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Companies disregard customer demands
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Fewer than one in five online shops are expanding their service
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Online services are not based on customer requirements
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Hamburg, Germany, June 13th, 2006 –
German online retailers neglect their customers’ wishes. Despite a growing demand for services, only a quarter of providers are extending their service portfolio. This means that Internet shops are throwing away important competitive advantages in a growing market: the number of Germans who shop on the Internet rose last year by seven per cent. These were the findings of the E-Commerce-Trend and Kundenkompass Online-Shopping surveys conducted by novomind in collaboration with the F.A.Z. institute.
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When it comes to customer service, the gap between what people want and what they get is still huge. The overwhelming majority of consumers (96 per cent) would like online shops to offer special services. Yet only two in five companies actually provide such services, like voluntary product comparisons, on their websites. The desire for low-cost delivery terms, given by nine out of ten consumers as an important factor, is something of which most providers seem to be altogether unaware. Only every third shop operator assumes that delivery terms play an exceptional role in keeping the customer satisfied. Nearly half of all customers would also like to see marketplaces introduced for the trading of used articles. Yet only 15 per cent of online retailers actually want to provide such facilities.
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Yet also from a practical point of view, services fall short of customer requirements. Most (56 per cent) expressed the opinion that online shopping could be greatly improved by the introduction of so-called "persistent shopping carts". With this model, the articles selected remain in the virtual shopping trolley even after the customer has left the online shop. This gives customers fast and easy access to the shopping cart when they return to the shop and enables them to spread the ordering process over a number of online window-shopping trips. Up to now, not quite one in four online retailers have decided to introduce such a service even though the persistent shopping cart has already proved successful in practice.
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Customer loyalty resulting from positive experiences serves as a basis for the lasting success of a business. Online shoppers especially reward positive experiences with a clear loyalty bonus. Only one in four customers likes to try out new shops. Over half of consumers regularly give preference to the Internet shops they already know.
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novomind is a software developer in Hamburg and the fastest-growing company in the field of electronic customer communications and mail management. As the leading provider of innovative solutions for digital customer communications, novomind AG provides software for service-oriented and personalised customer dealings. The software not only optimises efficiency in customer administration significantly, it also gives the user a faster return on investment. The portfolio of the Products division includes the novomind Self Service Suite™. The software package contains all the communication modules necessary for a customer service centre on a central knowledge basis: e-mail management, virtual customer consulting and systems for interactive, real-time communication. The novomind AG Services division implements complex e-business applications. More than 40 major companies have already decided in favour of novomind technology, among them Citibank, Otto, Yello Strom and the German pension institution Deutsche Rentenversicherung. Club Bertelsmann, EnBW and Mexx as well as public-sector users, such as the German Bundestag (parliament) and the German Department of Trade and Industry, have already successfully introduced novomind systems to optimise their customer communications, turnover and PR.
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