales are flat," says Ertell, who will speak about Tower’s customer satisfaction strategy at the eTail 2004 Conference this week in Palm Springs, CA. "We definitely attribute the improvement in web sales to how we’re improving customer satisfaction levels."
Tower’s web site, TowerRecords.com, has been routinely surveying customer satisfaction levels with the CS Site Manager tool from ForeSee Results, which it implemented about eight months ago. The application gathers customer feedback through pop-up survey forms, producing a response rate of about 8%, Ertell says.
Tower has learned what customers like about its site as well as what they don’t like, giving Tower the opportunity to make site improvements to raise customer satisfaction levels and increase both sales and customer recommendations, Ertell says. While customers rated highly the site’s functionality, for instance, they rated poorly some site sections for overall look and feel.
Among the improvements Tower has made in response to customer feedback is a streamlined checkout section, which quickly led to an increase in orders, Ertell says. "Order processing went way up," he says.
Ertell notes that Tower continuously operates the CS Site Manager tool to gather customer feedback after improvements are made. "We’re constantly looking at it to see if customer satisfaction improves," he says. After improving the checkout process, he adds, subsequent surveys revealed that customers were recommending Tower more to other shoppers as well as purchasing more themselves.
Back...
